Dr Guy Fletcher: Well-being and other topics

Dr Guy Fletcher: Well-being and other topics

This month we talk to Dr Guy Fletcher, a lecturer in philosophy here at Edinburgh. In April Guy published a book on what is becoming an increasing hot topic: The philosophy of well-being. The concept of well-being and happiness has fascinated philosophers of ethics and politics since ancient Greek times and beyond, but recently it has become an increasingly central theme in popular psychology, self-help and even government, with the latter spending increasing amounts of money and resource to promote it.

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Dr Lauren Hall-Lew: Tourist attitudes to linguistic variation in Scotland

Lauren Hall-Lew

This month’s podcast comes from Dr Lauren Hall-Lew, a lecturer in Sociolinguistics. With tourist season well and truly upon us it’s the perfect time to find out more about Lauren’s research into tourist attitudes to Scottish accents. Lauren and her team hit the streets of Edinburgh during a recent Edinburgh Festival Fringe to quiz tourists about their attitudes to Scottish accents in different contexts.

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Aidan McGlynn: How Pornography Works: Pornography as Undermining Propaganda, and Freedom of Speech

Aidan McGlynn: How Pornography Works: Pornography as Undermining Propaganda, and Freedom of Speech

This month’s podcast comes from Dr Aidan McGlynn, who discusses a paper he recently presented called ‘How pornography works: Pornography as undermining propaganda.’ Aidan is a lecturer in philosophy in the school of PPLS and has worked on a wide range of philosophical topics.

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Andy Clark: Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind

Andy Clark: Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind

Have you ever suspected that people tend to see what they expect to see? If you have, then you might want to check out my new book Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. The book explores an emerging view of the perceiving brain as a prediction machine. Brains like that are not cognitive couch-potatoes, passively awaiting the next waves of sensory stimulation. Instead, they are pro-active prediction engines constantly trying to guess at, or anticipate, the shape of the incoming sensory signal.

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