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Tag: "Mind"

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Why it matters that humans are animals.
By Erich Vieth on May 03rd, 2009

Why it matters that humans are animals.

I have written numerous posts advocating that because humans are animals they should be recognized as such (for example, see here , here, here , and here). For zoologists and others who study animals, it is obviously true that we are animals. We do hundreds of things that the other mammals do, plus a few extra. You can see it every day when you eat, breathe, emote, poop, become fatigued and fall asleep. Yet millions of Americans are horrified by the thought that human beings are animals.

Consider that we aren’t simply animals. Our species is a carefully defined type of animal. We are apes. Frans de Waal explains:

Darwin wasn’t just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes—he didn’t go far enough . . . We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.

If you want even more detail on what type of animal humans are (we are in the ape sub-division of primates), watch this brisk video by Aron-ra.

Again, this sort of information is really disturbing to many people, especially religious conservatives.

So why don’t I simply leave religious conservatives alone? Why do I persist on standing on rooftops and proclaiming this message that humans are animals? Why don’t I just whisper this sort of information only to my closest of friends: “Pssst. Human beings are animals.” Why don’t I just let it be, and keep it all to myself? What could possibly be at stake that I feel compelled to spread the word that human beings are animals? I was in the process of assembling my own list when I just happened to read Chapter 12 of Mark Johnson’s new book, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding.

Johnson is well known for his work with metaphors and embodied cognition with George Lakoff. Chapter 12 of his new book contains a section that leaped out at me: “The Philosophical Implications of the Embodied Mind.” In that short section, Johnson sets forth nine reasons why it really and truly matters for people to acknowledge that they are animals and to fully accept that their minds are embodied, not free-floating entities independent of physical laws.

Johnson’s biggest target is the “objectivist theory of meaning,” the idea that meaning “gets defined without any connection to the experience of the creature (i.e., the human) for whom the words are meaningful. Johnson points out that those who follow the objectivist theory of meaning believe that words and sentences somehow “carry” meaning without even trying to explain how words and sentences ever come to acquire meaning. It should send up immediate red flags that the predominate theory of meaning relies on floating thoughts, a theory of meaning that is not biologically anchored. Reacting to (and rejecting) this objectivist approach, Mark Johnson premises his analysis “with a mind that is not separate from or out-of-ongoing-contact with its body and its world.” His worldview includes a specific definition of body and his impressive list of why it matters for human beings to take seriously “the embodiment of mind and meaning.” Here are those reasons (I will be borrowing liberally from Johnson’s book with these descriptions, beginning at page 279):

American Culture • Featured • Human animals • Law • Meaning of Life • Psychology Cognition • Religion • nature
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Breeding and weeding in the mind.
By Erich Vieth on April 26th, 2009

Breeding and weeding in the mind.

Repeat any word and it starts to sound like an unknown word in a foreign language. Toaster toaster toaster toaster toaster . . . toaster? It starts to sound like a word you’ve never heard before. For me, this phenomenon seems to happen to all words except the word “no.” Whenever I hear the word “no” it resonates deep down and immediately. The word “no” never sounds alien and it always and immediately means “no.” We seem to have special power when it comes to negating. In fact, I would suggest that “no” is the engine of reason.

Now consider this: Based on introspection (a shaky foundation, I admit), it seems that we don’t directly decide what to say or do. Rather, it seems that many of our ideas and impulses somehow “rise” to our consciousness and that our main power is whether to exercise “veto-power” over them. It seems that our inner executive is not a creator, but (at most) a judge with veto-power.

The power to inhibit our own actions is central to our ability to operate at a high function. Those of us who successfully function in the world seem to be especially able to inhibit our own thoughts and actions—this allows us to delay gratification and it gives us time to consider alternate options to that first idea that popped into our heads. It is important to cultivate this power to inhibit impulses while we are young. To the extent that we are successful in developing the power to inhibit our impulses and ideas, we will grow into more disciplined and therefore more successful adults. Consider that toddlers who have sufficient discipline to wait a few minutes for two marshmallows (rather than eating one immediately) grow up to score an average of 250 points higher on the SAT. The statistics are truly shocking.

