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Saturday, February 02, 2013

Shrink Rap Radio #329 – The Emotional Foundation of Mind with Jaak Panksepp, PhD


On this episode of Shrink Rap Radio from back in December, Dr. David Van Nuys speaks with Dr. Jaak Panksepp, co-author (with psychoanalyst, Lucy Biven) of The Archeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (2012), as well as earlier books including Affective Neuroscience: the Foundation of Human and Animal Emotions (1998), editor of a Textbook of Biological Psychiatry (2004) and seven other books.

Here is the publisher's blurb for the book:
A look at the seven emotional systems of the brain by the researcher who discovered them.

What makes us happy? What makes us sad? How do we come to feel a sense of enthusiasm? What fills us with lust, anger, fear, or tenderness? Traditional behavioral and cognitive neuroscience have yet to provide satisfactory answers. The Archaeology of Mind presents an affective neuroscience approach—which takes into consideration basic mental processes, brain functions, and emotional behaviors that all mammals share—to locate the neural mechanisms of emotional expression. It reveals—for the first time—the deep neural sources of our values and basic emotional feelings.

This book elaborates on the seven emotional systems that explain how we live and behave. These systems originate in deep areas of the brain that are remarkably similar across all mammalian species. When they are disrupted, we find the origins of emotional disorders:

- SEEKING: how the brain generates a euphoric and expectant response
- FEAR: how the brain responds to the threat of physical danger and death
- RAGE: sources of irritation and fury in the brain
- LUST: how sexual desire and attachments are elaborated in the brain
- CARE: sources of maternal nurturance
- GRIEF: sources of non-sexual attachments
- PLAY: how the brain generates joyous, rough-and-tumble interactions
- SELF: a hypothesis explaining how affects might be elaborated in the brain

The book offers an evidence-based evolutionary taxonomy of emotions and affects and, as such, a brand-new clinical paradigm for treating psychiatric disorders in clinical practice.
It's an excellent discussion with one of the most important figures in neuroscience - enjoy.

Shrink Rap Radio #329 – The Emotional Foundation of Mind with Jaak Panksepp, PhD




Transcript

Dr. Jaak Panksepp is Baily Endowed Professor of Animal Well-Being Science at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Washington State University, and founder of the field of Affective Neuroscience. Along with many students and colleagues, he has published over 400 scientific articles, chapters and reviews devoted to elucidating the basic mechanisms of motivations and emotions as well as the fundamental nature of consciousness and self-representation in the brain. Along with psychoanalyst, Lucy Biven he is the author of the 2012 book The Archeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, as well as earlier books including Affective Neuroscience: the Foundation of Human and Animal Emotions (Oxford, 1998), editor of a Textbook of Biological Psychiatry (Wiley, 2004) and seven other books.

His current research is devoted to the analysis of emotional behaviors and their relations to models of psychiatric disorders. His main research interest is unraveling the nature of primary-process emotions in the mammalian brain— SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC and PLAY—and seeking linkages to new clinical insights. His work led to a new treatment of autistic children and current work is devoted to non-pharmacological therapies for ADHD and depression. Novel anti-depressants and anti-suicide agents are currently being clinically evaluated.

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copyright 2013: David Van Nuys, Ph.D.


Mind and Life XXVI: Mind, Brain and Matter - Critical Conversations Between Buddhist Thought and Science (Day 5)


In the 26th iteration of the Mind and Life Conference - Critical Conversations Between Buddhist Thought and Science - the Dalai Lama hosts 20 of the world's leaders in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology, including several leading Buddhist scholars.

It's another great series of discussions over six days - I will present one day at a time over the next few days - this is day five.


Mind and Life XXVI: Mind, Brain and Matter - Critical Conversations Between Buddhist Thought and Science (Day Five)

 
Twenty of the world’s foremost scientists and philosophers with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other senior Tibetan scholars will address topics over the course of the week that include the historical sweep of science and the revolutions in our understanding of our physical universe and the nature of the mind. Scientific and the classical Buddhist philosophical methods of inquiry will be studied, as well as selected topics in quantum physics, neuroscience, and Buddhist and contemporary Western views of consciousness. In addition, the applications of contemplative practices in clinical and educational settings will be explored.

