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Author: Edward Berge

Lakoff introduces FrameLab

Lakoff introduces FrameLab

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In this FB post, copied below. The first podcast can be found here. “By popular demand, it’s the FrameLab Podcast — a podcast about politics, language, and your brain. In Episode 1, [I] discuss the conservative moral hierarchy and how Republicans really think. And I answer some of the questions you submitted via Facebook and Twitter. Excerpt: This is a fight for freedom. Conservatives want to take the words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ and say that they mean that you’re free to take advantage of…

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Consciousness in the world is scale invariant

Consciousness in the world is scale invariant

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And implies an event horizon of the human brain. There’s a mouthful, a new title in NeuroQuantology (15:3, September 2017). The abstract follows, also a brainful. This will take some reading and digesting, provided I have the requisite capacity to understand it (which remains to be seen). “Our brain is not a ‘stand alone’ information processing organ: it acts as a central part of our integral nervous system with recurrent information exchange with the entire organism and the cosmos. In this study, the brain…

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Liology: Towards an integration of science and meaning

Liology: Towards an integration of science and meaning

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In this 20-minute video Jeremy Lent gives a brief introduction into his system of liology, his response to substance dualism. Conventional science maintains this dualism, so it is up to the ecological science of dynamical systems theory to correct it. He finds a precursor of systems science in Chinese Neo-Confucianism, which seems a bit of romantic retro-fitting to me, given their own environmental degradation which he minimalizes in his book The Patterning Instinct. That aside, he’s right about the emerging paradigm…

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The non-conscious nature of being

The non-conscious nature of being

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 Recent paper by that name in Frontiers in Psychology. The abstract follows. Since I’ve long thought the opposite of what the paper claims I’ll have to read and ponder this one for a bit. The introduction follows: “Despite the compelling subjective experience of executive self-control, we argue that ‘consciousness’ contains no top-down control processes and that ‘consciousness’ involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it. In our view, psychological processing and…

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Liberals and conservatives are not equivalently biased

Liberals and conservatives are not equivalently biased

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Here is a meta-analysis called “Ideological asymmetries and the essence of political psychology” by John T. Jost, Political Psychology, Vol. 38, No. 2, 2017. This is in part a response to a previous meta-analysis posted on this blog that found both liberal and conservatives equally biased. It’s interesting how liberals, when basing their so-called biases on science and facts, are declared equivalently biased to those whose biases are based on factors other than the foregoing, including authoritarianism and fear responses. …

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Dancing mitigates aging decline

Dancing mitigates aging decline

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See the study here in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, 15 June 2017. From the abstract: “Dancing seems a promising intervention for both improving balance and brain structure in the elderly. It combines aerobic fitness, sensorimotor skills and cognitive demands while at the same time the risk of injuries is low. […] Hence, dancing constitutes a promising candidate in counteracting the age-related decline in physical and mental abilities.”

The real problem of consciousness

The real problem of consciousness

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See this article. A few excerpts: “A new picture is taking shape in which conscious experience is seen as deeply grounded in how brains and bodies work together to maintain physiological integrity – to stay alive.” “The brain is locked inside a bony skull. All it receives are ambiguous and noisy sensory signals that are only indirectly related to objects in the world. Perception must therefore be a process of inference, in which indeterminate sensory signals are combined with prior…

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Real and false reason

Real and false reason

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Some liberals (and scientists) still think that reason is somehow above and beyond emotion. When I suggest framing in emotional terms they say sure, but that works only for emotional issues as if reason is something beyond emotion. So here’s a reminder from  this Lakoff classic: “It is a basic principle of false reason that every human being has the same reason governed by logic — and that if you just tell people the truth, they will reason to the…

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The development of altruism

The development of altruism

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With special reference to human relationships: A 10-stage theory by Hing Keung Ma,  Frontiers of Public Health, Oct. 2017: “A 10-stage theory of altruism with special reference to human relationships is proposed. The affective, cognitive, and relationship aspects of each stage are delineated in details. There are two developmental principles of altruism. The first principle states that the development of altruism follows the 10-stage theory and moves from Stage 1: Egoism toward the higher stages of altruism slowly. The second…

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It takes more than facts

It takes more than facts

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Excellent article by George Monbiot. He’s right to assert that one’s worldview narrative trumps all other considerations, like facts. Such stories organize how we see everything through their lenses. Monbiot notes that the two major narratives of our time are social democracy and neoliberalism. While having different means and goals they both have the same narrative structure: “Disorder afflicts the land, caused by powerful and nefarious forces working against the interests of humanity. The hero – who might be one…

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