Changesurfer Radio - What Is Character?

This was posted in November, at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies Changesurfer Radio podcast - a two-part episode in which Dr. J. (Dr. James J. Hughes) chats with Christian Miller, Professor of Philosophy and Director of The Character Project at Wake Forest University. They discuss the idea of virtue and moral character and its relationship to moral philosophy, personality theory, religion and neuroscience.

What is Character? pt1

Christian Miller

Changesurfer Radio

Posted: Nov 28, 2011


Dr. J. chats with Christian Miller, Professor of Philosophy and Director of The Character Project at Wake Forest University. They discuss the idea of virtue and moral character and its relationship to moral philosophy, personality theory, religion and neuroscience. Part 1 of 2.



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What is Character? pt2

Christian Miller

Changesurfer Radio

Posted: Nov 28, 2011


Dr. J. chats with Christian Miller, Professor of Philosophy and Director of The Character Project at Wake Forest University. They discuss the idea of virtue and moral character and its relationship to moral philosophy, personality theory, religion and neuroscience. Part 2 of 2. Also Dr. J. finishes his chat with Ted Chiang about his Hugo award winning novella “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” and the state of science fiction. (Part 2 of 2)



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GoodTherapy.org - Does Genuineness Influence Therapeutic Outcome More than Working Alliance?

One of the things that has proven true over the years is that the relationship between a client and therapist (the working alliance) is more important than the therapeutic approach being employed. This new study looks at the element of genuineness (the "real" relationship) between the client and therapist as the crucial element in the working alliance.

This was reported by GoodTherapy.org.

Does Genuineness Influence Therapeutic Outcome More than Working Alliance?

December 27th, 2011

The working alliance, a dimension of the therapeutic relationship between a therapist and client, has been shown to be an important predictor of treatment outcome. But the real relationship, the personal relationship between the client and therapist consisting of genuineness (G) and realism, may provide a more accurate forecast of treatment outcome. “Genuineness may be seen as the participants’ degree of authenticity with each other, whereas the realism element implies experiences and perceptions that ‘befit the other,’ rather than inaccurate or distorted perceptions that may be because of earlier unresolved conflicts,” said Gianluca Lo Coco of the Department of Psychology at the University of Palermo in Italy. “The real relationship component of the overall therapeutic relationship is thought to exist from the first moment of contact between therapist and client, and it has been theorized to be a part of all relationships in general, and therapeutic relationships in particular.”

To determine which dimension of the therapeutic relationship, real relationship, or working alliance predicted treatment outcome more accurately, Lo Coco evaluated 50 Italian clients before and after brief therapy. “A central finding was that, from the clients’ perspective, both the G element of the real relationship and the Bond scale of the working alliance were found to relate significantly to treatment outcome when these variables were measured early in treatment,” said Lo Coco. “However, neither the therapist-rated real relationship nor the therapist-rated working alliance, when measured early in treatment, was significantly associated with outcome.”

Lo Coco believes that these results demonstrate the importance of the real relationship. “When viewed in conjunction with already existing research on the real relationship, it seems clear that the psychotherapist ought to pay close attention to the personal or real relationship that is developing between him or her and the patient.” Lo Coco added, “Perhaps the major ways include for the therapists to be genuinely themselves within the confines of their theoretical orientations and to seek to grasp the reality of their patients in ways that are not contaminated by countertransference conflicts.”

Reference:
Lo Coco, Gianluca, Salvatore Gullo, Claudia Prestano, and Charles J. Gelso. “Relation of the Real Relationship and the Working Alliance to the Outcome of Brief Psychotherapy.”Psychotherapy 48.4 (2011): 359-67. Print.

Between biology and ideology - Links on brain, mind, and beyond

This collection of links from Bookforum has some interesting stuff. Among the good stuff is Why you are not your brain: A brief guide to embodied cognition, which I had posted here a while back. I also enjoyed the review of The Brain is Wider Than the Sky by Bryan Appleyard, a book that argues that our understanding of the mind is beyond our reach at the current time (and maybe always).

Enjoy the links.

Between biology and ideology

Dec 28 2011   3:00PM

Benjamin C. Carpenter (St. Thomas): A Chip Off the Old Iceblock: How Cryopreservation Has Changed Estate Law, Why Attempts to Address the Issue Have Fallen Short, and How to Fix It. E. Paul Zehr on his book Inventing Iron Man: The Possibility of a Human Machine. Why you are not your brain: A brief guide to embodied cognition. Is transhumanism coercive? Forcing humanity to remain relatively stupid and sick doesn't make us freer. A review of The Brain is Wider Than the Sky by Bryan Appleyard. Why aren’t more wealthy people funding aging research? Aubrey de Grey wants to know. Your brain knows a lot more than you realize: Neuroscientist David Eagleman explores the processes and skills of the subconscious mind, which our conscious selves rarely consider. Will whole-genome sequencing create a new liability tsunami for physicians? Philosophy of mind: Laura Weed takes us on a tour of the mind/brain controversy. Kevin Drum on why artificial intelligence is closer than we realize. Massimo Pigliucci on the entanglement between biology and ideology. "Information is cheap, meaning is expensive": An interview with George Dyson on the definition of life, human progress and the importance of cognitive autarchy. Why aren't we smarter already? A look at the evolutionary limits on cognition. Will you live forever — or until your next software release — by uploading your brain into a computer? The future of moral machines: Many think the idea of ethically sensitive machines is a kind of techno-utopian joke, but we are already moving in that direction. A look at how brain-reading devices could kill off the keyboard. Different thinkers come to completely opposite conclusions about the effect that knowledge of the Singularity should have on our investment decisions; here are your options for treating the future seriously.

