Announcing the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology

Announcing the 34th annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology
June 26-29, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Registration is now open; deadline Thursday, June 5 -- 12:00pm EST
Note that early registration is suggested, as the reserved hotel block is likely to fill quickly. http://www.ircs.upenn.edu/spp/


The 2008 conference will feature presentations by:

George Ainslie, Michael L. Anderson, Louise Antony
Peter Carruthers, Louis Charland, Anjan Chatterjee
David Danks, Felipe De Brigard, Michael Devitt
Marthah Farah, Evelina Fedorenko, Owen Flanagan,
Jerry Fodor, Kenneth R. Foster, Lila R. Gleitman (President of SPP)
George Graham, Bryce Huebner, Bertram F. Malle,
Barbara Malt, Christopher Meacham, Dominic P. Murphy
Thomas Nadelhoffer, Kenneth Norman, Mike Oaksford
Erik Parens, Nancy Petry, Jeffrey Poland
Zenon Pylyshyn, Sarah Robins, Paul Rozin,
Laurie R. Santos (the 2008 Stanton Prize winner)
Michael Strevens, Justin Sytsma, Kelly Trogdon
Charles Wallis, Deena Weisberg, Daniel Weiskopf
Fei Xu, Carlos Zednik. . . among many others

On topics including:

-Addiction and Responsibility
-Concepts and Categorization
-Consciousness
-Bayesian Inference and Rationality
-Foundational Issues in the Philosophy of Cognitive Science
-Language & Mental Representation
-Moral Psychology
-Neuroethics
-Theory of Mind

Note that this year the conference will be preceded June 25-26 by a workshop on experimental philosophy
http://www.socphilpsych.org/workshop.html

More information on both the 2008 SPP conference and the Experimental Philosophy Workshop can be found on the website http://www.ircs.upenn.edu/spp/

Bilingual phd looking for a job in Toronto

Dear readers,

As some of you may know, I am currently exploring career opportunities outside academia. I would like to ask each of you a small favour: if you know anyone (your friend, family, etc.) in Toronto who might be interested by my profile, please put me in contact with that person; I need to meet people, network, learn. Resume emailings and online job boards are anonymous and limited. Any help will be appreciated. I have strong analytical and communication skills, and I can apply them to a wide range of problems; I just need an organization who gives me the opportunity to prove it.

I am particularly interested by these industries:

• Management/strategy consulting
• Health care sector
• Biomedical/Pharmaceutical
• Information technology
• Human factors/ cognitive ergonomics
• Research and development
• Business intelligence

And by jobs such as :

• Management/strategy consultant
• Business/Policy Analyst
• Scientific, Medical Consultant
• Market researcher
• Project Manager
• Coordinator

Contact:

• I can be reached at benoit@hardyvallee.net
• My resume is online at http://www.hardyvallee.net/resume
• Here is a Word version (.doc)
  
• I am on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/hardyvallee
• I can give my cell phone number if you contact me personally by email
  

Thanks in advance. do not hesitate to forward or bookmark this page.


Benoit Hardy-Vallée, PhD
Toronto, ON
benoit@hardyvallee.net

OBJECTIVE: Applying my analytical and communication skills in a business environment

SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS

• Research and Analysis: 10+ years experience in documentary research
• Project Management: Organized 8 conferences and symposiums
• Workgroup / Team Management: Led 2 research groups and participated in 5 other ones
• Collaborative Work: Co-authored 7 research papers
• Written Communication: Penned 11 articles on cognition and decision-making
• Oral Communication: Delivered 38 conferences, 4 guest lectures and 2 university seminars
• Multicultural Awareness: Worked and studied in Quebec, Ontario and France
• Languages (written and spoken): English (Fluent), French (Native), Spanish (Basic)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

LECTURER
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario 2007–present
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario 2006–2007

• Taught philosophy at the graduate and undergraduate levels
• Designed course content, evaluated and counselled students about their coursework
• Edited 2 books on cognitive science
• Communicated ongoing research in various conferences and articles

ASSOCIATE RESEARCHER
University of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, Quebec 2002–2006

• Managed research teams and facilitated group discussions
• Created, promoted and supervised an annual international conference
• Implemented 3 content-management systems for various academic institutions
• Designed web sites for research groups
• Conducted experimental research on logical reasoning
• Communicated ongoing research in various conferences and articles

TECHNICAL SKILLS

• Proficient user of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, Intermediate user of Microsoft Excel
• Various content-management systems, HTML, FTP, Web design & publishing

EDUCATION

ECOLES DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES, Paris, France 2006
Doctor of Philosophy, Summa cum laude

UNIVERSITY OF QUEBEC AT MONTREAL, Montreal, Quebec
Master of Arts in Philosophy,Summa cum laude GPA: 4.23/4.3 2003
Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy,Summa cum laude GPA: 4.00/4.3 2001

AWARDS

• 2 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Scholarships
• 2 Fonds Québécois de la Recherche, Société et Culture (FQRSC-Québec) Scholarships
• McDonnell Foundation Travel Grant, California Institute of Technology Workshop

Found on the American Association Management website: a podcast on behavioral economics

Dan Ariely on Understanding the Logic Behind Illogical Decisions

An MIT professor discovers that people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion.

April 18, 2008 / Podcast # 08-16

Dan Ariely

Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Dan Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money. According to Ariely’s new book Predictably Irrational, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should, in fact, be based on our systematic, unsurprising irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social norms) that influence our economic behavior brings a variety of opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer choice, as well as economic and educational policy.

The Philosophy of Social Cognition - X - Game Theory

Here is the tenth and final chapter of "The Philosophy of Social Cognition", the free ebook-in-progress: Game Theory and Normative Social Cognition


INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: PHILOSOPHY AND THE OTHER MINDS

1. The Other Minds
2. Rationality and Interpretation


PART TWO: OUR EVERYDAY PSYCHOLOGY

3. Simulation and Theory-Theory
4. Embodied Phenomenology and Narratives
5.Experimental Approaches to Folk-Psychology: Moral Judgments and Pluralistic Accounts


PART THREE: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE SOCIAL MIND

6. Neurons that Mirror
7. Social Primates and the Evolution of Social Cognition
8. The Modularity of The Social Mind
9. Social Intelligence

PART FOUR: RATIONALITY, GAME THEORY AND SOCIALITY
10. Game Theory and Normative Social Cognition

CONCLUSION

Bibliography on Philosophy and Social Cognition

• [DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE BOOK]

I will revise it one day and make it more coherent, but in it's current form it should be useful as an introduction to the Philosophy of Social Cognition.

I would like to thank Patrick Parslow, (OdinLab, SSE, University of Reading) for his help with the proofreading.

a trader's morning testosterone level predicts his day's profitability

according to a new study plublished this week in PNAS:


J. M. Coates and J. Herbert

Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0704025105

Little is known about the role of the endocrine system in financial risk taking. Here, we report the findings of a study in which we sampled, under real working conditions, endogenous steroids from a group of male traders in the City of London. We found that a trader's morning testosterone level predicts his day's profitability. We also found that a trader's cortisol rises with both the variance of his trading results and the volatility of the market. Our results suggest that higher testosterone may contribute to economic return, whereas cortisol is increased by risk. Our results point to a further possibility: testosterone and cortisol are known to have cognitive and behavioral effects, so if the acutely elevated steroids we observed were to persist or increase as volatility rises, they may shift risk preferences and even affect a trader's ability to engage in rational choice.

See a good summary in Science.