I wasn't assigned to post this week, but I haven't done one yet and the semester seems to be ending quickly. I found this video on the TED Talks website. We talked about wanting to know more about general things about consciousness, and this video gives an interesting perspective from Dan Dennet, not a cognitive psychologist, but a professor, philosopher, and scientist. The video isn't too long, and he's a pretty entertaining speaker. He starts with a small scientific explanation of consciousness by the way of neurons firing and what not, but then goes on to compare the ideas of consciousness with magic tricks. It reminds me of many of previous blog posts that show ways in which our minds trick us. He shows a video example of how our eyes miss large pieces of information when concentrating on other things. In a way he seems to be saying that our minds are far less intriguing than we think they are, which I thought was strange, and do not entirely agree with. Nonetheless, it was an interesting new perspective.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_on_our_consciousness.html