Dr. James Hillman Live at Mythic Journeys

Dr. James Hillman discusses myth and the world around us at one of the Mythic Journeys conferences. To find out more information, please go to: www.mythicimagination.org

Part One:




Part Two:




Part Three:

Dharma Quote: The practitioner of self-liberation is like an ordinary person

YOU ARE THE EYES OF THE WORLD
by Longchenpa, translated by Kennard Lipman and Merrill Peterson,
introduction by Namkhai Norbu
more...

Dharma Quote of the Week

The famous nineteenth-century dzogchen master Paltrul Rinpoche explained self-liberation concretely and precisely:

"The practitioner of self-liberation is like an ordinary person as far as the way in which the thoughts of pleasure and pain, hope and fear, manifest themselves as creative energy. However, the ordinary person, taking these really seriously and judging them as acceptable or rejecting them, continues to get caught up in situations and becomes conditioned by attachment and aversion.

"Not doing this, a practitioner, when such thoughts arise, experiences freedom: initially, by recognizing the thought for what it is, it is freed just like meeting a previous acquaintance; then it is freed in and of itself, like a snake shedding its skin; and finally, thought is freed in being unable to be of benefit or harm, like a thief entering an empty house."

...Freeing or liberating thought does not mean ignoring, letting go of, being indifferent to, observing, or even not having thoughts. It means being present in hope and fear, pain and pleasure, not as objects before us, but as the radiant clarity of our natural state. Thus anger, for example, when experienced dualistically, is an irritation which we may indulge in or reject, depending on our conditioning. Either way we are caught up in it and act out of it. But when aware of anger as a manifestation of clarity, its energy is a very fresh awareness of the particulars of the situation. However, these particulars are no longer irritating.(p.77)

--from You Are the Eyes of the World by Longchenpa, translated by Kennard Lipman and Merrill Peterson, introduction by Namkhai Norbu, published by Snow Lion Publications

You Are the Eyes of the World • Now at 5O% off!

(Good until January 7th).

BBC Looks Inside the Brain of a Buddhist Monk

Back in April of this year, the BBC posted this article on the work of Dr. Zoran Josipovic, a research scientist and adjunct professor at New York University, who has been doing brain scans of Buddhist monks for much of the last several years.

Brains of Buddhist monks scanned in meditation study

By Matt Danzico BBC News, New York

 

Related Stories

• The happiest man in the world

In a laboratory tucked away off a noisy New York City street, a soft-spoken neuroscientist has been placing Tibetan Buddhist monks into a car-sized brain scanner to better understand the ancient practice of meditation. 

But could this unusual research not only unravel the secrets of leading a harmonious life but also shed light on some of the world's more mysterious diseases?

Zoran Josipovic, a research scientist and adjunct professor at New York University, says he has been peering into the brains of monks while they meditate in an attempt to understand how their brains reorganise themselves during the exercise.

Since 2008, the researcher has been placing the minds and bodies of prominent Buddhist figures into a five-tonne (5,000kg) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. 

The scanner tracks blood flow within the monks' heads as they meditate inside its clunky walls, which echoes a musical rhythm when the machine is operating.

Dr Josipovic, who also moonlights as a Buddhist monk, says he is hoping to find how some meditators achieve a state of "nonduality" or "oneness" with the world, a unifying consciousness between a person and their environment.

 

The study specifically looks at the default network in the brain, which controls self-reflective thoughts

 

"One thing that meditation does for those who practise it a lot is that it cultivates attentional skills," Dr Josipovic says, adding that those harnessed skills can help lead to a more tranquil and happier way of being.

"Meditation research, particularly in the last 10 years or so, has shown to be very promising because it points to an ability of the brain to change and optimise in a way we didn't know previously was possible."

When one relaxes into a state of oneness, the neural networks in experienced practitioners change as they lower the psychological wall between themselves and their environments, Dr Josipovic says.

And this reorganisation in the brain may lead to what some meditators claim to be a deep harmony between themselves and their surroundings.

Shifting attention

Dr Josipovic's research is part of a larger effort better to understand what scientists have dubbed the default network in the brain.

He says the brain appears to be organised into two networks: the extrinsic network and the intrinsic, or default, network. 

 

Dr Josipovic has scanned the brains of more than 20 experienced meditators during the study

The extrinsic portion of the brain becomes active when individuals are focused on external tasks, like playing sports or pouring a cup of coffee.

The default network churns when people reflect on matters that involve themselves and their emotions.

But the networks are rarely fully active at the same time. And like a seesaw, when one rises, the other one dips down.

This neural set-up allows individuals to concentrate more easily on one task at any given time, without being consumed by distractions like daydreaming.

"What we're trying to do is basically track the changes in the networks in the brain as the person shifts between these modes of attention," Dr Josipovic says.

Dr Josipovic has found that some Buddhist monks and other experienced meditators have the ability to keep both neural networks active at the same time during meditation - that is to say, they have found a way to lift both sides of the seesaw simultaneously.

And Dr Josipovic believes this ability to churn both the internal and external networks in the brain concurrently may lead the monks to experience a harmonious feeling of oneness with their environment.

Self-reflection

 

Scientists previously believed the self-reflective, default network in the brain was simply one that was active when a person had no task on which to focus their attention.

But researchers have found in the past decade that this section of the brain swells with activity when the subject thinks about the self.

The default network came to light in 2001 when Dr Marcus Raichle, a neurologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in the US state of Missouri, began scanning the brains of individuals who were not given tasks to perform.

The patients quickly became bored, and Dr Raichle noticed a second network, that had previously gone unnoticed, danced with activity. But the researcher was unclear why this activity was occurring.