Morning Session:


Afternoon Session:


Presented by Mind and Life Institute and the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Venue: Drepung Monastery, Mundgod, Karnataka, India
Date: January 17-22, 2013
PARTICIPANTS
  • Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
  • Michel Bitbol, PhD, Directeur de Recherche, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
  • Khen Rinpoche Jangchup Choeden, Abbott, Gaden Shartse Monastery
  • Richard Davidson, PhD, Founder and Chair, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Sona Dimidjian, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience University of Colorado at Boulder
  • James R. Doty, MD, Director, Center for the Study of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education
  • Stanford University
  • John Durant, PhD, Adjunct Professor Science,Technology & Society Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Anne Harrington, PhD, Professor, Department of the History of Science Harvard University
  • Wendy Hasenkamp, PhD, Program and Research Director Mind & Life Institute
  • Thupten Jinpa, PhD, Adjunct Professor McGill University Chairman Mind & Life Institute
  • Bryce Johnson, PhD, Director Science for Monks Staff Scientist Exploratorium
  • Geshe Lhakdor, Director, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
  • Rajesh Kasturirangan, PhD, Associate Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore
  • Christof Koch, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer Allen Institute for Brain Science
  • Geshe Dadul Namgyal, Member and Translator/Interpreter Emory-Tibet Science Initiative Emory University
  • Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, Senior Lecturer Emory University
  • Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, PhD, Professor and Chair Centre for Neuroscience at the Indian Institute of Science
  • Matthieu Ricard, PhD, Buddhist Monk Shechen Monastery
  • Geshe Ngawang Samten, Vice Chancellor, Central University of Tibetan Studies
  • Tania Singer, PhD, Director, Department of Social Neuroscience Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
  • Aaron Stern, Founder and President, The Academy for the Love of Learning
  • Diana Chapman Walsh, PhD, President Emerita, Wellesley College Governing Board Member, The Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard
  • Carol Worthman, PhD, Professor Department of Anthropology Emory-Tibet Science Initiative Emory University
  • Arthur Zajonc, PhD, President Mind & Life Institute

Friday, February 01, 2013

Kelly McKinney Reviews "Coming of Age on Zoloft" and "Dosed"


This article by Kelly McKinney comes from Somatosphere (published under a Creative Commons license), a rather cool "collaborative website covering the intersections of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, cultural psychiatry, psychology and bioethics," as their masthead proclaims. McKinney reviews two 2012 books on the use of psychoactive drugs on young people, accounts that are both personal (the authors were prescribed these drugs) and a cultural critique. Giving these drugs to children, adolescents, and teens has been a giant experiment, and for the most part the results have been frightening.

Coming of Age on Zoloft: How Antidepressants Cheered Us Up, Let Us Down, and Changed Who We Are, is the new (2012) book from Katherine Sharpe in which she examines the new normal of antidepressant use, from a personal angle (she began taking Prozac in college when they were prescribed for homesickness) and from a scientific perspective, with a lot of individual voices included as well.

The second book reviewed is Dosed: The Medication Generation Grows Up by Kaitlin Bell Barnett, also from 2012. Like Sharpe's book, Barnett also has a personal story in this realm, and she includes a lot of other young voices who are struggling with identity issues and an ever-changing cocktail of powerful psychopharmacological medications.

Neither author appears to come out strongly against psychopharmacology for children, adolescents, and teens, a fact that may mean more people will actually read these books and take seriously the young people who speak within them.

Coming of Age on Psychiatric Meds
By Kelly McKinney

Coming of Age on Zoloft: How Antidepressants Cheered Us Up, Let Us Down, and Changed Who We Are
by Katherine Sharpe
HarperCollins, 2012
336 pp, US$14.99 paperback

Dosed: The Medication Generation Grows Up
by Kaitlin Bell Barnett
Beacon Press, 2012
248 pp, US$25.95 hardcover


Remarkably (or perhaps not remarkably at all if we take synchronicity seriously) two books came out last year, both on the same topic, both drawing on personal experience, both written by Ivy League educated, ambitious, sensitive, young American female journalists and both insightful, substantially researched and well-written. Dosed, by Kaitlin Bell Barnett, and Coming of Age on Zoloft, by Katherine Sharpe, give voice to and critically explore the personal experiences of people who are now in their twenties and thirties who took psychiatric medications growing up. Both authors contextualize these medication stories within a historical moment—the shift in recent history they each mark with the introduction of Prozac in the late 1980s in which children and adolescents began receiving prescriptions for psychiatric medications (and psychiatric diagnoses) in unprecedented numbers. Both also define their generation through this shift. As Sharpe remarks, “Antidepressants are the story of my generation, an invisible but very real strand woven through our collective experience” and Barnett, “For the first time in history…. millions of young Americans… have grown up taking psychotropic medications.” These millions, in her words, are “the medication generation.”


Furnishing statistics to support these claims both books leave no doubt in the reader’s mind that our popular awareness of these trends come not just from media hype but from actual ‘scientific’ research. For instance, studies show that in 2008, 5% of twelve to nineteen year olds in the US took antidepressants, and that in 2009, 25% of college students were taking antidepressants, while prior to the late 1980s psychiatric medications (with the exception of the relatively infrequent psychostimulant) were rarely prescribed to young patients. But the sheer numbers only tell us part of the story, leaving Barnett and Sharpe with more interesting questions to answer: how did this happen and what are the possible effects and meanings of this shift? And more specifically, what new insights can emerge when we examine the intersection of lived experience and broader societal structures?

