Graphic Artifacts from Down Under Graphic Artifacts from Down Under Michael Fitzjames was born in Melbourne in 1948 and studied at the Tasmania School of Art. Since 1980, he has exhibited his graphic work and paintings in Melbourne, Sydney, and Berlin. He has also worked for newspapers part time: in London 1979–80, and with the Fairfax Media Group in Sydney since then (including and ). I asked Michael to describe his methods and influences: From rough pencil drafts I refine an image that will "take a silhouette" or be capable of working in a positive-negative way and be bold on the page. I then tend to make a fairly finished outline drawing over the roughs...I erase anything extraneous and ultimately have my finished shapes that can be realised in black and white. tracing onto smooth watercolour paper on a lightbox and then draw an ink line around the areas to be black. I like to have an artifact, a final image which has evolved a little at each stage of the process.
What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to be a bat? Thomas Nagel Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from modern science. Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. We may call this the subjective character of experience. While an account of the physical basis of mind must explain many things, this appears to be the most difficult. Let me first try to state the issue somewhat more fully than by referring to the relation between the subjective and the objective, or between the pour-soi and the en-soi. I assume we all believe that bats have experience. I have said that the essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat. Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. So if extrapolation from our own case is involved in the idea of what it is like to be a bat, the extrapolation must be incompletable.
Bilingualism Will Supercharge Your Baby’s Brain | Think Tank What’s the Big Idea? Pop quiz! Bilingualism is: a. b. c. d. e. Yep, it’s ‘e.’ According to Princeton Neuroscientist Sam Wang, co-author with Sandra Aamodt of Welcome to Your Child’s Brain, the benefits of bilingualism go far beyond the ability to order convincingly at Maxim’s in Paris, or to read Dostoevsky in the original. Cognitive science has demonstrated that all learning is, to a great extent, a process of unlearning – of redefining the schema we use to mentally represent and categorize the world. Bilingual kids are also better, says Wang, at “theory of mind” – the ability to imagine what others are thinking and feeling. Effortful self-control, the wide-ranging benefits of which are addressed in two previous posts on Willpower and Self-Discipline, is also strengthened by early bilingualism. What’s the Significance? The significance is enormous. There’s a socio-evolutionary angle here, too. Or maybe not.
The Bayeux Tapestry Animated We had to do it. We had to bring back a wonderful little animation of The Bayeux Tapestry -- you know, the famous embroidery that offers a pictorial interpretation of the Norman Conquest of England (1066) and the events leading up to this pivotal moment in medieval history. Currently residing in France, the tapestry measures 20 inches by 230 feet, and you can now see an animated version of the story it narrates. The clip above starts roughly halfway through the historical narrative, with the appearance of Halley's Comet, and it concludes with the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The video created by David Newton began as a student project at Goldsmiths College. P.S.
Embodied cognition and body psychotherapy: The construction of new therapeutic environments | Röhricht | Sensoria: A Journal of Mind, Brain & Culture Embodied cognition and body psychotherapy: The construction of new therapeutic environments Frank Röhricht, Shaun Gallagher, Ulfried Geuter, Daniel D. Hutto Abstract New approaches in the philosophy of mind defend the idea that basic forms of cognition and human intersubjectivity are deeply and inextricably embodied and embedded. Keywords embodiment; enactivism; embodied cognition; body psychotherapy; therapeutic environment; philosophy; intersubjectivity Human Brain: Extraordinary 48-Dancer Trailer for TEDxAmsterdam by Maria Popova Human bodies + human brains = human nature. This seems to be the year of the creative TEDx trailer. Now, from my friends at TEDxAmsterdam comes The Human Brain — a mesmerizing “trailer” for this month’s event, themed Human Nature, featuring 48 dancers from The Dutch National Ballet and an utterly smile-inducing original song titled “Turn the World Around” by Pigeon Horse Sex Tennis with Rutger Hauer, the British School, and children of Amsterdam. The “trailer” is actually the dress rehearsal for the first “human brain” in a series of three to be performed live at TEDxAmsterdam on November 25th. This piece of visual poetry — which seems to be the running theme here this week — comes from creative agency We Are Pi and production outfit 328 Stories. Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. Share on Tumblr
Architecture Without Architects: What Ancient Structures Reveal About Collaborative Design by Maria Popova From Rome’s theater districts to China’s underground cities, or what pleasure has to do with utility. The mythology of the sole genius underpins most contemporary creative disciplines, but it is particularly pronounced in architecture, where the image of the visionary diva-architect endures as the gold standard of the discipline’s success. In 1964, Moravian-born American writer, architect, designer, collector, educator, designer, and social historian Bernard Rudofsky examined a whole other side of architecture in Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture — a fascinating lens on “primitive” and communal architecture, exploring both its functional value and its artistic richness, with a focus on indigenous tribal structures and ancient dwellings. I believe that sensory pleasure should take precedence over intellectual pleasure in art and architecture.” ~ Bernard Rudofsky Underground city near Tungkwan (China) Marrakech (Morocco)
Consciousness as a Self-Organizing Process Allan Combs University of North Carolina at Asheville Saybrook Graduate School sourceintegralis.org Sally Goerner Triangle Center for the Study of Complex Systems 374 Wesley Court, Chapel Hill, NC 27515 Abstract The evolution of consciousness is seen in the context of energy driven evolution in general, where energy and information are understood as two sides of the same coin. From this perspective consciousness is viewed as an ecological system in which streams of cognitive, perceptual, and emotional information form a rich complex of interactions, analogous to the interactive metabolism of a living cell. Key Words autopoiesis, chaos, consciousness, energy, evolution, information, states, system 1. Old ideas of information as "neg-entropy" were steeped in the Mechanistic Age thermodynamic notion that the universe is losing organized energy and running down directly toward disorder. Energy driven evolution has been conceptualized as represented at several levels of increasing complexity.
