The Origin of Evil and the Social Brain Network

The Origin of Evil and the Social Brain Network
Author: William J. Shoemaker
Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 74
Release: 2023-03-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1638608121
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This book is written for the nonscientific man or woman, who is interested to learn more about the brain. The focus is on the brains of people who are psychopaths as an example of a brain gone wrong. Dr. Shoemaker includes his theory of how an individual can become a psychopath, which begins in the first year of life.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
Author: Julian Jaynes
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 580
Release: 2000-08-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0547527543
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National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

Evolution Science and Ethics in the Third Millennium

Evolution Science and Ethics in the Third Millennium
Author: Robert Cliquet
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2018-01-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3319730908
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The book aims to revitalise the interdisciplinary debate about evolutionary ethics and substantiate the idea that evolution science can provide a rational and robust framework for understanding morality. It also traces pathways for knowledge-based choices to be made about directions for future long-term biological evolution and cultural development in view of adaptation to the expected, probable and possible future and the ecological sustainability of our planetary environment The authors discuss ethical challenges associated with the major biosocial sources of human variation: individual variation, inter-personal variation, inter-group variation, and inter-generational variation. This book approaches the long-term challenges of the human species in a holistic way. Researchers will find an extensive discussion of the key theoretical scientific aspects of the relationship between evolution and morality. Policy makers will find information that can help them better understand from where we are coming and inspire them to make choices and take actions in a longer-term perspective. The general public will find food for thoughts.

Natural Selection's Paradox

Natural Selection's Paradox
Author: Carter Stroud
Publisher: Natural Selection's Paradox
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2008-08-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1419692747
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An important addition to understanding natural selection, these essays redefine wealth and identify a sustainable spirituality using the perspectives of scientific research and historical wisdom.

Bittersweet Destiny

Bittersweet Destiny
Author: Del Thiessen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2017-09-08
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351292706
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Bittersweet Destiny combines discourse on the evolution of human behavior with a philosophical perspective. It explores evolutionary theory aimed at determining human behavior. Del Thiessen presents this material against the broad background of everyday life, allowing the reader to see the theory of evolution as it has shaped his or her own behavior. However, he points out that when evolutionary theory is aimed at human behavior, the critics object, and controversy results. Thiessen argues that nothing in our lives makes sense unless we look at it through a biological lens. We can thereby understand our origin, our affiliation with all animals and plants, and our cultural destination. However, we can also discover a dark side to our destiny—our favoritism to those who share our own genes, our ability to deceive, and our capacity for abuse, rape, and murder. Good, bad, and indifferent, we serve the replication of our DNA. Critics extrapolate evolutionary theory to a wide range of animal species, and even human morphology and physiology, but when the same perspective is applied to human behavior there is strong dissent. What these critics fear, according to Thiessen, is that accepting evolutionary notions about human behavior strikes at the heart of free will, self-determination, and social equality. Bittersweet Destiny describes the heroic efforts of naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace to unlock the secrets of evolution. It continues with a vivid description of our fossil history and our chance beginnings. From there the story implicates disease processes in evolution, highlights our rational and irrational nature, focuses on those characteristics of brain evolution and language that make us distinctive, and illustrates our most basic survival and reproductive mechanisms. Thiessen warns the reader that things are as they are no matter what we might wish; we ignore facts and controversy at our own risk. This book will be significant to anthropologists, psychologists, biologists, and sociologists.

Just Babies

Just Babies
Author: Paul Bloom
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014-11-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0307886859
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A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is the role of society—and especially parents—to transform them from little sociopaths into civilized beings. In Just Babies, Paul Bloom argues that humans are in fact hardwired with a sense of morality. Drawing on groundbreaking research at Yale, Bloom demonstrates that, even before they can speak or walk, babies judge the goodness and badness of others’ actions; feel empathy and compassion; act to soothe those in distress; and have a rudimentary sense of justice. Still, this innate morality is limited, sometimes tragically. We are naturally hostile to strangers, prone to parochialism and bigotry. Bringing together insights from psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Bloom explores how we have come to surpass these limitations. Along the way, he examines the morality of chimpanzees, violent psychopaths, religious extremists, and Ivy League professors, and explores our often puzzling moral feelings about sex, politics, religion, and race. In his analysis of the morality of children and adults, Bloom rejects the fashionable view that our moral decisions are driven mainly by gut feelings and unconscious biases. Just as reason has driven our great scientific discoveries, he argues, it is reason and deliberation that makes possible our moral discoveries, such as the wrongness of slavery. Ultimately, it is through our imagination, our compassion, and our uniquely human capacity for rational thought that we can transcend the primitive sense of morality we were born with, becoming more than just babies. Paul Bloom has a gift for bringing abstract ideas to life, moving seamlessly from Darwin, Herodotus, and Adam Smith to The Princess Bride, Hannibal Lecter, and Louis C.K. Vivid, witty, and intellectually probing, Just Babies offers a radical new perspective on our moral lives.

