Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS
Psychology has the power to tell us how we behave and what motivates us. But is it really that accurate, or is it just a statistical game? Today we’ll talk to Dr. Grant Gutheil, Associate Professor of Psychology at Nazareth College. He’ll discuss the probabilistic nature of psychology. In the second half of the show we’ll explore what psychology might say about the very nature of the human mind.
Host: Brian Koberlein
Guest: Grant Gutheil
Producer: Mark Gillespie
Music: Marcus Warner
The One Universe at a Time Podcast is produced at the Rochester Institute of Technology with support from the RIT College of Science.
Comments
I think it should be well taken that if we did know the brain from ground up, to the limits of quantum mechanics (which should suffice for the modeling needed), and were able to “adjust it” to the same limits, and actually DID understand how to encode and decode in “brain,” then yes we should be able to do what the “hard scientists” say we could do. This includes loving something or any emotion. This includes consciousness. Maybe the guest’s opinion on this matter exemplifies the difference between the other “hard sciences” and psychology, though I cannot say for sure this opinion is shared by the cohort.
This was one very good discussion! Congrats on you both.
One of my favorite episodes in the podcast so far (:
As for sci-fi, I’d like to recommend a short story, Exhalation by Ted Chiang. It discusses brain anatomy and how it effects/implements cognitive processes. And it also discusses the heat death of the universe in a touching fashion. You’ll probably both enjoy it.