Other scientists were quick to suggest that Dr Raichle's subjects could have actually been thinking about themselves.

Soon other neuroscientists, who conducted studies using movies to stimulate the brain, found that when there was a lull of activity in a film, the default network began to flash - signalling that research subjects may have begun to think about themselves out of boredom.

But Dr Raichle says the default network is important for more than just thinking about what one had for dinner last night.

"Researchers have wrestled with this idea of how we know we are who we are. The default mode network says something about how that might have come to be," he says.

And Dr Raichle adds that those studying the default network may also help in uncovering the secrets surrounding some psychological disorders, like depression, autism and even Alzheimer's disease.

"If you look at Alzheimer's Disease, and you look at whether it attacks a particular part of the brain, what's amazing is that it actually attacks the default mode network," says Dr Raichle, adding that intrinsic network research, like Dr Josipovic's, could assist in explaining why that is.

Cindy Lustig, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, agrees.

"It's a major and understudied network in the brain that seems to be very involved in a lot of neurological disorders, including autism and Alzheimer's, and understanding how that network interacts with the task-oriented [extrinsic] network is important," she says. "It is sort of the other piece of the puzzle that's been ignored for too long."

Dr Josipovic has scanned the brains of more than 20 experienced meditators, both monks and nuns who primarily study the Tibetan Buddhist style of meditation, to better understand this mysterious network.

He says his research, which will soon be published, will for the moment continue to concentrate on explaining the neurological implications of oneness and tranquillity - though improving understanding of autism or Alzheimer's along the way would certainly be quite a bonus.

Neely Myers - The Neuroanthropology of Embodiment, Absorption, and Dissociation

This intriguing article was posted at Somatosphere - It's actually more of a summary of research and questions from the American Anthropological Association meeting in November.

The Neuroanthropology of Embodiment, Absorption, and Dissociation

By Neely Myers

 

Got Absorption? Towards a Neuroanthropology of Play and Ritual

Cross-posted with Neuroanthropology.

On Thursday, Nov. 17^th at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Montreal, Canada, I attended a double panel of neuroanthropologists hosted by the Society for Psychological Anthropology. Organized by Christopher Dana Lynn (University of Alabama) and Jeffrey G. Snodgrass (Colorado State University), the panel was entitled “The Neuroanthropology of Embodiment, Absorption, and Dissociation: Research in Ritual, Play, and Entertainment.”

So, I will begin with a warning – this is a pale attempt to summarize the ideas of 12 people plus various discussion questions and theorists mentioned by presenters. With that in mind, let’s get an overview of what happened, which was immensely interesting.

This group of scholars, who call themselves neuroanthropologists, distinguishes themselves from biocultural anthropologists by grounding themselves in rich ethnography, and then using this ethnography to launch dialogues with neuroscience methods in ways that advance both the scientific and anthropological approaches to the study of human adaptation in context.

Read the whole summary.

Douglas Hofstadter - Analogy as the Core of Cognition

Sandra Kiume posted this lecture by Douglas Hofstadter at her Channel N: Brain and Behaviors Videos blog at Psych Central. Hofstadter's most recent book was I Am a Strange Loop.

Analogy as the Core of Cognition

By Sandra Kium

Analogy as the Core of Cognition

Douglas Hofstadter demonstrates numerous analogies and talks about how analogy is at the core of cognition, in this high profile Presidential Lecture from the Stanford archives.

Producer: Stanford University Presidential Lecture

Featuring: Douglas Hofstadter

Length: 01:08:37

The Amazing Intelligence of Ravens and Crows

Here are a couple of posts from the last month on the amazing intelligence of ravens - for newer readers, I have been fascinated by the whole corvid family, but especially crows and ravens, for a couple of decades at least. I tend to post whatever new research comes out about their intelligence and culture.

First from io9:

 

Ravens like to communicate with their beaks — but not how you imagine

By Robert T. Gonzalez

Nov 29, 2011

Before most of us could talk, we were communicating with gestures — holding, pointing and reaching at objects, for example, to communicate our wants and needs to others.

These referential gestures (known as deictic gestures to those in the know) are thought to play an important foundational role in the development of higher forms of communication like speech, and are believed to be relatively rare in the animal kingdom. But now, scientists have found the first evidence that ravens, widely recognized as some of nature's smartest birds, use deictic gestures too — a discovery that researchers say could help shed light on the mysterious origins of human language.

Until recently, deictic gestures had only been observed in humans and a few of our closest evolutionary relatives, like chimpanzees — who have been observed signaling to other chimps where on their bodies they would like to be groomed. But according to researchers Simone Pika and Thomas Bugnyar (experts in gestural communication and raven behavior, respectively), virtually nothing is known about comparable skills in non-primate species.

In the interest of filling this investigative gap, Pika and Bugnyar spent two years observing the social interactions of seven pairs of ravens to determine if the birds engaged in referential gestures similar to those seen in humans. They discovered that ravens will use their beaks to present their counterparts with moss, stones and twigs; that these gestures are typically directed towards ravens of the opposite sex; and that they are only performed when another bird is watching.

In the latest issue of Nature Communications, Pika and Bugnyar conclude that these gestures may function as "testing-signals," allowing a raven to evaluate the interest of a potential partner, or to reinforce the strength of an already existing bond.

"If communication is governed by cooperation, then this could be what prompted the evolution of language [in both humans and ravens]" explains Pika. She continues:

Gesture studies have too long focused on communicative skills of primates only. The mystery of the origins of human language, however, can only be solved if we look at the bigger picture and also consider the complexity of the communication systems of other animal groups.

