Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite: your modular mind
Listen Now - 2010-11-06 |Download Audio - 06112010
Show TranscriptWhy do we so often deceive ourselves, believe one thing and yet do another, and fail to exercise self control when we know better? Acclaimed evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban argues we need to be more forgiving of ourselves. Our strange ways are explained by our 'modular minds', one of the most hotly debated ideas about how your mind works.
Guests
Professor Robert Kurzban
Pennsylvania Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary Psychology
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~kurzban/Further Information
All in the Mind blog with Natasha Mitchell
Presenter Natasha Mitchell's Audioboo page
Audioboo is an audio blogging site. You can record and upload your own "audioboos" using your phone or the web. All in the Mind is experimenting with Audioboo to invite your responses and stories to program themes.All in the Mind and the Philosopher's Zone special: Happy Birthday Charles Darwin
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Look in your doctor's kitbag, and you'll probably find a stethoscope, a thermometer, a first-aid kit. But a copy of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species too? 'Darwinian Medicine' asks: why do we get sick, and why didn't the body evolve to be better? Psychiatrist Randolph Nesse argues physicians ignore evolutionary theories at the peril of their patients. (Broadcast in 2009.)Stone Age Brains in 21st Century Skulls
Front up to your shrink, and you bring a menagerie of hunter gatherers, anteaters and reptiles from your ancestral past with you. Or so Professor Daniel Wilson and Dr Gary Galambos believe. Both clinical psychiatrists, they provocatively challenge their profession to look to the Darwinian roots of human neuroses, and the evolutionary battleground that is our stone-age brain. (Broadcast in 2008.)The Evolution of Depression - Does it Have a Role?
Major and minor depression, even post-partum depression - could they serve an important evolutionary function? Is depression a biological pathology or an adaptation, critical to our reproductive success and survival as a species? Natasha Mitchell is joined by two evolutionary biologists who argue that our capacity to be depressed has evolved over millennia to help us respond to and cope with difficult social circumstances. It's a deeply controversial thesis that, they argue, could have implications for how we read and treat depression in a therapeutic setting. But critics are concerned about what these implications might be. (Broadcast in 2004.)Breaking the Spell
As the world wages war over geographical, religious and historical turf - a growing number of big note scientists want religious faith put under the microscope. Uber-philosopher of mind and popular provocateur, Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, is one of them. He joins Natasha Mitchell to discuss his latest controversial offering, Breaking the Spell. Be provoked. (Broadcast in 2006.)Publications
Title: Why Everyone (Else) is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind
Author: Robert Kurzban
Publisher: Princeton University Press (2011)
ISBN: 978-0-691-14674-4Title: Selected research papers by Robert Kurzban and colleagues
URL: http://sites.google.com/site/pleeplab/home/publicationsPresenter
Natasha Mitchell
Producer
Natasha Mitchell/Corinne Podger
Offering multiple perspectives from many fields of human inquiry that may move all of us toward a more integrated understanding of who we are as conscious beings.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
All in the Mind - Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite: your modular mind
This is a cool episode of Natasha Mitchell's All in the Mind show from a week or two ago.
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brain,
evolution,
mind,
Psychology
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