Cephalopods and the evolution of the mind.

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Godfrey-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Independent Experiment ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Evolutionary Paths ◽  
Behavioural Repertoire

IN thinking about the nature of the mind and its evolutionary history, cephalopods — especially octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid — have a special importance. These animals are an independent experiment in the evolution of large and complex nervous systems — in the biological machinery of the mind. They evolved this machinery on a historical lineage distant from our own. Where their minds differ from ours, they show us another way of being a sentient organism. Where we are similar, this is due to the convergence of distinct evolutionary paths. I introduced the topic just now as ‘the mind.’ This is a contentious term to use. What is it to have a mind? One option is that we are looking for something close to what humans have — something like reflective and conscious thought. This sets a high bar for having a mind. Another possible view is that whenever organisms adapt to their circumstances in real time by adjusting their behaviour, taking in information and acting in response to it, there is some degree of mentality or intelligence there. To say this sets a low bar. It is best not to set bars in either place. Roughly speaking, we are dealing with a matter of degree, though ‘degree’ is not quite the right term either. The evolution of a mind is the acquisition of a tool-kit for the control of behaviour. The tool-kit includes some kind of perception, though different animals have very different ways of taking in information from the world. It includes some form of memory and learning, means by which past experiences can be brought to bear on the present. In some cases it includes problem-solving and planning. Some tool-kits are more elaborate and expensive than others, but they can be sophisticated in different ways, with different tools present and more investment in one technology than another. One animal might have better ways of tracking the environment through its senses, while another may have simpler senses but more sophisticated learning. Different tool kits go with different ways of making a living. The ordinary term ‘mind’ is awkwardly or misleadingly applied to an animal with a very simple behavioural repertoire, but it is parochial to apply it only to humans.

scholarly journals Peace Education in India: Possibilities and Challenges

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (S1-Dec2020) ◽  
pp. 34-36
Author(s):  
Anu Chandran ◽  
P Nagaraj
Keyword(s):  
Peace Education ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The World ◽  
Education In India ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Peace And Reconciliation

Peace education is an emerging field of study that has attained full acceptance in many countries, and is on its way towards development in many other parts of the world. The world is becoming more of an unsafe place to live in. There are threats in many forms against survival. Peace has become devoid in the day to day lives of people in all spheres of society, culture, politics and economics. Therefore it is essential to impart knowledge about peace and reconciliation post conflict, as that would help build a nonviolent approach towards conflict, and encourage to develop skills and values promoting reconciliation, and nonviolence. Once the right knowledge, skills and values are transmitted, transformation begins as people understand the root cause of conflicts and explore ways to address the challenges. Peace education is both educating on the peace content as well as educating for peace. The paper discusses the objectives of peace education and how it can be implemented as an effectualacademic discourse either by integrating it within the curriculum or through extramural activities. It also looks into the challenges and possibilities of a higher learning that shapes the mind and spirit of the learners as much as their intellect.

scholarly journals Internalization: A metaphor we can live without

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 618-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kubovy ◽  
William Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Apparent Motion ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Motion Path ◽  
The World ◽  
Kinematic Geometry ◽  
Innate Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Internal Knowledge

Shepard has supposed that the mind is stocked with innate knowledge of the world and that this knowledge figures prominently in the way we see the world. According to him, this internal knowledge is the legacy of a process of internalization; a process of natural selection over the evolutionary history of the species. Shepard has developed his proposal most fully in his analysis of the relation between kinematic geometry and the shape of the motion path in apparent motion displays. We argue that Shepard has made a case for applying the principles of kinematic geometry to the perception of motion, but that he has not made the case for injecting these principles into the mind of the percipient. We offer a more modest interpretation of his important findings: that kinematic geometry may be a model of apparent motion. Inasmuch as our recommended interpretation does not lodge geometry in the mind of the percipient, the motivation of positing internalization, a process that moves kinematic geometry into the mind, is obviated. In our conclusion, we suggest that cognitive psychologists, in their embrace of internal mental universals and internalization may have been seduced by the siren call of metaphor.

