SEE WITH YOUR TONGUE: HEAR WITH YOUR CHIN
Just some interesting brain matter.
Published: November 23, 2004 in the New York Times:
New Tools to Help Patients Reclaim Damaged Senses
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Cheryl Schiltz vividly recalls the morning she became a wobbler. Seven years ago, recovering from an infection after surgery with the aid of a common antibiotic, she climbed out of bed feeling pretty good.
"Then I literally fell to the floor," she said recently. "The whole world started wobbling. When I turned my head, the room tilted. My vision blurred. Even the air felt heavy."
The antibiotic, Ms. Schiltz learned, had damaged her vestibular system, the part of the brain that provides visual and gravitational stability. She was forced to quit her job and stay home, clinging to the walls to keep from toppling over.
But three years ago, Ms. Schiltz volunteered for an experimental treatment - a fat strip of tape, placed on her tongue, with an array of 144 microelectrodes about the size of a postage stamp. The strip was wired to a kind of carpenter's level, which was mounted on a hard hat that she placed on her head. The level determined her spatial coordinates and sent the information as tiny pulses to her tongue.
The apparatus, called a BrainPort, worked beautifully. By "buzzing" her tongue once a day for 20 minutes, keeping the pulses centered, she regained normal vestibular function and was able to balance.
Ms. Schiltz and other patients like her are the beneficiaries of an astonishing new technology that allows one set of sensory information to substitute for another in the brain.
Using novel electronic aids, vision can be represented on the skin, tongue or through the ears. If the sense of touch is gone from one part of the body, it can be routed to an area where touch sensations are intact. Pilots confused by foggy conditions, in which the horizon disappears, can right their aircraft by monitoring sensations on the tongue or trunk. Surgeons can feel on their tongues the tip of a probe inside a patient's body, enabling precise movements.
Sensory substitution is not new. Touch substitutes for vision when people read Braille. By tapping a cane, a blind person perceives a step, a curb or a puddle of water but is not aware of any sensation in the hand; feeling is experienced at the tip of the cane.
But the technology for swapping sensory information is largely the effort of Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a neuroscientist in the University of Wisconsin Medical School's orthopedics and rehabilitation department. More than 30 years ago, Dr. Bach-y-Rita developed the first sensory substitution device, routing visual images, via a head-mounted camera, to electrodes taped to the skin on people's backs. The subjects, he found, could "see" large objects and flickering candles with their backs. The tongue, sensitive and easy to reach, turned out to be an even better place to deliver substitute senses, Dr. Bach-y-Rita said.
Until recently sensory substitution was confined to the laboratory. But electronic miniaturization and more powerful computer algorithms are making the technology less cumbersome. Next month, the first fully portable device will be tested in Dr. Bach-y-Rita's lab.
The BrainPort is nearing commercialization. Two years ago, the University of Wisconsin patented the concept and exclusively licensed it to Wicab Inc., a company formed by Dr. Bach-y-Rita to develop and market BrainPort devices. Robert Beckman, the company president, said units should be available a year from now.
Meanwhile, a handful of clinicians around the world who are using the BrainPort on an experimental basis are effusive about its promise.
"I have never seen any other device do what this one does," said Dr. F. Owen Black, an expert on vestibular disorders at the Legacy Clinical Research and Technology Center in Portland, Ore. "Our patients are begging us to continue using the device."
Dr. Maurice Ptito, a neuroscientist at University of Montreal School of Optometry, is conducting brain imaging experiments to explore how BrainPort works.
Dr. Eliana Sampaio, a neuroscientist at the National Conservatory of Arts and Métiers in Paris, is using the BrainPort to study brain plasticity. Sensory substitution is based on the idea that all sensory information entering the brain consists of patterns carried by nerve fibers.
In vision, images of the world pass through the retina and are converted into impulses that travel up the optic nerve into the brain. In hearing, sounds pass through the ear and are converted into patterns carried by the auditory nerve into the brain. In touch, nerve endings on skin translate touch sensations into patterns carried into the brain.
These patterns travel to special sensory regions where they are interpreted, with the help of memory, into seeing, hearing and touch. Patterns are also seamlessly combined so that one can see, hear and feel things simultaneously.
"We see with the brain, not with the eyes," Dr. Bach-y-Rita said. "You can lose your retina but you do not lose the ability to see as long as your brain is intact."
Most important, the brain does not seem to care if patterns come from the eye, ear or skin. Given the proper context, it will interpret and understand them. "For me, it happened automatically, within a few minutes," said Erik Weihenmayer, who has been blind since he was 13.
Mr. Weihenmayer, a 35-year-old adventurer who climbed to the summit of Mount Everest two years ago, recently tried another version of the BrainPort, a hard hat carrying a small video camera. Visual information from the camera was translated into pulses that reached his tongue.
He found doorways, caught balls rolling toward him and with his small daughter played a game of rock, paper and scissors for the first time in more than 20 years. Mr. Weihenmayer said that, with practice, the substituted sense gets better, "as if the brain were rewiring itself."
Ms. Schiltz, too, whose vestibular system was damaged by gentamicin, an inexpensive generic antibiotic used for Gram-negative infections, said that the first few times she used the BrainPort she felt tiny impulses on her tongue but still could not maintain her balance. But one day, after a full 20-minute session with the BrainPort, Ms. Schiltz opened her eyes and felt that something was different. She tilted her head back. The room did not move. "I went running out the door," she recalled. "I danced in the parking lot. I was completely normal. For a whole hour." Then, she said, the problem returned.
She tried more sessions. Soon her balance was restored for three hours, then half a day. Now working with the BrainPort team at the University of Wisconsin, Ms. Schiltz wears the tongue unit each morning. Her balance problems are gone as long as she keeps to the regimen.
How the device produces a lasting effect is being investigated. The vestibular system instructs the brain about changes in head movement with respect to the pull of gravity. Dr. Bach-y-Rita speculated that in some patients, a tiny amount of vestibular tissue might survive and be reactivated by the BrainPort.
Dr. Black said he had seen the same residual effect in his own pilot study. "It decays in hours to days," he said, "but is very encouraging."
Blind people who have used the device do not report lasting effects. But they are amazed by what they can see. Mr. Weihenmayer said the device at first felt like candy pop rocks on his tongue. But that sensation quickly gave way to perceptions of size, movement and recognition.
Mr. Weihenmayer said that on several occasions he was able to find his wife, who was standing still in an outdoor park, but he admitted that he also once confused her with a tree. Another time, he walked down a sidewalk and almost went off a bridge.
Nevertheless, he is enthusiastic about the future of the device. Mr. Weihenmayer likes to paraglide, and he sees the BrainPort as a way to deliver sonar information to his tongue about how far he is from the ground.
Dr. Ptito is scanning the brains of congenitally blind people who, wearing the BrainPort, have learned to make out the shapes, learned from Braille, of capital letters like T, B or E. The first few times they wore the device, he said, their visual areas remained dark and inactive - not surprising since they had been blind since birth. But after training, he said, their visual areas lighted up when they used the tongue device. The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Brain.
Dr. Ptito says he would like to see if he could teach his subjects how to read drifting letters like those in advertising displays. Not seeing motion is a big problem for the blind, he said.
In another approach, Dr. Peter Meijer, a Dutch scientist working independently, has developed a system for blind people to see with their ears. A small device converts signals from a video camera into sound patterns delivered by stereo headset to the ears. Changes in frequency connote up or down. Changes in pixel brightness are sensed as louder or softer sounds.
Dr. Yuri Danilov, a neuroscientist and engineer who works with Dr. Bach-y-Rita, said the research team had thought of dozens of applications for the BrainPort, which he called a "USB port to the brain."
In one experiment, a leprosy patient who had lost the ability to experience touch with his fingers was outfitted with a glove containing contact sensors. These were coupled to skin on his forehead. Soon he experienced the data coming from the glove on his forehead, as if the feelings originated in his fingertips. He said he cried when he could touch and feel his wife's face.
The federal government has also shown interest in sensory substitution technology. The Navy is exploring the use of a tongue device to help divers find their way in dark waters at night, said Dr. Anil Raj, director of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition at the University of West Florida in Pensacola.
The sensors detect water surges, informing Navy Seals if they are following the correct course. The Army is thinking about sending infrared signals from night goggles directly to the tongue, Dr. Raj said.
In another application, student pilots have been fitted with body sensors attached to aircraft instruments. When the airplane starts to pitch or change altitude, they can feel the movements on their chests.
Sensory substitution technology may eventually help millions of people overcome their sensory disabilities. But the devices may also have more frivolous uses: in video games, for example.
Dr. Raj said the tongue unit had already been tried out in a game that involved shooting villains. "In two minutes you stop feeling the buzz on your tongue and get a visual representation of the bad guy," he said. "You feel like you have X-ray vision. Unfortunately it makes the game boring."
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“Sex drive: A physical craving that begins in adolescence and ends at marriage.” —RB
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Monday, November 29, 2004
RATHER WILL LEAVE CBS. NOW IF ONLY LIMBAUGH, HANNITY AND
SOME RIGHT WING KOOKS WOULD RESIGN
Right wing Republicans are sure celebrating Rather’s retirement. They call him a liberal biased reporter, but it’s very interesting that these same Republican Congressmen can make comments about supposedly biased left wing reporting yet leave in silence the even more obviously biased reporting of right wing talk/lie radio.
(From an AP news release.) “Rather has long been a target of critics who accused him of a liberal bias, and there's even a Web site devoted to that notion. The National Guard story sent those critics into overdrive. Rather's announcement Tuesday led one Republican congressman from Pennsylvania to issue a statement saying, in effect, good riddance.
‘Dan Rather has been a legend in media for more than a quarter-century to many people around the world, but not to me,’ Rep. Bill Shuster said. ‘For the entirety of his career, Rather has allowed his liberal bias to shape the news rather than report it.’”
Read more.
$28,000.00 DOLLARS WORTH OF CHEESE FACE
Have you heard the one about the guy who bought a cheese sandwich for $28,000.00 dollars? I wonder if it was Swiss, American or Limburger? Whichever it was, you know it smelled to high heaven and certainly reveals just how cheesy superstition and religion substantially are! Hey, I’ve got a baloney sandwich which has the face of John the Baptist on it. By the way—who has seen a portrait of the Virgin Mary anyhow? Did someone get a photo of her or paint a portrait of her during her life?
I don’t think so! Didn’t someone tell the poor sucker that it can’t be a picture of the Virgin Mary because no one actually knows what she looks like or even if she existed?
_________________________________________
"Wonder will never cease!" —Sir Henry Bate Dudley (Who the hell?!)
SOME RIGHT WING KOOKS WOULD RESIGN
Right wing Republicans are sure celebrating Rather’s retirement. They call him a liberal biased reporter, but it’s very interesting that these same Republican Congressmen can make comments about supposedly biased left wing reporting yet leave in silence the even more obviously biased reporting of right wing talk/lie radio.
(From an AP news release.) “Rather has long been a target of critics who accused him of a liberal bias, and there's even a Web site devoted to that notion. The National Guard story sent those critics into overdrive. Rather's announcement Tuesday led one Republican congressman from Pennsylvania to issue a statement saying, in effect, good riddance.
‘Dan Rather has been a legend in media for more than a quarter-century to many people around the world, but not to me,’ Rep. Bill Shuster said. ‘For the entirety of his career, Rather has allowed his liberal bias to shape the news rather than report it.’”
Read more.
$28,000.00 DOLLARS WORTH OF CHEESE FACE
Have you heard the one about the guy who bought a cheese sandwich for $28,000.00 dollars? I wonder if it was Swiss, American or Limburger? Whichever it was, you know it smelled to high heaven and certainly reveals just how cheesy superstition and religion substantially are! Hey, I’ve got a baloney sandwich which has the face of John the Baptist on it. By the way—who has seen a portrait of the Virgin Mary anyhow? Did someone get a photo of her or paint a portrait of her during her life?
I don’t think so! Didn’t someone tell the poor sucker that it can’t be a picture of the Virgin Mary because no one actually knows what she looks like or even if she existed?
_________________________________________
"Wonder will never cease!" —Sir Henry Bate Dudley (Who the hell?!)
Saturday, November 27, 2004
STRANGE IS THE HUMAN BEING
How many of us were shocked by the Moslem madman in Holland who killed film maker van Gogh because he objected to van Gogh’s ideas about the oppression of Islamic women? I was shocked and enraged. I suddenly could side with George Bush in his effort to kill as many terrorists as possible. What angered me most was the threat to freedom of speech that the Moslem killer represented. Or so I thought.
Yet, here in America, in Taylor, Michigan, a 49 year old former Eagle Scout shot an acquaintance because the acquaintance identified himself as an “atheist”. The Eagle Scout/killer shot his atheist acquaintance because, “... he [was] evil; he was not a believer.” Another blind, senseless murder by a fundamentalist of another sort against one of my own, an atheist like me.
So why am I not as outraged by this Christian murderer as by the Moslem murderer? Evolution tells me why. The Moslem is a double outsider to me whereas the Christian is a part of my country. Evolution tells me that I will have stronger feelings about protecting my national group above the other’s national group. Thus, I’m not as outraged by the one murder as by the other. The interesting thing to me is that even someone, like me, who understands the evolutionary pressures on my decisions can do nothing about the intensity of feelings that my evolutionary body creates in me.
NOT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE AFTER ALL
According to E. O. Wilson, George Scialabba wrote perceptively of Michael Foucault when Scialabba observed, “Foucault was grappling with the deepest, most intractable dilemmas of modern identity.... For those who believe that neither God nor natural law nor transcendent Reason exist, and who recognize the varied and subtle ways in which material interest—power—has corrupted, even constituted , every previous morality, how is one to live, to what values can one hold fast?”
As answer, Wilson writes, “To Foucault I would say, if I could (and without meaning to sound patronizing), it’s not so bad. Once we get over the shock of discovering that the universe was not made with us in mind, all the meaning the brain can master, and all the emotions it can bear, and all the shared adventure we might wish to enjoy, can be found by deciphering the hereditary orderliness that has borne our species through geological time and stamped it with the residues of deep history. Reason will be advanced to new levels, and emotions played in potentially infinite patterns. The true will be sorted from the false, and we will understand one another very well, the more quickly because we are all of the same species and possess biologically similar brains.”
_________________________________________
"The reason grandparents and children get along so well is that they have a common enemy." —Sam Levenson (comedian)
How many of us were shocked by the Moslem madman in Holland who killed film maker van Gogh because he objected to van Gogh’s ideas about the oppression of Islamic women? I was shocked and enraged. I suddenly could side with George Bush in his effort to kill as many terrorists as possible. What angered me most was the threat to freedom of speech that the Moslem killer represented. Or so I thought.
Yet, here in America, in Taylor, Michigan, a 49 year old former Eagle Scout shot an acquaintance because the acquaintance identified himself as an “atheist”. The Eagle Scout/killer shot his atheist acquaintance because, “... he [was] evil; he was not a believer.” Another blind, senseless murder by a fundamentalist of another sort against one of my own, an atheist like me.
So why am I not as outraged by this Christian murderer as by the Moslem murderer? Evolution tells me why. The Moslem is a double outsider to me whereas the Christian is a part of my country. Evolution tells me that I will have stronger feelings about protecting my national group above the other’s national group. Thus, I’m not as outraged by the one murder as by the other. The interesting thing to me is that even someone, like me, who understands the evolutionary pressures on my decisions can do nothing about the intensity of feelings that my evolutionary body creates in me.
NOT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE AFTER ALL
According to E. O. Wilson, George Scialabba wrote perceptively of Michael Foucault when Scialabba observed, “Foucault was grappling with the deepest, most intractable dilemmas of modern identity.... For those who believe that neither God nor natural law nor transcendent Reason exist, and who recognize the varied and subtle ways in which material interest—power—has corrupted, even constituted , every previous morality, how is one to live, to what values can one hold fast?”