The Social Neuroscience of Empathy

The Social Neuroscience of Empathy
Author: Jean Decety
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2011-01-21
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0262293366
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Cross-disciplinary, cutting-edge work on human empathy from the perspectives of social, cognitive, developmental and clinical psychology and cognitive/affective neuroscience. In recent decades, empathy research has blossomed into a vibrant and multidisciplinary field of study. The social neuroscience approach to the subject is premised on the idea that studying empathy at multiple levels (biological, cognitive, and social) will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of how other people's thoughts and feelings can affect our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In these cutting-edge contributions, leading advocates of the multilevel approach view empathy from the perspectives of social, cognitive, developmental and clinical psychology and cognitive/affective neuroscience. Chapters include a critical examination of the various definitions of the empathy construct; surveys of major research traditions based on these differing views (including empathy as emotional contagion, as the projection of one's own thoughts and feelings, and as a fundamental aspect of social development); clinical and applied perspectives, including psychotherapy and the study of empathy for other people's pain; various neuroscience perspectives; and discussions of empathy's evolutionary and neuroanatomical histories, with a special focus on neuroanatomical continuities and differences across the phylogenetic spectrum. The new discipline of social neuroscience bridges disciplines and levels of analysis. In this volume, the contributors' state-of-the-art investigations of empathy from a social neuroscience perspective vividly illustrate the potential benefits of such cross-disciplinary integration. Contributors C. Daniel Batson, James Blair, Karina Blair, Jerold D. Bozarth, Anne Buysse, Susan F. Butler, Michael Carlin, C. Sue Carter, Kenneth D. Craig, Mirella Dapretto, Jean Decety, Mathias Dekeyser, Ap Dijksterhuis, Robert Elliott, Natalie D. Eggum, Nancy Eisenberg, Norma Deitch Feshbach, Seymour Feshbach, Liesbet Goubert, Leslie S. Greenberg, Elaine Hatfield, James Harris, William Ickes, Claus Lamm, Yen-Chi Le, Mia Leijssen, Abigail Marsh, Raymond S. Nickerson, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, Stephen W. Porges, Richard L. Rapson, Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory, Rick B. van Baaren, Matthijs L. van Leeuwen, Andries van der Leij, Jeanne C. Watson

Rhythms of the Brain

Rhythms of the Brain
Author: G. Buzsáki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2011
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0199828237
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Studies of mechanisms in the brain that allow complicated things to happen in a coordinated fashion have produced some of the most spectacular discoveries in neuroscience. This book provides eloquent support for the idea that spontaneous neuron activity, far from being mere noise, is actually the source of our cognitive abilities. It takes a fresh look at the coevolution of structure and function in the mammalian brain, illustrating how self-emerged oscillatory timing is the brain's fundamental organizer of neuronal information. The small-world-like connectivity of the cerebral cortex allows for global computation on multiple spatial and temporal scales. The perpetual interactions among the multiple network oscillators keep cortical systems in a highly sensitive "metastable" state and provide energy-efficient synchronizing mechanisms via weak links. In a sequence of "cycles," György Buzsáki guides the reader from the physics of oscillations through neuronal assembly organization to complex cognitive processing and memory storage. His clear, fluid writing-accessible to any reader with some scientific knowledge-is supplemented by extensive footnotes and references that make it just as gratifying and instructive a read for the specialist. The coherent view of a single author who has been at the forefront of research in this exciting field, this volume is essential reading for anyone interested in our rapidly evolving understanding of the brain.

The Brain

The Brain
Author: David Eagleman
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0525433449
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From the renowned neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of Incognito comes the companion volume to the international PBS series about how your life shapes your brain, and how your brain shapes your life. "An ideal introduction to how biology generates the mind.... Clear, engaging and thought-provoking." —Nature Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, your brain fashions the rich narratives of your reality and your identity. Join renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman for a journey into the questions at the mysterious heart of our existence. What is reality? Who are “you”? How do you make decisions? Why does your brain need other people? How is technology poised to change what it means to be human? In the course of his investigations, Eagleman guides us through the world of extreme sports, criminal justice, facial expressions, genocide, brain surgery, gut feelings, robotics, and the search for immortality. Strap in for a whistle-stop tour into the inner cosmos. In the infinitely dense tangle of billions of brain cells and their trillions of connections, something emerges that you might not have expected to see in there: you. Color illustrations throughout.

Philosophical Posthumanism

Philosophical Posthumanism
Author: Francesca Ferrando
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2019-06-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350059498
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The notion of 'the human' is in need of urgent redefinition. At a time of radical bio-technological developments, and in light of the political and environmental imperatives of our age, the term 'posthuman' provides an alternative. The philosophical landscape which has developed as a response to the crisis of the human, includes several movements, such as: Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism and Object Oriented Ontology. This book explains the similarities and differences between these currents and offers a detailed examination of a number of topics that fall under the “posthuman” umbrella, including the anthropocene, artificial intelligence and the deconstruction of the human. Francesca Ferrando affords particular focus to Philosophical Posthumanism, defined as a philosophy of mediation which addresses the meaning of humanity not in separation, but in relation to technology and ecology. The posthuman shift thus emerges in the global call for social change, responsible science and multispecies coexistence.