http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2004_09_27_newsweek.html
Can Love Change Your Mind? MADISON - What is happening in the minds of people who have developed a greater capacity for forgiveness and compassion? Can a quality like love - whether it's shown toward a family member or a friend - be neurologically measured in the brain? A new research project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers the opportunity to apply hard science to these seemingly ethereal questions. UW-Madison psychology professor Richard Davidson, director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, has received a $2.5 million grant from the Michigan-based Fetzer Institute to launch a new research initiative on the neuroscience of compassion, love and forgiveness, investigating how these virtues manifest themselves in the human mind and whether we have the ability to nurture and expand them through practice. Davidson already has the foundation for probing these questions through his decade-long work exploring brain function and meditation.
An Unforgettable Act of Kindness I was sitting in a bookstore engrossed in writing when I noticed an elderly man, (in his early 80's), sit down with his coffee drink, at a nearby table. I smiled at him and he nodded, as I went back to work. Within seconds, I witnessed him spill his coffee all over his pants and onto the floor. Why is it a cup of something, looks like a gallon, once it has been knocked over? Table of contents (With last update date) Cover Foreword (August 13, 2009) Chapter 1 1.1. The assumption of objective reality, a necessity for survival and for science? The assumption of an external reality is the assumption that there is a real world that is external to our mind and senses, and that it exists whether or not we as observers exist, and whether or not we are observing it.
5 Ways To Hack Your Brain Into Awesomeness Much of the brain is still mysterious to modern science, possibly because modern science itself is using brains to analyze it. There are probably secrets the brain simply doesn't want us to know. But by no means should that stop us from tinkering around in there, using somewhat questionable and possibly dangerous techniques to make our brains do what we want. We can't vouch for any of these, either their effectiveness or safety. All we can say is that they sound awesome, since apparently you can make your brain...
THE IMPRINTED BRAIN THEORY By Christopher Badcock The Imprinted Brain Theory What causes mental illnesses like schizophrenia and autism? We have long known that both tend to run in families and that if one of two identical twins has such a disorder, there is a much higher than average probability that the other will too. Autism is sometimes associated with genetic syndromes, such as Rett, Down, and Turner's, Phenylketonuria, and Tuberous Sclerosis. The clearest single-gene cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is Fragile X syndrome, with a wide range of severity in symptoms and 25-47 per cent of affected males meeting the criteria for autism. But neither autism nor schizophrenia obeys classical Mendelian laws of inheritance in the way that Cystic Fibrosis or some types of colour blindness do.
Aesthetics Aesthetics may be defined narrowly as the theory of beauty, or more broadly as that together with the philosophy of art. The traditional interest in beauty itself broadened, in the eighteenth century, to include the sublime, and since 1950 or so the number of pure aesthetic concepts discussed in the literature has expanded even more. Traditionally, the philosophy of art concentrated on its definition, but recently this has not been the focus, with careful analyses of aspects of art largely replacing it. Philosophical aesthetics is here considered to center on these latter-day developments. Thus, after a survey of ideas about beauty and related concepts, questions about the value of aesthetic experience and the variety of aesthetic attitudes will be addressed, before turning to matters which separate art from pure aesthetics, notably the presence of intention. Table of Contents
Myth, Legend, Folklore, Ghosts Apollo and the Greek Muses Updated July 2010 COMPREHENSIVE SITES ON MYTHOLOGY ***** The Encyclopedia Mythica - SEARCH - Areas - Image Gallery - Genealogy tables - Mythic Heroes Probert Encyclopaedia - Mythology Gods, Heroes, and MythDictionary of Mythology What is Myth? MESOPOTAMIAN MYTHOLOGYThe Assyro-Babylonian Mythology FAQ Sumerian Mythology FAQ Sumerian Mythology Sumerian Gods and Goddesses Sumerian Myths SUMERIAN RELIGION Mythology's Mythinglinks: the Tigris-Euphrates Region of the Ancient Near East Gods, Goddesses, Demons and Monsters of Mesopotamia The Assyro-Babylonian Mythology FAQ More info on Ancient Mesopotamia can be found on my Ancient River Valley Civilizations page. GREEK MYTHOLOGYOrigins of Greek MythologyGreek Mythology - MythWeb Greek-Gods.info (plus a fun QUIZ)Ancient Greek Religion Family Tree of Greek Mythology Greek Names vs.
Your brain is an index. Is Google making us stupid? Will digitized books and e-readers devalue the written word? Does reading on the web harm human thinking? Do technologies like RSS and Twitter simply provide too much too fast — are we all about to drown in a informational tidal wave? In his widely discussed Atlantic essay on how the web changes our reading habits, Nicholas Carr wrote of the changes he’s noticed to his reading habits in the years since the rise of the web: Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. Possibilianism Not to be confused with Possibilism. Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the diverse claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in strong atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground.[1][2][3][4][5] The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.[6] Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in February 2009, he replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to...ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now."[6] In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Eagleman expanded on the definition: "Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion.