I shudder a bit at the results of the study discussed in Breaking Rules Makes You Seem Powerful. We learn: What happens when people interact with a rule breaker? Van Kleef and colleagues had people come to the lab, and interact with a rule follower and a rule breaker. The rule follower was polite and … [Read more…]
[In this essay, I’m suggesting a speculative framework and not any cures for these serious disorders of the human mind and soul. At the same time, this framework — if appropriate — would guide researchers and clinicians in developing palliatives or cures. Mostly, I’m pursuing my goal of understanding the human mind as the immaterial … [Read more…]
This is a very important line of thought and research which underlies this short article: The Ties That Bind: Grandparents and Their Grandchildren. Knowing that research in traditional societies in the undeveloped world had shown that children’s health and longevity were improved greatly when they were under the care or supplemental care of grandparents — … [Read more…]
I’ve recently reread Kenneth Minogue’s The Liberal Mind and might be publishing some articles over the next few weeks on thoughts that book raised. For now, I’ve got to address the question in the title, “What is politics?” from the viewpoint of my effort to enrich and expand our understanding of the Body of Christ … [Read more…]
I’m so confused. Not long ago, I quickly read an article about a study which cast doubt upon the idea that we have grammatical structures, as conjectured by Noam Chomsky, built into our brains. Didn’t pay much attention, but I think the news article might have been about this study — Evolved structure of language … [Read more…]
In Brain Performs Near Optimal Visual Search, we read of some interesting research on the power of visual search techniques used by human beings: In the wild, mammals survive because they can see and evade predators lurking in the shadowy bushes. … This ability to recognize target objects surrounded by distracters is one of the … [Read more…]
Are we determined by our genes or by our environments? Yes. But, it’s not so simple as that. Those genes are us and we are part of those environments which are hardly independent of human technology — culture in general — these days. But the complications are still more than that. We are what’s shaped … [Read more…]
This article, How Do Neurons in the Retina Encode What We ‘See’?, points to the great effort our nervous system puts into the effort to make sense of perceptual input. One surprise is that the eyes don’t pick up some of the more complex patterns which change over time even though complex spatial patterns, say, … [Read more…]
Flannery O’Connor was a devout Catholic Christian who no mercy on those who preached what she once labeled “Pious Crap.” Sometimes, that might even mean poking fun at the ways in which a truth is held or rejected. One truth she clearly held is: The body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. She wrote … [Read more…]