As answer, Wilson writes, “To Foucault I would say, if I could (and without meaning to sound patronizing), it’s not so bad. Once we get over the shock of discovering that the universe was not made with us in mind, all the meaning the brain can master, and all the emotions it can bear, and all the shared adventure we might wish to enjoy, can be found by deciphering the hereditary orderliness that has borne our species through geological time and stamped it with the residues of deep history. Reason will be advanced to new levels, and emotions played in potentially infinite patterns. The true will be sorted from the false, and we will understand one another very well, the more quickly because we are all of the same species and possess biologically similar brains.”
_________________________________________
"The reason grandparents and children get along so well is that they have a common enemy." —Sam Levenson (comedian)
Thursday, November 25, 2004
MOTION SICKNESS? WHY?
When I was a tyke, my folks used to drive every summer from Ohio to Connecticut so that my Stepmom could visit her family in Waterbury. Every summer, it seems, I’d get bored and try to read, which I enjoyed, while my Dad drove. And, of course, I always got sick. Why was this?
Two frames of reference that keep us oriented as we move through the environment are gravity which helps us know up from down and vision which tells us we’re walking through the world, passing things by.
Howsomever, when we are reading while traveling in a car, the inner ear, by gravity, by frontal pressure and less pressure to read, knows that we’re moving while the interior of the car and the page we read, say that we’re sitting still. This cognitive dissonance tells us that it’s time to be sick. (Pinker, HOW THE MIND WORKS, p. 264)
A REASON TO DOUBT EVERYTHING
“Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true; no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith. But whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must be the judge.” —John Locke in 1689 C.E.
GETTING IT ON
From HOW THE MIND WORKS by Stephen Pinker:
“... intelligence is the pursuit of goals in the face of obstacles. Without goals, the very concept of intelligence is meaningless.” (p. 372)
“The emotions are mechanisms that set the brain’s highest level goals.” (p. 373) Yeah, man, getting laid. Look at the body on that little animal over there! Hubba! Hubba!
“Each human emotion mobilizes the mind and body to meet one of the challenges of living and reproducing in the cognitive niche.” (p. 374)
And the “... brain strives to put its owner in [emotional/physical] circumstances like those that caused its ancestors to reproduce.” (p. 373)
WHICH LEADS TO BAD GUYS
Pinker says that emotions are not very nice, but they are understandable. Yes, when my prick rises at sight of a shapely female, it means my emotions are telling me to run over and copulate with her. In polite society, we try to pretend this doesn’t happen. Or my rage can kill someone, and everyone shakes their heads at my act. The Columbine killers sure made a messy emotional mess too but we can understand why they did what they did. I shake my head over those who shake their heads when faced with the result of emotional outburst built up over time.
How many of us are willing to accept that animals will be animals? We all want animals to be people, but we aren’t. So we lie about things. But likable or not, Pinker says, “emotions are understandable”. “... the brain blithely weaves false explanations about its motives.” (HOW THE MIND WORKS, Pinker, p. 422) This is because we don’t like to think badly about ourselves; cognitive dissonance is triggered when our own good opinion of ourselves is threatened. Believe it or not, Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy in his own mind. “In real life villains are convinced of their rectitude.” (Pinker, p. 424)
Think, my friends, of George Bush and his excuses for the murder called war he’s got us into. I’ll bet he’s incapable of judging the cruelty of his own acts. If you wonder why some of us don’t trust him, just look into the science of those mentalities who believe they’re performing the work of a higher authority than themselves, convinced of their own rectitude, incapable of admitting to an error.
Accepting evolution as I do, I do understand the emotions behind the animals who are comforted by a man who’s animal nature comforts their animal instincts. Why do these people call themselves Christians? Why do they fail to understand the evolution at work in them?
______________________________________________________________________
"The reason husbands and wives do not understand each other is because they belong to different sexes." —Dorothy Dix
When I was a tyke, my folks used to drive every summer from Ohio to Connecticut so that my Stepmom could visit her family in Waterbury. Every summer, it seems, I’d get bored and try to read, which I enjoyed, while my Dad drove. And, of course, I always got sick. Why was this?
Two frames of reference that keep us oriented as we move through the environment are gravity which helps us know up from down and vision which tells us we’re walking through the world, passing things by.
Howsomever, when we are reading while traveling in a car, the inner ear, by gravity, by frontal pressure and less pressure to read, knows that we’re moving while the interior of the car and the page we read, say that we’re sitting still. This cognitive dissonance tells us that it’s time to be sick. (Pinker, HOW THE MIND WORKS, p. 264)
A REASON TO DOUBT EVERYTHING
“Whatever God hath revealed is certainly true; no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith. But whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must be the judge.” —John Locke in 1689 C.E.
GETTING IT ON
From HOW THE MIND WORKS by Stephen Pinker:
“... intelligence is the pursuit of goals in the face of obstacles. Without goals, the very concept of intelligence is meaningless.” (p. 372)
“The emotions are mechanisms that set the brain’s highest level goals.” (p. 373) Yeah, man, getting laid. Look at the body on that little animal over there! Hubba! Hubba!
“Each human emotion mobilizes the mind and body to meet one of the challenges of living and reproducing in the cognitive niche.” (p. 374)
And the “... brain strives to put its owner in [emotional/physical] circumstances like those that caused its ancestors to reproduce.” (p. 373)
WHICH LEADS TO BAD GUYS
Pinker says that emotions are not very nice, but they are understandable. Yes, when my prick rises at sight of a shapely female, it means my emotions are telling me to run over and copulate with her. In polite society, we try to pretend this doesn’t happen. Or my rage can kill someone, and everyone shakes their heads at my act. The Columbine killers sure made a messy emotional mess too but we can understand why they did what they did. I shake my head over those who shake their heads when faced with the result of emotional outburst built up over time.
How many of us are willing to accept that animals will be animals? We all want animals to be people, but we aren’t. So we lie about things. But likable or not, Pinker says, “emotions are understandable”. “... the brain blithely weaves false explanations about its motives.” (HOW THE MIND WORKS, Pinker, p. 422) This is because we don’t like to think badly about ourselves; cognitive dissonance is triggered when our own good opinion of ourselves is threatened. Believe it or not, Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy in his own mind. “In real life villains are convinced of their rectitude.” (Pinker, p. 424)
Think, my friends, of George Bush and his excuses for the murder called war he’s got us into. I’ll bet he’s incapable of judging the cruelty of his own acts. If you wonder why some of us don’t trust him, just look into the science of those mentalities who believe they’re performing the work of a higher authority than themselves, convinced of their own rectitude, incapable of admitting to an error.
Accepting evolution as I do, I do understand the emotions behind the animals who are comforted by a man who’s animal nature comforts their animal instincts. Why do these people call themselves Christians? Why do they fail to understand the evolution at work in them?
______________________________________________________________________
"The reason husbands and wives do not understand each other is because they belong to different sexes." —Dorothy Dix
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
HUMILITY? DOES BUSH HAVE IT?
One of the most puzzling issues concerning George Bush is why he can’t get along with people. He can’t get along with half of the American people, and he certainly doesn’t seem to be able to get along with most of the free world outside the boundaries of the U.S.
Some of us think we know why he’s such a troublemaker. We recognize that, of course, he’s a dry drunk, unable to be one among many and lacking the humility to see that he just can’t always have things his own way and that if he does force his will on others, he’ll end up causing more trouble than good and making more enemies than friends. Dry drunks never see that they’re sometimes wrong. They insist on having their way.
Some of us also understand that part of Bush’s inability to be humble is his religious temperament. Religious people (like orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Moslems and evangelical Christians) just are not willing to admit they can be wrong. This is because their religions teach them that they are right and the rest of the world wrong. With that sort of training, how can a truly religious person get along with people who think differently from them?
A PLASTIC FREEDOM?
In a MIND SO RARE (pp.208-209), Merlin Donald writes, “Neural plasticity simply implies that there is some flexibility in the way a nervous system unfolds in reaction to the environment [and] plasticity itself is subject to natural selection....” (p. 210)
We just keep stacking up the evidence for evolution, don’t we? How plastic is Bush’s brain? Is he and his an evolutionary deadend, unable to move on? Or is his dead-headedness, what natural selection will elect?
A SOURCE OF HUMILITY
The humble choice we all can make if we have the courage, if we want to honor human freedom, is the choice to give up our lives for the greater good of mankind. Metaphorically and, yet, literally too, that’s what an atheist does when he chooses his philosophy over the primitive religions which continue to offer “eternal life” in exchange for fawning obedience to their king/gods and kingdoms. Only atheists can relish the feeling of true human freedom and are truly suited to the rigors of democracy. It is the irony of their rebellion in which their freedom is won that everyone loses their lives and not a shot is fired.
_____________________________________________________
"Man is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowlege of good and evil. He acts against God's command... From the standpoint of the Church, which represents authority, this is essentially sin. From the standpoint of man, however, this is the beginning of human freedom." —Erich Fromm
One of the most puzzling issues concerning George Bush is why he can’t get along with people. He can’t get along with half of the American people, and he certainly doesn’t seem to be able to get along with most of the free world outside the boundaries of the U.S.
Some of us think we know why he’s such a troublemaker. We recognize that, of course, he’s a dry drunk, unable to be one among many and lacking the humility to see that he just can’t always have things his own way and that if he does force his will on others, he’ll end up causing more trouble than good and making more enemies than friends. Dry drunks never see that they’re sometimes wrong. They insist on having their way.
Some of us also understand that part of Bush’s inability to be humble is his religious temperament. Religious people (like orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Moslems and evangelical Christians) just are not willing to admit they can be wrong. This is because their religions teach them that they are right and the rest of the world wrong. With that sort of training, how can a truly religious person get along with people who think differently from them?
A PLASTIC FREEDOM?
In a MIND SO RARE (pp.208-209), Merlin Donald writes, “Neural plasticity simply implies that there is some flexibility in the way a nervous system unfolds in reaction to the environment [and] plasticity itself is subject to natural selection....” (p. 210)
We just keep stacking up the evidence for evolution, don’t we? How plastic is Bush’s brain? Is he and his an evolutionary deadend, unable to move on? Or is his dead-headedness, what natural selection will elect?
A SOURCE OF HUMILITY
The humble choice we all can make if we have the courage, if we want to honor human freedom, is the choice to give up our lives for the greater good of mankind. Metaphorically and, yet, literally too, that’s what an atheist does when he chooses his philosophy over the primitive religions which continue to offer “eternal life” in exchange for fawning obedience to their king/gods and kingdoms. Only atheists can relish the feeling of true human freedom and are truly suited to the rigors of democracy. It is the irony of their rebellion in which their freedom is won that everyone loses their lives and not a shot is fired.
_____________________________________________________
"Man is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowlege of good and evil. He acts against God's command... From the standpoint of the Church, which represents authority, this is essentially sin. From the standpoint of man, however, this is the beginning of human freedom." —Erich Fromm
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
CAN WE NEVER GET ALONG? MAYBE WE CAN.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 13, 2002
Does the human mind have an evolved cognitive specialization for reasoning about social exchange, including a subroutine for detecting cheaters?
Neural and cross-cultural evidence that our minds contain evolved adaptations for reasoning about social exchange -- presented in two PNAS companion papers:
Selective Impairment of Reasoning About Social Exchange in a Patient with Bilateral Limbic System Damage (PNAS #3526) by Valerie Stone, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Neal Kroll, and Robert Knight
Cross-Cultural Evidence of Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange among the Shiwiar of Ecuadorian Amazonia (PNAS #3529) by Lawrence S. Sugiyama, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides
These PNAS papers provide surprising new evidence that our neural architecture has evolved specializations for reasoning about social exchange. That cheater detection can be impaired without impairing other reasoning abilities suggests that this cognitive competence is caused by a functionally isolable brain mechanism (#3526). That this brain mechanism reliably develops even in disparate cultural contexts suggests that it is a universal feature of human nature (#3529). Because social exchange allows trade, this evolved competence provides a cognitive foundation for human economic activity and other forms of cooperation.
Read It For Yourself and Load Up On a Whole Lot of Science
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 13, 2002
Does the human mind have an evolved cognitive specialization for reasoning about social exchange, including a subroutine for detecting cheaters?
Neural and cross-cultural evidence that our minds contain evolved adaptations for reasoning about social exchange -- presented in two PNAS companion papers:
Selective Impairment of Reasoning About Social Exchange in a Patient with Bilateral Limbic System Damage (PNAS #3526) by Valerie Stone, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Neal Kroll, and Robert Knight
Cross-Cultural Evidence of Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange among the Shiwiar of Ecuadorian Amazonia (PNAS #3529) by Lawrence S. Sugiyama, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides
These PNAS papers provide surprising new evidence that our neural architecture has evolved specializations for reasoning about social exchange. That cheater detection can be impaired without impairing other reasoning abilities suggests that this cognitive competence is caused by a functionally isolable brain mechanism (#3526). That this brain mechanism reliably develops even in disparate cultural contexts suggests that it is a universal feature of human nature (#3529). Because social exchange allows trade, this evolved competence provides a cognitive foundation for human economic activity and other forms of cooperation.
Read It For Yourself and Load Up On a Whole Lot of Science
Monday, November 22, 2004
RISKY BUSINESS
At times, now, in my recliner years, I’ve looked back over my life and wondered why I had such a tendency to do things impulsively, take unnecessary risks, make self-destructive decisions. I struggled harder than some of my friends just to survive and get along, and I lived a lot of years in poverty and skating along near poverty. It’s not that I didn’t have opportunity and friends who might have helped me. One friend tried to bring me into the technical writing field, but I shunned that. He worked himself up into high digit incomes and told me it was as easy as falling off a log. And I’ve had other friends who have worked themselves up into six figure jobs, being responsible parents and steady members of society. My own sons have become teachers and businessmen, yet, thinking of my masters’ degrees, I know I must be considered an underachiever. Professional or financial success were not for me.
When I think back to my impulsive behavior, the way I often just followed the moment and made decisions with no thought of tomorrow, I’m amazed since I know I’m no dummy. Most of the time I seemed to purposely duck advancement and hide from responsibility. For a long time I swore in my cups that as long as there was one poor person in the world, I wanted no financial success for myself, somehow yoking myself to failure and actually making it impossible for me to be of any help to those with less potential than myself.
Often I’d do something just to be able to say that I’d experienced it. When I was 50 years old, back 17 years ago, I’d already held 53 jobs in a wide variety of professions. I was everything from a janitor to a high school teacher and college teacher to a painter’s and sandblaster’s helper on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. I’d been a window decorator, a clerk, an aluminum awning salesman and a certified nurse’s aide in a nursing home. I suppose I thought that, somehow, all my experience would translate into the books I was going to write which would make me famous....
Well, famous I am not, but okay I am with that. Somehow I’ve found a little peace in my old age.
Anyhow... I’ve noticed others like myself who have poor impulse control, and since I’ve been reading so much science these days, specially in the field of brain chemistry and the evolution of consciousness, I’ve begun to think that much of what I’ve been is genetics, twisted by nurture. And here another small article inSCIENTIFIC AMERICAN which finds that the volume of the amygdala may have something to do with those of us who just seem to have no fear and no sense when certain decisions approach. We just seem to gotta go find out about whatever it is and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
THEY’RE ONLY JUST BEGINNING
The following are from FREETHOUGHT TODAY, November 2004:
“Three Christian youths taunted an 11 year old boy over his family’s non-Christian beliefs and threw rotten apples at him in late September, reported the TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE (Sept. 29).