For the first question, Barnett and Sharpe comprehensively synthesize in a clear fashion the now familiar multitude of factors identified by many social scientists that have converged to make this transformation possible, including the emergence of direct-to-consumer advertising, the rise of biological psychiatry over the psychoanalytic paradigm, the 1990s agenda-setting Decade of the Brain, the ever-widening categories of childhood psychopathology established and codified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and that lovely marriage between the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry. Other conditions include the restructuring of health care system in the US that favor medication and short-term psychotherapies over other longer-term and non-pharmaceutical based alternatives, a shift toward more ‘child-centered’ parenting, disability and accommodation legislation, and more generally, the increasing tendency to understand and experience distress (and life!) in terms of individual biology, and finally, some particularities of American culture that differentiate the US from other ‘developed’ countries where psychiatric med prescription rates for youth have been much lower (Sharpe refers to Carl Elliott’s work for this last part). Both authors also speculate on whether young people are in some absolute way more distressed than previous generations by exploring recent trends in the mental health of college students, campus life and cultural expectations, and college mental health services (the answer? kind of yes, kind of no) and the sections in their books about this are quite compelling.

Moreover, while the authors acknowledge the value of the sometimes contentious debates around kids and meds and the anxieties and ambivalences permeating discourses about “over-medicated” children in the US, they both hope that their focus on the actual experiences of the young people who have taken the meds will bring a much needed perspective, one uniquely born out of the nuanced complexities of first person experience, to these often abstract debates. By focusing on the meanings of these medications for the young people who take them, in how taking meds have “shaped their experiences and relationships, their emotions and personalities, and perhaps, most fundamentally, their very sense of themselves (Barnett: x)” Barnett and Sharpe aim to (and do indeed succeed) in adding to the conversation on what the increasing medicalization of everyday life and the normalization of pediatric psychiatric medication consumption means for our society.

Neither intends her book to be “self-help,” but Sharpe nurtures the hope that readers who came of age with psych meds “will find these stories recognizable, thought provoking and ultimately affirming,” and that friends and family members will also benefit from them. For Barnett, a hope is that her book will help create a space of greater openness for people to discuss their medication experiences in their lives without feeling exposed, vulnerable, dismissed, or stigmatized.


Data from interviews with medical and social science researchers, parents, clinicians, and psychiatric medication consumers, scholarly research in the social sciences and medicine, and personal experience flesh out both works. Judiciously and with some restraint Barnett incorporates her own experiences as someone who began a psychiatric medication career in her late teens, when she began taking Prozac for “the exhausting and oppressive symptoms of [her] unhappiness” to make connections or identify contrasts with other medication experiences in developing her analysis. In contrast, Sharpe’s book is narratively structured as a memoir, supported by a diary she began in her late teens that was indispensable to her project.

Rather than limiting her sample to antidepressant users as Sharpe did (although Coming of Age shows how difficult it is to limit a sample to one type of medication, as many users take several different classes of meds over the course of their medication trajectories), Barnett gathers stories from individuals who have taken the gamut of psychiatric meds and focuses on just a handful of their stories, aiming for “depth over breadth.” Each chapter, organized around a theme, for instance, side effects, is devoted to describing the lives and experiences of “Paul,” “Claire” and a handful of other individuals and is woven together with information on, for example, sexual side-effects of SSRIs (a class of antidepressants) Barnett’s own medication experiences, and sometimes experiences of people she interviewed but who do not get the full length treatment. Barnett provides little raw interview data; instead, each person’s story is fashioned through her voice and story-telling abilities. She does a good job portraying these individuals and their struggles, likely faithfully, certainly with eloquence and at times so poignantly and powerfully, especially when describing suffering, that I had to pause in my reading at one point. However I felt something was also erased in that process. Everything was told in one voice—Barnett’s—and the homogeneity and polished coherence resulting from that strategy at times dampened my enthusiasm as a reader. I even found myself yearning for colorful punctures of individual voices in the masterful smoothness of Barnett’s writing.

Sharpe’s book, on the other hand, is written with less distance—the individual voices of her participants are represented (e.g., email transcripts), and she also makes more use of her own observations and feelings in ways that enhance, rather than detract, from the bigger story she is telling. In fact, this leads to one of the biggest differences between the two books in my opinion—the enjoyability quotient. Although I can say without reservation that Barnett’s book was much more enjoyable to read than most academic books, but no less scholarly, I really enjoyed Sharpe’s in that I-cannot-wait-to-curl-up-on-the-couch-with-a-hot chocolate-and-my-warm-dogs-next-to-me-to-read-this-book kind of way. I was even excited to get on the elliptical trainer at the gym just so I could continue reading Sharpe’s book, and I barely even glanced at the US magazine on the rack beckoning to me. Admittedly, I have scholarly and personal interests in this topic, but I also just love a good read. I also started this review by suggesting how similar these two books and authors are when in fact, in some major ways like this one, they are also quite distinctive.

Barnett and Sharpe conclude that taking psychiatric medications during the critical developmental years of adolescence, when questions of identity are most heightened and when huge changes are happening physically, emotionally and socially, intensifies their meaning and their legacies. They also conclude that the meanings and effects of medications are incredibly varied over time and across individuals, and that this is part of what makes debates about meds and kids much more complex than meets the eye. Sharpe suggests that many of the worst emotional struggles that take place in adolescence, for which diagnoses may be attached and meds prescribed, will soften over time, and even be resolved. (I kind of agree with her on this developmental hypothesis as someone who would not like to revisit her teen years or her twenties, and who has found that her overall sense of well-being seems to keep improving with the years). However, I think some people might disagree with Sharpe’s hypothesis and argue that mental illness is mental illness and is no better at 35 than 19. Moreover, after engaging in a deep and productive course of psychotherapy, Sharpe is persuaded to argue how much more expansive and resonating other vocabularies and relationships can be over those of chemical imbalances and with a doctor for a 15 minute medication visit. This might not be as true for young adolescents. Barnett, for one, preferred medication that worked well rather than what she felt as a teenager to be the intrusive, violating probe of psychotherapy and its more visible sign of her struggles.

Overall, Sharpe seems more wary of the tide of psychopharmaceuticalization than Barnett though by no means is she ideologically against psych meds. There is nothing polemical about either of these books, which is precisely something that makes each of them so respectable. In Sharpe’s last chapters, her writing gains momentum as she takes medicalization itself to task, and her chapter, “The Next Generation,” provides several excellent reasons why we should, too. My sense is that Barnett is a bit more conservative and careful and that she takes a position that at least appears to be more accepting of normative psychiatry than Sharpe.

I would recommend these books as valuable references for anyone doing research in this area. My sister read Sharpe’s book and liked it, and she is not an academic but an interested, curious person. I suspect that undergraduates might favor Sharpe’s book for some of the reasons I mentioned above, but sections of Barnett’s would work as excellent course readings as well.

Kelly McKinney teaches in the Humanities, Philosophy and Religion Department at John Abbott College in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC and is a research affiliate with the Culture and Mental Health Research Unit at the Jewish General Hospital and McGill University. Her more recent research focuses on adolescence, psychiatry, neuroscience, and subjectivity.

Mind and Life XXVI: Mind, Brain and Matter - Critical Conversations Between Buddhist Thought and Science (Day Four)


In the 26th iteration of the Mind and Life Conference - Critical Conversations Between Buddhist Thought and Science - the Dalai Lama hosts 20 of the world's leaders in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology, including several leading Buddhist scholars.

It's another great series of discussions over six days - I will present one day at a time over the next few days - this is day four.


Mind and Life XXVI: Mind, Brain and Matter - Critical Conversations Between Buddhist Thought and Science (Day Three)

 
Twenty of the world’s foremost scientists and philosophers with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other senior Tibetan scholars will address topics over the course of the week that include the historical sweep of science and the revolutions in our understanding of our physical universe and the nature of the mind. Scientific and the classical Buddhist philosophical methods of inquiry will be studied, as well as selected topics in quantum physics, neuroscience, and Buddhist and contemporary Western views of consciousness. In addition, the applications of contemplative practices in clinical and educational settings will be explored.
Morning Session:


Afternoon Session:



Presented by Mind and Life Institute and the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Venue: Drepung Monastery, Mundgod, Karnataka, India
Date: January 17-22, 2013
PARTICIPANTS
  • Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
  • Michel Bitbol, PhD, Directeur de Recherche, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
  • Khen Rinpoche Jangchup Choeden, Abbott, Gaden Shartse Monastery
  • Richard Davidson, PhD, Founder and Chair, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Sona Dimidjian, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience University of Colorado at Boulder
  • James R. Doty, MD, Director, Center for the Study of Compassion and Altruism Research and Education
  • Stanford University
  • John Durant, PhD, Adjunct Professor Science,Technology & Society Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Anne Harrington, PhD, Professor, Department of the History of Science Harvard University
  • Wendy Hasenkamp, PhD, Program and Research Director Mind & Life Institute
  • Thupten Jinpa, PhD, Adjunct Professor McGill University Chairman Mind & Life Institute
  • Bryce Johnson, PhD, Director Science for Monks Staff Scientist Exploratorium
  • Geshe Lhakdor, Director, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
  • Rajesh Kasturirangan, PhD, Associate Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore
  • Christof Koch, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer Allen Institute for Brain Science
  • Geshe Dadul Namgyal, Member and Translator/Interpreter Emory-Tibet Science Initiative Emory University
  • Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, Senior Lecturer Emory University
  • Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, PhD, Professor and Chair Centre for Neuroscience at the Indian Institute of Science
  • Matthieu Ricard, PhD, Buddhist Monk Shechen Monastery
  • Geshe Ngawang Samten, Vice Chancellor, Central University of Tibetan Studies
  • Tania Singer, PhD, Director, Department of Social Neuroscience Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
  • Aaron Stern, Founder and President, The Academy for the Love of Learning
  • Diana Chapman Walsh, PhD, President Emerita, Wellesley College Governing Board Member, The Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard
  • Carol Worthman, PhD, Professor Department of Anthropology Emory-Tibet Science Initiative Emory University
  • Arthur Zajonc, PhD, President Mind & Life Institute

Philosopher Graham Harman - Speculative Realism and the Philosophy of Tristan Garcia


This is an interesting talk from Graham Harman, a leader in the Speculative Realism movement (the other three core members of this movement are Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant and Quentin Meillassoux). Harman (professor, American University in Cairo, Egypt) has his own unique version of speculative realism, object-oriented philosophy (OOP).