[Nature Communications via New Scientist]
Top image by cowlishaw

And this is from Inkfish, a blog from the editor of MUSE, a very cool kids' science magazine.

Aesop's Crows Understand Physics, Literature

By Elizabeth Preston on Friday, December 16, 2011

 

Aesop told the fable of a thirsty crow that came upon a nearly empty pitcher of water and discovered that by dropping pebbles in, he could raise the water to a drinkable level. The moral is "Little by little does the trick"--or was that "Necessity is the mother of invention"? Either way, scientists have enjoyed testing non-fictional members of the clever corvid family with this puzzle. Most recently, wild crows showed scientists they're smart enough for a whole barrage of Aesop-inspired challenges.

New Zealand psychologist Alex Taylor led the study of five New Caledonian crows that had been captured from the wild. The birds (Caesar, Laura, Bess, Mimic and Pepe, since you asked) were each given an extensive series of tests while visually separated from their peers. Like one of those computer games where you walk into a dead-end room and have to find the secret button that opens a submarine hatch and takes you someplace more interesting, the crows were presented with varied apparatuses and had to figure out which objects were tools that would help get a tasty treat into their beaks.

The tests began with the classic "Aesop's fable paradigm." Crows saw a tube partially filled with water. Inside the tube was a bite of meat, stuck onto a piece of wood that floated below their reach. Small stones were sitting nearby. If you're thinking that you might not have been able to solve this puzzle, rest assured--the birds didn't get it either.

After making sure the crows didn't naturally know how to solve the puzzle, the researchers gave the birds a hint. This time, the crows saw the same tube, floating meat, and stones. But there was a platform next to the top of the tube with a couple stones sitting on it, too. As the crows attempted to jam their beaks far enough into the tube to reach the meat, they tended to accidentally knock the stones into the tube. After doing this several times and noticing how the water level rose, all the crows eventually figured out the trick. They began dropping stones into the tube on purpose to get the meat.

Although this looks pretty clever, it's possible that the birds found the solution by simple association: "Stones mean food. Mess around with the stones, or put them near the food, and the food gets in my beak." So the researchers followed up with a series of puzzles that tested what the crows actually understood.

(Only four crows were used in most of the experiments--poor Bess, perhaps believing herself to be in one of those fables where the crow gets eaten by an alligator, was too afraid of the testing apparatus to participate.)

In one test, the crows were given stones of two different sizes. They quickly began ignoring the smaller stones in favor of larger ones, which raised the water level faster. (Laura, the smartypants of the bunch, never once used a small stone.) In another test, the stones were replaced with white chunks of rubber and styrofoam. Though they looked the same, the former item was heavy and useful, while the latter uselessly floated on top of the water. Again, the crows picked up on the difference, learning after a few trials to discard the styrofoam chunks and throw the rubber ones into the tube. In this video, you can see Mimic mastering the puzzle on his first try (and adorably peeking into the tube to make sure the meat is still there).

The crows seemed to understand what was important about the objects they were using as tools: bigger and heavier items would get the meat to them faster. But did they grasp what was happening inside the tube? To test the birds' understanding of the water in the tube, researchers showed them a tube of water next to a tube of sand. Both had the usual chunk of meat sitting on their surface, but throwing rocks into the tube of sand would accomplish nothing. The crows soon learned this, more or less, and dropped most of their rocks into the water tube. In this video, smartypants Laura ignores the sand tube entirely in her fourth trial. When the tube of water was paired with a tube of air, the crows again learned to put most of their stones into the water tube--though they dropped a fair number of stones into the air tube as well, apparently struggling to grasp that one clear substance wasn't the same as the other.

New Caledonian crows use sticks as tools in the wild to dig grubs out of holes, and showed here that they can learn to use other kinds of tools as well. This suggests that using tools, for the crows, is true problem solving and not just an ingrained behavior (like your dog kicking up imaginary dirt on the sidewalk after it poops). And the birds' performance with different sizes and shapes of "rocks" shows that they can adapt their tool use to various conditions--though they did struggle a bit with the tubes of air and sand. Buoyancy is tricky for everyone.

With the crow-and-pitcher paradigm nearly exhausted, maybe scientists will turn to Aesop's other fables for future studies. Are crows susceptible to flattery when holding pieces of cheese? Do foxes eat grapes (sour or otherwise)? And, of course, does slow and steady really win the race?

Images: Project Gutenberg/Wikimedia Commons; Taylor et al. (video screengrab)

Taylor, A., Elliffe, D., Hunt, G., Emery, N., Clayton, N., & Gray, R. (2011). New Caledonian Crows Learn the Functional Properties of Novel Tool Types PLoS ONE, 6 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0026887

Upaya Dharma Podcasts - Losang Samten: Teachings on Green Tara

I have never been too enamored with the deity meditations of Tibetan Buddhism, but the Green Tara meditations have always been an exception. The only thangka I own is a Green Tara - I have been drawn to the meaning of compassion in action.

Losang Samten: 12-21-2011: Teachings on Green Tara

Speaker: Losang Samten

Recorded: Wednesday Dec 21, 2011

Venerable Lama Losang Samten discusses Green Tara, one of the most important practices in Mahayana Buddhism in all four lineages in Tibet. Losang takes us through a short text, paragraph by paragraph, and introduces two Green Tara meditation practices. More information may be found at his website, www.losangsamten.com.