You Are Not So Smart: A Field Guide to the Psychology of Our Stupidity by Maria Popova The science of why 600 Facebook “friends” are an illusion, or why brand loyalty is a product of the ego. We spend most of our lives going around believing we are rational, logical beings who make carefully weighted decisions based on objective facts in stable circumstances. Of course, as both a growing body of research and our own retrospective experience demonstrate, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The original trailer for the book deals with something the psychology of which we’ve previously explored — procrastination: And this excellent alternative trailer is a straight shot to our favorite brilliant book trailers: Despite his second-person directive narrative, McRaney manages to keep his tone from being preachy or patronizing, instead weaving an implicit “we” into his “you” to encompass all our shared human fallibility. You Are Not So Smart is positively one of the smartest books to come by this year — no illusion there. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr
Incognito: David Eagleman Unravels the Secret Lives of the Brain by Maria Popova What seeing rainbows has to do with artificial intelligence and the biology of infidelity. Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by neuroscientist David Eagleman is one of my favorite books of the past few years. So, as a proper neuro-nut, it’s no surprise I was thrilled for this week’s release of his latest gem, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain — a fascinating, dynamic, faceted look under the hood of the conscious mind to reveal the complex machinery of our subconscious. The three-pound organ in your skull — with its pink consistency of Jell-o — is an alien kind of computational material. Sample some of Eagleman’s fascinating areas of study with this excellent talk from TEDxAlamo: Equal parts entertaining and illuminating, the case studies, examples and insights in Incognito are more than mere talking points to impressed at the next dinner party, poised instead to radically shift your understanding of the world, other people, and your own mind. Share on Tumblr
Mood Map Emotions create subjective feelings that are often evaluated as “feeling good” or “feeling bad”. Emotions also tend to increase or decrease our arousal level, which we often describe as increasing or lowering our energy level. The map shown here places each of the major emotions roughly where they are often experienced in these two dimensions. The placement of each emotion on this map is only approximate and very subjective. Each emotion can vary greatly in intensity. For example anger can range from mild irritation to intense rage. Two other, more subtle dimensions also differentiate among emotions. These charts are based on the following data obtained from Averill, J.R. (1975) “A semantic atlas of emotional concepts”, JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA, Vol. 5, No. 330, pp.1-64 (Ms No. 1103). The “activation” dimension is labeled High/Low energy and the “evaluation” dimension is labeled “Feel good/Feel bad” on the upper chart.
Internal Time: The Science of Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired by Maria Popova Debunking the social stigma around late risers, or what Einstein has to do with teens’ risk for smoking. “Six hours’ sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool,” Napoleon famously prescribed. (He would have scoffed at Einstein, then, who was known to require ten hours of sleep for optimal performance.) In fact, each of us possesses a different chronotype — an internal timing type best defined by your midpoint of sleep, or midsleep, which you can calculate by dividing your average sleep duration by two and adding the resulting number to your average bedtime on free days, meaning days when your sleep and waking times are not dictated by the demands of your work or school schedule. The distribution of midsleep in Central Europe. This myth that early risers are good people and that late risers are lazy has its reasons and merits in rural societies but becomes questionable in a modern 24/7 society. The scissors of sleep. Chronotypes vary with age: Share on Tumblr