This synopsis of OOP comes from Wikipedia:
Object-oriented philosophy

The central tenet of object-oriented philosophy (OOP) is that objects have been given short shrift for too long in philosophy in favour of more “radical approaches.” Graham Harman has classified these forms of “radical philosophy” as those that either try to “undermine” objects by saying that objects are simply superficial crusts to a deeper underlying reality, either in the form of monism or a perpetual flux, or those that try to “overmine” objects by saying that the idea of a whole object is a form of folk ontology, that there is no underlying “object” beneath either the qualities (e.g. there is no “apple,” only “red,” “hard,” etc.) or the relations (as in both Latour and Whitehead, the former claiming that an object is only what it "modifies, transforms, perturbs, or creates"[10]). OOP is notable for not only its critique of forms of anti-realism, but other forms of realism as well. Harman has even claimed that the term "realism" will soon no longer be a relevant distinction within philosophy as the factions within Speculative Realism grow in number. As such, he has already written pieces differentiating his own OOP from other forms of realism which he claims are not realist enough as they reject objects as "useless fictions."

According to Harman, everything is an object, whether it be a mailbox, electromagnetic radiation, curved spacetime, the Commonwealth of Nations, or a propositional attitude; all things, whether physical or fictional, are equally objects. Expressing strong sympathy for panpsychism, Harman proposes a new philosophical discipline called "speculative psychology" dedicated to investigating the "cosmic layers of psyche" and "ferreting out the specific psychic reality of earthworms, dust, armies, chalk, and stone."[11]

Harman defends a version of the Aristotelian notion of substance. Unlike Leibniz, for whom there were both substances and aggregates, Harman maintains that when objects combine, they create new objects. In this way, he defends an apriori metaphysics that claims that reality is made up only of objects and that there is no “bottom” to the series of objects. In contrast to many other versions of substance, Harman also maintains that it need not be considered eternal, but as Aristotle maintained, substances can both come to be and pass away. For Harman, an object is in itself an infinite recess, unknowable and inaccessible by any other thing. This leads to his account of what he terms “vicarious causality.” Inspired by the occasionalists of Medieval Islamic Philosophy, Harman maintains that no two objects can ever interact save through the mediation of a “sensual vicar.”[12] There are two types of objects, then, for Harman: real objects and the sensual objects that allow for interaction. The former are the things of everyday life, while the latter are the caricatures that mediate interaction. For example, when fire burns cotton, Harman argues that the fire does not touch the essence of that cotton which is inexhaustible by any relation, but that the interaction is mediated by a caricature of the cotton which causes it to burn.
Abstract: The young French philosopher Tristan Garcia, born in Toulouse in 1981, gained attention in 2011 for his book Forme et objet: Un traité des choses (Form and Object: A Treatise on Things, forthcoming 2013 from Edinburgh University Press). In this lecture I will cover the major themes of Garcia’s book and offer a brief critical analysis.

To know more about novelist, author, and philosopher Tristan Garcia, check out this article by Harmon on Garcia for Continent.

Speculative Realism and the Philosophy of Tristan Garcia

 
Graham Harman - Purdue Talk (Jan.14.2013) from Andrew Iliadis on Vimeo.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Shiping Tang - Neo-Modernity: A Manifesto


According to Shiping Tang, neo-modernity is "a new meta-theory about the relationship between theories of knowledge and theories of society, underpinned by a social evolutionary approach toward human knowledge and society." Further, neo-modernity embraces Foucault's idea of “permanent critique” and a "scientific/critical realism in the Popperian-Bhaskarian sense."

It feels as though there is some integral thinking inherent in this manifesto, especially in its embrace of social evolutionary ideas (culture is always changing, evolving) and the recognition of the interplay between "critical realism" in science and "permanent critique" in social theory to prevent the radical post-modernist collapse into "empty space."

Neo-Modernity: A Manifesto

Fudan University - School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIRPA)
January 17, 2013

Abstract:
Neo-modernity is a new philosophical stand that transcends the modernism vs. post-modernism debate. Neo-modernity is a new meta-theory about the relationship between theories of knowledge and theories of society, underpinned by a social evolutionary approach toward human knowledge and society. Neo-modernity also embodies the spirit of “permanent critique” in the Foucauldian sense, underpinned by scientific/critical realism in the Popperian-Bhaskarian sense. The two aspects of neo-modernity sustain each other: The spirit of permanent critique requires scientific realism as its foundation, whereas scientific realism demands the spirit of permanent critique to uphold an open society that protects liberty and prompts progress.

