'The Rainbow Bridge' By Roger Griffin

'The Rainbow Bridge' By Roger Griffin from Wiley-Blackwell Compass on Vimeo.

'What is the Human Mind Designed for?"

'What is the Human Mind Designed for?' By Roy F. Baumeister from Wiley-Blackwell Compass on Vimeo.

Patricia Churchland - Morality and the Mammalian Brain

EdinburghUniversity

Self-caring neural circuitry embodies self-preservation values, and these are values in the most elemental sense. Whence caring for others?

Social problem-solving, including policy-making, is probably an instance of problem-solving more generally, and draws upon the capacity, prodigious in humans, to envision consequences of a planned action. In humans, it also draws upon the capacity for improving upon current practices and technologies.

Unlike other mammals, humans have developed highly complex language, and highly complex cultures. This means that our sociality, and consequently ours systems of ethical values, have become correspondingly complex.

Professor Patricia Smith Churchland is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute.

Her current work focuses on morality and the social brain. She has been President of the American Philosophical Association and the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and won a MacArthur Prize in 1991 and the Rossi Prize in 2008.

How to recognise an addiction - Dr Iain McGilchrist Priory Group

00159_Priory_addiction_Dr.McGilchrist  Carregado por broadbandtvchannel

The next programme in the Priory Healthcare News series looking at the subject of addictions and how to recognise when a habit becomes an addiction and requires specialist intervention.

“Filmed at The Priory Hospital Hayes Grove, a 45-bed acute psychiatric hospital offering a wide range of inpatient, outpatient, day patient and therapy services we hear from consultant psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist.”

The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

theRSAorg

Renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how the 'divided brain' has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society.

http://iainmcgilchrist.com/brief_description.asp

This book argues that the division of the brain into two hemispheres is essential to human existence, making possible incompatible versions of the world, with quite different priorities and values.

Most scientists long ago abandoned the attempt to understand why nature has so carefully segregated the hemispheres, or how to make coherent the large, and expanding, body of evidence about their differences. In fact to talk about the topic is to invite dismissal. Yet no one who knows anything about the area would dispute for an instant that there are significant differences: it's just that no-one seems to know why. And we now know that every type of function - including reason, emotion, language and imagery - is subserved not by one hemisphere alone, but by both.

This book argues that the differences lie not, as has been supposed, in the 'what' - which skills each hemisphere possesses - but in the 'how', the way in which each uses them, and to what end. But, like the brain itself, the relationship between the hemispheres is not symmetrical. The left hemisphere, though unaware of its dependence, could be thought of as an 'emissary' of the right hemisphere, valuable for taking on a role that the right hemisphere - the 'Master' - cannot itself afford to undertake. However it turns out that the emissary has his own will, and secretly believes himself to be superior to the Master. And he has the means to betray him. What he doesn't realize is that in doing so he will also betray himself.

The book begins by looking at the structure and function of the brain, and at the differences between the hemispheres, not only in attention and flexibility, but in attitudes to the implicit, the unique, and the personal, as well as the body, time, depth, music, metaphor, empathy, morality, certainty and the self. It suggests that the drive to language was not principally to do with communication or thought, but manipulation, the main aim of the left hemisphere, which manipulates the right hand. It shows the hemispheres as no mere machines with functions, but underwriting whole, self-consistent, versions of the world. Through an examination of Western philosophy, art and literature, it reveals the uneasy relationship of the hemispheres being played out in the history of ideas, from ancient times until the present. It ends by suggesting that we may be about to witness the final triumph of the left hemisphere – at the expense of us all.
Some responses to The Master and his Emissary

Money as Credit

publicbanking

What is the origin of money? This video, written by Ellen Brown and narrated/produced by Bob Bows, is a exploration of money as credit, how history shows us we've moved from money as a unit of account to money as a unit of value.

Activist Naomi Klein on her book "The Shock Doctrine"

AllanGregg

Nine-eleven. the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina. According to Naomi Klein, these and other crises have been exploited by neo-conservatives to impose radical free-market policies on unwitting citizens. Klein is a journalist, filmmaker and activist, known for her bestseller No Logo. Her provocative new book is called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.