Where the essays actually got it

Naoyuki Abe and colleagues, "Neural Correlates of True Memory, False Memory, and Deception" (2008): heightened dorsolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate activity during false recognition Paywalled

Fred Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, The Bounds of Cognition (2008): the book-length argument for the "coupling-constitution fallacy" objection to the extended mind thesis Purchase

Fred Adams and Kenneth Aizawa, "Defending the Bounds of Cognition" (2010): a freely available direct response elaborating the same coupling-constitution fallacy with the pencil-and-mathematician example Free

George Ainslie, "Specious Reward: A Behavioral Theory of Impulsiveness and Impulse Control" (1975): the paper behind what later work calls hyperbolic discounting Free

A. Baioui and colleagues, "Psychophysiology of False Memories in a Deese-Roediger-McDermott Paradigm with Visual Scenes" (2012): skin conductance and heart-rate responses run measurably weaker for false memories than true ones Free

Albert Bandura, "Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change" (1977) Paywalled

Frederic Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932): the original argument that remembering is reconstruction from schemas, not playback Free

Henry Beecher, "Pain in Men Wounded in Battle" (1946): badly wounded soldiers who did not ask for morphine Free

Pauline Boss, Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (1999) Purchase

Thomas J. Bouchard and Matt McGue (2003), heritability of personality traits in twin and adoption studies Paywalled

Franz Brentano, the theory of intentionality Free

Alison Wood Brooks, "Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement" (2014) Paywalled

Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923) Purchase

John Campbell, "Schizophrenia, the Space of Reasons, and Thinking as a Motor Process" (1999): thinking as partly a motor act, and thought insertion as a failure of the sense of authorship Paywalled

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus Free

Walter Cannon, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage (1915): coining "fight or flight" Free

Cao Cao, Li Quan, Du Mu, and other commentators, 十一家注孙子 (Sunzi with Eleven Commentaries), chapter 1 (Song dynasty compilation): Cao Cao, Du Mu, and Zhang Yu on the Dao, and Li Quan's reading of temple calculation as a tally, in Chinese Free

CBS News San Francisco, "'Suicidal Thoughts Just Disappeared'; Groundbreaking UCSF Study Treats Depression With On-Demand Stimulation" (2021): interview with the study's patient, Sarah Free

David Chalmers, "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" (1995) Free

Loren Chapman (1967), coining "illusory correlation" Paywalled

Chen Shou, 三国志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms), biography of Guan Yu (late 3rd century): the historical account of the bone-scraping, in Chinese Free

Chen Shou, with Pei Songzhi's commentary, 三国志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms), biography of Liu Shan (late 3rd century; commentary 429): the banquet in Luoyang, Xi Zheng's coaching, and Chen Shou's "white silk" verdict, in Chinese Free

Chen Shou, with Pei Songzhi's commentary, 三国志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms), biography of Zhuge Liang (late 3rd century; commentary 429): Guo Chong's empty-fort anecdote and Pei Songzhi's reasons for rejecting it, in Chinese Free

Chen Shou, with Pei Songzhi's commentary, 三国志 (Records of the Three Kingdoms), annals of Cao Cao (late 3rd century; commentary 429): the three early accounts of the killings at Lü Boshe's house, and Sun Sheng's version of Cao Cao's line, in Chinese Free

Andy Clark (2013), predictive processing Paywalled

Andy Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence (2003): argues neurally coupled technology may collapse the incorporation period other tools require Purchase

Andy Clark and David Chalmers, "The Extended Mind" (1998) Paywalled

Jack Clark and Dario Amodei (OpenAI), "Faulty Reward Functions in the Wild" (2016): the CoastRunners boat that circled a lagoon for points instead of finishing the race Free

Richard Corliss (Time), "Keith Richards' Life: Somehow He Still Has One" (2010): review of Life, quoting Richards on heroin and on quitting it in 1979 Free

Kenneth Craik, The Nature of Explanation (1943): the "small-scale model" of reality the mind uses to try out alternatives Purchase

John Darley and Daniel Batson, "From Jerusalem to Jericho" (1973): the Good Samaritan experiment: seminary students in a hurry walked past a man in need Paywalled

Robyn Dawes, "The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear Models in Decision Making" (1979): crude linear models outperforming expert judgment Paywalled

Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (1991) Free

Daniel Dennett, The Intentional Stance (1987): treating a system as if it has beliefs and desires in order to predict it Purchase

Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) Free

René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul (1649): part 1, where the pineal gland becomes the meeting point of mind and body (Jonathan Bennett's modernized text) Free

John Doris, Lack of Character (2002): the situationist case that stable traits explain less of behavior than situations do Purchase

J. A. Easterbrook, "The Effect of Emotion on Cue Utilization and the Organization of Behavior" (1959) Paywalled

Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, Correspondence (1643): Elisabeth's question of how a thinking substance could move the body Free

Carl Elliott, Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (2003) Purchase

Epictetus, Enchiridion (c. 135 CE) Free

Baruch Fischhoff (1975), early experimental work on hindsight bias Paywalled

B. L. Finlay (2007), developmental noise in neural wiring Paywalled

Charlotte Finsterwald and Cristina Alberini, "Stress and Glucocorticoid Receptor-Dependent Mechanisms in Long-Term Memory: From Adaptive Responses to Psychopathologies" (2014): cortisol biasing hippocampal encoding toward generalized, gist-level associations under stress Paywalled

Jerry Fodor, The Language of Thought (1975) Purchase

Eldon Foltz and Lowell White, "Pain 'Relief' by Frontal Cingulumotomy" (1962): cingulotomy patients describing pain as less bothersome Paywalled

Harry Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" (1971) Paywalled

Keith Frankish (2016), defending illusionism about consciousness Paywalled

Lluís Fuentemilla and colleagues, "Individual Differences in True and False Memory Retrieval Are Related to White Matter Brain Microstructure" (2009): true recall tracks the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, false-memory susceptibility tracks the superior longitudinal fasciculus Free

Shaun Gallagher, "Philosophical Conceptions of the Self: Implications for Cognitive Science" (2000): the distinction between the sense of ownership and the sense of agency Paywalled

Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk, "The Visual Cliff" (1960): babies who would not crawl across safe glass over an apparent drop Paywalled

James Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979) Purchase

Robert Gordon, "Folk Psychology as Simulation" (1986): simulation theory: predicting others by using your own mind as the model Paywalled

Maree L. Hackett and Kristen Pickles, "Part I: Frequency of Depression after Stroke: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies" (2014) Paywalled

Dylan Hadfield-Menell, Anca Dragan, Pieter Abbeel, and Stuart Russell, "The Off-Switch Game" (2017): why a system uncertain about its goal has a reason to let a human switch it off Free

Pierre Hadot, The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (1998 (English edition)): the Stoic image of the mind as a private stronghold Purchase

Brian Hare and colleagues, research on dogs' comprehension of human pointing gestures Paywalled

Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel, "An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior" (1944): the animated film of moving geometric shapes that viewers described as people Paywalled

John Herz, "Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma" (1950): the article usually credited with naming the security dilemma Paywalled

Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore (1655): part 2, chapter 11, where the ship is rebuilt from its old planks Free

Hans Holbein the Younger, The Ambassadors (1533): the anamorphic skull that only resolves from one side of the painting Free

David Hume, writing on causation, choice, and what became compatibilism Free

Wolfgang Iser, reader-response theory and the concept of narrative "gaps" Paywalled

F. Janelle and colleagues, "Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus: A Review of the Anatomical Descriptions With Functional Correlates" (2022) Free

Frank Jackson, "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982): the knowledge argument (see also this site's Mary's Room primer) Paywalled

Robert Jervis, work on the security dilemma in international relations Paywalled

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) Purchase

Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety (1844) Free

E. J. Kim and colleagues, "Stress Effects on the Hippocampus: A Critical Review" (2015) Free

Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World (1998): the causal exclusion problem for mental causation Purchase

Pang Wei Koh and colleagues, "Concept Bottleneck Models" (2020) Free

Peter D. Kramer, Listening to Prozac (1993): the book that coined "cosmetic psychopharmacology" Purchase

Saul Kripke, the causal theory of reference Purchase

Erin Kunz, Frank Willett, and colleagues, "Inner Speech in Motor Cortex and Implications for Speech Neuroprostheses" (2025): decoding imagined words, unintended leaks, and the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" password Free

Kelly Kurkela and Nancy Dennis, "Event-Related fMRI Studies of False Memory: An Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis" (2016) Free

