Science of the SpiritS


Megaphone

Best of the Web: Deepities and the Politics of Pseudo-Profundity

Coleman Hughes
Quillette
Tue, 16 Oct 2018 00:01 UTC
anti-Trump rally London
The word deepity, coined by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, refers to a phrase that seems true and profound but is actually ambiguous and shallow. Not to be confused with lies, clichés, truisms, contradictions, metaphors, or aphorisms, deepities occupy a linguistic niche of their own. The distinguishing feature of a deepity is that it has two possible interpretations. On the first reading, a deepity is true but trivial. On the second, it's false but would be mind-blowing if it were true.

Consider, for instance, the phrase "love is just a word." On one reading, this is true but trivial. It's no deep insight that "love" - like "Ethiopia" or "subdermatoglyphic" or "word" - is just a word in the English language. But on a second reading, "love is just a word" asserts something mind-blowing if true: there is no emotion called "love," and everyone who thinks they've felt love is either lying or self-deceived. If true, this would change everything we thought we knew about our emotional lives. But it's plainly false. Whatever love is - an emotion, an illusion, a pattern of neuronal firings - it's not "just a word." By virtue of its ambiguity, the phrase "love is just a word" doesn't even achieve coherence, much less profundity.

The problem with deepities is not that they are arguments that initially seem convincing but collapse under scrutiny; it's that they aren't even arguments to begin with. Once you disambiguate a deepity - that is, once you notice it has two distinct meanings - you see that it contains no real argument at all, only an empty space where an argument should be. (Think of phrases like "love trumps hate" and "everything happens for a reason." Do they seem both true and important after you disambiguate them?)

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Light Saber

Fundamental truths that could change your life

Dr. Travis Bradberry
LinkedIn
Tue, 25 Sep 2018 00:00 UTC
Thinking man
© Getty
It's surprising how easy it is to lose sight of the important things in life. Busy schedules and regular routines have a tendency to put the brain on autopilot.

When things aren't going quite the way you'd like them to, it's often because you've lost focus on what really matters. But focusing on life's fundamental truths can be difficult, especially when they remind you that you're heading in the wrong direction.

The best things in life don't come easily, and failing to observe yourself carefully is a sure path to mediocrity. I believe that Socrates said it best:
"The unexamined life isn't worth living."
Socrates' observation also applies to business. When Eric Schmidt was CEO of Google, he famously said, "We run this company on questions, not answers."

Life and business run on questions, not answers. You should be asking yourself regularly if you're headed in the right direction.

Many of life's essential truths need repeating. We need reminders that help us to stay focused on them. Keep these truths handy and they're sure to give you a much-needed boost.
Read More...
Caesar

Stoicism: An old approach for living a new life happily

John Sellars
The Conversation
Tue, 09 Oct 2018 00:00 UTC
Stoicism
What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, obviously the roads - the roads go without saying. How about guidance for how to live in the 21st century? That seems less likely, but in fact the last few years have seen a flurry of interest in the work of three Roman Stoic philosophers who offered just that. They were Seneca, tutor to the Emperor Nero; Epictetus, a former slave; and Marcus Aurelius, himself emperor.

Modern books drawing on their ideas and repackaged as guidance for how to live well today include A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine, Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, and How to Be a Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci. What all these books share is the conviction that people can benefit by going back and looking at the ideas of these Roman Stoics. There's even an annual week dedicated to Stoicism.

Stoicism holds that the key to a good, happy life is the cultivation of an excellent mental state, which the Stoics identified with virtue and being rational. The ideal life is one that is in harmony with Nature, of which we are all part, and an attitude of calm indifference towards external events. It began in Greece, and was founded around 300BC by Zeno, who used teach at the site of the Painted Stoa in Athens, hence the name Stoicism. The works of the early Stoics are for the most part lost, so it is the Roman Stoics who have been most influential over the centuries, and continue to be today.
Read More...
Brain

On biology, brains, and human suffering

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Thu, 11 Oct 2018 19:23 UTC
brain
Once upon a time, the first microorganisms appeared in our planet's water, and then eventually got around to evolving into complex life forms. Those life forms ate each other and had sex with each other in a frenzied orgy of chaos, eventually schlepping their way out of the ocean and onto land so they could eat each other and have sex with each other on dry dirt.