Losang Samten has been sharing teachings of loving-kindness, joy and compassion, as well as the path to enlightenment for almost 30 years. Losang lived and studied over 20 years in the Namgyal Monastery (the monastery of His Holiness the Dalai Lama) earning the highest degree attainable at the monastery, equivalent to a doctoral degree in the West. He also became a Master of Ritual Dance and Sand Mandalas and was the Personal Attendant to His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama prior to moving to the United States in 1988. Ven. Losang Samten is one of the Mandala Masters who created the first public sand mandala in the West in 1988. He is the spiritual director of several Buddhist Centers in North America, with a home base currently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – the City of Brotherly Love.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Suter Science Seminar (2010) - Caring: How We Become Attached

This is an older but fascinating seminar lecture (yes, I am a geek, and I rejoice in my geekiness) on creating healthy (secure) attachments through Care Theory. Dr. Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University and a past president of the National Academy of Education, the Philosophy of Education Society, and the John Dewey Society.

Her many books include Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (2003), The Challenge to Care in Schools (2005), and Philosophy of Education (2011).




Suter Science Seminar (2010) - Caring: How We Become Attached

Many educators today express interest in attachment theory. Children who have not formed secure attachments to their early caregivers often experience social problems in school and neighborhood activities. Care theory is useful in explaining how secure attachments are formed. Caring relations are important at every stage of life, and caring teachers can be instrumental in enriching the lives of their students, often well into adolescence. Care theory also offers a powerful approach to moral education.

Dr. Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University. She is a past president of the National Academy of Education, the Philosophy of Education Society and the John Dewey Society. In addition to sixteen books—among them, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, The Challenge to Care in Schools, Philosophy of Education—she is the author of more than 200 articles and chapters on various topics ranging from the ethics of care to mathematical problem solving. Her latest books are Happiness and Education, Educating Citizens for Global Awareness, Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach, and most recent When School Reform Goes Wrong.

Noddings spent fifteen years as a teacher, administrator, and curriculum supervisor in public schools; she served as a mathematics department chairperson in New Jersey and as Director of the Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago. At Stanford, she received the Award for Teaching Excellence three times.

The Daniel B. Suter Endowment sponsors the seminar series. The endowment is named for a professor who joined the EMU science faculty in 1948, became head of the biology department and developed the university's pre-med program. He retired in 1985 and died in 2006.

For more information on the Suter Science Seminars, contact Dr. Roman Miller at EMU.

Maria Konnikova - How We Think Is How We Are: The Power of Self-Stereotyping

The Big Think site posted this article by Maria Konnikova on how we define ourselves through own self-identifying stereotypes. She argues that "how we think about our own selves is largely determined by how we think others think of us—how we are perceived, judged, and evaluated by the outside world."

Another way of looking at this is through the lens of attachment theory. When we do not experience healthy mirroring (a Self Psychology term for our need to have caregivers be supportive of our presence, our actions, our uniqueness, and who show this support through smiling, laughter, and joyfulness) during infancy and toddler years, we grow up more dependent on how we are viewed by others as our way of defining ourselves.

The lack of healthy mirroring is the root of a lot of self-identity issues - everything from the ubiquitous "co-dependence" issues of addictive relationships to depression and other mood disorders, to the more extreme borderline personality disorder (or, more accurately, complex PTSD) that can occur when a lack of mirroring is combined with neglect or abuse.

How We Think Is How We Are: The Power of Self-Stereotyping

Maria Konnikova on October 31, 2011

As we make sense of the world around us, our minds often take shortcuts, generalizing, cutting corners, making connections and engaging in inferences as they integrate all of the incoming information into a cohesive whole. And as we make sense of people, we typically engage in the exact same practice: when we meet someone for the first time, we’ve likely formed multiple judgments—often without realizing we have done so—before our new acquaintance has even had a chance to speak a single word. We take a look, and we generalize based on what we know and what we’ve learned through past experience. It’s far easier than having to start fresh every single time.
That process of initial, nearly instantaneous judgment is often driven by prevailing stereotypes, our own as well as those of our society as a whole and our immediate circle in particular. But what is less commonly known—or at least considered—is that we apply the exact same process to ourselves, often without realizing we are doing it: how we think about our own selves is largely determined by how we think others think of us—how we are perceived, judged, and evaluated by the outside world.

Stereotype threat in aging
One area where effects of self-stereotyping play out to quite dramatic effect is aging. It is typically thought that as people age, their memories grow worse and their cognitive abilities suffer a general decline. And unfortunately, that type of thinking seems to actually affect how the elderly actually think and remember. Studies have shown that when aging stereotypes are activated, older adults actually begin to exhibit larger memory deficits and worse performance on tests of cognitive ability. But, the news isn’t all bad: the opposite is also true. When such stereotypes are given less weight, memory and cognitive performance both improve.

A study in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science examined whether older adults would perform better on one of the memory tasks that is most often compromised as a result of aging, item-specific processing. Typically, as we age, we rely more on relational processing than item-specific processing when we make memory judgments. That is, we focus on relationships between words and concepts as opposed to differentiating information for a specific word or concept. And when we do that, individuating item information is less available when we retrieve that item from memory. So, for instance, we may find it difficult to determine if an item was actually shown before or if it’s just similar to one that we’ve seen before—creating, in a sense, a false memory. But what if the age-related stereotypes that relate to memory declines are eliminated?

 Read the whole article.

Secular Buddhist - Episode 95 :: Britta Hölzel :: Mechanisms of Mindfulness

Very cool podcast - The Secular Buddhist Association's Executive Director Ted Meissner interviews Britta Hölzel, PhD, a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Giessen in Germany, on the neural, mechanisms of mindfulness meditation.

Episode 95 :: Britta Hölzel :: Mechanisms of Mindfulness

The Secular Buddhist Podcast

Britta Hölzel

Dr. Britta Hölzel speaks with us about her recent paper about the potential mechanisms of mindfulness.