The boy, whose family is pagan, was called names and a ‘Jesus hater.’ He was hit five or six times during the attack by middle-schoolers.”
In addition, a film maker was murdered by a Dutch Moslem fundamentalist; a Muslim stabbed four of his seven daughters to death because his faith told him he must have sons; in Michigan a Christian believer shot an atheist to death because “he is evil; he was not a believer”; Moslems stoned to death two Nigerian women for having sex outside of marriage; a Hindu family killed an 11 year old daughter for being possessed by demons; in South Africa a Christian soapbox actress hacked her 2 year old to death because he was possessed by the devil; a Texas Christian plucked out his eye, quoting Mark 9:47, while being held in jail for killing and cutting out the hearts of his son, estranged wife and her daughter; and another Christian in Penticton, B.C. cut his penis off and ran through the streets, yelling, “Repent, repent fornicators.”
Now that Canadian dude might be a solution for all this religious nonsense going around. If they’d all just follow suit we’d soon be free of them.
_____________________________________________
"I tell you I can feel them! They're all around us! Young people! Getting closer and closer!" —Hamilton cartoon caption
At times, now, in my recliner years, I’ve looked back over my life and wondered why I had such a tendency to do things impulsively, take unnecessary risks, make self-destructive decisions. I struggled harder than some of my friends just to survive and get along, and I lived a lot of years in poverty and skating along near poverty. It’s not that I didn’t have opportunity and friends who might have helped me. One friend tried to bring me into the technical writing field, but I shunned that. He worked himself up into high digit incomes and told me it was as easy as falling off a log. And I’ve had other friends who have worked themselves up into six figure jobs, being responsible parents and steady members of society. My own sons have become teachers and businessmen, yet, thinking of my masters’ degrees, I know I must be considered an underachiever. Professional or financial success were not for me.
When I think back to my impulsive behavior, the way I often just followed the moment and made decisions with no thought of tomorrow, I’m amazed since I know I’m no dummy. Most of the time I seemed to purposely duck advancement and hide from responsibility. For a long time I swore in my cups that as long as there was one poor person in the world, I wanted no financial success for myself, somehow yoking myself to failure and actually making it impossible for me to be of any help to those with less potential than myself.
Often I’d do something just to be able to say that I’d experienced it. When I was 50 years old, back 17 years ago, I’d already held 53 jobs in a wide variety of professions. I was everything from a janitor to a high school teacher and college teacher to a painter’s and sandblaster’s helper on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. I’d been a window decorator, a clerk, an aluminum awning salesman and a certified nurse’s aide in a nursing home. I suppose I thought that, somehow, all my experience would translate into the books I was going to write which would make me famous....
Well, famous I am not, but okay I am with that. Somehow I’ve found a little peace in my old age.
Anyhow... I’ve noticed others like myself who have poor impulse control, and since I’ve been reading so much science these days, specially in the field of brain chemistry and the evolution of consciousness, I’ve begun to think that much of what I’ve been is genetics, twisted by nurture. And here another small article inSCIENTIFIC AMERICAN which finds that the volume of the amygdala may have something to do with those of us who just seem to have no fear and no sense when certain decisions approach. We just seem to gotta go find out about whatever it is and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
THEY’RE ONLY JUST BEGINNING
The following are from FREETHOUGHT TODAY, November 2004:
“Three Christian youths taunted an 11 year old boy over his family’s non-Christian beliefs and threw rotten apples at him in late September, reported the TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE (Sept. 29).
The boy, whose family is pagan, was called names and a ‘Jesus hater.’ He was hit five or six times during the attack by middle-schoolers.”
In addition, a film maker was murdered by a Dutch Moslem fundamentalist; a Muslim stabbed four of his seven daughters to death because his faith told him he must have sons; in Michigan a Christian believer shot an atheist to death because “he is evil; he was not a believer”; Moslems stoned to death two Nigerian women for having sex outside of marriage; a Hindu family killed an 11 year old daughter for being possessed by demons; in South Africa a Christian soapbox actress hacked her 2 year old to death because he was possessed by the devil; a Texas Christian plucked out his eye, quoting Mark 9:47, while being held in jail for killing and cutting out the hearts of his son, estranged wife and her daughter; and another Christian in Penticton, B.C. cut his penis off and ran through the streets, yelling, “Repent, repent fornicators.”
Now that Canadian dude might be a solution for all this religious nonsense going around. If they’d all just follow suit we’d soon be free of them.
_____________________________________________
"I tell you I can feel them! They're all around us! Young people! Getting closer and closer!" —Hamilton cartoon caption
Saturday, November 20, 2004
HOW LITTLE I KNEW
Strange to admit how little I knew of what I was suffering from during the mid to late 60’s into the mid 70s. A child of the 1940s and a 1950s teen, I entered my adulthood with an assured sense of the world, believing that reason could and would sort everything out and believing that there was a master plan somewhere in an imaginary heaven which we humans had only to discover and follow in order for us to achieve happiness and world peace. I don’t know how many times I said in my early years, “I sure wish I could die and know all the answers.”
Then, when the comfortable world I knew mysteriously crumbled in the 1960s and I “lost my way” (note how that assumes there was a way to follow), at first, I thought the world was crazy as I sank into drunkenness. But, coming out of alcohol abuse, I used the second step which says, “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,” and I began to say that, no, it was not the world, it was only I who was crazy.
But, now, in reading the following passage in CONSILIENCE by E.O. Wilson, I see that I was struggling not with a crazy world or with a crazy self so much as with a mighty realignment of my neurological makeup caused by my coming face to face with a new understanding of reality, such as the following:
“Postmodernism is the ultimate polar antithesis of the Enlightenment.... Enlightenment thinkers [me?] believe we can know everything, and radical postmodernists believe we can know nothing.... Reality, they [postmodernists] propose is a state constructed by the mind, not perceived by it. In the most extravagant version of this constructivism, there is no ‘real’ reality, no objective truths external to mental activity, only prevailing versions disseminated by ruling social groups. Nor can ethics be firmly grounded, given that each society creates its own codes for the benefit of the same oppressive forces.”
I think “relativism” clearly states what I was dealing with in the 60s-70s. Interesting too, that as I read CONSILIENCE, some of its themes dovetailed with Kernan’s who I’m simultaneously reading. In Kernan’s IN PLATO’S CAVE, I came across the justification which I and many like me used as a rationalization for our opposition to old ideas about order and knowledge and our descents into what I thought of as a sort of personal hell:
“In some ways this was all the familiar bohemia of earlier times, the subculture of opposition that seems to be a permanent feature of modern, democratic, permissive, capitalist society. But now, hyped with drugs and amplified with sound, faces and voices spread everywhere by TV, bohemia went militant, attacking middle-class mores and undermining rationality by recommending extraordinary states of consciousness to the young. These revolts probably would not have come to much had not the civil rights movement in the South and the Vietnam War authenticated the distrust of authority at all levels and supported the radical position that a revolution was necessary to change things.” (Kernan, p.160)
It’s Kernan’s mention of an “extraordinary state of consciousness” that got my attention as I read the foregoing passage. For indeed that’s what I feel I’ve been through and am still in possession of—a different state of consciousness from so many of my fellow American citizens. I don’t have allegiances to the mundane things of the world, like nation or state or wealth or possessions or rigid ways of believing in or of “seeing” reality. I don’t have the allegiance to family as so many others of us “seem” to have. I don’t like pro sports much. I don’t fish or hunt. I read a lot and write my thoughts down. All of these things are to me a radical departure from what others seem to think is the norm. Of course, this “reading and writing” penchant may actually make me a reactionary rather than a man of the modern world—for isn’t literacy disappearing?
Well, there you go, eh?
_______________________________________
"Reality is a flowing. This does not mean that everything moves, changes, becomes. Science and common experience tell us that. It means that movement, change, becoming is everything that there is. There is nothing else; everything is movement, is change. The time that we ordinarily think about is not real time, but a picture of space." —Henri-Louis Bergson
Strange to admit how little I knew of what I was suffering from during the mid to late 60’s into the mid 70s. A child of the 1940s and a 1950s teen, I entered my adulthood with an assured sense of the world, believing that reason could and would sort everything out and believing that there was a master plan somewhere in an imaginary heaven which we humans had only to discover and follow in order for us to achieve happiness and world peace. I don’t know how many times I said in my early years, “I sure wish I could die and know all the answers.”
Then, when the comfortable world I knew mysteriously crumbled in the 1960s and I “lost my way” (note how that assumes there was a way to follow), at first, I thought the world was crazy as I sank into drunkenness. But, coming out of alcohol abuse, I used the second step which says, “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,” and I began to say that, no, it was not the world, it was only I who was crazy.
But, now, in reading the following passage in CONSILIENCE by E.O. Wilson, I see that I was struggling not with a crazy world or with a crazy self so much as with a mighty realignment of my neurological makeup caused by my coming face to face with a new understanding of reality, such as the following:
“Postmodernism is the ultimate polar antithesis of the Enlightenment.... Enlightenment thinkers [me?] believe we can know everything, and radical postmodernists believe we can know nothing.... Reality, they [postmodernists] propose is a state constructed by the mind, not perceived by it. In the most extravagant version of this constructivism, there is no ‘real’ reality, no objective truths external to mental activity, only prevailing versions disseminated by ruling social groups. Nor can ethics be firmly grounded, given that each society creates its own codes for the benefit of the same oppressive forces.”
I think “relativism” clearly states what I was dealing with in the 60s-70s. Interesting too, that as I read CONSILIENCE, some of its themes dovetailed with Kernan’s who I’m simultaneously reading. In Kernan’s IN PLATO’S CAVE, I came across the justification which I and many like me used as a rationalization for our opposition to old ideas about order and knowledge and our descents into what I thought of as a sort of personal hell:
“In some ways this was all the familiar bohemia of earlier times, the subculture of opposition that seems to be a permanent feature of modern, democratic, permissive, capitalist society. But now, hyped with drugs and amplified with sound, faces and voices spread everywhere by TV, bohemia went militant, attacking middle-class mores and undermining rationality by recommending extraordinary states of consciousness to the young. These revolts probably would not have come to much had not the civil rights movement in the South and the Vietnam War authenticated the distrust of authority at all levels and supported the radical position that a revolution was necessary to change things.” (Kernan, p.160)
It’s Kernan’s mention of an “extraordinary state of consciousness” that got my attention as I read the foregoing passage. For indeed that’s what I feel I’ve been through and am still in possession of—a different state of consciousness from so many of my fellow American citizens. I don’t have allegiances to the mundane things of the world, like nation or state or wealth or possessions or rigid ways of believing in or of “seeing” reality. I don’t have the allegiance to family as so many others of us “seem” to have. I don’t like pro sports much. I don’t fish or hunt. I read a lot and write my thoughts down. All of these things are to me a radical departure from what others seem to think is the norm. Of course, this “reading and writing” penchant may actually make me a reactionary rather than a man of the modern world—for isn’t literacy disappearing?
Well, there you go, eh?
_______________________________________
"Reality is a flowing. This does not mean that everything moves, changes, becomes. Science and common experience tell us that. It means that movement, change, becoming is everything that there is. There is nothing else; everything is movement, is change. The time that we ordinarily think about is not real time, but a picture of space." —Henri-Louis Bergson
Friday, November 19, 2004
I HATE TO BE BLUNT ABOUT TILLMAN
I was watching a little football this weekend and happened to notice that some college is retiring Pat Tillman’s jersey number. Tillman’s the guy who put off his pro football career so that he could go serve his country in Iraq where he promptly got himself killed. Well, if getting yourself killed is a reason to be declared a hero, so be it. That certainly doesn’t make him a hero to me. You ought to be something more than naive young, cannon fodder to achieve hero status, don’t you think?
But what really gets me about the whole thing is the pious claptrap coming from the pie holes of conservatives who praise Tillman who was naive enough to go get himself killed while electing a man who was smart enough not to go get himself killed in that war of long ago in Vietnam. That conservatives can’t see the ironic blather of such commotion over herodom just goes to show how shallow and limited their thinking is.
I’m furious at the stupidity which is currently misguiding America. I don’t want any Americans to be killed unnecessarily, and so I sorrow for Tillman, not because he was a soldier who got killed, but because some men in America can convince young men like Tillman to go off to unnecessary wars for absolutely no reason at all except by appealing to blind jingoism. When will the stupidity and waste of war ever end? When will we pick our leaders more wisely? When will all young men grow wise enough not to be conned by supposedly religious leaders?
E.O. WILSON, A PIOUS KID AND RIGOROUS NATURALIST
A pious Alabama kid, young Wilson had read through the Bible twice and was a born-again Christian when, at the University of Alabama, he discovered evolution and its comprehensive vision inspired him to “doubt”. He found it “hard to accept that our deepest beliefs were set in stone by agricultural societies of the eastern Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago. I suffered,” he writes,” cognitive dissonance between the cheerfully reported genocidal wars of these people and Christian civilization in 1940s Alabama.... Baptist theology made no provision for evolution. Could it be that they [Bible authors] were not really privy to the thoughts of God?”
So Wilson drifted away from a church which knew so little about the natural world, and he maintains in CONSILIENCE that placing “objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying religious hunger.”
I can agree with that, specially when some scientific vision of reality lifts me up to see into a future I may never experience, but can at least, standing on the shoulders of intelligence, peek at what may be.
_____________________________________________
“Thank goodness kids never mean well.” —Lily Tomlin
I was watching a little football this weekend and happened to notice that some college is retiring Pat Tillman’s jersey number. Tillman’s the guy who put off his pro football career so that he could go serve his country in Iraq where he promptly got himself killed. Well, if getting yourself killed is a reason to be declared a hero, so be it. That certainly doesn’t make him a hero to me. You ought to be something more than naive young, cannon fodder to achieve hero status, don’t you think?
But what really gets me about the whole thing is the pious claptrap coming from the pie holes of conservatives who praise Tillman who was naive enough to go get himself killed while electing a man who was smart enough not to go get himself killed in that war of long ago in Vietnam. That conservatives can’t see the ironic blather of such commotion over herodom just goes to show how shallow and limited their thinking is.
I’m furious at the stupidity which is currently misguiding America. I don’t want any Americans to be killed unnecessarily, and so I sorrow for Tillman, not because he was a soldier who got killed, but because some men in America can convince young men like Tillman to go off to unnecessary wars for absolutely no reason at all except by appealing to blind jingoism. When will the stupidity and waste of war ever end? When will we pick our leaders more wisely? When will all young men grow wise enough not to be conned by supposedly religious leaders?
E.O. WILSON, A PIOUS KID AND RIGOROUS NATURALIST
A pious Alabama kid, young Wilson had read through the Bible twice and was a born-again Christian when, at the University of Alabama, he discovered evolution and its comprehensive vision inspired him to “doubt”. He found it “hard to accept that our deepest beliefs were set in stone by agricultural societies of the eastern Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago. I suffered,” he writes,” cognitive dissonance between the cheerfully reported genocidal wars of these people and Christian civilization in 1940s Alabama.... Baptist theology made no provision for evolution. Could it be that they [Bible authors] were not really privy to the thoughts of God?”
So Wilson drifted away from a church which knew so little about the natural world, and he maintains in CONSILIENCE that placing “objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying religious hunger.”
I can agree with that, specially when some scientific vision of reality lifts me up to see into a future I may never experience, but can at least, standing on the shoulders of intelligence, peek at what may be.
_____________________________________________
“Thank goodness kids never mean well.” —Lily Tomlin
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
PHYSICAL LOCATION OF MORAL JUDGMENT
Recently, I’ve begun to listen in, participate little, to the forums at the Internet Infidels web site, just as I’ve also been adding scientific sites to my “favorites” column in IE. In a chain devoted to discussing the “objectivity” of moral judgment, in one of the postings, I came across a link to which opened to an article from Vol. 6 No. 12 December 2002 issue of TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences. The article is the work of Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt.
