Here’s reason number ten thousand and one for why you really ought to shut down your browser/tablet/smartphone and reenter the existential immediacy of your actual surrounding environment with its network of in-person social relationships just as soon as you finish reading this and then clicking through to read the full, brief article from which it’s…
Tag: neuroscience
Is the “brain as computer” metaphor dying?
Yesterday, Edge.org published a long and depth-filled conversation with Daniel C. Dennett — he of Consciousness Explained and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea fame — and it shows the renowned philosopher of mind and consciousness saying some things about the now-ubiquitous model and metaphor of the brain as a kind of computing machine that casts a whole…
Recommended Reading 26
This week’s recommendations include: a thoroughly disturbing expose — written by a medical doctor — of the unsafe conditions in America’s hospitals that frequently lead to permanent injury, destruction of health, or even death; an examination of the possibly shaky foundations of medical science; a review essay on “the oldest self-help book,” a 19th-century grimoire…
Western civilization and the divided brain
In his 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Â psychiatrist, doctor, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar Iain McGilchrist mounts a fascinating argument for the idea “that the division of the brain into two hemispheres is essential to human existence, making possible incompatible versions of…
Recommended Reading 22
This week’s recommended reading includes: a report on the real-world rise of nightmarish SF-type threats from widely deployed nanobots; a satirical exposure of the essence of bipolar political demonization; a story from National Geographic on the way ancient Rome’s obsession with borders and wall-building was directly implicated in the empire’s fall; information about a new…
Recommended Reading 17
This week’s recommendations encompass the spiritual past and future of money and capitalism; the use of neuroscience by tech companies to profit from Internet addiction; the future of books, libraries, and old movies in an age of digital instant gratification and a perpetually shrinking historical awareness; the deep appeal of fairy tales; thoughts on…
Neuroscientific support for the value of introspection
The stream of information and recommendations flowing out of the neuroscience field regarding the real value of reflection and daydreaming, as contrasted with our mainstream culture’s relentless emphasis on focus and productivity, recalls Theodore Roszak’s words in Where the Wasteland Ends about the fatuousness of modern science when it frequently announces “revolutionary” “new findings” about…
Recommended Reading 7
This week’s collection of recommended articles, essays, blog posts, and (as always) an interesting video or two, covers economic collapse and cultural dystopia; the question of monetary vs. human values; the ubiquity of disinformation in America and the accompanying need for true education of the deeply humanizing sort; the ongoing debate over climate change and…
Recommend Reading 5
This week’s recommended reading includes articles and essays about: collapse and global crisis; the manipulation of economics and politics by wealthy elites; the mysteries of consciousness; current hot-button topics in religion and spirituality; fruitful ways of regarding paranormal phenomena; and the value of working consciously to live a real human life in the midst of…
Recommended Reading 3
Topics this week include imperial and economic collapse, the true value of a college education, our troubled shift from physical to digital media, the nature of consciousness, a mysterious marine mammal die-off, the nature and quirks of the human religious instinct, and a new UFO documentary.