Group items tagged

Why Seeing (The Unexpected) Is Often Not Believing : NPR http://ow.ly/5osJY More on inattentional blindness

"She lives in a narrow sliver of the present moment, not well connected to what just happened," Aline says. "And with her puzzles, she's able to capture what's going on in a way that she can use her creative energies. And that's one scaffolding. Another is the alphabet. Because, for example, when she's singing an alphabet song and she's at the letter 'M,' she knows where she's come from, she knows where she's going to. So it gives her a feeling of continuity, of the flow of time, which she might not otherwise be able to get."

In the history of the world, every culture in every location at every point in time has developed some supernatural belief system. And believing in God may have been evolutionarily advantageous to humans as it provided a framework for promoting social good.

" For more than five generations, Patrick Tracey's family has been plagued by what he calls "a perfect storm of schizophrenia." In his new book, Stalking Irish Madness, he traces his family lineage - and the roots of the disease - all the way back to Ireland."

"Renegade husband and wife philosophers Pat and Paul Churchland met forty years ago in a college Plato class. Their instincts as philosophers - then and now - run outside the philosophy mainstream. Where most philosophers looked to reason and logic to apprehend the human mind, the Churchlands looked - and look - to science. There is no independent "mind", these two practically say, just the human brain, three pounds of tissue and water, firing away behind all our emotions, beliefs, actions. Consciousness itself, they say, is straight biology, a machine. Once, that sounded esoteric. Now, it's on the frontline of debate over law, soul and life."