What are the mechanisms of a mindfulness state? A recent paper suggests, as a starting point of discussion, that four significant components may be Attention Regulation, Body Awareness, Emotion Regulation, and Sense of Self. As we look at the positive benefits of meditation, it is valuable for us to hypothesize about these qualities of the process, as that can help us think creatively about new areas for scientific investigation.

Britta Hölzel, PhD, is a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Giessen in Germany. She received her MA in Psychology from Frankfurt University, and her PhD from Giessen University. She conducts MRI research to investigate the neural mechanisms of mindfulness practice. Her research focuses on the effects of mindfulness practice on attention and emotion regulation as well as on structural changes in the brain. She is a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction instructor, a certified yoga teacher, and has been a dedicated yoga and meditation practitioner for the last 12 years. Recently, she has been involved in projects to adapt mindfulness-based interventions for patients with bipolar disorder.

At the end of this interview, Britta references a brand new study of a colleague, Tim Gard. I’m happy to say that Tim’s work has just been published, and our interview with him about that will be next week’s episode. And on a personal note, I would like to thank our friends in the scientific community for their spirit of collaboration. It is solely due to their open communication and interest that this podcast is able to share their fascinating work in as timely a fashion as we’ve enjoyed. So, Britta, Tim, Katherine, Sara, Cathy, Cliff, Fadel, Philippe, and happily everyone else too numerous to mention by name — thank you for sharing.

So, sit back, relax, and have a nice Chocolate Safari tea.

Podcast: Download

 

:: Discuss this episode ::

Web Links

• Britta Hölzel
• Wildmind Meditation News: Don’t worry, be happy: Understanding mindfulness meditation
• Science Daily: Don’t Worry, Be Happy: Understanding Mindfulness Meditation
• Perspectives on Psychological Science: How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective

Music for This Episode




Shakuhachi

Meditations
The music heard in the middle of the podcast is from Rodrigo Rodriguez’s CD, Shakuhachi Meditations. The tracks used in this episode are:

• Chaniwa

~ Ted Meissner is the Executive Director of the Secular Buddhist Association, and host of the SBA’s official podcast, The Secular Buddhist. His background is in the Zen and Theravada traditions, he is a regular speaker on interfaith panel discussions, and is a guest editor at The Buddhist Dispatch.

Upaya Dharma Podcasts - Rohatsu Sesshin: Exploring the Heart Sutra

Yesterday morning I posted the podcasts from the Thanksgiving retreat at Upaya on the Heart Sutra. This six-part Rohatsu Sesshin (in honor of the enlightenment of the Buddha) explores even deeper into the Heart Sutra - a nice series of talks.

Rohatsu Annual Retreat 2011: All 6 Parts

The 6 part series  Rohatsu Sesshin: Exploring the Heart Sutra is now published. You can access the desired part of the series by clicking on its link below.

Beate Stolte & Enkyo O'Hara & Joan Halifax: 12-01-2011: Rohatsu Sesshin: Exploring the Heart Sutra (Part 1 of 6)

Speakers: Beate Stolte & Enkyo O'Hara & Joan Halifax

Recorded: Thursday Dec 1, 2011

Series Summary Description:

Rohatsu Sesshin marks the enlightenment of the Buddha. It is a powerful gathering of practitioners and friends who are dedicated to realizing the way. Roshis Joan Halifax and Enkyo O’Hara, and Senseis Kaz Tanahashi and Beate Stolte explore the enlightenment of the Buddha, the story and its meaning in our lives today, during this powerful annual retreat.

Roshi Joan Halifax is Co-abbot of Upaya Zen Center with Sensei Beate Stolte. Roshi Enkyo O’Hara is Abbot of Village Zendo, and Sensei Kaz Tanahashi is a Dogen Scholar.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Here are the rest of the links:

• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 2 of 6
• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 3 of 6
• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 4 of 6
• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 5 of 6
• Rohatsu Sesshin: Part 6 of 6

Philippe Goldin - Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation

I suspect I posted this in the past, but it's good, so here it is again.




Google Tech Talks
February, 28 2008

ABSTRACT

Mindfulness meditation, one type of meditation technique, has been shown to enhance emotional awareness and psychological flexibility as well as induce well-being and emotional balance. Scientists have also begun to examine how meditation may influence brain functions. This talk will examine the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on the brain systems in which psychological functions such as attention, emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, and self-view are instantiated. We will also discuss how different forms of meditation practices are being studied using neuroscientific technologies and are being integrated into clinical practice to address symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress.

Speaker: Philippe Goldin 
Philippe is a research scientist and heads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience group in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University.

He spent 6 years in India and Nepal studying various languages, Buddhist philosophy and debate at Namgyal Monastery and the Dialectic Monastic Institute, and serving as an interpreter for various Tibetan Buddhist lamas. He then returned to the U.S. to complete a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University. His NIH-funded clinical research focuses on (a) functional neuroimaging investigations of cognitive-affective mechanisms in adults with anxiety disorders, (b) comparing the effects of mindfulness meditation and cognitive-behavioral therapy on brain-behavior correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation, and (c) training children in family and elementary school  settings in mindfulness skills to reduce anxiety and enhance compassion, self-esteem and quality of family interactions.

Professor Brian Cox: A Night with the Stars

Very cool . . . .




Professor Brian Cox: A Night with the Stars

For one night only, Professor Brian Cox goes unplugged in a specially recorded programme from the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In his own inimitable style, Brian takes an audience of famous faces, scientists and members of the public on a journey through some of the most challenging concepts in physics.

