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  1. How We Know What Isn't So.Thomas Gilovich - 1993 - New York, NY, USA: Free Press.
    Thomas Gilovich offers a wise and readable guide to the fallacy of the obvious in everyday life. When can we trust what we believe—that "teams and players have winning streaks," that "flattery works," or that "the more people who agree, the more likely they are to be right"—and when are such beliefs suspect? Thomas Gilovich offers a guide to the fallacy of the obvious in everyday life. Illustrating his points with examples, and supporting them with the latest research findings, he (...)
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  • Viruses of the mind.Richard Dawkins - 1993 - In Bo Dahlbom (ed.), Dennett and his critics: demystifying mind. Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell. pp. 13--27.
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  • (1 other version)Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.David L. Hull - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3):435-438.
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  • The evolution and psychology of self-deception.William von Hippel & Robert Trivers - 2011 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (1):1.
    In this article we argue that self-deception evolved to facilitate interpersonal deception by allowing people to avoid the cues to conscious deception that might reveal deceptive intent. Self-deception has two additional advantages: It eliminates the costly cognitive load that is typically associated with deceiving, and it can minimize retribution if the deception is discovered. Beyond its role in specific acts of deception, self-deceptive self-enhancement also allows people to display more confidence than is warranted, which has a host of social advantages. (...)
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  • Denying Evolution: Creation, Scientism, and the Nature of Science.Massimo Pigliucci - 2002 - Sinauer.
    Denying Evolution aims at taking a fresh look at the evolution–creation controversy. It presents a truly “balanced” treatment, not in the sense of treating creationism as a legitimate scientific theory (it demonstrably is not), but in the sense of dividing the blame for the controversy equally between creationists and scientists—the former for subscribing to various forms of anti-intellectualism, the latter for discounting science education and presenting science as scientism to the public and the media. The central part of the book (...)
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  • In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion.Scott Atran - 2002 - New York, US: Oup Usa.
    This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.
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  • Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk.Massimo Pigliucci - 2010 - University of Chicago Press.
    Introduction : science versus pseudoscience and the "demarcation problem" -- Hard science, soft science -- Almost science -- Pseudoscience -- Blame the media? -- Debates on science : the rise of think tanks and the decline of public intellectuals -- Science and politics : the case of global warming -- Science in the courtroom : the case against intelligent design -- From superstition to natural philosophy -- From natural philosophy to modern science -- The science wars I : do we (...)
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  • Epistemic Vigilance.Dan Sperber, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz, Olivier Mascaro, Hugo Mercier, Gloria Origgi & Deirdre Wilson - 2010 - Mind and Language 25 (4):359-393.
    Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.
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  • Self-control and belief.Alfred R. Mele - 1994 - Philosophical Psychology 7 (4):419 – 435.
    Although the extent to which motivational factors are involved in the production and sustaining of biased or 'irrational' beliefs continues to be a controversial issue in social psychology, even those who urge that such beliefs are often explained by non-motivational tendencies admit that biased beliefs sometimes have motivational sources. Sometimes toe are influenced by motivational pressures in ways proscribed by principles that we accept for belief-acquisition or belief-revision ('doxastic' principles). Many garden-variety instances of self-deception are cases in point. We are (...)
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  • Immunizing Strategies and Epistemic Defense Mechanisms.Maarten Boudry & Johan Braeckman - 2011 - Philosophia 39 (1):145-161.
    An immunizing strategy is an argument brought forward in support of a belief system, though independent from that belief system, which makes it more or less invulnerable to rational argumentation and/or empirical evidence. By contrast, an epistemic defense mechanism is defined as a structural feature of a belief system which has the same effect of deflecting arguments and evidence. We discuss the remarkable recurrence of certain patterns of immunizing strategies and defense mechanisms in pseudoscience and other belief systems. Five different (...)
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  • Relevance: Communication and Cognition.Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson - 1986/1995 - Oxford: Blackwell.
    This revised edition includes a new Preface outlining developments in Relevance Theory since 1986, discussing the more serious criticisms of the theory, and ...
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  • Conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorizing.Steve Clarke - 2002 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32 (2):131-150.
    The dismissive attitude of intellectuals toward conspiracy theorists is considered and given some justification. It is argued that intellectuals are entitled to an attitude of prima facie skepticism toward the theories propounded by conspiracy theorists, because conspiracy theorists have an irrational tendency to continue to believe in conspiracy theories, even when these take on the appearance of forming the core of degenerating research program. It is further argued that the pervasive effect of the "fundamental attribution error" can explain the behavior (...)
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  • Of conspiracy theories.Brian Keeley - 1999 - Journal of Philosophy 96 (3):109-126.
    As the end of the Millennium approaches, conspiracy theories are increasing in number and popularity. In this short essay, I offer an analysis of conspiracy theories inspired by Hume's discussion of miracles. My first conclusion is that whereas Hume can argue that miracles are, by definition, explanations we are not warranted in believing, there is nothing analytic that will allow us to distinguish good from bad conspiracy theories. There is no a priori method for distinguishing warranted conspiracy theories (say, those (...)
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  • Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment.Richard E. Nisbett & Lee Ross - 1980 - Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: Prentice-Hall.
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  • Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach.Dan Sperber - 1996 - Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
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  • Consciousness Explained.Daniel C. Dennett - 1991 - Penguin Books.
    Little, Brown, 1992 Review by Glenn Branch on Jul 5th 1999 Volume: 3, Number: 27.
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  • The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion.Pascal BOYER - 1994
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  • Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism.Robert T. Pennock - 1999 - MIT Press.
    Creationists have acquired a more sophisticated intellectual arsenal. This book reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. Creationism is no longer the simple notion it once was taken to be. Its new advocates have become more sophisticated in how they present their views, speaking of "intelligent design" rather than "creation science" and aiming their arguments against the naturalistic philosophical method that underlies science, proposing to replace it with a "theistic science." The creationism controversy is not just about the status of Darwinian (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Abusing Science: The Case against Creationism.Michael Ruse - 1984 - Journal of the History of Biology 17 (1):147-148.
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  • Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience.Frank Cioffi - 1998 - Open Court.
    For three decades Frank Cioffi has been at the center of the debate over Freud's legacy and the legitimacy of psychoanalysis.
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  • The Selfish Gene. [REVIEW]Gunther S. Stent & Richard Dawkins - 1977 - Hastings Center Report 7 (6):33.
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  • The fixation of superstitious beliefs.Konrad Talmont-Kaminski - 2009 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 28 (3):81-95.
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  • The problem of apparently irrational beliefs.Steven Lukes - 2006 - In Stephen P. Turner & Mark W. Risjord (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology. Boston: Elsevier. pp. 591--606.
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