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Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently discovered, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as we know it.
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In Damasio's terminology, even single-celled organisms such as bacteria or amoebae have a minimal sense of self, working to preserve their internal integrity against foreign incursion.
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What the scientists found was that after drawing only ten cards, the hands of the experimental subjects got “nervous” whenever they reached for the negative decks. Although the subjects still had little inkling of which card piles were the most lucrative, their emotions had developed an accurate sense of fear. They knew which decks were dangerous. In other words, their feelings figured out the game first – the hand was leading the brain.
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Consciousness used to be the crazy aunt in psychology's attic.
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Unfortunately, in Self Comes to Mind, Damasio seems to have jumped the shark. The book doesn't include either the new scientific research of the last 10 years or new philosophical clarity—although the style is readable, if a bit high-flown, it's often hard to make out the arguments. Instead, the book is a rather wandering and digressive restatement, with some minor variations, of Damasio's earlier views on consciousness.
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USC's Dr. Antonio Damasio's latest work, 'Self Comes to Mind,' explores how consciousness evolved and how it contributes to our culture.
"This is a crude web presentation of the talk I gave at the University of Wisconsin Thursday noon Genetics Seminar series on April 28th, 2011. I’ve passed on the text I lectured from virtually untouched, inserting the slides shown...there may be some rough spots. "
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If the ape sought to touch or wipe off the mark while facing a mirror, it showed that the animal recognised itself.
But even if this test revealed a certain degree self-awareness, many questions remained as to how animals were taking in the information. What, in other words, was the underlying cognitive process?
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"This indicates that the chimpanzees were able to distinguish the cursor actions controlled by themselves from those caused by other factors, even when the physical properties of those actions were almost identical," the researchers said. <!-- inj G3 -->
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"The substantival phrase ‘the self’ is very unnatural in most speech contexts in most languages, and some conclude from this that it’s an illusion to think that there is such a thing as the self, an illusion that arises from nothing more than an improper use of language. This, however, is implausible. People are not that stupid. The problem of the self doesn’t arise from an unnatural use of language which arises from nowhere. On the contrary: use of a phrase like ‘the self’ arises from a prior and independent sense that there is such a thing as the self."
In “Self Comes to Mind,” the eminent neurologist and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio gives an account of consciousness that might come naturally to a highly caffeinated professor in his study.
Book Review - Self Comes to Mind - By Antonio Damasio - NYTimes.com
We're hard-wired to turn our lives into stories
Last fall I submitted to the latest high-tech way to bare your soul. I had my genome sequenced and am allowing it to be posted on the Internet, along with my medical history.
Derek Parfit in effect denies Descartes's conclusion. He would insist that the conclusion is not nearly as innocent and straightforward as it seems. When Descartes says that he exists, he means that there is a continuing subject of experiences or self or ego, or whatever word you prefer, that exists. Parfit denies that there really is any such thing, and therefore denies that we can know that there is.
A couple of years ago we organised a salon with Helen Birtwistle of the Institute of Ideas on the meaning of friendship, and the then quite new social networking sites such as Facebook. A US survey in 2004 had found that up to 25% of people claimed that they had no real intimates. Yet by 2007 there was networking technology where people would ask: ‘Can I be your friend?’ What is it all about? Why is it so important?
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