The organisms became more and more complex as they figured out better and better ways to eat each other and have sex with each other in the frenzied cacophony. Some of them said "screw this" and schlepped their way back into the ocean, and they got really big and evolved blowholes on the tops of their heads. Others evolved opposable thumbs for climbing up trees and, eventually, brains so large that they needed to be born while still completely helpless due to the massive size of their heads. Those brains are the most complex objects in the known universe to this day.

Comment: Being caught in stress induced cycles actually isn't just limited to humans. All animals have this capacity as Pavlov demonstrated in his experiments on transmarginal inhibition. Humanity is, however, faced with unique challenges in line with the complexity of our brains and the human mind. We have a creative ability that is beyond that of other animals. As can be inferred in Johnstone's article, this capacity can be diverted to feed elaborate narratives and imagined threats that keep us in cycle of stress where remain reactive rather than responsive to the world around us. But it can also be nurtured so we can take on the challenges of live using sensibility and reason rather than being stuck in endless cycles. Éiriú Eolas is a strong technique that readers can check out to turn down the stress response and utilize our creative capacities in a more productive manner.

Read More...
Info

Illusion experiment claims brain can retroactively change perceptions of reality

Chris Mahon
Outer Places
Wed, 10 Oct 2018 19:10 UTC
Clock
© Pixabay
By now, most of us are familiar with the 'Invisible Gorilla' experiment, which shows how selective our attention can be, but now a research team from Caltech (The California Institute of Technology) has found that our brain can mess with our perceptions in other ways-including changing our memories to fit a non-existent reality.

The new research, published in the journal PLOS One, is centered on two experiments that use flashes of light accompanied by beeps. The first experiment, called the "Illusory Rabbit," instructs a participant to focus on a cross in the center of a screen, then count the number of vertical bars of light they see near the bottom of the screen using their peripheral vision. The bars of light only flash for 58 milliseconds, and appear first on the left side of the screen, then the right. To make it simple, there are only two of them, and each one is paired with a short beep when they light up.

Here's the rub, though: despite there being only two bars of light, there are three beeps, including one that happens between the first and second bars lighting up.

Because the lights and sounds happen so quickly, human perception is glitched: researchers found that participants in the study tended to count three flashes instead of two, apparently reacting to the audio stimuli (the beeps) rather than the visual stimuli. Because there was no third bar of light in between the real two, researchers claim that this experiment shows how the brain "fills in the blanks" to fit patterns it observes, even retroactively changing perceptions (and memory) to fit what it believes did happen.
Read More...
No Entry

Bishop to set up exorcism ministry as he warns of the evils of reiki

Conor Kane
Irish Independent
Wed, 10 Oct 2018 17:08 UTC
Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan
Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan: ‘People involved in some new age thing have opened up a door to Satan’
A Catholic bishop has said he is establishing a "delivery ministry" of people who will attempt to rid others of the devil and warned that using reiki or other new-age healing methods could open one up to the possibility of encountering malevolent spirits.

Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan said he had received "several requests" from people to help deal with evil forces and that one priest in his diocese of Waterford and Lismore is about to start training in the practice of exorcism.

He said he was told by the brother of a reiki master that the man was "working on somebody one day when he actually says he saw a vision of Satan" and was "scared out of his wits, dropped the reiki and went back to the Church".

Comment: Reiki as a healing modality is not evil:

Read More...
Family

Study suggests humans can recognize 5,000 different faces

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:01 UTC
University of York says first evidence-based study nails down facial-recognition ability

psychologists face recognition
© Jason Reed / ReutersThe scientists asked volunteers to spend an hour recalling as many faces as they could from their private lives, covering old school friends, work colleagues, past partners and colleagues.
The next time an old friend meets your greeting with a quizzical who-are-you stare, you're right to take offence: new research suggests the average person can recognise 5,000 different faces.

