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Category: metacognition

Neuroscience report on Dumpsters

Neuroscience report on Dumpsters

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See this report. While it also applies to ignorant Dems, however “studies have shown that Democrats now tend to be generally more educated than Republicans, making the latter more vulnerable to the Dunning-Kruger effect.” “Perhaps this helps explain why Trump supporters seem to be so easily tricked into believing obvious falsehoods when their leader delivers his ‘alternative facts’ sprinkled with language designed to activate partisan identities. Because they lack knowledge but are confident that they do […] they are less…

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Affective neuroscience of self-generated thought

Affective neuroscience of self-generated thought

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By Fox et al. (2018), Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 12 May, pp. 1 – 27. The abstract: “Despite increasing scientific interest in self-generated thought—mental content largely independent of the immediate environment—there has yet to be any comprehensive synthesis of the subjective experience and neural correlates of affect in these forms of thinking. Here, we aim to develop an integrated affective neuroscience encompassing many forms of self-generated thought—normal and pathological, moderate and excessive, in waking and in…

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Consciousness Regained:

Consciousness Regained:

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“Disentangling mechanisms, brain systems, and behavioral responses” by Johan F. Storm et al., Journal of Neuroscience 8 November 2017, 37 (45) 10882-10893. The abstract: “How consciousness (experience) arises from and relates to material brain processes (the “mind-body problem”) has been pondered by thinkers for centuries, and is regarded as among the deepest unsolved problems in science, with wide-ranging theoretical, clinical, and ethical implications. Until the last few decades, this was largely seen as a philosophical topic, but not widely accepted…

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Neuroscience of Consciousness Journal

Neuroscience of Consciousness Journal

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Their blurb: “Neuroscience of Consciousness is an open access journal which publishes papers on the biological basis of consciousness, with an emphasis on empirical neuroscience studies in healthy populations and clinical settings. The journal also publishes empirically and neuroscientifically relevant psychological, methodological, theoretical, and philosophical papers. As well as the primary phenomenon of consciousness itself, relevant topics include interactions between conscious and unconscious processes; selfhood; metacognition and higher-order consciousness; intention, volition, and agency; individual differences in consciousness; altered states of…

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What is consciousness, and could machines have it?

What is consciousness, and could machines have it?

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By Dehaene et al., Science 358, 486–492 (2017). The abstract: “The controversial question of whether machines may ever be conscious must be based on a careful consideration of how consciousness arises in the only physical system that undoubtedly possesses it: the human brain. We suggest that the word “consciousness” conflates two different types of information-processing computations in the brain: the selection of information for global broadcasting, thus making it flexibly available for computation and report (C1, consciousness in the first…

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Consciousness and the brain

Consciousness and the brain

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Book title by Stanislas Dehaene (New York: Viking 2014), a copy of which can be downloaded here. (Note it is in EPUB format. EPUB readers can be downloaded free on the internet.) From the Introduction, the section “Cracking consciousness”: “The word consciousness, as we use it in everyday speech, is loaded with fuzzy meanings, covering a broad range of complex phenomena. Our first task, then, will be to bring order to this confused state of affairs. We will have to…

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Towards a cognitive neuroscience of self-awareness

Towards a cognitive neuroscience of self-awareness

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Recall the anterior cingulate cortex’s (ACC) role in meditative states from the last post. This neuroscience article by the above name claims that “self-awareness is a pivotal component of conscious experience. It is correlated with a paralimbic network of medial prefrontal/anterior cingulate and medial parietal/posterior cingulate cortical ‘hubs’ and associated regions. Electromagnetic and transmitter manipulation have demonstrated that the network is not an epiphenomenon but instrumental in generation of self-awareness.” Concerning meditation and this brain network: “The new understanding of…

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The neurocircuitry of awakening

The neurocircuitry of awakening

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See Dan Brown talking about it in this video. He is also co-author in the paper “Mapping complex mind states.” Some excerpts from the latter follow. Note that it does not differentiate the different aspect of ‘self’ as discussed by Damasio. It appears that what it means by ‘self’ is the autobiographical self-reference system. However Damasio would see some of these results as examples of the proto-self and core self. This neuroscience article compares Damasio’s different types of self to…

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Seeing my blindfold

Seeing my blindfold

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I’ve found some thought-provoking answers on the Q&A social media site, Quora. Follow the link to a perceptive and helpful answer to, “Can a person be able to objectively identify exactly when and how their thinking processes are being affected by cognitive biases?” The author provides some practical (if exhausting) recommendations that, if even partly followed by a third-to-half of people (my guestimate), would possibly collapse the adversarial culture in our country.

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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