Mind

Here. Gut reactions guide our judgements and behaviour, but those reactions, developed over millions of years of living in small groups, aren’t up to the grand challenges that face us in an interconnected world of billions of people. On the road ahead, this is a recipe for tyranny everywhere: Traditional moral instincts don’t work; we need some brand new scheme. Sound familiar? The main thing to see is, these people are serious. Follow UD News at Twitter!

From Real Clear Science: Not only are bonobos liberal in their lovemaking, they also aren’t shy about requesting it. Researchers report in the journal Scientific Reports that wild female bonobos will make blatant gestures asking for genital-on-genital rubbing. Subtlety is not their specialty. The two moves the scientists observed were foot-pointing, in which the female used her foot to point at her genitals, and the “hip shimmy,” in which she wiggled her genitals to mimic rubbing. Some 83% of the time, another female responded, giving the signaller exactly what she wanted. More. Everything would be simpler if we were bonobos. But try suing a bonobo for chimp support. No wonder they are an endangered species. See also: Why the human Read More ›

Here: President Obama signed an executive order Tuesday directing federal agencies to incorporate behavioral and social science into their policies, giving federal employees and citizens a “nudge” to make better decisions by simplifying forms, sending reminders, or re-framing their choices. It’s the latest iteration of a philosophy that’s guided policy making since the early days of the Obama administration. Last year, the White House built a Social and Behavioral Sciences Team to come up with ways to improve services by presenting choices more clearly. Among their experiments: More. Of course, presenting choices “more clearly” often depends on whether one agrees with the way the choices are framed. Some of us discovered that decades ago on used car lots. Sunstein’s argument Read More ›

A friend kindly linked us to a Reason feature on the alternative medicine “racket:” Behind the dubious medical claims of Dr. Mehmet Oz and Deepak Chopra is a decades-long strategy to promote alternative medicine to the American public. Twenty-three years ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began to investigate a wide variety of unconventional medical practices from around the world. Five-and-a-half billion dollars later, the NIH has found no cures for disease. But it has succeeded in bringing every kind of quackery—from faith healing to homeopathy—out of the shadows and into the heart of the American medical establishment. … The OAM’s stated mission was to investigate the medical value of alternative therapies. Despite its minuscule budget, its mandate was Read More ›

At Huffington Post, Suzan Mazur interviews neuroscientist David Edelman on Paradigm shift “YES)”and origin of 3D organismal form”: Neuroscientist David Edelman, who’s currently on the faculties of the University of San Diego and the University of California, San Diego, and is the son of late Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman, says he agrees that an evolution paradigm shift needs to happen. Driver, this is our stop. Can we get out now? Anyway, Suzan Mazur:  … From your perspective as a neuroscientist, is there a paradigm shift underway in evolutionary thinking? David Edelman: I think there should be a shift. . . . The Modern Synthesis was a scientific reckoning — or coming to terms — among great thinkers: George Gaylord Simpson, Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Brain size and complexity vary enormously across vertebrates, but it is not clear how these differences came about. Humans and frogs, for example, have been evolving separately for 350 million years and have very different brain abilities. Yet scientists have shown that they use a remarkably similar repertoire of genes to build organs in the body. The key lays in the process that Blencowe’s group studies, known as alternative splicing (AS), whereby gene products are assembled into proteins, which are the building blocks of life. During AS, gene fragments — called exons — are shuffled to make different protein shapes. It’s like LEGO, where some fragments can be missing from the final protein shape. AS enables cells to Read More ›

In customer service: 7 Ways to Engage Your Customer’s Reptilian Brain According to SalesBrain and the Triune Brain theory, the reptilian region is the brain’s attention gatekeeper and decision maker. If you can grab the attention of a consumer’s reptilian brain with your landing page, advertisement, or commercial, you’ve got a much better chance of guiding them to conversion. Fortunately, there are specific techniques you can use to make your value proposition communicate directly to this region and give you the edge in engaging your audience from the start. Although the Triune Brain theory is sometimes controversial as experts argue about it’s accuracy – see this earlier Neuromarketing post, the theory provides a helpful, simplified view of how the brain Read More ›

Tell Frank Tipler. 😉 Further to: Still chipping away at the sense of self (Such efforts are virtually always uninsightful. After all, they would be world news if they weren’t), Another current pop sci rave is uploading our consciousness to the Internet. We Will Never Be Able to Upload Our Consciousness says Ann Althouse, referring to this discussion between Daniel Kaufman and Massimo Pigliucci*: *Note: Pigliucci, blogging at Scientia Salon, was one of the The Altenberg 16 See also: Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away Would we give up naturalism to solve the hard problem of consciousness? and What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness Follow UD News at Twitter!