This ability to control impulses does far more allow us to score better on tests. I suspect that our ability to inhibit impulses is the basis for our sense of character coherence and our sense of personal freedom. Inhibiting our impulses (having the power to say no to thoughts and actions) allows us to steer a path among the wreckage of the ideas we reject. Saying “no” to 100 ideas that pop into our head might be the only way that we would ever have to get the opportunity “yes” to that 101st idea– that 101st idea would never occurred had we not vetoed the first 100 ideas. Did you wait to marry a highly compatible partner or did you commit to the first romantic partner who paid any attention to you? Did you take the first job offered to you or did you turn down various offers, patiently waiting for a job that was an especially good fit between your skills and the job duties? Many people who can’t wait end up paying a big price for their inability to say no.

Featured • Psychology Cognition • Science • nature
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Shucks, it’s hard to be a materialist!
By Erika Price on April 10th, 2009

Shucks, it’s hard to be a materialist!

I have these two smart, atheistic, science-respecting-type friends. Their respect for science falls short of any active pursuit of the subject. Each one can enjoy a good documentary that bashes creationism or socially conservative evangelism- such low-hanging forbidden fruit!- but the interest ends about there. Still, I think of them both as rational, generally skeptical thinkers.

My intellectual pursuits run more to the science side than do theirs. I’m only a lowly social sciences buff, with a truly shaky grasp of the “hard” stuff, but I have taken enough courses in research methods and statistics to understand much of the philosophy of science. I often have to represent science to these smart but humanities-focused friends.

I can’t remember how materialism came up between the three of us, exactly. I remember attempting to stumble my way through a question about social cognitive neuroscience, and the fact that some criticize the field as nothing but “gee-whiz, lookit what lit up right there!” I said that it comes as no surprise that a real-life mental process has visible, biological trappings.

Or maybe it came up when discussing the classic battle of therapy versus medication for depression. I told my friends that major depression probably always involves real, observable changes in serotonin or other neurtransmitters. I said that this doesn’t prove that medicine is the answer in all cases. Maybe a depressing situation can push a distressed person into having the chemical trappings of depression. Therapy that cheers a person up could cause the chemical problem itself to recede.

For some reason, my rational friends struggled with the marriage of the mental and the chemical. How strange, how eerie it was that every mental process has a biological sign, they said.

I shrugged at this and set my sarcasm level to stun. “Well of course it’s biological,” I moaned, “If you’re a materialist, this shouldn’t surprise you.”

They blanched. What did I mean?

Education • Featured • Human animals • Psychology Cognition • Science • Uncategorized • Whimsy • ignorance • scientific method
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By Erich Vieth on March 22nd, 2009

Why do many people believe that Barack Obama is not a Christian?

Our minds are big bags of tricks, many of them helpful out in the wild, but prone to deceive us in the modern world. Princeton Psychologist Samuel Wang points out that two of our mind’s heuristics, “source amnesia” and “bias dissimulation” (confirmation bias) account for the persistent belief of many people that Barack Obama is not a Christian, in the absence of any evidence supporting this claim.

Politics • Psychology Cognition
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Billboards for your body, your mind and your planet
By Erich Vieth on January 17th, 2009

Billboards for your body, your mind and your planet

Consider the types of billboards that we most often see along the highway. They encourage us to pollute our bodies with unhealthy food, to pollute our minds with shallow amusements and to pollute our Earth by wasting resources and indulging in luxuries. The two billboards I photographed below are all-too-representative of what I’ve read along highways.

Yes, there are also billboards for public services as well as billboards for useful and reasonable products. What concerns me, though, is that most billboards carry unhealthy messages. There are so many unhealthy billboards out there that unhealthy activities seem to be norm. It’s booze, gambling and conspicuous consumption all the way down the highway. What effect might this have on us? It reminds me of James Q. Wilson’s broken window theory of crime:

American Culture • Communication • Consumerism • Energy • Environment • Featured • Food • Health • Whimsy • photography
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By Erich Vieth on December 30th, 2008

How is high-speed high-volume inter-connectivity affecting our brains?

What happens to our brains when we sit at our computers for long periods of time interacting with the cyber world? This question was considered in an article called “Meet Your iBrain,” appearing in the October/November 2008 issue of scientific American Mind.
The authors cite a 2005 Kaiser family foundation study that found that “young [...]

Uncategorized
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