I couldn’t ask for anymore support for my thinking that the human mind is mostly a determined thing, barely able to waddle on its own, thus humbling the mighty moralists who still live in brains conditioned and set back 2000 years in the past by Bible reading. The findings also support the information about left brain “spin meistering” which I’ve mentioned several times in past posts as regards people who’ve had their corpus callosum severed in order to cure uncontrollable seizures. Read these pieces of their premise, for example:
“Moral psychology has long focused on reasoning, but recent evidence suggests that moral judgment is more a matter of emotion and affective intuition than deliberated reasoning. Here [in the article] we discuss recent findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including several studies that specifically investigate moral judgment. These findings indicate the importance of affect, although they allow that reasoning can play a restricted but significant role in moral judgment. They also point towards a preliminary account of the functional neuroanatomy of moral judgment, according to which many brain areas make important contributions to moral judgment although none is devoted specifically to it.”
In the 1980s “...new findings in evolutionary psychology and primatology began to point to origins of human morality in a set of emotions... that make individuals care about the welfare of others... and about cooperation, cheating, and norm-following....”
The feelings which we call moral feelings are, according to the article, intuitions. “These intuitions—for example, about reciprocity, loyalty, purity, suffering—are shaped by natural selection, as well as by cultural forces. [La Cerra, in her THE ORIGIN OF MINDS certainly agrees with the influence of both culture and natural selection in shaping the mechanisms by which the human animal meets her bioenergetic needs.] People certainly do engage in moral reasoning, but, as suggested by studies of informal reasoning, these processes are typically one-sided efforts in support of preordained conclusions.” Like the guy with severed corpus callosum, we act first, or judge first, and then make up reasons, excuses, later. “...people can very easily construct post-hoc reason to justify their actions and judgments.” Or as the authors quote William James: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
The body of the article supports these findings with detailed analysis of experimental data, under the headings of such things as “Somatic markers and decision-making”, “Neuroimaging”, “The neuroanatomy of moral judgment”, and ending with “Conclusions”, one of which is “Neuroimaging studies of moral judgment in normal adults, as well as studies of individuals exhibiting aberrant moral behavior, all point to the conclusion, embraced by the social intuitionist model, that emotion is a significant driving force in moral judgment.”
Recently, I’ve begun to listen in, participate little, to the forums at the Internet Infidels web site, just as I’ve also been adding scientific sites to my “favorites” column in IE. In a chain devoted to discussing the “objectivity” of moral judgment, in one of the postings, I came across a link to which opened to an article from Vol. 6 No. 12 December 2002 issue of TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences. The article is the work of Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt.
I couldn’t ask for anymore support for my thinking that the human mind is mostly a determined thing, barely able to waddle on its own, thus humbling the mighty moralists who still live in brains conditioned and set back 2000 years in the past by Bible reading. The findings also support the information about left brain “spin meistering” which I’ve mentioned several times in past posts as regards people who’ve had their corpus callosum severed in order to cure uncontrollable seizures. Read these pieces of their premise, for example:
“Moral psychology has long focused on reasoning, but recent evidence suggests that moral judgment is more a matter of emotion and affective intuition than deliberated reasoning. Here [in the article] we discuss recent findings in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, including several studies that specifically investigate moral judgment. These findings indicate the importance of affect, although they allow that reasoning can play a restricted but significant role in moral judgment. They also point towards a preliminary account of the functional neuroanatomy of moral judgment, according to which many brain areas make important contributions to moral judgment although none is devoted specifically to it.”
In the 1980s “...new findings in evolutionary psychology and primatology began to point to origins of human morality in a set of emotions... that make individuals care about the welfare of others... and about cooperation, cheating, and norm-following....”
The feelings which we call moral feelings are, according to the article, intuitions. “These intuitions—for example, about reciprocity, loyalty, purity, suffering—are shaped by natural selection, as well as by cultural forces. [La Cerra, in her THE ORIGIN OF MINDS certainly agrees with the influence of both culture and natural selection in shaping the mechanisms by which the human animal meets her bioenergetic needs.] People certainly do engage in moral reasoning, but, as suggested by studies of informal reasoning, these processes are typically one-sided efforts in support of preordained conclusions.” Like the guy with severed corpus callosum, we act first, or judge first, and then make up reasons, excuses, later. “...people can very easily construct post-hoc reason to justify their actions and judgments.” Or as the authors quote William James: “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
The body of the article supports these findings with detailed analysis of experimental data, under the headings of such things as “Somatic markers and decision-making”, “Neuroimaging”, “The neuroanatomy of moral judgment”, and ending with “Conclusions”, one of which is “Neuroimaging studies of moral judgment in normal adults, as well as studies of individuals exhibiting aberrant moral behavior, all point to the conclusion, embraced by the social intuitionist model, that emotion is a significant driving force in moral judgment.”
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
FINISHED AND MOVING ON
I managed to read through THE ORIGIN OF MINDS twice before I had to turn it in. Another fundamental argument which La Cerra puts up against Steven Pinker is the idea that the mind is not strictly modular so much as general purpose or undedicated. Here’s her take on the matter:
“We agree that your brain is composed of neural adaptations that resulted from evolution (and the mind, remember, is a product of the activity in the brain). But these adaptations did not take the form of well-defined, inherited information-processing circuits that were designed to generate predetermined adaptive solutions to Stone Age problems. Rather they took the form of components of a system that could construct adaptive information-processing—individualized circuits that generated behavioral solutions that precisely fit the specific environmental conditions, bioenergetic needs, personal experiences, and unique life history of an individual.” (p. 186)
A good deal of nurture is allowed for in La Cerra’s view. She uses the idea of beauty to discuss the modular idea of the mind as compared to her more generalized view of how the brain works. According to most modular views, the brain is modularly constructed to select for standardized ideas of beauty which show health and good childbearing capabilities, etcetera. According to La Cerra, that view is false, or more to the point, uses different mechanisms to make its decisions than her "bioenergetic adaptations" .
GOD LIES OR PAT ROBERTSON LIES OR AINTNOGOD?
Pat Robertson reported that God told him personally that Bush’s victory would be a landslide. Turns out ‘twas no landslide at all. Now, either God lied to this pompous asshole or Pat Robertson lied to the President of the United States. Considering all the lies coming out of the White House about our successes in Iraq, Pat’s lies maybe just got lost in the traffic out of the lie channels exiting the Bush-mouth.
THEY ALWAYS CRUMBLE.
JUST PROMISE THEM MARRIAGE
In USA TODAY, November 8, 2004, p.60, we read: “U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention data show that teens who pledge virginity until marriage wait longer before having sex and have fewer partners. But they also are less likely to use condoms once they have sex, and they contract sexually transmitted diseases at the same rate as teens who don’t take abstinence pledges.”
IT’S OKAY TO BE DEPRESSED
One of the ideas that interested me in La Cerra was her idea that depression is a sign of a healthy, functioning intelligence system. She believes that defeats and loses ought to bring us down so that we can rest and reevaluate what’s going on. According to her bioenergetic theories, serotonin is the chemical that adjusts ‘self worth’ according to the situation you’re in. It may raise or lower your self-esteem depending upon what’s called for and also based on your past experience and familiarity with the situation.
Example: if you feel nervous and hesitant when approaching a novel situation to yourself, then it pays to be cautious and uncertain while you feel your way through it. Also, if you suffer a series of reverses in the business world, of course, your self-esteem lowers and you withdraw, lick your wounds, then come back with new solutions because the old “adaptive representational networks” have proven to be wrong. You need new ones. Depression lets you find this out and causes you not to rely on the old ways so much.
You know one of the reasons I like La Cerra’s work here is that her answers are simple and elegant and take into account so many other fields of knowledge. Consilience seems to reside in her description of the functioning, human chemical system. And isn’t that a sign of a true answer?
CONSILIENCE
Speaking of “consilience”. I just got Wilson’s CONSILIENCE out of the library. That’s my next read.
___________________________________
"Man is more an ape than many of the apes." —Nietzsche
"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal." —Tolstoy
"Tolstoy ruined his talent with his endless moralizing!" —aintnogod
I managed to read through THE ORIGIN OF MINDS twice before I had to turn it in. Another fundamental argument which La Cerra puts up against Steven Pinker is the idea that the mind is not strictly modular so much as general purpose or undedicated. Here’s her take on the matter:
“We agree that your brain is composed of neural adaptations that resulted from evolution (and the mind, remember, is a product of the activity in the brain). But these adaptations did not take the form of well-defined, inherited information-processing circuits that were designed to generate predetermined adaptive solutions to Stone Age problems. Rather they took the form of components of a system that could construct adaptive information-processing—individualized circuits that generated behavioral solutions that precisely fit the specific environmental conditions, bioenergetic needs, personal experiences, and unique life history of an individual.” (p. 186)
A good deal of nurture is allowed for in La Cerra’s view. She uses the idea of beauty to discuss the modular idea of the mind as compared to her more generalized view of how the brain works. According to most modular views, the brain is modularly constructed to select for standardized ideas of beauty which show health and good childbearing capabilities, etcetera. According to La Cerra, that view is false, or more to the point, uses different mechanisms to make its decisions than her "bioenergetic adaptations" .
GOD LIES OR PAT ROBERTSON LIES OR AINTNOGOD?
Pat Robertson reported that God told him personally that Bush’s victory would be a landslide. Turns out ‘twas no landslide at all. Now, either God lied to this pompous asshole or Pat Robertson lied to the President of the United States. Considering all the lies coming out of the White House about our successes in Iraq, Pat’s lies maybe just got lost in the traffic out of the lie channels exiting the Bush-mouth.
THEY ALWAYS CRUMBLE.
JUST PROMISE THEM MARRIAGE
In USA TODAY, November 8, 2004, p.60, we read: “U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention data show that teens who pledge virginity until marriage wait longer before having sex and have fewer partners. But they also are less likely to use condoms once they have sex, and they contract sexually transmitted diseases at the same rate as teens who don’t take abstinence pledges.”
IT’S OKAY TO BE DEPRESSED
One of the ideas that interested me in La Cerra was her idea that depression is a sign of a healthy, functioning intelligence system. She believes that defeats and loses ought to bring us down so that we can rest and reevaluate what’s going on. According to her bioenergetic theories, serotonin is the chemical that adjusts ‘self worth’ according to the situation you’re in. It may raise or lower your self-esteem depending upon what’s called for and also based on your past experience and familiarity with the situation.
Example: if you feel nervous and hesitant when approaching a novel situation to yourself, then it pays to be cautious and uncertain while you feel your way through it. Also, if you suffer a series of reverses in the business world, of course, your self-esteem lowers and you withdraw, lick your wounds, then come back with new solutions because the old “adaptive representational networks” have proven to be wrong. You need new ones. Depression lets you find this out and causes you not to rely on the old ways so much.
You know one of the reasons I like La Cerra’s work here is that her answers are simple and elegant and take into account so many other fields of knowledge. Consilience seems to reside in her description of the functioning, human chemical system. And isn’t that a sign of a true answer?
CONSILIENCE
Speaking of “consilience”. I just got Wilson’s CONSILIENCE out of the library. That’s my next read.
___________________________________
"Man is more an ape than many of the apes." —Nietzsche
"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal." —Tolstoy
"Tolstoy ruined his talent with his endless moralizing!" —aintnogod
Monday, November 15, 2004
BACK TO “MIND SO RARE” BY MERLON DONALD
“Humans thus bridge two worlds. We are hybrids, half analogizers, with direct experience of the world, and half symbolizers, embedded in the cultural web [through culturally directed and formed language].” Brackets mine.
According to Donald, hybrid consciousness is constructed from language symbols by which we manipulate our experience of our culture and by the physicality of our contact with the world, as in: “Basic animal awareness intuits the mysteries of the world directly, allowing the universe to carve out its own image in the mind.... A receptive mode of knowing.” (p. 157)
Donald calls the analogous method of knowing, the process by which our neural synaptical patterns are formed by the incoming messages of our senses, "receptive". And he calls the symbol manipulating, language rich way of interacting with our cultures, "aggressive".
Hey! I wonder if that has something to do with passive/aggressive behavior? Our language telling us one thing while our bodies tell us another? Just a piss in the dark of an idea....
LET’S THROW PINKER’S “HOW THE MIND WORKS”
IN HERE AGAIN
I’m throwing in these bits from books just to tickle people’s fancy about these books. Here’s Pinker on the perceptual functions of the brain:
First he quotes David Marr: “Vision is a process that produces from images of the external world a description that is useful to the viewer and not cluttered with irrelevant information.” (p. 212)
As explanation for this fragmentation of the visual intake of the environment, Pinker goes on, “Perception is the only branch of psychology that has been consistently adaptation-minded, seeing its task as reverse-engineering. The visual system is not there to entertain us with pretty patterns and colors; it is contrived to deliver a sense of the true forms and materials of the world...” so that we animals can know “...where the food, the predators, and the cliffs are....” (p. 213)
And from hunting to art, he says: “Whatever assumptions impel the brain to see the world as the world will impel it to see the painting as the world and not as smeared paint.” (p. 217)
NOW La CERRA IN “THE ORIGIN OF MINDS” SAYS THAT
“To think about yourself in relation to your world, you need machinery to construct a self-representation—a neural signature that uniquely defines you as the central player in the marketplace. You also have to be able to construct representations of the other salient features in your environment. then you need to create a relational map in your mind between yourself and those salient features—the things in the world that have an effect on you. And all of this has to be dynamic, responsive to environmental fluctuations (like changing concentrations of nectar in the blue or yellow flowers) and changes in you internal state.” (p. 63)
____________________________________________________
"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage." —Mark Russell
“Humans thus bridge two worlds. We are hybrids, half analogizers, with direct experience of the world, and half symbolizers, embedded in the cultural web [through culturally directed and formed language].” Brackets mine.
According to Donald, hybrid consciousness is constructed from language symbols by which we manipulate our experience of our culture and by the physicality of our contact with the world, as in: “Basic animal awareness intuits the mysteries of the world directly, allowing the universe to carve out its own image in the mind.... A receptive mode of knowing.” (p. 157)
Donald calls the analogous method of knowing, the process by which our neural synaptical patterns are formed by the incoming messages of our senses, "receptive". And he calls the symbol manipulating, language rich way of interacting with our cultures, "aggressive".
Hey! I wonder if that has something to do with passive/aggressive behavior? Our language telling us one thing while our bodies tell us another? Just a piss in the dark of an idea....
LET’S THROW PINKER’S “HOW THE MIND WORKS”
IN HERE AGAIN
I’m throwing in these bits from books just to tickle people’s fancy about these books. Here’s Pinker on the perceptual functions of the brain:
First he quotes David Marr: “Vision is a process that produces from images of the external world a description that is useful to the viewer and not cluttered with irrelevant information.” (p. 212)
As explanation for this fragmentation of the visual intake of the environment, Pinker goes on, “Perception is the only branch of psychology that has been consistently adaptation-minded, seeing its task as reverse-engineering. The visual system is not there to entertain us with pretty patterns and colors; it is contrived to deliver a sense of the true forms and materials of the world...” so that we animals can know “...where the food, the predators, and the cliffs are....” (p. 213)
And from hunting to art, he says: “Whatever assumptions impel the brain to see the world as the world will impel it to see the painting as the world and not as smeared paint.” (p. 217)
NOW La CERRA IN “THE ORIGIN OF MINDS” SAYS THAT
“To think about yourself in relation to your world, you need machinery to construct a self-representation—a neural signature that uniquely defines you as the central player in the marketplace. You also have to be able to construct representations of the other salient features in your environment. then you need to create a relational map in your mind between yourself and those salient features—the things in the world that have an effect on you. And all of this has to be dynamic, responsive to environmental fluctuations (like changing concentrations of nectar in the blue or yellow flowers) and changes in you internal state.” (p. 63)
____________________________________________________
"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage." —Mark Russell
Saturday, November 13, 2004
THE DARK ELECTION SECRET
So 1% of all Americans put Bush over the top! Or 2% of all those who voted. Not very many and certainly not a mandate, but if Bush acted as he did when he did not have a plurality of the vote in his first appointment, don’t expect him to be cautious or to care about anybody but his Christian base in his elected term in office.