With the help of Jonathan Ross, Simon Pegg, Sarah Millican and James May, Brian shows how diamonds – the hardest material in nature – are made up of nothingness; how things can be in an infinite number of places at once; why everything we see or touch in the universe exists; and how a diamond in the heart of London is in communication with the largest diamond in the cosmos.

Ken Wilber Offers His Final Statement on Marc Gafni

When the latest Marc Gafni thing blew up in September, Ken Wilber eventually issued a tepid statement of support and said he would make a final statement at a later date. Part of the reason Wilber was drawn into it was because Robb Smith, Diane Hamilton, and several other people all made a public break with Gafni. Integral Life ended its affiliation with Gafni's Center for World Spirituality and several teachers stopped working with him.


Well, for Wilber, the date of his final statement came a week or so ago.

Final Ken Wilber Statement Dec. 2011, Marc Gafni / Center for World Spirituality

Dec 25, 2011

The board of directors of the Center for World Spirituality recently made a public statement, conveying their support for Marc Gafni as a leader and teacher in the Center.

Earlier, in a post on the Integral Life website, I have commented on the situation that developed several months ago in the blogosphere.

I acknowledged in that post that Marc, like most great spiritual teachers and pundits, has great gifts as well as human complexity. I pointed out that everyone must make up their own mind as to whether they want to work with Marc, or to be his student.

I am writing to share that, for myself, I have made up my mind. I am rejoining the Wisdom Council of the Center for World Spirituality, to which I invited many of my colleagues to participate.

I look forward to future work with Marc in articulating and evolving the contours of a World Spirituality based on Integral Principles.

Some of my reasons for wanting to work with Marc are contained in letters I co-wrote with Sally Kempton in 2008. However, there is one piece I want to add. I am not working with Marc despite this last blogosphere explosion but rather because of his reaction to it.

You can read the whole statement at the CWS site (free registration required).

That last paragraph makes the whole statement more than a little suspect to me - Wilber did not co-write those previous letters, he gave Kempton and Gafni permission to use his name. So I suspect the same is true this time, but that really does not matter - he signed off on it.

The "Wisdom Council" of the CWS, which seems to have a lot of different names than it did several months ago, has also issued a statement of support for Gafni.

Gafni also issued his final statement on this issue, in which he still denies having done anything unethical or otherwise wrong - as is always the case, he blames the accusers for making false accusations and misrepresentations of the "truth."

For example:

What I will say here is that a great deal of distortion, misinformation, behind-the-scenes manipulation, and outright untruth appeared in many of the statements and comments posted in some blogs. Active behind the scenes were some of the same folks who, over the years, have supported the ongoing dissemination of false complaints, interpretations and characterizations of my actions. (See Mariana Caplan’s article  on False Complaints which gives some of the background.)  Others used this particular circumstance to accomplish their own “political” ends, always of course under the fig leaf of more virtuous motivations. Shadow can never admit of itself so it always pleads other motives.

And this on the assumed conspiracy he feels has been working against him all these years, and how the internet makes it easy to spread what he considers false information without accountability:

Most of us are aware by now of how Internet discourse operates. As Jurgen Habermaas, Lee Segal, and other discerning readers of culture have noted, the blogosphere is a place where anyone can say anything, with no professional or ethical accountability required. As a result, devastating accusations are routinely and carelessly thrown about. Often, as in this case, no attempt is made to hear all sides, or even to check facts. As Ken Wilber has pointed out, there is often gross confusion between facts and interpretation of facts. Too often, as a way of propagating slander without being held responsible, the identity of someone posting comments on a blog is hidden under a cloak of anonymity or a pseudonym. It is all too easy for one person to post under a number of pseudonyms to create the impression that his or her  opinion is widely shared. This has been the case in many of the blogposts that appear on the web about my personal life. Even when blogging is not anonymous or pseudonymous, the writer’s personal agendas in all four quadrants remain effectively hidden. In short, the blogosphere makes unchallenged character assassination far too easy.

You can read the whole statement at the link above.

As has been the case in all of the previous episodes, Gafni has found a way to spread enough accusations of conspiracies and other nonsense to convince those who did not have any investment in checking the facts to side with him.

It appears to me that these folks (who often claim to be "integral" and not working from a postmodern, relativistic "mean green meme"), are willing to accept that truth has different versions and ethics are all situational, which is the only way I see that Gafni can still be endorsed as a trustworthy teacher.

But at least the truth of so many women (and men) who have been injured by Gafni is out there for others to read and consider before entering into any kind of relationship with him.

Jonah Lehrer - The Psychology of Nakedness

Jonah Lehrer posted this article a while back on his blog, the Frontal Cortex, which is also reposted at Wired. In an very intriguing study, a group of researchers discovered that when we see only a face we make different assumptions and inferences than if we see the same face with a bit of exposed torso.

It sounds like we might be talking about proof that a little skin leads to objectification, but the researchers disagree. Here is a statement from the lead author, Kurt Gray:

The idea that a body focus can lead to both decreased and increased mind stands in contrast to the term “objectification,” because it suggests that people seen as bodies are not seen as mindless objects but, instead, as experiencers: someone more capable of pain, pleasure, desire, sensation, and emotion but lacking in agency. In other words, focusing on the body does not lead to de-mentalization but to a redistribution of mind.

While this seems to be true in the given study, my guess is that the context is crucial. For example, put the same female face and torso on the cover of Maxxim or Playboy and the inferences made about the body would be very different than if she were on the cover of Shape or People. Or more obviously, put a woman in a bikini on a stage at a Spring Break event in Miami or at pool side in a Miami at an Olympic level swim meet - the inferences will be very different.