scholarly journals Embodiment and the Philosophy of Mind

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 35-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Clark
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Real World ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Local Environment ◽  
Inner Model ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Scientist ◽  
Biological Problem ◽  
The Mind

Cognitive science is in some sense the science of the mind. But an increasingly influential theme, in recent years, has been the role of the physical body, and of the local environment, in promoting adaptive success. No right-minded cognitive scientist, to be sure, ever claimed that body and world were completely irrelevant to the understanding of mind. But there was, nonetheless, an unmistakeable tendency to marginalize such factors: to dwell on inner complexity whilst simplifying or ignoring the complex inner-outer interplays that characterize the bulk of basic biological problem-solving. This tendency was expressed in, for example, the development of planning algorithms that treated real-world action as merely a way of implementing solutions arrived at by pure cognition (more recent work, by contrast, allows such actions to play important computational and problem-solving roles). It also surfaced in David Marr's depiction of the task of vision as the construction of a detailed threedimensional image of the visual scene. For possession of such a rich inner model effectively allows the system to ‘throw away’ the world and to focus subsequent computational activity on the inner model alone.

scholarly journals HEALTH MEET - MUSIC

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1SE) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Monisha Veeravani
Keyword(s):  
Music Therapy ◽  
Human Life ◽  
High Stress ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
Sound Waves ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Music gives people a deeper understanding on the level of sensation and motivates them to become better and this element can change the world when it is wider than our own. It is music that connects the beginning to the end and becomes the literature of our heart. Fills the soul with affection, takes the mind from deep darkness to eternal heights. Music has the status of a® God, so purity has special importance in this genre. Music is the way to cultivate the mind through the seven pure and five vocal cords. Therefore, it can be said that music is necessary to keep the body and mind healthy, cheerful. This keeps the body, mind and brain healthy, and concentrates. Stress is also removed from music. It has been proved by various scientific experiments that both music practice and yoga practice develop strength in human life and many diseases can be treated. Music therapy i.e. music therapy nowadays plays an important role in relieving many health problems. Is playing If you live under high stress or are suffering from insomnia problem, then you can take help of this therapy. Each sound produces specific waves. These sound waves directly affect our brain. Everything in existence is affected by these waves. If a music is composed with the right words and the appropriate ragas, it will work on our brain in the same way that the software works inside a computer. Since our entire body is under the control of the brain, we can get the right result by having the expected effect on the brain through remedial music. संगीत लोगों को संवेदना के स्तर पर एक गहरी समझ देकर उन्हें बेहतर बनने की दिशा में प्रेरित करता है और यही तत्व जब निज से व्यापक होता है तो दुनिया भी बदल सकती है. ये संगीत ही है जो आदि को अंत से जोडकर हमारे हृदय का साहित्य बन जाता है। आत्मा को स्नेह से भर देता है मन को गहन अन्धकार से लेकर अनन्त ऊंचाइयों तक ले जाता है । संगीत क® ईश्वर का दर्जा प्राप्त है, इसीलिए इस विधा में शुध्दता का विशेष महत्व है। सात षुघ्द अ©र पांच क®मल स्वर®ं के माध्यम से मन क® साधने का उपाय है संगीत। अतः कहा जा सकता है कि शरीर तथा मन क® स्वस्थ््ा, प्रफुल्लित रखने के लिए संगीत आवश््यक है। इससे शरीर, मन, मस्तिष्क स्वस्थ््ा रहता है, एकाग्र रहता है। संगीत से तनाव भी दूर ह®ता है। विभिन्न वैज्ञानिक प्रयोगों द्वारा यह सिद्ध हो चुका है कि संगीत साधना व योग साधना दोनों से मनुष्य के जीवन में शक्ति का विकास होता है और अनेक बीमारियों का उपचार किया जा सकता है म्यूजिक थेरेपी यानी संगीत चिकित्सा आजकल अनेक स्वास्थ्य समस्याओं से राहत दिलाने में अहम भूमिका निभा रही है। आप अगर ज्यादा तनाव में रहते हैं या अनिद्रा की समस्या से पीडित हैं तो इस चिकित्सा की सहायता ले सकते हैं । हर ध्वनि से विशिष्ट तरंगें पैदा होती हैं। ये ध्वनि तरंगें सीधे हमारे मस्तिष्क को प्रभावित करती हैं। इन्हीं तरंगों से अस्तित्व में मौजूद हर चीज प्रभावित होती है। अगर कोई संगीत सही शब्दों और उपयुक्त रागों के साथ तैयार किया जाए तो वह हमारे मस्तिष्क पर उसी तरह काम करेगा जैसे किसी ’कम्प्यूटर’ के अंदर ’साफ्टवेयर’ काम करता है। चूंकि हमारा पूरा शरीर मस्तिष्क के नियंत्रण में होता है, इसलिए हम मस्तिष्क पर उपचारी संगीत के माध्यम से अपेक्षित प्रभाव डालकर सही परिणाम प्राप्त कर सकते हैं।

