Dilemma of speech production – Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”
“How words do things with us?” is the title of chapter eight. It starts with the idea of how the virtual machines inside us are organised and how they could have a "virtual captain" of the crew, but not elevate the captain to have dictatorial power. Dennett starts...
Evolution of consciousness – Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”
Dennett begins his discussion of the evolution of consciousness by introducing the Baldwin Effect, which explains the impact of learned behaviour on evolution. This adaptation hastens evolution for an organism, giving it an advantage over hard-wired cousins of the...
Review of Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion”.
The first thing that could be said about the book is it is one of the most important books written about moral psychology. Jonathan Haidt is the author; he is a social psychologist and one of the leaders of moral psychology. Haidt presents the idea that he mainly...
Modelling History as a Dynamical System Chaos and Self-Similarity
By: Rashid Alawadhi Contributor: Omar Meriwani (عربي) ‘History repeats itself’, a phrase we so often hear and recognize to be self-evident. After all, history is brimming with examples of historical recurrence. Empires rose and fell, wars erupted, cultural revolutions...
Stefano Bigliardi: New Religious Movements, Islam and science, and other topics
Who is Stefano Bigliardi? This is a new episode of Real Sciences podcast and in this episode we are welcoming professor Stefano Bigliardi. He is a professor of philosophy in Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. He is interested in research about Islam and...
Language and the brain – Language and the Mind
Can we now say that no single part of the brain that is specific for language? What are the main parts, and what are the other functions that they serve? This vision is, of course, adopted by Elizabeth Bates, which you mentioned multiple times. This will help someone...
Language as an emotionally safe environment – Language and the Mind
The experiment that you mentioned about the Turks and the English speakers was very interesting. The native English speakers acted differently to emotionally loaded words than Turks who learned English later in life. Can we run away from a time or a place that we...
Rhymes and poems in native language – Language and the Mind
I have a question from Issam Munir, a resident doctor and a neurologist in Baghdad, Iraq: “When does a human start getting indulged rhymes and poems? And what is the neurodevelopment that happens in the brain for that? And why is it difficult for someone to enjoy...
Cognitive Control and Bilingualism – Language and the Mind
What exactly is cognitive control, and what advantages does it offer? How does language, particularly multilingualism, enhance cognitive control? I'll return to this language network that I just described. You don't need to appreciate the complexities of the network,...
Language and Genes – Language and the Mind
You mentioned genes sometimes and usually in the literature in neuroscience and psychology we read about some genes that have some effects on our behavior. Sometimes they couldn't cause diseases, sometimes they can. We can inherit some traits, but how easily we can...