I’ve heard intelligent Democrats speak wistfully about how Bush will attempt to make his legacy in his lame duck term and so act with restraint to win over some of his opposition in Congress. Sometimes, intellectuals amaze me, being as smart as they are, with their not seeing how wishful that thinking is.
Bush is going to kick butt and take names. He’s going to have a legacy all right in taking America back a century into the past and restoring the power of the wealthy all over this land. He’s going to undermine the legal protections of the minorities in America. His base more or less have spoken, and they don’t give a damn about the economic situation in America, nor in economic justice. They just want their morality imposed on the rest of us.
And their supposed morality is the point that really sticks about this election. I know that the largest proportion of Bush supporters voted with upright and fair reasons for the President, but that his evangelical base, which carried him over the threshold to victory, voted from bigotry and prejudice against the gay minority in America. But I have hope for the future.
Bigotry and prejudice are not the American way, nor is the excluding of any citizen from full participation in the democratic system. Eventually, just as blacks were admitted fully into American society so will the gay community be admitted. Bigotry and prejudice eventually are seen for what they are—the misguided moral attempts by one group in America to exclude another group from full participation in American freedoms. Good Christians will see this injustice, and they won’t let their fundamentalist brethren distort the Christian name. Patience, my gay friends, Americans will come around. They know that an America which excludes anyone from freedom is an America in decline.
_______________________________________________
"A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support." —Ambrose Bierce
So 1% of all Americans put Bush over the top! Or 2% of all those who voted. Not very many and certainly not a mandate, but if Bush acted as he did when he did not have a plurality of the vote in his first appointment, don’t expect him to be cautious or to care about anybody but his Christian base in his elected term in office.
I’ve heard intelligent Democrats speak wistfully about how Bush will attempt to make his legacy in his lame duck term and so act with restraint to win over some of his opposition in Congress. Sometimes, intellectuals amaze me, being as smart as they are, with their not seeing how wishful that thinking is.
Bush is going to kick butt and take names. He’s going to have a legacy all right in taking America back a century into the past and restoring the power of the wealthy all over this land. He’s going to undermine the legal protections of the minorities in America. His base more or less have spoken, and they don’t give a damn about the economic situation in America, nor in economic justice. They just want their morality imposed on the rest of us.
And their supposed morality is the point that really sticks about this election. I know that the largest proportion of Bush supporters voted with upright and fair reasons for the President, but that his evangelical base, which carried him over the threshold to victory, voted from bigotry and prejudice against the gay minority in America. But I have hope for the future.
Bigotry and prejudice are not the American way, nor is the excluding of any citizen from full participation in the democratic system. Eventually, just as blacks were admitted fully into American society so will the gay community be admitted. Bigotry and prejudice eventually are seen for what they are—the misguided moral attempts by one group in America to exclude another group from full participation in American freedoms. Good Christians will see this injustice, and they won’t let their fundamentalist brethren distort the Christian name. Patience, my gay friends, Americans will come around. They know that an America which excludes anyone from freedom is an America in decline.
_______________________________________________
"A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support." —Ambrose Bierce
Friday, November 12, 2004
I VOTED A STRAIGHT DEMO TICKET
There’s little to say about that terrible day. I didn't want to go home and listen to the votes roll in tonight. I don’t know if I can stand it. By the time I post this, it’ll be a few days past election day, and, hopefully, we’ll know who our next president is. Maybe not. But, today, something happened in the Netherlands which bothers me a great deal and almost makes me a bushman.
A film maker was shot and stabbed to death for making a film critical of the Koran and of the Moslem suppression of women. The killer held joint citizenship in Morocco and in the Netherlands. He left a note stabbed into the film maker’s chest.
I don’t know that it is yet my business to tell mid-Eastern countries how to run their affairs, but when they come into Western countries and show no respect for free speech and for Western traditions, then, I’m not so sure we don’t need to stamp them out or, at least, not let them live in our countries. That act really pisses me off.
I think the murderer demonstrates, again, some link between men who don’t respect the equality of women and men full of rage. It shows again that fundamentalism of all kinds is not a healthy modern psychology. Murderous, jealous, insane and irrational, but not healthy or modern or rational.
MANTRA
The Universe is exactly as it must be. The Cosmos could not be anything else than it is.
JOHN JOHN
In “The Passover Plot”, Schonfield says of whoever wrote the Gospel, John: “The Greek author of this Gospel, as we have it, has effectively buried the Jesus of history and substituted his own theological notion of the Son of God, a posturing polemical figure with a streak of anti-Semitism, wholly incompatible with the Messiah of apostolic tradition.” (p. 99)
EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORICAL SHIFTS
Again from Schonfield: “The tendency of the Christians as the Church developed was increasingly to stress the guilt of the Jews and to whitewash Pilate, and we have to allow for this [reflection] in the later Gospels.” (p. 129) Some of this change in attitude over the years, as reflected in the inconsistent Gospels, proves that the Gospels were written much later than the time of Christ and that the later Gospels reveal that change over time.
HERE’S ANOTHER BIBLE MYSTERY
If the Garden of Eden was in the Middle East as the Bible tells us, and if all the animals were created and named in the Garden of Eden, how did the penguin survive while waddling to the South Pole, how did the lowly earthworm spread across the oceans, how did the cricket hop all the way to South America, how did the buffalo swim the oceans to North America?
Okay! Let’s say you tell me that all these creatures were in their places around the globe and that Adam only named representatives of each animal in the Garden. Though, you’re making up a bunch of stuff that isn’t clearly stated, I’ll let you get away with it. But, then, we have the same problem after the flood. In the case of the flood, we know that all the animals were in one place, the ark, after the waters subsided. So the same problem exists after the flood which existed right after the creation. How did these non-swimming and slow-moving animals and spread themselves back around the earth?
_____________________________________________
"Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based." —Ambrose Bierce
There’s little to say about that terrible day. I didn't want to go home and listen to the votes roll in tonight. I don’t know if I can stand it. By the time I post this, it’ll be a few days past election day, and, hopefully, we’ll know who our next president is. Maybe not. But, today, something happened in the Netherlands which bothers me a great deal and almost makes me a bushman.
A film maker was shot and stabbed to death for making a film critical of the Koran and of the Moslem suppression of women. The killer held joint citizenship in Morocco and in the Netherlands. He left a note stabbed into the film maker’s chest.
I don’t know that it is yet my business to tell mid-Eastern countries how to run their affairs, but when they come into Western countries and show no respect for free speech and for Western traditions, then, I’m not so sure we don’t need to stamp them out or, at least, not let them live in our countries. That act really pisses me off.
I think the murderer demonstrates, again, some link between men who don’t respect the equality of women and men full of rage. It shows again that fundamentalism of all kinds is not a healthy modern psychology. Murderous, jealous, insane and irrational, but not healthy or modern or rational.
MANTRA
The Universe is exactly as it must be. The Cosmos could not be anything else than it is.
JOHN JOHN
In “The Passover Plot”, Schonfield says of whoever wrote the Gospel, John: “The Greek author of this Gospel, as we have it, has effectively buried the Jesus of history and substituted his own theological notion of the Son of God, a posturing polemical figure with a streak of anti-Semitism, wholly incompatible with the Messiah of apostolic tradition.” (p. 99)
EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORICAL SHIFTS
Again from Schonfield: “The tendency of the Christians as the Church developed was increasingly to stress the guilt of the Jews and to whitewash Pilate, and we have to allow for this [reflection] in the later Gospels.” (p. 129) Some of this change in attitude over the years, as reflected in the inconsistent Gospels, proves that the Gospels were written much later than the time of Christ and that the later Gospels reveal that change over time.
HERE’S ANOTHER BIBLE MYSTERY
If the Garden of Eden was in the Middle East as the Bible tells us, and if all the animals were created and named in the Garden of Eden, how did the penguin survive while waddling to the South Pole, how did the lowly earthworm spread across the oceans, how did the cricket hop all the way to South America, how did the buffalo swim the oceans to North America?
Okay! Let’s say you tell me that all these creatures were in their places around the globe and that Adam only named representatives of each animal in the Garden. Though, you’re making up a bunch of stuff that isn’t clearly stated, I’ll let you get away with it. But, then, we have the same problem after the flood. In the case of the flood, we know that all the animals were in one place, the ark, after the waters subsided. So the same problem exists after the flood which existed right after the creation. How did these non-swimming and slow-moving animals and spread themselves back around the earth?
_____________________________________________
"Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based." —Ambrose Bierce
Thursday, November 11, 2004
VOTING IRREGULARITIES FAVOR BUSH IN FLORIDA AND ELSEWHERE
I'm not sure what to make of this, but it's worth looking into. Read this
I'm not sure what to make of this, but it's worth looking into. Read this
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
ADAPTIVE REPRESENTATIONAL NETWORKS
ARE THE YOU IN YOU
In “The Origin of Minds”, we read about how a personality or “self” evolved in time.
From p. 66: “The next time you feel cold... your intelligence system will access any adaptive representational network that has a ‘physiological sense of being cold [internal state]’ component and match your current environment and stimulus with one from your past that had a successful outcome.” From this rummaging around to find successful adaptations, we chose an appropriate behavior for getting warm. [I must ask here, What if someone had few successful outcomes in her life? Is this how some of us become self-destructive? When the whole system is malfunctioning?]
From p. 69: “A memory is not a photograph. It is, in a sense, a revisiting of a moment in your life that captures not only the scene but also the significance of the participants’ relationships, their internal states, and the outcome of their behavior. It [a memory] is the activation of our adaptive representational network.”
From p. 70: “There is nothing arbitrary about the circumstances in which these representations were formed by the way. They had utility at that moment.... Nothing gets into the club of adaptive representational networks unless it follows the rules: An external stimulus and/or an internal state change provokes a behavior with an outcome that shifts your state, your feelings. That is what is memorable.” These memorable scenes are deeply entrenched—they are bits of yourself, they are pieces of memory from which you strung together the self that you call “you”. This connection between necessity and memory also explains why memories are closely linked with emotions.
From p. 71: A prototype is the vertical dimension of ‘representations’ [ARNs]. Imagine all the dolls you’ve experienced in your life. “This composite sense of dollness is a higher order representation. A prototype. Doll essence.” Prototypes are adaptive constructions which, when we meet new things in our environment, help us explore them. They might also obstruct our adaptations if we cling to old prototypes too tightly.
From p. 72: We human animals also develop prototypes for our “selves”. “Something... happens when we act as agents in a year’s worth of transactions in the biological marketplace. A higher level of abstraction [a prototype] of who we are—our social signatures—emerges.”
SPEAKING OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Stephen Pinker in “Blank Slate” notes an obvious fact about consciousness. The coming of the computer was parallel or precedent to the emerging into consciousness of the idea of “the computational theory of mind.” Each new level of historical consciousness can “look back” and understand what has come before, says Pinker.
I say that if this is so, then, Freud could see back to the unconscious (instinctual) structure that underlay consciousness. He was wrong about so much, yet he was a pioneer. Freud’s greatest gift to intellectual life was ‘they know not what they do” at a much more true level than Christ himself who also said it. Christ blindly thought that the material world was acting against the spiritual world. Christ sensed the underlying structure of brain chemistry but missed the real truth, but Freud knew it when he uncovered the unconscious. Now we who come later can actually understand it.
_____________________________________________
"Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable." —Plato
"Plato is a bore." —Nietzsche
ARE THE YOU IN YOU
In “The Origin of Minds”, we read about how a personality or “self” evolved in time.
From p. 66: “The next time you feel cold... your intelligence system will access any adaptive representational network that has a ‘physiological sense of being cold [internal state]’ component and match your current environment and stimulus with one from your past that had a successful outcome.” From this rummaging around to find successful adaptations, we chose an appropriate behavior for getting warm. [I must ask here, What if someone had few successful outcomes in her life? Is this how some of us become self-destructive? When the whole system is malfunctioning?]
From p. 69: “A memory is not a photograph. It is, in a sense, a revisiting of a moment in your life that captures not only the scene but also the significance of the participants’ relationships, their internal states, and the outcome of their behavior. It [a memory] is the activation of our adaptive representational network.”
From p. 70: “There is nothing arbitrary about the circumstances in which these representations were formed by the way. They had utility at that moment.... Nothing gets into the club of adaptive representational networks unless it follows the rules: An external stimulus and/or an internal state change provokes a behavior with an outcome that shifts your state, your feelings. That is what is memorable.” These memorable scenes are deeply entrenched—they are bits of yourself, they are pieces of memory from which you strung together the self that you call “you”. This connection between necessity and memory also explains why memories are closely linked with emotions.
From p. 71: A prototype is the vertical dimension of ‘representations’ [ARNs]. Imagine all the dolls you’ve experienced in your life. “This composite sense of dollness is a higher order representation. A prototype. Doll essence.” Prototypes are adaptive constructions which, when we meet new things in our environment, help us explore them. They might also obstruct our adaptations if we cling to old prototypes too tightly.
From p. 72: We human animals also develop prototypes for our “selves”. “Something... happens when we act as agents in a year’s worth of transactions in the biological marketplace. A higher level of abstraction [a prototype] of who we are—our social signatures—emerges.”
SPEAKING OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Stephen Pinker in “Blank Slate” notes an obvious fact about consciousness. The coming of the computer was parallel or precedent to the emerging into consciousness of the idea of “the computational theory of mind.” Each new level of historical consciousness can “look back” and understand what has come before, says Pinker.
I say that if this is so, then, Freud could see back to the unconscious (instinctual) structure that underlay consciousness. He was wrong about so much, yet he was a pioneer. Freud’s greatest gift to intellectual life was ‘they know not what they do” at a much more true level than Christ himself who also said it. Christ blindly thought that the material world was acting against the spiritual world. Christ sensed the underlying structure of brain chemistry but missed the real truth, but Freud knew it when he uncovered the unconscious. Now we who come later can actually understand it.
_____________________________________________
"Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable." —Plato
"Plato is a bore." —Nietzsche
Saturday, November 06, 2004
WEB-TOED TRAVELERS DON’T DUCK TO ANYONE
I found this interesting. From the “Baltimore Sun”, Michael Himowitz reports on some interesting research about how much web users do and do not know about current issues in American life, compared to regular readers of papers and the heavily illiterate listeners to talk radio. With backing from the Pew Charitable Trust and in conjunction with the University of Michigan, researchers conducted an in depth telephone survey of Internet users. One overarching finding emerged.
“We were actually a bit surprised,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “Especially with the broadband users, who tend to be more sophisticated [or wealthy or more able to waste money on broadband or more addicted to Internet use].... Before we started, we were prepared to say that there’s a start of a bad trend going on here, but we were surprised to find the opposite, that what’s going on is good for democracy.... It comes down to this: People who use the Internet know more and get more than people who do not.”
COULD THIS BE BUSH-LEAGUE?
Alvin Kernan in “In Plato’s Cave”, though not meaning to, uncovered some of the trouble we’re having in America just now.