CO-OPERATIVE LEARNING : AN EFFICIENT TECHNIQUE TO CONVERT STUDENTS INTO ACTIVE LEARNERS IN CLASSROOMS

2016 ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Madhu Gupta ◽  
Pooja Pasrija
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Mental Skills ◽  
Participatory Learning ◽  
The World ◽  
Pupil Achievement ◽  
The Mind

This paper discusses the need of co-operative learning in Indian classrooms in order to promote active participation of all students in the classroom. In order to prepare the students for life and higher education, the gaining and improvement of important mental skills such as the effective usage of the mind, critical thinking, and problem solving are necessary so that they can face the challenges of life actively. In recent years, teaching has been confronted by demands for higher standards and better pupil achievement in several parts of the world. Researchers have suggested a shift from teacher-centred instruction towards more active participatory learning methods as one way to improve the quality of the learning process. The search on co-operative learning is overwhelmingly positive, and the co-operative approaches are appropriate for all curriculum areas. The present paper reflects that co-operative learning makes teaching–learning more satisfying, momentous, enjoyable and effective.

Mobilizing World

2010 ◽  
pp. 152-180
Author(s):  
Gonca Telli Yamamoto
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Telephone ◽  
Evolutionary Stage ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mobile Environment ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Voice Communication ◽  
The World ◽  
Point To Point ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind

The human being benefits from his or her ability to communicate and turn knowledge into action in order to sustain its ability to survive on this planet, the earth. As a result of the fast life conditions imposed on humanity, point-to-point relationships have begun to be established in a faster way and the idea to use technology to acquire and share knowledge has become widespread. Doing the right thing leads to improving and advancing the standard of life. The products of the mind can now be produced easier than ever by scope of technology. Intercommunication between people begins with talking; humans first talk and then express his or her emotions and opinions. Mobile telephone is the name of the latest technology which creates a worldwide area to talk in. One can easily notice how much the sector and its applications have developed only by looking at the first mobile phone which was launched in the world. Motorola Dyna TAC 8000x is one of these telephones. Its dimensions are 13x1.75x3.5. This is a brick-size device and you had to pay US $3,995 to own it in 1983. In return, what you would get was just a telephone which provides just voice communication and which could be used while moving. This affected concurrently users, families, types of entertainment even health issues and payments. The positive and negative effects have appeared in the evolutionary stage. Like the virtual environment (Han, Kim & Lee, 2005), the mobile environment which is used in order to cover customers’ needs for communication, information and entertainment is related to marketing with its different spirals and own sanctions. In this chapter we would like to give short notices for future researchers about the present conditions of major important topics and some new trends of these subjects.