Jeffrey Ladish, Jeremy Schlatter, and Benjamin Weinstein-Raun (Palisade Research), "Shutdown Resistance in Reasoning Models" (2025): AI models editing a shutdown script to finish a set of math problems Free

David Lee and Eric Aronson, "Visual Proprioceptive Control of Standing in Human Infants" (1974): the moving room that made toddlers sway and fall on a still floor Paywalled

Joseph Levine (1983), coining "the explanatory gap" Paywalled

Jon Levine, Newton Gordon, and Howard Fields, "The Mechanism of Placebo Analgesia" (1978): naloxone reversing placebo pain relief after dental surgery Paywalled

John Locke, the psychological-continuity theory of personal identity Free

Elizabeth Loftus, "Planting Misinformation in the Human Mind: A 30-Year Investigation of the Malleability of Memory" (2005): confidently but falsely recalled eyewitness testimony has helped convict innocent people Free

Lu Xun, 《绛洞花主》小引 (preface to Jiangdong Huazhu) (1927): the short preface listing how different readers each find their own Dream of the Red Chamber, in Chinese Free

Luo Guanzhong (attributed), 三国演义 (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), chapter 75 (14th century): the novel's version of the scene, with Hua Tuo and the chess game, in Chinese Free

Arien Mack and Irvin Rock, Inattentional Blindness (1998) Purchase

Anita Mahinpei and colleagues, "Promises and Pitfalls of Black-Box Concept Learning Models" (2021): how concept bottleneck models can leak information past their named concepts Free

Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (press release) (2005): Helicobacter pylori, not stress, as the main cause of peptic ulcers Free

Emeran Mayer, "Gut Feelings: The Emerging Biology of Gut-Brain Communication" (2011): two-way signaling between the brain and the gut Paywalled

Ronald Melzack and Kenneth Casey, "Sensory, Motivational, and Central Control Determinants of Pain" (1968): the sensory and affective dimensions of pain Free

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1945) Purchase

Robert K. Merton, "The Matthew Effect in Science" (1968) Paywalled

Mozi, 所染 (On Dyeing), chapter 3 of the Mozi (5th to 3rd century BCE): silk dyed blue becomes blue, silk dyed yellow becomes yellow: the image behind Chen Shou's verdict on Liu Shan, in Chinese Free

Edgar Müller (Gulf News profile), "Edgar Mueller: Canvas of Illusions": The Crevasse (2008), and passers-by who step around his 3D pavement paintings Free

Thomas Nagel, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) Paywalled

Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson, "Telling More Than We Can Know" (1977): people explaining their own choices no better than outsiders could Paywalled

Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (1988, revised 2013) Purchase

Steve Omohundro, "The Basic AI Drives" (2008): why almost any goal-seeking system will tend to protect its own ability to keep going Free

Adrian Owen (reported in The Scientist), "An "Unconscious" Man Talks" (2012): Scott Routley answering yes-or-no questions through an fMRI scanner Free

Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984) Purchase

Robert Plomin and Denise Daniels (1987), why children in the same family turn out so different (the nonshared environment) Paywalled

Plutarch, Life of Theseus (c. 100): the original account of the ship kept in Athens Free

Russell Poldrack, "Can Cognitive Processes Be Inferred from Neuroimaging Data?" (2006): the reverse-inference problem: a brain region tied to one process often responds to generic task difficulty too Paywalled

Zenon Pylyshyn, "Is Vision Continuous with Cognition? The Case for Cognitive Impenetrability of Visual Perception" (1999) Paywalled

W. V. O. Quine, the indeterminacy of translation Purchase

Adam Radomsky and colleagues, "You Can Run but You Can't Hide: Intrusive Thoughts on Six Continents" (2014): 93.6 percent of 777 students in 13 countries reported unwanted intrusive thoughts Paywalled

Pierre Rainville and colleagues, "Pain Affect Encoded in Human Anterior Cingulate But Not Somatosensory Cortex" (1997): hypnosis changing pain's unpleasantness but not its intensity Paywalled

V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (1998) Free

Steve Ramirez and colleagues, "Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus" (2013): optogenetically tagged hippocampal neurons from one context, reactivated during a shock in a different context, produced fear of the original, never-shocked room Free