Kernan writes that, “... the great satirists of Western tradition did not merely attack the particular failings of their own time but chronicled a universal destructive energy—Pope styled it ‘Dulness’ and described it as ‘laborious, heavy, busy, bold and blind.’ Dulness perverts nature, manufactures bizarre and grotesque worlds, and moves toward a futile conclusion in which, instead of the air being cleared as in tragedy and comedy, waste and confusion reign and nothing is solved.... satire always move[s] toward a breakdown of sense and order in which ‘universal darkness covers all.’ ”
Looked at through the eyes of the great Alexander Pope, this world created by the bushman regime is a figure for satire from which a “universal darkness” poofs out like a smelly, yellow-gray bean curd fart. Bush and his administration couldn’t be more “laborious, heavy, busy, bold and blind”.
DECONSTRUCTION APPEARS IN KERNAN’S WORLD
Although isn’t even “deconstructionism” a passé term today in the world of American illiteracy?
“The authors of the great works of literature were stripped of their literary property and reduced to the status of ‘scriptors’ who did not create their works but merely exploited the stock of ideas common to their languages and cultures. Heidegger’s ‘language writes, not the author’ became standard doctrine, though language was itself now empty of any truth. Roland Barthes delivered the coup de grace in a famous article, ‘The Death of the Author,’ where he wrote that, far from being the creative genius that literature had made him, the author was only a historical idea ‘formulated by and appropriate to the social beliefs of democratic, capitalistic society with its emphasis on the individual.’ Terry Eagleton summed it all up by saying that literature is not truth, or even fiction, but ‘ideology,’ one of the means ‘by which certain social groups exercise and maintain power over others.’” (p. 192)
_____________________________________________________
"Children of the poor should work for some part of the day when they reach the age of three." —John Locke (conservative)
I found this interesting. From the “Baltimore Sun”, Michael Himowitz reports on some interesting research about how much web users do and do not know about current issues in American life, compared to regular readers of papers and the heavily illiterate listeners to talk radio. With backing from the Pew Charitable Trust and in conjunction with the University of Michigan, researchers conducted an in depth telephone survey of Internet users. One overarching finding emerged.
“We were actually a bit surprised,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “Especially with the broadband users, who tend to be more sophisticated [or wealthy or more able to waste money on broadband or more addicted to Internet use].... Before we started, we were prepared to say that there’s a start of a bad trend going on here, but we were surprised to find the opposite, that what’s going on is good for democracy.... It comes down to this: People who use the Internet know more and get more than people who do not.”
COULD THIS BE BUSH-LEAGUE?
Alvin Kernan in “In Plato’s Cave”, though not meaning to, uncovered some of the trouble we’re having in America just now.
Kernan writes that, “... the great satirists of Western tradition did not merely attack the particular failings of their own time but chronicled a universal destructive energy—Pope styled it ‘Dulness’ and described it as ‘laborious, heavy, busy, bold and blind.’ Dulness perverts nature, manufactures bizarre and grotesque worlds, and moves toward a futile conclusion in which, instead of the air being cleared as in tragedy and comedy, waste and confusion reign and nothing is solved.... satire always move[s] toward a breakdown of sense and order in which ‘universal darkness covers all.’ ”
Looked at through the eyes of the great Alexander Pope, this world created by the bushman regime is a figure for satire from which a “universal darkness” poofs out like a smelly, yellow-gray bean curd fart. Bush and his administration couldn’t be more “laborious, heavy, busy, bold and blind”.
DECONSTRUCTION APPEARS IN KERNAN’S WORLD
Although isn’t even “deconstructionism” a passé term today in the world of American illiteracy?
“The authors of the great works of literature were stripped of their literary property and reduced to the status of ‘scriptors’ who did not create their works but merely exploited the stock of ideas common to their languages and cultures. Heidegger’s ‘language writes, not the author’ became standard doctrine, though language was itself now empty of any truth. Roland Barthes delivered the coup de grace in a famous article, ‘The Death of the Author,’ where he wrote that, far from being the creative genius that literature had made him, the author was only a historical idea ‘formulated by and appropriate to the social beliefs of democratic, capitalistic society with its emphasis on the individual.’ Terry Eagleton summed it all up by saying that literature is not truth, or even fiction, but ‘ideology,’ one of the means ‘by which certain social groups exercise and maintain power over others.’” (p. 192)
_____________________________________________________
"Children of the poor should work for some part of the day when they reach the age of three." —John Locke (conservative)
Friday, November 05, 2004
BUSH DISCREDITS AMERICA WITH THE WORLD
BRITAIN SAYS “NEVER AGAIN”
Okay. I know you’ve heard this before, but here’s yet another (my fourth?) post which supports intelligent claims that Bush is really making a mess of American security by lousing up our relationships with our past allies in the world. He’s even lost British support for any other venture someplace else in the world if he should ever ask them to help us again. As one senior British diplomat said, “Never again.”
If Americans reappoint Bush to office tomorrow, I doubt we’ll get any respect from the rest of the free world for a long time except for those weak nations, like Israel and other small fry, which desperately need our dole. We are no longer the leader of the free world. Do we understand that? We must have respect from other nations if we are to lead them. The bushman has lost us all such respect. Now, we’re more or less just a rogue nation alone and without good allies in the really free world.
Read the following from Newsweek, November 1, 2004, p. 34:
THE CREAKY COALITION
By Stryker McGuire of Newsweek
“Nov. 1 issue - America's 138,000 troops in Iraq were asking for a little help from their British friends. Could an 850-strong armored battalion of Scotland's Black Watch Regiment please be redeployed from Basra, in southern Iraq, to the outskirts of Baghdad? The request seemed straightforward enough. Yet it triggered another political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. As British commanders weighed the American request, London editors wrote scare mongering headlines about the Black Watch's walking into a "Triangle of Death." Blair's critics charged that acceding to the U.S. request would amount to an election-eve boost to Bush's presidential campaign. Is it not time "to say 'no' to the Americans?" one Labour Party M.P. demanded of Blair.
“The prime minister didn't cave. But a new conventional wisdom is taking hold among Britain's military and foreign-policy elite: even if John Kerry defeats Bush, any British government will find it difficult, if not impossible, to muster popular support for a future American-led military intervention. A senior British diplomat put it bluntly to NEWSWEEK: ‘Never again.’
“Other members of Bush's Coalition of the Willing are getting balky, too. A total of 29 countries now have troops in Iraq, including Britain's 8,300. After pro-war Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was voted out of office earlier this year, the new government withdrew all of Spain's 1,300 troops. Honduras and the Dominican Republic then brought home their small contingents. Under mounting domestic pressure, Italy (2,700 troops), Poland (2,500), Ukraine (1,600), the Czech Republic (100) and Slovakia (105) have hinted at troop reductions next year. The Coalition's Potemkin-village quality is perhaps best illustrated by Japan's contribution: 600 Self-”Defense Force troops. By law, they cannot instigate combat, and have not fired a single shot in anger. In fact, troops from the Netherlands' 500-strong contingent are deployed around the SDF compound in southern Iraq to provide an extra layer of security for the Japanese.
“Blair's fealty to Bush barely masks serious disagreements between the American and the British governments. In private, senior British military commanders have strongly criticized the United States' "overwhelming force" tactics in Iraq. Senior British Foreign Service officers have despaired at the post-9/11 collapse of American diplomacy. For Washington, it's one thing to see Thailand and New Zealand pulling troops out of Iraq. It's quite another to have Britain questioning its "special relationship" with the United States.”
Which countries are providing military support?
United States 138,000
Britain 8,530
Albania 70
Australia 850
Azerbaijan 150
Bulgaria 455
Czech Rep. 92
Denmark 510
Dominican Rep. 300
El Salvador 360
Estonia 55
Georgia 150
Hungary 300
Italy 2,700
Japan 1,000
Kazakhstan 25
Latvia 120
Lithuania 105
Macedonia 28
Moldavia 25
Mongolia 180
Netherlands 1,263
New Zealand 60
Nicaragua 115
Norway 150
Poland 2,400
Portugal 120
Romania 730
Singapore 200
Slovakia 105
South Korea 675 (3,000 on way)
Thailand 460
Tonga 44
Ukraine 1,700
Sources: Reuters news reports/GlobalSecurity.org.
_______________________________________________________
"War hath no fury like a non-combatant's." —C.E. Montague
BRITAIN SAYS “NEVER AGAIN”
Okay. I know you’ve heard this before, but here’s yet another (my fourth?) post which supports intelligent claims that Bush is really making a mess of American security by lousing up our relationships with our past allies in the world. He’s even lost British support for any other venture someplace else in the world if he should ever ask them to help us again. As one senior British diplomat said, “Never again.”
If Americans reappoint Bush to office tomorrow, I doubt we’ll get any respect from the rest of the free world for a long time except for those weak nations, like Israel and other small fry, which desperately need our dole. We are no longer the leader of the free world. Do we understand that? We must have respect from other nations if we are to lead them. The bushman has lost us all such respect. Now, we’re more or less just a rogue nation alone and without good allies in the really free world.
Read the following from Newsweek, November 1, 2004, p. 34:
THE CREAKY COALITION
By Stryker McGuire of Newsweek
“Nov. 1 issue - America's 138,000 troops in Iraq were asking for a little help from their British friends. Could an 850-strong armored battalion of Scotland's Black Watch Regiment please be redeployed from Basra, in southern Iraq, to the outskirts of Baghdad? The request seemed straightforward enough. Yet it triggered another political crisis for Prime Minister Tony Blair last week. As British commanders weighed the American request, London editors wrote scare mongering headlines about the Black Watch's walking into a "Triangle of Death." Blair's critics charged that acceding to the U.S. request would amount to an election-eve boost to Bush's presidential campaign. Is it not time "to say 'no' to the Americans?" one Labour Party M.P. demanded of Blair.
“The prime minister didn't cave. But a new conventional wisdom is taking hold among Britain's military and foreign-policy elite: even if John Kerry defeats Bush, any British government will find it difficult, if not impossible, to muster popular support for a future American-led military intervention. A senior British diplomat put it bluntly to NEWSWEEK: ‘Never again.’
“Other members of Bush's Coalition of the Willing are getting balky, too. A total of 29 countries now have troops in Iraq, including Britain's 8,300. After pro-war Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was voted out of office earlier this year, the new government withdrew all of Spain's 1,300 troops. Honduras and the Dominican Republic then brought home their small contingents. Under mounting domestic pressure, Italy (2,700 troops), Poland (2,500), Ukraine (1,600), the Czech Republic (100) and Slovakia (105) have hinted at troop reductions next year. The Coalition's Potemkin-village quality is perhaps best illustrated by Japan's contribution: 600 Self-”Defense Force troops. By law, they cannot instigate combat, and have not fired a single shot in anger. In fact, troops from the Netherlands' 500-strong contingent are deployed around the SDF compound in southern Iraq to provide an extra layer of security for the Japanese.
“Blair's fealty to Bush barely masks serious disagreements between the American and the British governments. In private, senior British military commanders have strongly criticized the United States' "overwhelming force" tactics in Iraq. Senior British Foreign Service officers have despaired at the post-9/11 collapse of American diplomacy. For Washington, it's one thing to see Thailand and New Zealand pulling troops out of Iraq. It's quite another to have Britain questioning its "special relationship" with the United States.”
Which countries are providing military support?
United States 138,000
Britain 8,530
Albania 70
Australia 850
Azerbaijan 150
Bulgaria 455
Czech Rep. 92
Denmark 510
Dominican Rep. 300
El Salvador 360
Estonia 55
Georgia 150
Hungary 300
Italy 2,700
Japan 1,000
Kazakhstan 25
Latvia 120
Lithuania 105
Macedonia 28
Moldavia 25
Mongolia 180
Netherlands 1,263
New Zealand 60
Nicaragua 115
Norway 150
Poland 2,400
Portugal 120
Romania 730
Singapore 200
Slovakia 105
South Korea 675 (3,000 on way)
Thailand 460
Tonga 44
Ukraine 1,700
Sources: Reuters news reports/GlobalSecurity.org.
_______________________________________________________
"War hath no fury like a non-combatant's." —C.E. Montague
Thursday, November 04, 2004
FRED AND FEDERICO
I suddenly got it!
Halloween night I was handing out candy while my wife and I watched Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers shake their booties in “Follow The Fleet”, a 1936 black and white dance/song/comedy bit of fluff, one of ten they made together. Federico Fellini would have been an impressionable 16 when that movie was made. I can imagine him, mouth agape, staring up at a glowing screen in semi-darkness.
My wife, years younger than me, loves Astaire movies too. It’s one small piece of the network that puts us, unenmeshed, together.
As you may know, Federico Fellini loved vaudeville and dancing, and he made a film called “Ginger and Fred” in 1986, exactly 50 years after “Follow The Fleet” was released. Suddenly, I saw the connection between Federico and Fred in a “Fleet” dance number aboard a ship with gaudy and fantastical backdrops, the kind of backdrops and fantasy you get in many a Fellini film. I saw the fantasy influence in Astaire’s dance numbers, the whole musical 30’s genre, which came through into Federico’s films. It was amazing to see it so clearly after all these years of loving musicals and loving Federico flicks, and the fantasy of the Astaire musical knocked me back in my seat. Wow and wonderful. You can see it spilling through into Woody Allen’s films too like in “Stardust Memories” and in Woody’s use of music in most all of his films, the same way Fellini uses music. It was a wonderful moment, making all those connections in the graying part of my life.
EUROPEANS HEALTHIER THAN AMERICANS
From an article in the October 28, 2004 Spokesman, I copy the following: “Northern Europeans are now two inches taller than Americans.... Seventy five years ago that wasn‘t the case. We’re falling behind.”
What!? Americans “falling behind” Europeans, falling behind in many measures of public health?! What can we make of that? Could it really mean that the European “socialistic medical system” is really better for the majority of citizens than America’s free enterprise system of medical distribution? Did Europe have any flu shot crisis? Why not? Perish the thought that Hillary was right way back when we had a chance to make medical care a universal right for all Americans. Way back before the Bushman bankrupted the country before it could put its surplus to good use to save lives rather than slaughter them in Iraq.
SCIENCE MAKES GOOD BEDFELLOWS
I’d like to point out that when it comes to peace on earth, it’s not religion that fosters it best, but science. Did you know that the Cassini spacecraft from NASA which is circling Saturn’s moon, Titan, is the joint venture of America’s NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency? Scientists have always been competitive when it comes to setting up experiments to try and get to the correct answers about the Cosmos, and peer review can really knock down a falsehood and deliver a hurting to a fellow scientist, but when it gets right down to it, scientists usually feel like comrades in a wonderful joint endeavor to get to the bottom of things in the Universe.
Please imagine clearly, as I can, what the world would be like if we’d just eliminate the fundamentalists in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Picture it! Where would the trouble be? A little in Africa, a little in the far East, but nothing too big, nothing as hellish and destructive as fundamentalism creates in the world. Fundamentalists are a troublesome and destructive lot. If you don’t believe me, look at their works. That’s how yee’ll know them.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
"I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio."
—Joan Rivers
I suddenly got it!
Halloween night I was handing out candy while my wife and I watched Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers shake their booties in “Follow The Fleet”, a 1936 black and white dance/song/comedy bit of fluff, one of ten they made together. Federico Fellini would have been an impressionable 16 when that movie was made. I can imagine him, mouth agape, staring up at a glowing screen in semi-darkness.
My wife, years younger than me, loves Astaire movies too. It’s one small piece of the network that puts us, unenmeshed, together.
