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Philosophy Talk

Daniel Kahneman and the Fallible Mind

Should we be demoralized at how quirky our brains are, or delighted we can do so much in spite of that?

Together with Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman discovered many fascinating quirks of the human mind, such as “framing effects,” the “anchoring bias,” and the “availability heuristic.” In doing so, he helped to revolutionize our understanding of the mind: there is a new, non-Freudian unconscious in town, one that actually steers us right much of the time. But what does Kahneman’s way of thinking suggest about who we are as human beings? Which of our cognitive quirks are benign, which benevolent, and which malignant? And what, if anything, can we do about the bad ones? Josh and Blakey check their biases with Tamar Gendler from Yale University, author of Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology. Sunday, November 15 at 11 am.

Part of the Jewish Thinkers series.

Devon Strolovitch studied medieval Judeo-Portuguese manuscripts and earned a PhD in Linguistics from Cornell University before coming to KALW. He is the Senior Producer of Philosophy Talk, and since 2007 has hosted Fog City Blues, the weekly digest of Blues in the Bay Area and beyond.