Coleridge and the Luminous Gloom: An Analysis of the “Symbolical Language” in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

PMLA ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliott B. Gose
Keyword(s):  
Time And Space ◽  
Romantic Poetry ◽  
The World ◽  
Lyrical Ballads ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Window Pane ◽  
As If

Speaking of the “plan of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’” in Chapter 14 of his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge pointed out that while Wordsworth was to deal with “the wonders of the world before us,” he himself was to try to connect the human truth of “our inward nature” with the “shadows of imagination.” The fruitfulness of this connection is evidenced by “The Ancient Mariner”; its aesthetic basis was analyzed by Coleridge at a later date: “The romantic poetry,” he decided, appeals “to the imagination rather than to the senses and to the reason as contemplating our inward nature, the working of the passions in their most retired recesses.” By “exciting our internal emotions,” the poet “acquires the right and privilege of using time and space as they exist in the imagination, obedient only to the laws which the imagination acts by.” Philosophically, Coleridge's transcendentalism is obviously responsible for this assertion of the superiority of the mind over nature; he had remarked its psychological basis as early as 1805:In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language, for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling as if that new phenomenon were the dim awakening of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature. (Anima Poetae, p. 136).

scholarly journals Learning as program induction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Bramley ◽  
Eric Schulz ◽  
Fei Xu ◽  
josh tenenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Systems ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Learning Contexts ◽  
The World ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Learning Through Play ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Important Notion ◽  
Shed Light

The notion that the mind approximates rational (Bayesian) inference has had a strong influence on thinking in psychology since the 1950s. In constrained scenarios, typical of psychology experiments, people often behave in ways that approximate the dictates of probability theory. However, natural learning contexts are typically much more open-ended --- there are often no clear limits on what is possible, and initial proposals often prove inadequate. This means that coming up with the right hypotheses and theories in the first place is often much harder than ruling among them. How do people, and how can machines, expand their hypothesis spaces to generate wholly new ideas, plans and solutions?Recent work has begun to shed light on this problem via the idea that many aspects of learning can be better understood through the mathematics of program induction.People are demonstrably able to compose hypotheses from parts and incrementally grow and adapt their models of the world. A number of recent studies has formalized these abilities as program induction, using algorithms that mix stochastic recombination of primitives with memoization and compression to explain data, ask informative questions [8], and support one- and few-shot-inferences. Program induction is also proving to be an important notion for understanding development and learning through play and the formation of geometric understanding about the physical world.The aim of this workshop is thus to bring together scientists who have a joint interest in how intelligent systems (humans or machines) can learn rich representations and action plans (expressable as programs) though observing and interacting with the world.

Getting Over Yourself

2020 ◽  
pp. 276-282
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right

This concluding chapter presents some recommendations and advice regarding Buddhism. For Dogen, a famous Japanese Buddhist philosopher, anything the individual does can be a form of Buddhist practice as long as they do it with the right mindset. This counters a temptation to think of practice as something formal, something that happens only at a meditation center or a temple. But ideally, Buddhist practice is not limited in these sacred domains; it is everything that individual does in their life. This can sound overwhelming, but Dogen's insight is that practice is not something the individual does in order to reach enlightenment; it is enlightenment. Ultimately, the heart of Buddhism is recalibrating how the individual relates to themself and to the world. It is about confronting unpleasant realities directly, with an attitude of problem solving.

The Ugly Psyche: Arendt and the Right to Opacity

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-198
Author(s):  
Anne O’Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
Specific Question ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Sensus Communis ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Arendt was famously dismissive of the work of psychologists, claiming that they did nothing more than reveal the pervasive ugliness and monotony of the psyche. If we want to know who people are, she argued, we should observe what they do and say rather than delving into the turmoil of their inner lives; if we want to understand humanity, we would be better off reading Oedipus Rex than hearing about someone’s Oedipus complex. The rejection has a certain coherence in the context of her understanding of public life as the realm of appearance and opinion, but examining it through the specific question of ugliness complicates that understanding. While beauty invites us to contemplate the world and admire it, ugliness repels our attention and sows the seed of a worry that the world might not want to be known. Working with Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Life of the Mind: Thinking, the Kant lectures and a striking Denktagebuch entry in which she reacts with revulsion to Matisse’s Heads of Jeannette, I argue that Arendt’s response to the ugly psyche requires a re-examination of the sensus communis. If the psyche does not want to be known, and if not all points of view are open to imaginative occupation, the ideal and practice of enlarged mentality must reckon with a right to opacity.

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