As you may know, Federico Fellini loved vaudeville and dancing, and he made a film called “Ginger and Fred” in 1986, exactly 50 years after “Follow The Fleet” was released. Suddenly, I saw the connection between Federico and Fred in a “Fleet” dance number aboard a ship with gaudy and fantastical backdrops, the kind of backdrops and fantasy you get in many a Fellini film. I saw the fantasy influence in Astaire’s dance numbers, the whole musical 30’s genre, which came through into Federico’s films. It was amazing to see it so clearly after all these years of loving musicals and loving Federico flicks, and the fantasy of the Astaire musical knocked me back in my seat. Wow and wonderful. You can see it spilling through into Woody Allen’s films too like in “Stardust Memories” and in Woody’s use of music in most all of his films, the same way Fellini uses music. It was a wonderful moment, making all those connections in the graying part of my life.
EUROPEANS HEALTHIER THAN AMERICANS
From an article in the October 28, 2004 Spokesman, I copy the following: “Northern Europeans are now two inches taller than Americans.... Seventy five years ago that wasn‘t the case. We’re falling behind.”
What!? Americans “falling behind” Europeans, falling behind in many measures of public health?! What can we make of that? Could it really mean that the European “socialistic medical system” is really better for the majority of citizens than America’s free enterprise system of medical distribution? Did Europe have any flu shot crisis? Why not? Perish the thought that Hillary was right way back when we had a chance to make medical care a universal right for all Americans. Way back before the Bushman bankrupted the country before it could put its surplus to good use to save lives rather than slaughter them in Iraq.
SCIENCE MAKES GOOD BEDFELLOWS
I’d like to point out that when it comes to peace on earth, it’s not religion that fosters it best, but science. Did you know that the Cassini spacecraft from NASA which is circling Saturn’s moon, Titan, is the joint venture of America’s NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency? Scientists have always been competitive when it comes to setting up experiments to try and get to the correct answers about the Cosmos, and peer review can really knock down a falsehood and deliver a hurting to a fellow scientist, but when it gets right down to it, scientists usually feel like comrades in a wonderful joint endeavor to get to the bottom of things in the Universe.
Please imagine clearly, as I can, what the world would be like if we’d just eliminate the fundamentalists in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Picture it! Where would the trouble be? A little in Africa, a little in the far East, but nothing too big, nothing as hellish and destructive as fundamentalism creates in the world. Fundamentalists are a troublesome and destructive lot. If you don’t believe me, look at their works. That’s how yee’ll know them.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
"I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio."
—Joan Rivers
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
NONE OF THIS POST MEANS MUCH NOW
Anyhow, I do note that there is some message for us liberals in the election of George Bush and the closing down of libraries in Spokane. They seem to go together somehow. That and the rise of conservatism and the closing of libraries.
IT’S A REPUBLICAN THING
It’s Halloween Sunday, and I’m looking at the Sunday issue of the Spokesman Review, at an article about election dirty tricks by Joe Becker and David Finkel of the Washington Post. What I notice, as I’ve noticed and mentioned in the past, is that the article headline mentions dirty tricks in general, as if reporters are trying to be fair and impartial, but when one reads the article, he discovers that most all of the dirty tricks are perpetrated by Republicans and few if any by Democrats.
The tricks are being perpetrated on minorities by racist and elitist Republicans. These are the same racists who used to make Democrats like me ashamed of parts of the Democratic Party. They were called Dixiecrats back then, but now they’ve all moved over to the Republican Party and ought to be called “Republicrats”. I think it’s unfair that the article wasn’t titled “Republican Party Seeks To Disenfranchise Minority Voters”. That title more nearly represents the truth of the article. Journalistic fairness doesn’t mean that the truth must be covered up. Anyhow... read the article for yourself below:
Dirty election tricks growing problem
Scams intended to discourage voters appear
Related stories
Jo Becker and David Finkel
Washington Post October 31, 2004
As if things weren't complicated enough, here comes the dirt.
Registered voters who have been somehow unregistered. Democrats who suddenly find they've been reregistered as Republicans. A flier announcing that Election Day has been extended through Wednesday.
Dirty tricks are a staple of campaigns, but election officials say this year's could achieve new highs in numbers and new lows in scope, especially in key battleground states such as Florida and Ohio, where special-interest groups have poured in to influence the neck-and-neck race between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry.
"In my 16 years as an election administrator, I've never seen anything like this," said Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County, Fla. "I see it as an expression of a political culture that has evolved in the United States of win at any cost. It's not partisan, but it's just lie, cheat and steal, and ethics be damned."
The problem in Leon County: Students at Florida State and Florida A&M universities, some of whom signed petitions to legalize medical marijuana or impose stiffer penalties for child molesters, unknowingly had their party registration switched to Republican and their addresses changed.
Officials say students at the University of Florida in Alachua County have made similar complaints and that about 4,000 potential voters in all have been affected. Local papers traced some of the problems to a group hired by the Florida Republican Party, which has denounced the shenanigans. Switching voters' party affiliations does not affect their ability to vote, but changing addresses does, because when voters shows up at their proper polling places, they won't be registered there.
The college scam has also made an appearance in Pennsylvania, along with a separate scam last week in Allegheny County, where election officials received a flurry of phone calls about fliers handed out at a Pittsburgh area mall and mailed to an unknown number of homes. The flier, distributed on bogus but official-looking stationery with a county letterhead, told voters that "due to immense voter turnout expected on Tuesday," the election had been extended. Republicans should vote Tuesday, Nov. 2, it said — and Democrats on Wednesday. A criminal investigation has been launched.
Authorities in several states also are investigating claims, by former employees of groups paid by both the Republican Party and Democratic-leaning interest groups, that they destroyed or did not turn in new registrations by voters of the opposite party.
Clouding investigations are claims and counterclaims not only about tricks, but double dirty tricks.
In Wisconsin, a flier is circulating in Milwaukee's black neighborhoods that purports to be from the "Milwaukee Black Voters League." "If you've already voted in any election this year, you can't vote in the presidential election," the flier reads. "If you violate any of these laws, you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you."
Chris Lato, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Republican Party, called the fliers "appalling" but wondered whether Democratic interest groups might be to blame. He said circulators falsely claiming to represent the Republican Party might be trying to gin up turnout among black voters.
"First of all, the claim was false, and it seems a little obvious," he said. "We have a lot of these shadowy Democratic groups here in Wisconsin, and I wouldn't put it past them to do something like this to muck up the works."
In Lake County, Ohio, some voters received a memo on bogus Board of Elections letterhead informing voters who registered through Democratic and NACCP drives that they could not vote. Election officials referred the matter to the sheriff.
Lawyers for the Ohio GOP, who have charged Democratic groups with registering fictitious characters such as Mary Poppins, said Friday that they condemned election fraud and misinformation campaigns of any kind. But some local Lake County Republicans have adopted the double-dirty-trick explanation, saying Democrats are out to make the GOP look bad.
Whatever the motive, election officials say voters are genuinely confused by the misinformation. In the Cleveland area, election officials said they received a spate of complaints after voters began receiving phone calls incorrectly informing them their polling place had changed. In addition, unknown volunteers began showing up at voters' doors illegally offering to collect and deliver completed absentee ballots to the election office.
Jane Platten, a spokeswoman for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said officials have not identified who is behind the tricks. "We've never seen anything like this before, where there seems to be a concerted effort to give voters misinformation," she said.
In South Carolina, Charleston County election officials warned voters Friday to ignore a fake letter that purports to be from the NAACP. The letter threatens voters who have outstanding parking tickets or have failed to pay child support with arrest.
"Thankfully, we got this in time to do something about it," said the Rev. Joe Darby, first vice president of the South Carolina state conference of the NAACP, who learned about the letter his organization supposedly had written when it showed up in his own mailbox. "This isn't new — it's the South Carolina politics of ignorance. And it's not surprising, because this is one of those every-vote-counts elections. But I don't think people will be fooled."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyhow, I do note that there is some message for us liberals in the election of George Bush and the closing down of libraries in Spokane. They seem to go together somehow. That and the rise of conservatism and the closing of libraries.
IT’S A REPUBLICAN THING
It’s Halloween Sunday, and I’m looking at the Sunday issue of the Spokesman Review, at an article about election dirty tricks by Joe Becker and David Finkel of the Washington Post. What I notice, as I’ve noticed and mentioned in the past, is that the article headline mentions dirty tricks in general, as if reporters are trying to be fair and impartial, but when one reads the article, he discovers that most all of the dirty tricks are perpetrated by Republicans and few if any by Democrats.
The tricks are being perpetrated on minorities by racist and elitist Republicans. These are the same racists who used to make Democrats like me ashamed of parts of the Democratic Party. They were called Dixiecrats back then, but now they’ve all moved over to the Republican Party and ought to be called “Republicrats”. I think it’s unfair that the article wasn’t titled “Republican Party Seeks To Disenfranchise Minority Voters”. That title more nearly represents the truth of the article. Journalistic fairness doesn’t mean that the truth must be covered up. Anyhow... read the article for yourself below:
Dirty election tricks growing problem
Scams intended to discourage voters appear
Related stories
Jo Becker and David Finkel
Washington Post October 31, 2004
As if things weren't complicated enough, here comes the dirt.
Registered voters who have been somehow unregistered. Democrats who suddenly find they've been reregistered as Republicans. A flier announcing that Election Day has been extended through Wednesday.
Dirty tricks are a staple of campaigns, but election officials say this year's could achieve new highs in numbers and new lows in scope, especially in key battleground states such as Florida and Ohio, where special-interest groups have poured in to influence the neck-and-neck race between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry.
"In my 16 years as an election administrator, I've never seen anything like this," said Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County, Fla. "I see it as an expression of a political culture that has evolved in the United States of win at any cost. It's not partisan, but it's just lie, cheat and steal, and ethics be damned."
The problem in Leon County: Students at Florida State and Florida A&M universities, some of whom signed petitions to legalize medical marijuana or impose stiffer penalties for child molesters, unknowingly had their party registration switched to Republican and their addresses changed.
Officials say students at the University of Florida in Alachua County have made similar complaints and that about 4,000 potential voters in all have been affected. Local papers traced some of the problems to a group hired by the Florida Republican Party, which has denounced the shenanigans. Switching voters' party affiliations does not affect their ability to vote, but changing addresses does, because when voters shows up at their proper polling places, they won't be registered there.
The college scam has also made an appearance in Pennsylvania, along with a separate scam last week in Allegheny County, where election officials received a flurry of phone calls about fliers handed out at a Pittsburgh area mall and mailed to an unknown number of homes. The flier, distributed on bogus but official-looking stationery with a county letterhead, told voters that "due to immense voter turnout expected on Tuesday," the election had been extended. Republicans should vote Tuesday, Nov. 2, it said — and Democrats on Wednesday. A criminal investigation has been launched.
Authorities in several states also are investigating claims, by former employees of groups paid by both the Republican Party and Democratic-leaning interest groups, that they destroyed or did not turn in new registrations by voters of the opposite party.
Clouding investigations are claims and counterclaims not only about tricks, but double dirty tricks.
In Wisconsin, a flier is circulating in Milwaukee's black neighborhoods that purports to be from the "Milwaukee Black Voters League." "If you've already voted in any election this year, you can't vote in the presidential election," the flier reads. "If you violate any of these laws, you can get ten years in prison and your children will get taken away from you."
Chris Lato, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Republican Party, called the fliers "appalling" but wondered whether Democratic interest groups might be to blame. He said circulators falsely claiming to represent the Republican Party might be trying to gin up turnout among black voters.
"First of all, the claim was false, and it seems a little obvious," he said. "We have a lot of these shadowy Democratic groups here in Wisconsin, and I wouldn't put it past them to do something like this to muck up the works."
In Lake County, Ohio, some voters received a memo on bogus Board of Elections letterhead informing voters who registered through Democratic and NACCP drives that they could not vote. Election officials referred the matter to the sheriff.
Lawyers for the Ohio GOP, who have charged Democratic groups with registering fictitious characters such as Mary Poppins, said Friday that they condemned election fraud and misinformation campaigns of any kind. But some local Lake County Republicans have adopted the double-dirty-trick explanation, saying Democrats are out to make the GOP look bad.
Whatever the motive, election officials say voters are genuinely confused by the misinformation. In the Cleveland area, election officials said they received a spate of complaints after voters began receiving phone calls incorrectly informing them their polling place had changed. In addition, unknown volunteers began showing up at voters' doors illegally offering to collect and deliver completed absentee ballots to the election office.
Jane Platten, a spokeswoman for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said officials have not identified who is behind the tricks. "We've never seen anything like this before, where there seems to be a concerted effort to give voters misinformation," she said.
In South Carolina, Charleston County election officials warned voters Friday to ignore a fake letter that purports to be from the NAACP. The letter threatens voters who have outstanding parking tickets or have failed to pay child support with arrest.
"Thankfully, we got this in time to do something about it," said the Rev. Joe Darby, first vice president of the South Carolina state conference of the NAACP, who learned about the letter his organization supposedly had written when it showed up in his own mailbox. "This isn't new — it's the South Carolina politics of ignorance. And it's not surprising, because this is one of those every-vote-counts elections. But I don't think people will be fooled."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
ELECTION NIGHT
Florida just fell into the Bush column. I can't stand the suspense. I'm 67 for goodness sakes!
MORE ORIGIN OF MINDS
The following is a longish excerpt from “The Origin of Minds” which reveals the core of Peggy La Cerra’s ideas about the evolution of minds. Her explanation of how the mind evolved its capacity for a self and for causation is both deterministic and, yet, allows for the uniqueness of the individual mind. It cuts out a wide swath for nurture in the underbrush of genetic determinism:
pp. 50-53: “...all mammalian intelligence systems... are constantly monitoring the energetic costs of behavior and weighing them against the benefits (goods).
“How does the bee track these changes in environment and successfully navigate toward the goods? [Like us] the bee has evolved an integrated neuronal system that guides foraging behavior. One part of this system is instinctual, reflecting the regularities of the foraging problem. But there’s a new element... that enables it to go beyond the ‘if A, then B’ survival logic of E. Coli. It has a rudimentary cortex—a swatch of functionally plastic neural tissue—that can encode critical information about previously novel features of the environment and how they relate to the bottom line activity of getting the goods. It enables the bee [and us] to learn from past experience (the blue flowers were full of nectar on the last trip), make predictions about future rewards in variable environments (but they seem to have dried up; maybe I’d better try the yellow [flowers]), and execute fitness enhancing behavior on-line (Ah! Much better. I’ll take my pollen-delivery service to the yellows for awhile...). The bee’s intelligence system enables it to learn the new market environment quickly and home in on the nectar....
If you understand the mechanism that the bee uses to learn each new market environment and form associations between various floral features and ‘the goods’, you can understand the basic logic of your mind.
“Look at the key components of the bee’s guidance program. First, it needs a core instinctual mechanism. An evolved connection between a sensory stimulus in the environment (...sugary sweetness of the nectar) and a specific behavioral response (extension of the proboscis—the nectar-sucking tube).... In the early stages of development, your intelligence system relies on an analogous instinct—simply substitute the sucking reflex for proboscis extension and mother’s milk for nectar.... As you begin to navigate your path in the markets of life, these instincts are the first step in the creation of your customized representations.
“In addition to this instinct, the bee needs sensory systems, such as visual and olfactory systems, that can detect and record features of the environment that were previously arbitrary (... color or odor of a particular flower) but have become associated with the availability of food. (Just as your visual system allowed you to form an association between a bottle and milk.)
“Third, it needs a plastic neural substrate—like your neocortex—in which these new associative network connections (‘adaptive representations’) can be formed. Finally, it needs a neural mechanism to build and modify these representations in light of experience. (Remember, these representations automatically self-adapt with the outcome of each relevant experience, increasing or decreasing their strength as a function of the value of the acquired ‘goods’.)