Psychologists at the University of York embarked on the study after realising that for all the work scientists have done on faces, they had never nailed down, even roughly, the number of faces the average human knows. They say it is the first evidence-based estimate of this figure.

Through a series of recall and recognition tests on volunteers, the researchers discovered that the human ability to recognise faces varies enormously. The study found that people know between 1,000 and 10,000 faces of friends, family members, colleagues and celebrities, with most racking up about 5,000.

"We've studied faces for years and years and the main thing we always find is that there's a huge difference between our ability to recognise familiar versus unfamiliar faces. People are surprisingly bad at checking a real face against a photo ID, and yet we recognise friends and colleagues over a huge range of conditions," said Burton.
Read More...
People

Loneliness is a looming public health threat

Dr. Jonathan Fielding
The Hill
Tue, 09 Oct 2018 13:48 UTC
lonley
© coloringinthedark.wordpress.com
Everyone feels isolated sometimes, but with one in five Americans chronically lonely, has loneliness reached epidemic proportions? In 1988, the journal Science published a landmark study suggesting isolation was as strong a risk factor for morbidity and mortality as sedentary lifestyle, high blood pressure and smoking or obesity. Since then, loneliness has become an increasing public health concern and health officials are now taking the idea of an epidemic seriously. As the population ages, the burden of social isolation on public health will only increase.

Loneliness is one aspect of interrelated conditions such as isolation due to illness, disability or age; the social and language-based isolation of being an immigrant; depression; poverty; discrimination, etc.

This past summer, two surveys made news, marking the extent of loneliness in the U.S. and other economically developed countries. Since these and other studies are new, we can anticipate learning more about the interrelationships of factors that contribute to loneliness over time. That shouldn't stop us from addressing the problem now, but may help provide better perspective.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Attention

Recent study shows social media impairs your ability to think intelligently

Alisa Wolfson
Moneyish
Sat, 29 Sep 2018 09:15 UTC
cellphone confusion
© Shutterstock
It's not smart to overindulge in social media.

Your friends may be accidentally making you feel excluded on social media - and that can harm your ability to think intelligently, according to a recent study of 194 individuals conducted by New York's University at Buffalo and published in the journal Social Science Computer Review.

Indeed, the study, which looked at Facebook and other similar social media platforms, found that many social media posts - even when they aren't intended to - make us feel excluded. And those feelings of social exclusion can evoke "various physical and psychological consequences such as reduced complex cognitive thought," says lead author Jessica Covert, a graduate student in UB's Department of Communication.

Though the study notes that social exclusion is often unintentional, the sheer ability to remain informed of where one's friends are at any given time can be interpreted in ways that make people feel left out. University at Buffalo associate professor Michael Stefanone said, "We're using these technologies daily and they're pushing information to users about their networks, which is what the sites are designed to do, but in the end there's negative effect on people's well-being."

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Arrow Up

Hugs could buffer against life draining conflict stress


RT
Sun, 07 Oct 2018 14:03 UTC
Hugging
A simple hug may be all one needs to protect against physically draining stress levels often present after a blazing argument or individual conflict, a new study into interpersonal touch has found.

Hugs are typically associated with affection and a general fuzzy feeling of friendliness.

Meanwhile, negativity has been linked to a general decline in one's physiological and physical wellbeing, with research citing how higher rates of loss and humiliation can be a predictor of later life depression. Now science boffins have delved into the human psyche to find evidence that a warm embrace helps buffer against "concurrent negative affect."

In an effort to pin down the psychological impact of a hug, Pennsylvania's Carnegie Mellon University asked a group of men and women to document their feelings of conflict over a two-week period.

Comment: A good reminder, have you hugged someone today?

Read More...