The Psychology of Nakedness

• By Jonah Lehrer
• November 30, 2011  

The human mind sees minds everywhere. Show us a collection of bouncing balls and we hallucinate agency; a glance at a stuffed animal and we endow it with a mood; I’m convinced Siri doesn’t like me. The point is that we are constantly translating our visual perceptions into a theory of mind, as we attempt to imagine the internal states of teddy bears, microchips and perfect strangers.

Most of the time, this approach works well enough. If I notice someone squinting their eyes and clenching their jaw, I automatically conclude that he must be angry; if she flexes the zygomatic major – that’s what happens during a smile – then I assume she’s happy. The point is that a few cues of body language are instantly translated into a rich mental image. We can’t help but think about what other people are thinking about.

But this intricate connection between mind theorizing and sensory perception can also prove problematic. For instance, when people glance at strangers who look “different” – perhaps they dress funny, or belong to a different ethic group – they endow these strangers with less agency, a fancy term for the ability to plan, act and exert self-control. Or consider a 2010 fMRI experiment that found that when men glance at “sexualized” women they exhibit reduced activation in parts of the brain typically associated with the attribution of mental states. These are obviously terrible habits – a hint of cleavage shouldn’t make us care less about someone’s feelings, nor should a different skin tone – but we mostly can’t help it. We judge books by the cover and minds by their appearance. We are a superficial species.

And this brings me to a fascinating new paper by an all star team of psychologists, including Kurt Gray, Joshua Knobe, Mark Sheskin, Paul Bloom and Lisa Feldman Barrett. The scientists nicely frame the mystery they want to solve:

Do people’s mental capacities fundamentally change when they remove a sweater? This seems absurd: How could removing a piece of clothing change one’s capacity for acting or feeling? In six studies, however, we show that taking off a sweater—or otherwise revealing flesh—can significantly change the way a mind is perceived. In this article, we suggest that the kind of mind ascribed to another person depends on the relative salience of his or her body—that the perceived capacity for both pain and planned action depends on whether someone wears a sweater or tank-top.

In order to understand why sweaters and tank-tops influence the kind of minds we perceive, it’s important to know about the different qualities we imagine in others. In general, people assess minds – and it doesn’t matter if it’s the “mind” of a pet, iPhone or deity – along two distinct dimensions. First, we grade these minds in terms of agency. (Human beings have lots of agency; goldfish less so.) But we also think of minds in terms of the ability to have experience, to feel and perceive. The psychologists suggest that these dual dimensions are actually a duality, and that there’s a direct tradeoff between the ability to have agency and experience. If we endow someone with lots of feeling, then they probably have less agency. And if someone has lots of agency, then they probably are less sensitive to experience. In other words, we automatically assume that the capacity to think and the capacity to feel are in opposition. It’s a zero sum game.

What does all this have to do with nakedness? The psychologists demonstrated it’s quite easy to shift our perceptions of other people from having a mind full of agency to having a mind interested in experience: all they have to do is take off their clothes. Take the first experiment by Gray, et al., which showed 159 undergraduates a variety of photos. Some of these photos were of an attractive female named Erin, appearing in either a headshot or a bikini. Other students looked at a handsome man named Aaron, glancing at either his face or sculpted bare chest.
After looking at these pictures and reading a brief description of Erin/Aaron, subjects were asked to evaluate the mental capacities of the person. They answered six questions, which took the form, “Compared to the average person, how much is Erin capable of X.” The X was filled in by various agency-related capacities, such as “self-control,”“acting morally,” and “planning” and a slew of experience-related capacities, such as “experiencing pleasure,” “experiencing hunger,” and “experiencing desire.” Participants answered these six questions on a 5-point scale from 1 (Much Less Capable) to 5 (Much More Capable).

It turns out that a glimpse of flesh strongly influences our perception of Erin/Aaron. When the pictures only showed a face, they had lots of agency. But when we saw their torso, we suddenly imagined them as obsessed with experience. Instead of being good at self-control, they were suddenly extremely sensitive to hunger and desire. Same person, same facial expression, same brief description – but a hint of body changed everything.

Read the rest of the article.

Tao Ruspoli - Being in the World

This looks like an interesting film - If I decide to download it this week, I'll try to get a review posted.

Being In The World

Click to Play

Ten years after graduating with a degree in philosophy from UC Berkeley, filmmaker Tao Ruspoli returned to visit his one-time professor, world-renowned philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. That visit led to meetings with a whole generation of philosophers whom Dreyfus had taught, which subsequently sparked the inspiration for this film. Being in the World raises the question of whether we have forgotten what it means to be truly human in today's technological age, and proceeds to answer this question by taking a journey around the world to meet a whole host of remarkable individuals, including Manuel Molina, the legendary poet and flamenco master; Leah Chase, affectionately known as the Queen of Creole Cuisine; and Hiroshi Sakaguchi, a master carpenter from Japan. By showing how these modern day masters approach life from within their chosen fields, Ruspoli's film celebrates the ability of human beings to find meaning in the world through the mastery of physical, intellectual, and creative skills.

How to Download	$14.95 Download to own and watch the movie with your Mac or Windows computer in high quality computer Standard Definition on QuickTime Player, on iTunes or on your TV using your Apple TV anytime (987.8 MB)
Duration: 01:20:31

Being in the World is now available for download-to-own plus limited edition white label DVD that ships free. Available only from Alive Mind Cinema to US viewers. Tell your friends!

How to Download	$24.95 Download to own and watch the movie with your Mac or Windows computer in high quality computer Standard Definition on QuickTime Player, on iTunes or on your TV using your Apple TV anytime (987.8 MB) plus limited edition white label DVD by mail (free shipping).
Duration: 01:20:31	This offer is available to US cutomers only.