Episode 40 - Beautiful Confusion

Darron and Jeff explore feelings of confusion and the limits of Cognitivism. They talk about the contradictory nature of knowing and thinking versus feeling, how our understanding and our actions are bounded by our biological nature, the purpose of Cognitivism, the dissonance that comes from interacting with others due to our anecdotal perceptions of the world, the difficulty of constructing meaning in an ultimately meaningless universe, their differing interpretations of Absurdism, and finally Darron begins working on reconceptualizing a framework for personal meaning based around uncertainty and the unlikely probabilistic nature of our existence as individual entities experiencing the universe.

Notes:

• 4:37 - See more on Daniel Kahneman, “The Father of Behavioral Science,” at The Decision Lab

• 6:31 - Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

• 6:44 - In his book, The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathan Haidt characterizes the human mind as a partnership between separate but connected entities using the metaphor of the rider and the elephant - the rider represents all that is conscious and is the director of actions and executor of thought and long term goals, while the elephant represents all that is automatic, and often acts independently of conscious thought.

• 8:10 - Listen to Beautiful Illusions Episode 12 - A New Enlightenment: The Age of Cognitivism from March, 2021

• 9:19 - Philosophize This!

• 17:19 - The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

• 21:43 - Listen to Mindscape Episode 340 - Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on What Matters and Why It Matters

• 28:40 - See “Each Shuffle of a Deck of Cards is Probably Unique in History”