Episode 276: Attention Please

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2024

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David and Tamler are back for the new year and one of our resolutions was to do more episodes on William James. Today we talk about his account of ‘Attention’ from his 1890 volume The Principles of Psychology – another remarkably prescient chapter that still feels more than relevant today. What is attention and how does it function in the mind? What accounts for the different ways that we attend to things? Does attention help to shape or construct our reality? What is attention’s connection to the will? Does James anticipate predictive coding theory?

Plus we discuss the removal of the head of a renowned university for reasons that have nothing to do with the mission of higher learning.

Episode Links

Chancellor of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Fired [nbc.com]

William James chapter on Attention from Principles of Psychology (1890) [yorku.ca]

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist Dave Vizarro,
0:06.0	having an informal discussion about issues and science and ethics.
0:09.4	Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.
0:17.0	We're all about. There's no such thing as courage. There's only fear.
0:24.0	The fear of getting hurt and the fear of dying.
0:28.0	That's why one beings live so long. The way then has spoken.
0:35.0	The way then has spoken.
0:37.0	Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Who are you?
0:48.0	Who are you?
0:50.0	Who are you?
0:51.0	A very bad man. I'm A very bad man.
0:53.0	I'm a very good man.
0:55.0	Good man.
0:56.0	They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have.
1:02.0	They think they've been lost and with no more brains than you have.
1:05.0	Pay no attention to that man.
1:11.0	Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man.
1:15.0	I'm a very good man.
1:17.0	Just a very bad wizard.
1:20.0	Welcome to very bad wizards.
1:21.0	I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston.
1:24.0	Dave, happy new year. I know you hate to talk about politics, but we need to discuss the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.