Full Citation
Tang, Shiping, Neo-Modernity: A Manifesto (January 17, 2013). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2202213 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2202213


Introduction

In the past decades, the debate between modernism and post-modernism has dominated many quarters of philosophy of social sciences, and the debate does not seem to have a resolution in sight. This article advances neo-modernity as a new philosophical stand for transcending the modernism vs. post-modernism debate.

Fundamentally speaking, the debate between modernism and post-modernism is a debate regarding the relationship between human knowledge and the human society, or as Gellner’s aptly titled Thought and Change (1964) put it, the relationship between knowing and being/becoming. Neo-modernity is a new stand toward human knowledge and human society. More precisely, neo-modernity is a new meta-theory about the relationship between theories of knowledge and theories of society, underpinned by a social evolutionary approach toward human knowledge and society [1]. Neo-modernity also embodies a spirit: the spirit of “permanent critique” in the Foucauldian sense, underpinned by scientific/critical realism in the Popperian-Bhaskarian sense. These two aspects of neo-modernity form an organic whole: each sustains the other and neither can travel far without the other. The spirit of neo-modernity requires the neo-modernity theory toward human knowledge and society as a foundation for permanent critique, whereas the neo-modernity theory toward human knowledge and society demands the spirit of neo-modernity as a venue toward human progress via advancing human knowledge.


I. Neo-Modernity versus Modernity and Post-Modernity

Modern utopianism, embodied in the “irrational exuberance” of modernity, is ultimately a static theory toward knowledge and society. Utopianism wants us to remain in a space with full knowledge and perfect institutions (Tang 2011, chap. 5) [2]. In a state of full knowledge and perfect institutions, nothing can be changed, because changes mean imperfect knowledge and imperfect institutions.

Radical post-modernism, as a counter-revolution to the “irrational exuberance” of modernity, too is a static theory toward knowledge and society [3]. Radical post-modernism denies the possibility of any certain knowledge, thus eventually leading us to nihilism. By doing so, radical post-modernism condemns us to an empty space. In a state without the possibility of any certain knowledge, critique becomes word game and change becomes aimless child play.

Both modern utopianism and radical post-modernism are thus underpinned by an un-evolutionary, if not anti-evolutionary, approach toward knowledge and society [4]. Yet, because both knowledge and society itself are evolutionary social systems, the only valid approach toward knowledge and society is a social evolutionary approach, which informs neo-modernity.

Before I move on, a key caveat on truth is in order. Truth here is defined as (true) knowledge corresponding to natural or social reality (Searle 1995, chap. 9) [5]. Truth does not necessarily entail happiness at any given time: Truth merely entails self-enlightenment, which will lay down part of the foundation for human happiness and progress. Truth does not have to be universal or absolute, especially in social sciences [6]. In human society, many, if not most, truths are context-dependent. Yet, local knowledge too should be subjected to critical scrutiny: permanent critique admits no boundary, and local knowledge is no exception.

Notes:

1. A more detailed elaboration on the meta-theory itself and the social evolutionary approach will have to be provided elsewhere. I do offer a brief statement on the social evolutionary approach below. Some major threads of the meta-theory too become clear below. 
2. Institutions are social rules, informal or informal (North 1990, 3). The institutional system of a society is the social structure (Tang 2011). 
3. Radical post-modernism has been labeled as relativism (e.g., Gellner 1992). I reject labeling radical post-modernism as relativism because relativism can be at different levels: ontological, epistemological, and moral. Scientific realism rejects ontological relativism whereas radical post-modernism holds ontological relativism. Scientific realism is compatible with epistemological relativism and moral relativism. Indeed, if we subscribe to scientific realism, only epistemological relativism and moral relativism can be defended although we have to reject judgmental relativism (Bhaskar 1988[1979], 62-63; 164-174). 
4. In addition, modernism and post-modernism, although seemingly far apart, actually originated from the same starting point: an anthropocentric view of the world, as Norbert Elias (1940-50 [1991] and Roy Bhaskar (1978; 1979) pointed out (see also Laudan 1996; Gellner 1998). 
5. This is the so-called “correspondence theory of truth”, submitted by scientific realism. Unfortunately, however, Bhaskar rejected the “correspondence theory of truth” (1978, 248-50). This will essentially nullify his realistic stand. For a critique of Bhaskar’s stand on truth, see Collier (1994, chap. 8). 
6. Truths in natural sciences are more likely to be universal (for earth) or even for the whole universe.

Read the whole article.


Omnivore - Humans and Robots Coexisting & Simulated Human Brains


Via Bookforum's Omnivore blog: Some believe the age of robot domination may have already arrived (Dominic Basulto), and Kevin Kelley believes we should just step aside and let the robots run things.

