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.

Why everyone (else) is a hypocrite: your modular mind

Why 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.

Show Transcript

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.

Robert Kurzban's blog

All in the Mind and the Philosopher's Zone special: Happy Birthday Charles Darwin
The human animal is a complex beast-we mate, fight, emote, and socialise in curious ways. Charles Darwin's theories continue to provoke controversy over how and why we behave the way we do. Join leading evolutionary scientists and philosophers in this one-hour special, as presenters Alan Saunders and Natasha Mitchell consider how Darwin radically influenced the life of the mind. (Broadcast in 2009)

'It takes a village': the evolution of human nature
What most distinguishes us from other apes? Our naked flesh? Language? Our empathic ways? Acclaimed anthropologist and sociobiologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has spent her long research career upending assumptions about sex, reproduction and the evolution of human nature. She joins Natasha Mitchell to discuss her new book Mothers and Others, and why it took a village to generate a big brained human child. (Broadcast in 2009.)

Moral Minds: The Evolution of Human Morality
Incest, infanticide, honour killings - different cultures have different rules of justice. But are we all born with a moral instinct - an innate ability to judge what is right and wrong? Could morality be like language - a universal, unconscious grammar common to all human cultures? Eminent evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser and philosopher Richard Joyce take on these controversial questions in impressive new tomes, and to critical acclaim. But could their evolutionary arguments undermine the social authority of morality? Is biology the new 'religion'? (Broadcast in 2006.)

Doctoring with Darwinian Medicine
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: 978-0-691-14674-4

Title: Selected research papers by Robert Kurzban and colleagues
URL: http://sites.google.com/site/pleeplab/home/publications

Presenter

Natasha Mitchell

Producer

Natasha Mitchell/Corinne Podger


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