“In the bee, the plastic neural substrate is found in structures called the mushroom bodies and protocerebral lobes of its brain—the bee’s equivalent of your neocortex. The neural mechanism that forms new representations is a special neuron (called ‘VUMmx1’) that projects from the life history regulatory system [LHRS] (the part of the system that ‘knows’ whether or not the bee just got food) to the plastic part of the brain. When the goods have been registered, this neuron ensures that the sensory information—which just came into the brain—will be associated with the appropriate foraging and eating behavior.
“Our intelligence system works in much the same way.... [Humans have an analogous mechanism for the VUMmx1 of the bee. See Chapter Five.]”
So, there you are! The basic system upon which, according to La Cerra, we build our selves and our sense of causation, our very personalities by which we can function in groups to gain the sustenance we need in order to survive and thrive.
___________________________________________________________________________
"To my embarrassment, I was born in bed with a lady." —Wilson Mizner
Florida just fell into the Bush column. I can't stand the suspense. I'm 67 for goodness sakes!
MORE ORIGIN OF MINDS
The following is a longish excerpt from “The Origin of Minds” which reveals the core of Peggy La Cerra’s ideas about the evolution of minds. Her explanation of how the mind evolved its capacity for a self and for causation is both deterministic and, yet, allows for the uniqueness of the individual mind. It cuts out a wide swath for nurture in the underbrush of genetic determinism:
pp. 50-53: “...all mammalian intelligence systems... are constantly monitoring the energetic costs of behavior and weighing them against the benefits (goods).
“How does the bee track these changes in environment and successfully navigate toward the goods? [Like us] the bee has evolved an integrated neuronal system that guides foraging behavior. One part of this system is instinctual, reflecting the regularities of the foraging problem. But there’s a new element... that enables it to go beyond the ‘if A, then B’ survival logic of E. Coli. It has a rudimentary cortex—a swatch of functionally plastic neural tissue—that can encode critical information about previously novel features of the environment and how they relate to the bottom line activity of getting the goods. It enables the bee [and us] to learn from past experience (the blue flowers were full of nectar on the last trip), make predictions about future rewards in variable environments (but they seem to have dried up; maybe I’d better try the yellow [flowers]), and execute fitness enhancing behavior on-line (Ah! Much better. I’ll take my pollen-delivery service to the yellows for awhile...). The bee’s intelligence system enables it to learn the new market environment quickly and home in on the nectar....
If you understand the mechanism that the bee uses to learn each new market environment and form associations between various floral features and ‘the goods’, you can understand the basic logic of your mind.
“Look at the key components of the bee’s guidance program. First, it needs a core instinctual mechanism. An evolved connection between a sensory stimulus in the environment (...sugary sweetness of the nectar) and a specific behavioral response (extension of the proboscis—the nectar-sucking tube).... In the early stages of development, your intelligence system relies on an analogous instinct—simply substitute the sucking reflex for proboscis extension and mother’s milk for nectar.... As you begin to navigate your path in the markets of life, these instincts are the first step in the creation of your customized representations.
“In addition to this instinct, the bee needs sensory systems, such as visual and olfactory systems, that can detect and record features of the environment that were previously arbitrary (... color or odor of a particular flower) but have become associated with the availability of food. (Just as your visual system allowed you to form an association between a bottle and milk.)
“Third, it needs a plastic neural substrate—like your neocortex—in which these new associative network connections (‘adaptive representations’) can be formed. Finally, it needs a neural mechanism to build and modify these representations in light of experience. (Remember, these representations automatically self-adapt with the outcome of each relevant experience, increasing or decreasing their strength as a function of the value of the acquired ‘goods’.)
“In the bee, the plastic neural substrate is found in structures called the mushroom bodies and protocerebral lobes of its brain—the bee’s equivalent of your neocortex. The neural mechanism that forms new representations is a special neuron (called ‘VUMmx1’) that projects from the life history regulatory system [LHRS] (the part of the system that ‘knows’ whether or not the bee just got food) to the plastic part of the brain. When the goods have been registered, this neuron ensures that the sensory information—which just came into the brain—will be associated with the appropriate foraging and eating behavior.
“Our intelligence system works in much the same way.... [Humans have an analogous mechanism for the VUMmx1 of the bee. See Chapter Five.]”
So, there you are! The basic system upon which, according to La Cerra, we build our selves and our sense of causation, our very personalities by which we can function in groups to gain the sustenance we need in order to survive and thrive.
___________________________________________________________________________
"To my embarrassment, I was born in bed with a lady." —Wilson Mizner
Monday, November 01, 2004
FLORES MAN
In the following three sections, read more about a new species of man, a little small guy, recently discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores.
MINI HUMAN SPECIES UNEARTHED
In what is being hailed as one of the most spectacular paleoanthropological finds of the past century, researchers have unearthed the remains of a dwarf human species that survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until just 13,000 years ago. The discovery significantly extends the known range of physical variation in our genus, Homo, and reveals that H. sapiens shared the planet with other humans much more recently than previously believed.
Scientists writing today in Nature describe a partial skeleton from a limestone cave on the island known as Liang Bua. Dubbed LB1, the specimen appears to have belonged to an adult female who stood barely a meter tall and had a skull the size of a grapefruit--the smallest member of the human family yet. Although closer in overall size to the much older australopithecines, such as Lucy, the new hominid apparently resembles members of the genus Homo in features related to chewing and upright-walking. Discoverers Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his colleagues assign LB1 to a new species of Homo, H. floresiensis. They further propose that it was a dwarfed descendant of H. erectus, which is thought to have arrived in Southeast Asia by around 1.7 million years ago.
DIGGING DEEPER: Q&A WITH PETER BROWN
A discoverer of an extinct dwarf species of human reflects on one of the most startling paleoanthropological revelations in living memory
By Kate Wong
KW: Paleoanthropologists tend to disagree over how bushy or neat the human family tree is. How do you see it?
PB: My view on family trees changes daily, like everyone's does. When I first was educated I went for a fairly simple family tree, but then there weren't so many fossils around at the time. But I'm more willing now to accept a more complex family tree. That was important as far as Liang Bua goes because I had no problem at all putting it in a new species and making the tree more bushy, if you like. You can take dwarf examples and stick them into new genera or just create new species, and zoologists go both ways. But it just seemed on balance more sensible to stay within the genus Homo.
Published online: 27 October 2004; | doi:10.1038/news041025-3
A STRANGER FROM FLORES
Chris Stringer
When a new fossil is found it is often claimed that it will rewrite the anthropological textbooks. But in the case of an astonishing new discovery from Indonesia, this claim is fully justified.
The skull of Homo floresiensis is tiny compared to modern day Homo sapiens.
© P. Brown The conventional view of early human evolution is that the species Homo erectus was our first relative to spread out of Africa, some 2 million years ago. The spread that our cousin achieved is indicated by a 1.8-million-year-old, primitive form of H. erectus found at Dmanisi in Georgia, and by finds at slightly younger sites in China and the Indonesian island of Java. It was not thought that H. erectus travelled any farther towards Australia than this, because although early humans could have walked to Java from Southeast Asia at times of low sea level, the islands east of Java, always separated from it by deep water, seemed beyond their reach.
However, six years ago a team of archaeologists, led by Australian Mike Morwood, published a paper claiming that a site on the island of Flores, 500 kilometres east of Java, contained stone tools dating from about 800,000 years ago. Many researchers (myself included) doubted these claims, because if they were true they implied that H. erectus had moved beyond Java and might have used boats to do so. Such a development was thought to be unique to Homo sapiens.
When I then heard rumours about the discovery of an early human skeleton in a cave on Flores, I was ready to be surprised. However, nothing could have prepared me for how big (or small) that surprise would be.
Asian fusion:
The skeleton found at Liang Bua, a cave on Flores, is of an adult who was only about one metre tall with a brain size of only 380 cubic centimetres. That is less than one-third of the average brain size for a modern human and much smaller even than those of the primitive H. erectus skulls from Dmanisi.
The Flores skull shows a unique mixture of primitive and advanced characteristics. The brain is the same size as a chimpanzee's, the brain-case is low with a prominent brow ridge at the front, and the lower jaw completely lacks a chin. However, as in modern humans, the face is small and delicate. It is tucked under the brain rather than thrust out in front and the teeth are similar in size to our own.
The skeleton shows a similarly strange mixture of features. The hip-bone resembles those of the pre-human African species known as australopithecines (meaning 'southern apes'). But the legs are slight, and enough detail has been preserved to show that this creature definitely walked on two legs, as we do.
Class act:
This skull almost certainly belonged to a woman, who lived 18,000 years ago.
© P. Brown So what was this strange creature, and what was it doing on Flores? The authors of the two Nature papers about the discovery and its context have had to make difficult choices in deciding how to classify the creature, although it is clear that this person was definitely not a modern human. The small brain size and the hip-bone shape might favour classification as an australopithecine, whereas the size and shape of the skull might suggest a primitive form of H. erectus.
Given the unique combination of features, the authors have decided to give the specimen a new name: Homo floresiensis. This means, literally, 'man of Flores', although the authors recognize that the Liang Bua skeleton is probably that of a woman.
The researchers argue that this species made the tools found in the Liang Bua cave, and may have preyed on one of the few other mammals that had also managed to reach Flores: a tiny form of the extinct, elephant-like Stegodon.
Of a certain age:
It seems that Flores man (or woman) still has one more surprise up its sleeve: its age. Astonishingly, two methods of dating agree in placing the skeleton at only about 18,000 years old. Its ancestors, probably a form of H. erectus, could have reached the island in the hunt for stegodons a million years ago, either by building some kind of boat or by walking across a short-lived land-bridge.
Their resulting isolation and inbreeding may have led them to evolve a small body size, in a process known from other mammals as 'island dwarfing'. Because of climate change or the impact of modern humans, who began to spread from Africa around 100,000 years ago, the strange story of H. floresiensis eventually ended in extinction. But modern humans must surely have encountered this tiny relative of ours, and the discovery shows how much we still have to learn about the story of human evolution.
Chris Stringer is a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
____________________________________________________________
"The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes." —Thomas Henry Huxley
In the following three sections, read more about a new species of man, a little small guy, recently discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores.
MINI HUMAN SPECIES UNEARTHED
In what is being hailed as one of the most spectacular paleoanthropological finds of the past century, researchers have unearthed the remains of a dwarf human species that survived on the Indonesian island of Flores until just 13,000 years ago. The discovery significantly extends the known range of physical variation in our genus, Homo, and reveals that H. sapiens shared the planet with other humans much more recently than previously believed.
Scientists writing today in Nature describe a partial skeleton from a limestone cave on the island known as Liang Bua. Dubbed LB1, the specimen appears to have belonged to an adult female who stood barely a meter tall and had a skull the size of a grapefruit--the smallest member of the human family yet. Although closer in overall size to the much older australopithecines, such as Lucy, the new hominid apparently resembles members of the genus Homo in features related to chewing and upright-walking. Discoverers Peter Brown of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and his colleagues assign LB1 to a new species of Homo, H. floresiensis. They further propose that it was a dwarfed descendant of H. erectus, which is thought to have arrived in Southeast Asia by around 1.7 million years ago.
DIGGING DEEPER: Q&A WITH PETER BROWN
A discoverer of an extinct dwarf species of human reflects on one of the most startling paleoanthropological revelations in living memory
By Kate Wong
KW: Paleoanthropologists tend to disagree over how bushy or neat the human family tree is. How do you see it?
PB: My view on family trees changes daily, like everyone's does. When I first was educated I went for a fairly simple family tree, but then there weren't so many fossils around at the time. But I'm more willing now to accept a more complex family tree. That was important as far as Liang Bua goes because I had no problem at all putting it in a new species and making the tree more bushy, if you like. You can take dwarf examples and stick them into new genera or just create new species, and zoologists go both ways. But it just seemed on balance more sensible to stay within the genus Homo.
Published online: 27 October 2004; | doi:10.1038/news041025-3
A STRANGER FROM FLORES
Chris Stringer
When a new fossil is found it is often claimed that it will rewrite the anthropological textbooks. But in the case of an astonishing new discovery from Indonesia, this claim is fully justified.
The skull of Homo floresiensis is tiny compared to modern day Homo sapiens.
© P. Brown The conventional view of early human evolution is that the species Homo erectus was our first relative to spread out of Africa, some 2 million years ago. The spread that our cousin achieved is indicated by a 1.8-million-year-old, primitive form of H. erectus found at Dmanisi in Georgia, and by finds at slightly younger sites in China and the Indonesian island of Java. It was not thought that H. erectus travelled any farther towards Australia than this, because although early humans could have walked to Java from Southeast Asia at times of low sea level, the islands east of Java, always separated from it by deep water, seemed beyond their reach.
However, six years ago a team of archaeologists, led by Australian Mike Morwood, published a paper claiming that a site on the island of Flores, 500 kilometres east of Java, contained stone tools dating from about 800,000 years ago. Many researchers (myself included) doubted these claims, because if they were true they implied that H. erectus had moved beyond Java and might have used boats to do so. Such a development was thought to be unique to Homo sapiens.
When I then heard rumours about the discovery of an early human skeleton in a cave on Flores, I was ready to be surprised. However, nothing could have prepared me for how big (or small) that surprise would be.
Asian fusion:
The skeleton found at Liang Bua, a cave on Flores, is of an adult who was only about one metre tall with a brain size of only 380 cubic centimetres. That is less than one-third of the average brain size for a modern human and much smaller even than those of the primitive H. erectus skulls from Dmanisi.
The Flores skull shows a unique mixture of primitive and advanced characteristics. The brain is the same size as a chimpanzee's, the brain-case is low with a prominent brow ridge at the front, and the lower jaw completely lacks a chin. However, as in modern humans, the face is small and delicate. It is tucked under the brain rather than thrust out in front and the teeth are similar in size to our own.
The skeleton shows a similarly strange mixture of features. The hip-bone resembles those of the pre-human African species known as australopithecines (meaning 'southern apes'). But the legs are slight, and enough detail has been preserved to show that this creature definitely walked on two legs, as we do.
Class act:
This skull almost certainly belonged to a woman, who lived 18,000 years ago.
© P. Brown So what was this strange creature, and what was it doing on Flores? The authors of the two Nature papers about the discovery and its context have had to make difficult choices in deciding how to classify the creature, although it is clear that this person was definitely not a modern human. The small brain size and the hip-bone shape might favour classification as an australopithecine, whereas the size and shape of the skull might suggest a primitive form of H. erectus.
Given the unique combination of features, the authors have decided to give the specimen a new name: Homo floresiensis. This means, literally, 'man of Flores', although the authors recognize that the Liang Bua skeleton is probably that of a woman.
The researchers argue that this species made the tools found in the Liang Bua cave, and may have preyed on one of the few other mammals that had also managed to reach Flores: a tiny form of the extinct, elephant-like Stegodon.
Of a certain age:
It seems that Flores man (or woman) still has one more surprise up its sleeve: its age. Astonishingly, two methods of dating agree in placing the skeleton at only about 18,000 years old. Its ancestors, probably a form of H. erectus, could have reached the island in the hunt for stegodons a million years ago, either by building some kind of boat or by walking across a short-lived land-bridge.
Their resulting isolation and inbreeding may have led them to evolve a small body size, in a process known from other mammals as 'island dwarfing'. Because of climate change or the impact of modern humans, who began to spread from Africa around 100,000 years ago, the strange story of H. floresiensis eventually ended in extinction. But modern humans must surely have encountered this tiny relative of ours, and the discovery shows how much we still have to learn about the story of human evolution.
Chris Stringer is a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
____________________________________________________________
"The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes." —Thomas Henry Huxley
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