The spectacular Ramachandran

[Michael Hjerth]

One of my absolute favorite brain scientists in a fantastic lecture. Don't miss it...

[Paolo Terni]

TED talks are so cool...
check out also Dennett and Pinker!!
Paolo

[Michael Hjerth]

Dennett and Pinker, yes I've seen them too. Also heroes of mine. I just joined the Brights movement, with Dennett, Pinker, and Dawkings as prominent members.

[Mark McKergow]

Ramachandran is a really top-notch speaker, isn't he? Jenny and I saw him at the Tucson Science of Consciousness conference in 1996, and he was excellent there too.

We just had the pleasure of the Cheltenham Science Festival at the weekend - went to two presentations involving Stephen Pinker, one about his new book in conversation with AC Grayling, the other a discussion about IQ and where it currently sits entitled 'What makes a brilliant mind'.

There were other talks too, including one from brain scientist Shitij Kapoor where he showed comparative results between brains from schizophrenic patients _while they were hallucinating voices_ and 'normal' people. The schizophrenics showed activation in the language areas of the brain, where the others did not. This was interesting, but I was not entirely sure what to make of it - they way they are hearing voices, and their appear to act as if they were hearing voices. But what if this had not been the case - would they have been lying? ;-) He also used the words brain and mind interchangeably, which was perturbing.

[Michael Hjerth]

I love Pinker, he positions himself radically center in an inspiring way. Perfectly reasonable. I just read "the blank state", which make mince-meat of radical social constructionists, radical behaviourists, and people-are-naturally-good people at the same time. "The stuff of thought" is also a good book. Some very interesting observations about verb use, a kind of moderate Chomsky. Several really interesting chapters on things like swear words.

Brain and mind: It is quite easy, to slip between languages, it is the same with systems thinkers.

Michael

[Anton Stellamans]

Hi Michael,

I'm unfamiliar with his work. Which of Pinker's books would you recommend?

Anton

[Michael Hjerth]

Pinker is a cognitive linguist, but also a towering intelectuall in the same way as Dawkins and Dennett. He is also a fabulous writer. I loved "the Blank Slate" since it is such a clear argument for the fact that there is a human nature, and travels thin, but perfectly reasonable line between nature and nurture.

The stuff of thought, is also a good book. But here the focus is Pinkers home turf, cognitive semantics. The general idea is that the structure of language allows us to peek into some of the functioning of the human mind. Interestingly, it seems that Kant was onto something. The way verbs are constructed seems to indicate that some sort of ideas of causation, etc are inbuild into our cognitive function.

Another really intersting article by Pinker is about the dramtic decrease of violence since the beginnings of recorded history. Human beings are not becoming more violent, which is the impression you get from the media. We are getting less violent, day by day. This becomes clear if you look at statistics. I'll post the article and some video in another thread.

[Agneta Castenberg]

Thank´s for sharing Ramachandran great to listen to. What a nice place you are living at Mark and Jenny I can imagine you like it.
Agneta