“A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life.” Paul Bloom in the NY Times.
BRAIN cells that may underlie our ability to empathise with others have been detected directly in people for the first time. Link to New Scientist article.
if a deterministic understanding of human behavior encourages antisocial behavior, how can we scientists justify communicating our deterministic research findings? In fact, there’s a rather shocking line in this Psychological Science article, one that I nearly overlooked on my first pass. Vohs and Schooler write that:
If exposure to deterministic messages increases the likelihood of unethical actions, then identifying approaches for insulating the public against this danger becomes imperative.
Perhaps you missed it on your first reading too, but the authors are making an extraordinary suggestion. They seem to be claiming that the public “can’t handle the truth,” and that we should somehow be protecting them (lying to them?) about the true causes of human social behaviors. Perhaps they’re right. Jesse Bering on the sticky science of free will in Scientific American.
I’ll be asking this repeatedly via all of my web-presences, but since this one sits idle these days I probably won’t have to ask more than once here; it’ll just stay on top since I never blog.
I’m teaching a First Year Initiatives course in the Fall. These are basically first-year seminar classes designed to teach college- and learning-based skills to incoming students. The content is meant to be highly interdisciplinary, but the content is also secondary in these courses. The primary goal is to give them training in critical reading and writing, public speaking, etc., as well as get them introduced to the college environment and the surrounding community and its needs.
I’m teaching a class with a cyborg theme, because the knitting theme I wanted to do just seemed too tough to sell (I wanted to attract the right sorts of students and I haven’t figured out how to do that with a knitting-themed course yet). I’ll be working on my syllabus once the semester is over (May) and I hope to have a sizable list of books, stories, and articles, both fiction and non-fiction, to examine and consider for the class by then. I have a few non-fiction items already to look at, but I don’t have many fiction pieces (aside from “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”). I welcome recommendations, and the ideal pieces will examine multiple facets of the cyborg concept (Hayles, Haraway, Stelarc, for example). The fiction pieces should do more than look only at the human-machine blending, although good fiction will always deal with more than one dimension. The social aspects, the economic aspects, and the philosophical aspects are all as important as the biological.
Please leave comments with recommendations, or also feel free to email me if you’d prefer that. And thanks in advance if anyone is still reading here and has something to contribute!
“Scientists have found a surprising link between magnets and morality. A person’s moral judgments can be changed almost instantly by delivering a magnetic pulse to an area of the brain near the right ear, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Link to NPR story.
“Well, here goes. I really resent the term, but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.
I’m gay.” …Link to post where James Randi renews my faith in the notion of progress in American culture, just because he feels safe enough to make this public declaration that shouldn’t even be news.
So, you want to take the reporting on this with the usual “science-writing caveat,” (which I don’t normally have to give for Wired Science, but I think this time it’s necessary). I’m not thrilled with the methodology of the study itself, as there have been abundant rigorous studies done that already show the effects being described are real. I’m more intrigued by the fact that the scientific community is starting to take seriously some of the philosophical phenomenological arguments, which is what I’ve been basically yelling my head off about for the last 8 or 9 years.
An empirical test of ideas proposed by Martin Heidegger shows the great German philosopher to be correct: Everyday tools really do become part of ourselves.
The findings come from a deceptively simple study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. It seemingly extended to the very roots of cognition.
Link to article at Wired Science, with the title “Your Computer Really Is a Part of You.”
Indian election authorities Thursday granted what they called an independent identity to intersex and transsexuals in the country’s voter lists. Before, members of these groups — loosely called eunuchs in Indian English — were referred to as male or female in the voter rolls. But now, they will have the choice to tick “O” — for others — when indicating their gender in voter forms, the Indian election commission said in a statement. Link to CNN article.
Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your 64 Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other anti-choice “progressive” Christians, men: Why don’t you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?
For example, budget hawks in Congress say they’ll vote against the bill because it’s too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won’t wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.
Read more by Katha Pollitt at the Guardian.
“The Prime Minister has released a statement on the Second World War code-breaker, Alan Turing, recognising the “appalling” way he was treated for being gay… So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.” Link to the Office of the Prime Minster’s Website.