Do you remember Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation? In a couple of episodes, his rights as a sentient being were central to the plot - has the time come that we need to have those discussions?

Finally, in a separate article from io9, George Dvorsky reports on the $1.6 billion Human Brain Project - the researchers will be using "a progressively scaled-up multi-layered simulation" running on a supercomputer to theoretically (my word and emphasis) "re-create the human brain." Good luck with that.


How will humans and robots coexist?

JAN 30 2013
1:00PM


This story is related, of course, and it comes from io9.

New $1.6 billion supercomputer project will attempt to simulate the human brain

George Dvorsky
JAN 30, 2013

In what is the largest and most significant effort to re-create the human brain to date, an international group of researchers has secured $1.6 billion to fund the incredibly ambitious Human Brain Project. For the next ten years, scientists from various disciplines will seek to understand and map the network of over a hundred billion neuronal connections that illicit emotions, volitional thought, and even consciousness itself. And to do so, the researchers will be using a progressively scaled-up multilayered simulation running on a supercomputer.


And indeed, the project organizers are not thinking small. The entire team will consist of over 200 individual researchers in 80 different institutions across the globe. They're even comparing it the Large Hadron Colllider in terms of scope and ambition, describing the Human Brain Project as "Cern for the brain." The project, which will be based in Lausanne, Switzerland, is an initiative of the European Commission.

According to scientists working on the project, HBP will build new platforms for "neuromorphic computing" and "neurorobotics," allowing researchers to develop new computing systems and robots based on the architecture and circuitry of the brain. The researchers will attempt to reconstruct the human brain piece-by-piece, and gradually bring these cognitive components into an overarching supercomputer.

"The support of the HBP is a critical step taken by the EC to make possible major advances in our understanding of how the brain works," said Swedish Nobel Laureate Torsten Wiesel in a recent statement. "HBP will be a driving force to develop new and still more powerful computers to handle the massive accumulation of new information about the brain, while the neuroscientists are ready to use these new tools in their laboratories." He added that the research may also give rise to fundamentally new computer architectures modeled after the brain.

"This cooperation should lead to new concepts and a deeper understanding of the brain, the most complex and intricate creation on earth," he said.

The researchers are also hoping that the insights gained will help in the treatment of neurological disorders like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Moreover, due to the nature of the research, no animals will be required for experimentation.


Shrink Rap Radio #336 – The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy with Louis Cozolino PhD


Awesome! Louis Cozolino, PhD, is the author of some excellent books on neuroscience, relationships, psychotherapy, the aging brain, and education: The Making of a Therapist: A Practical Guide for the Inner Journey (2004), The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment And the Developing Social Brain (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) (2006), The Healthy Aging Brain: Sustaining Attachment, Attaining Wisdom (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) (2008), The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain (Second Edition) (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) (2010), and The Social Neuroscience of Education: Optimizing Attachment and Learning in the Classroom (Norton Books in Education) (2013).

In this week's Shrink Rap Radio, Dr. David Van Nuys interviews Dr. Cozolino on the neuroscience of psychotherapy. I was fortunate to see Dr. Cozolino at the Psychotherapy Networker Conference in Washington, D.C. a few years back - he made the neuroscience of attachment understandable in ways no one else I have heard talk has done (aside from Dr. Dan Siegel).

Shrink Rap Radio #336 – The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy with Louis Cozolino PhD



Louis Cozolino, PhD is a professor of psychology at Pepperdine University and a therapist in private practice in Los Angeles. He is the author of five books The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, The Social Neuroscience of Education, The Neuroscience of Human Relationships, The Healthy Aging Brain and The Making of a Therapist. He has also authored and co-authored research articles and book chapters on child abuse, schizophrenia, language and cognition including the chapter on Sensation, Perception and Cognition for the current edition of The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry

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A psychology podcast by David Van Nuys, Ph.D.
copyright 2013: David Van Nuys, Ph.D.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Ray Kurzweil Plans to Create a Mind at Google—and Have It Serve You


Uh, yeah, sure, you betcha, Ray.

This comes from the MIT Technology Review - a brief explanation of Ray Kurzweil's new job at Google, to create a mind that can help predict what searchers will need before they know they need it. This is a part of his ongoing quest to create an artificial intell Turing-test.

He outlines his model of building a mind in his most recent book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed. But as I have argued here for years, unless he also creates a body and full nervous system, his "mind" will be little more than a fancy super-computer.

Ray Kurzweil Plans to Create a Mind at Google—and Have It Serve You

The technologist speaks about an ambitious plan to build a powerful artificial intelligence.


Hal from 2001: A Space Odyessy.

Famed AI researcher and incorrigible singularity forecaster Ray Kurzweil recently shed some more light on what his new job at Google will entail. It seems that he does, indeed, plan to build a prodigious artificial intelligence, which he hopes will understand the world to a much more sophisticated degree than anything built before–or at least that will act as if it does.

