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the humanities and social sciences are doomed to deliver a seemingly directionless sequence of theories and explanations, with no promise of additive progress
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contrasting record of extraordinary success in some areas of natural science.
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`... memes should be regarded as living structures, not just metaphorically but technically.(3) When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn't just a way of talking -- the meme for, say, "belief in life after death" is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in the nervous systems of individual men the world over.'
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Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution.
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Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS (16 February 1822 – 17 January 1911), cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician.
"But bad metaphors can do a great disservice to the public understanding of science. The idea of the “evolutionary ladder” perpetuates the myth that evolution is about a steady linear march towards complexity. The militaristic metaphor of the “war on cancer” threatens to undervalue achievements in treatment that fall short of a total cure. The idea of the brain as a computer creates all sorts of misconceptions about how different parts of the brain work, how memories are stored and whether we will ever be able to download or upload our minds."
"much of physics is counterintuitive, as is the case in many other disciplines, and before the rise of modern science we had only our folk intuitions to guide us. Folk astronomy, for example, told us that the world is flat, celestial bodies revolve around the earth, and the planets are wandering gods who determine our future."
Neurobabble: "There are three things wrong with this talk. First, it provides little insight into psychological phenomena. ... Second, brains-in-love talk conflates levels of explanation. Neurobabble piques interest in science, but obscures how science works. ... The third thing wrong with neurobabble is that it has pernicious feedback effects on science itself."
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provides little insight into psychological phenomena
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brains-in-love talk conflates levels of explanation. Neurobabble piques interest in science, but obscures how science works.
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We should embrace rather than fear the knowledge science brings as it unravels morality's muddles, says Fiery Cushman
in list: Neuroethics
In his new book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris claims that science 'reveals' values to us. Kwame Anthony Appiah is one of the many who have pointed out that Harris makes the common mistake of seeking to derive an 'ought' from a series of mere 'is' statements, a mistake pointed out by David Hume centuries ago.
in list: Neuroethics
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