From New Scientist: However, the more that is discovered about consciousness, the less obvious its role appears to be. For example, measurements of brain activity reveal that muscles and brain areas prepare for an action, such as a reaching out for an object, before we are even aware of our intention to make that movement. As noted by the psychologist Jeffrey Grey and others, consciousness simply occurs too late to affect the outcomes of the mental processes apparently linked to it. So where does this powerful sense of self come from? We suggest it is the product of our … More. (You have to pay to read the article.) Don’t pay; such efforts are virtually always uninsightful. After all, they Read More ›

… is that, at times, you’re saner than many pundits. Further to Terms to retire from psychological science (Perry: Many terms commonly used in psychology, psychiatry and related fields “should be avoided, or at most used sparingly and with explicit caveats”): A new book by Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove, Psychiatry Under the Influence, investigates how the influence of pharmaceutical money and guild interests has corrupted the behavior of the American Psychiatric Association and academic psychiatry during the past 35 years. The book documents how the psychiatric establishment regularly misled the American public about what was known about the biology of mental disorders, the validity of psychiatric diagnoses, and the safety and efficacy of its drugs. It also looks at Read More ›

From the Christian Scientific Society: Philosopher J. P. Moreland says no: “The irrelevance of neuroscience for formulating and addressing the fundamental problems in philosophy/theology of mind.” In the first part of my talk, I will lay out the autonomy and authority theses in philosophy and identify the central questions in the four key areas of the mind/body problem. In the second section, I will show why neuroscience cannot even formulate, much less address these central questions. I will also clarify what it means to say that two or more theories are empirically equivalent and go on to argue that when it comes to the neuroscience of mirror neurons, (1) strict physicalism (2) mere property dualism and (3) substance dualism are Read More ›

Oh, wait. Read this first, re Theodore Dalrymple’s new  book: However, it’s also clear from the outset that the primary target of his scathing critique is not psychology but reductionism, the view that all aspects of human life and values can be exhaustively explained in terms of physical processes: No, seriously. Someone noticed. Contrarian Theodore Dalrymple, who investigated the mentality of the British underclass in Life at the Bottom, has frequently described psychology as a modern religion, or pseudo-religion. The medical establishment is the brave new priest class, while the anxious therapy patient replaces the penitent sinner. If so, then Dalrymple must be a heretic of the first order. … Moreover, deference to psychology has led to a culture of Read More ›

Truth? That’s only if you assume that your brain is shaped for truth, not mere fitness. A friend kindly writes to say that Nancy Pearcey … has done two excellent podcasts with ID the Future about her new book Finding Truth:Five Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes: Is Human Reason Reliable? Interview with Nancy Pearcey Is Human Reason Reliable?, pt. 2 Interview with Nancy Pearcey, pt. 2 We are advised to await more podcasts. Meanwhile, there may not be a huge amount of religion news. The new atheists have apparently persisted with their relationship counsellors. We are not hearing so much cease and desist stuff against fellow atheists or (or non-theists or theists). You know, it’s so Read More ›

From Eurekalert: The reason people act altruistically is well contested among academics. Some argue that people are innately selfish and the only way to override our greedy tendencies is to exercise self-control. Others are more positive, believing that humans naturally find generosity rewarding and that we only act selfishly when we pause to think about it. The Caltech model suggests that neither side fits all; both generosity and selfishness can be fast and effortless. But it depends on the person and the context. “We take a very simple model of choice that’s been developed for predicting perceptual decisions–like whether a dot is moving left or right–and adapt it to capture generosity,” says lead author Cendri Hutcherson, who did the work Read More ›

From Science: The human hand is a marvel of dexterity. It can thread a needle, coax intricate melodies from the keys of a piano, and create lasting works of art with a pen or a paintbrush. Many scientists have assumed that our hands evolved their distinctive proportions over millions of years of recent evolution. But a new study suggests a radically different conclusion: Some aspects of the human hand are actually anatomically primitive—more so even than that of many other apes, including our evolutionary cousin the chimpanzee. The findings have important implications for the origins of human toolmaking, as well as for what the ancestor of both humans and chimps might have looked like. More. Funny that. I remember meeting Read More ›