Kurzweil’s AI will be designed to analyze the vast quantities of information Google collects and to then serve as a super-intelligent personal assistant. He suggests it could eavesdrop on your every phone conversation and email exchange and then provide interesting and important information before you ever knew you wanted it. It sounds like a scary-smart version of Google Now (see “Google’s Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead”).

Kurzweil says this of his project at Google, in a video posted by The Singularity Hub:
“There’s no more important project than understanding Intelligence and recreating it. I do envision a fundamental approach based on everything we understand about how the human brain [works]. And there are some things we don’t yet understand so I plan to go off and explore some of my own ideas about how certain things work.”
Kurzweil makes it sound like the effort will be based on the theory of the put forward in his new book, How to Create a Mind. In this work, based largely on observations about current trends in AI research, and his own work on speech and character recognition, Kurzweil suggests a fairly simple mechanism by which information is captured and accessed hierarchically throughout the neo-cortex, and posits that this phenomenon can explain the miracle of human conscious experience.

Kurzweil’s claims are certainly bold, and some have criticized them as hopelessly naïve. Indeed, it’s easy to dismiss any predictions he makes because of the outlandish ones he’s made in the past. But Kurzweil is nothing if not a brilliant inventor, and he indicates that at Google he’ll be rolling his sleeves up and doing real engineering. It’ll be fascinating to see how far this remarkable project takes both the inventor and the company.

Watch Häxan (1922), the Classic Cinematic Study of Witchcraft Narrated by William S. Burroughs (1968)


Very interesting and exceedingly strange, somehow, to see this silent film with an added jazz soundtrack and with a narration by none other the Beat icon William Boroughs. Brought to you by Open Culture, of course.

Watch Häxan (1922), the Classic Cinematic Study of Witchcraft Narrated by William S. Burroughs (1968)

January 21st, 2013


Some pictures from the silent era, like F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, couldn’t look more clearly like ancestors of the modern horror film. Tracing the distant origins of other forms — of documentary, say — proves a trickier task. Hence the value of a movie like Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan, also known as Witchcraft Through the Ages, which not only mounts a nonfictional investigation into humanity’s perception of “witches” throughout the ages, but does so with the aid of dramatic sequences as eerie as any of Count Orlok running amok. Given that Christensen’s meticulously researched historical creation demanded a larger budget than any other Scandinavian film to that point, you could also view it as an antecedent of today’s visually elaborate, spectacle-intensive blockbusters. Like many well-known silent films, Häxan has undergone multiple releases, each running different lengths, with different scores. You see above the 1968 version, which reduces Christensen’s original 104-minute cut to a brisk 77 minutes and accompanies it with a jaunty, richly incongruous five-piece jazz score by Daniel Humair.

Atop the music we hear the history of the persecution of “witches,” from the primitive era to medieval times to then-modern times, when the idea of the “hysterical woman” gained purchase in the zeitgeist. Narrating this story in the 1968 version is none other than writer and Beat icon William S. Burroughs, who, despite his flamboyantly artistic personality, delivers an ultimately sober analysis. The film takes the position that witchcraft, far from a reality in and of itself, arises and re-arises as an invention of the superstitious, the irrational, and those disinclined to understand the nature of mental illness. If that subject sounds more suitable for an academic paper, remember that this research comes delivered by the bold visual strokes of proto-horror silent film, close reading of the fifteenth-century inquisitor’s treatise Malleus Maleficarum, and the man who wrote Naked Lunch.

via Biblioklept

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~ Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on literature, film, cities, Asia, and aesthetics. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

Bookforum Omnivore - The Vast Majority of the Universe

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, this is a coo collection of links on cosmology, including a couple of articles on the ever-mysterious "dark matter," and an article on the largest "object" ever discovered in the universe, which is composed of 73 quasars.


The vast majority of the universe

JAN 18 2013 
9:00AM


  • From Cosmos, the vast majority of the universe is something we can't see, can't touch and is expanding the universe at ever-increasing speeds; Tamara Davis explains why dark energy poses more questions than answers. 
  • Can time just stop? Michael Byrne wonders. 
  • The God Particle: What explains the current wave of popular physics
  • Virginia Trimble reviews Gravity's Engines: The Other Side of Black Holes by Caleb Scharf. 
  • Dark matter mystery may soon be solved: Experiments to detect dark matter, which scientists believe makes up about a quarter of the universe, are underway and may yield direct evidence within a decade. 
  • What is string theory, and why should we bother finding out? Steven Gubser explains. 
  • Most fundamental clock ever could redefine kilogram: Physicists have created the first clock with a tick that depends on the hyper-regular frequency of matter itself. 
  • Rebecca J. Rosen on the largest structure ever observed in the universe: At 4 billion light years across, this quote-unquote "object" throws astronomical assumptions that go back to Einstein into doubt.