Keith Richards, Life (2010) Purchase

Henry Roediger and Kathleen McDermott, "Creating False Memories: Remembering Words Not Presented in Lists" (1995): the original Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) word-list demonstration Free

Rolling Stone, "Keith Richards Guilty, But Free" (1978): the 1977 Toronto arrest, his admission of four years of addiction, and the 1978 sentence Free

Lee Ross, David Greene, and Pamela House, "The False Consensus Effect: An Egocentric Bias in Social Perception and Attribution Processes" (1977): the "Eat at Joe's" sandwich-board study Paywalled

Stuart Russell, Human Compatible (2019): "You can't fetch the coffee if you're dead" Purchase

Matthew Salganik, Peter Dodds, and Duncan Watts, "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market" (2006) Paywalled

Katherine Scangos and colleagues, "Closed-Loop Neuromodulation in an Individual with Treatment-Resistant Depression" (2021) Paywalled

Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (1960): strategic moves that change an opponent's choice by changing his expectations Purchase

Jeremy Schlatter, Benjamin Weinstein-Raun, and Jeffrey Ladish, "Incomplete Tasks Induce Shutdown Resistance in Some Frontier LLMs" (2026): the larger follow-up study: thirteen models, more than 100,000 trials Free

Alan Scoboria and colleagues, "A Mega-Analysis of Memory Reports from Eight Peer-Reviewed False Memory Implantation Studies" (2017): roughly one in four to one in three participants come to report a memory of a childhood event invented for the study Paywalled

Roger Schank and Robert Abelson (1977), script theory of routine cognition Purchase

John Searle, "Minds, Brains, and Programs" (1980): the Chinese Room argument (see also this site's Chinese Room primer) Paywalled

Anil Seth, on biological naturalism and AI consciousness, in a Creative Intelligence podcast interview Free

Scott Slotnick and Daniel Schacter, "A Sensory Signature That Distinguishes True from False Memories" (2004): true recollection reactivates early visual cortex; false recollection largely doesn't, even at equal confidence Free

Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris (1999), the "invisible gorilla" selective-attention experiment Paywalled

Edward Slingerland, Trying Not to Try Purchase

Kirsty Spalding and colleagues, "Retrospective Birth Dating of Cells in Humans" (2005): carbon-14 from nuclear tests used to date human cells Free

Sun Tzu (Lionel Giles, translator), The Art of War (1910): chapter 1, "Laying Plans," and chapter 3, "Attack by Stratagem" Free

Nitasha Tiku, "The Google Engineer Who Thinks the Company's AI Has Come to Life" (2022): The Washington Post's report on Blake Lemoine and LaMDA Paywalled

Michael Tomasello and colleagues, "Understanding and Sharing Intentions: The Origins of Cultural Cognition" (2005): shared intentionality Paywalled

Alan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (1950): the paper that proposed the imitation game, now called the Turing test Paywalled

Eric Turkheimer (2000), the "three laws" of behavior genetics Paywalled

UC San Francisco, "Treating Severe Depression with On-Demand Brain Stimulation" (2021): the October 4, 2021 announcement quoting Sarah Free

Giovanni Vallar and Daniela Perani, "The Anatomy of Unilateral Neglect after Right-Hemisphere Stroke Lesions: A Clinical/CT-Scan Correlation Study in Man" (1986) Paywalled

Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind (1991) Purchase

Solomon Volkov, Testimony (1979) Free

Wang Bi, Zhouyi Lueli (周易略例) (3rd century CE) Free

Gary Watson, "Free Agency" (1975) Paywalled

Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (1950) Free

Heinz Wimmer and Josef Perner, "Beliefs about Beliefs: Representation and Constraining Function of Wrong Beliefs in Young Children's Understanding of Deception" (1983): the false-belief test Paywalled

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953): "An 'inner process' stands in need of outward criteria" (§580) Purchase

Xunzi, 议兵 (Debating Military Affairs), chapter 15 of the Xunzi (3rd century BCE): the reply to Li Si that Du Mu quotes on the Dao: well-run government makes the people think little of dying for their ruler, in Chinese Free

Zhuangzi, 齐物论 (Discussion on Making All Things Equal), chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi (4th to 3rd century BCE): the Daoist equanimity some readers find in Liu Shan's contentment, in Chinese Free