Stanford University Conference Videos: Brain, Mind and Emergence

I stumbled across this information on the web; but what a stumble it was. In 2003, Stanford University hosted a conference called Becoming Human: Brain, Mind and Emergence. There, many influential minds converged and gave some talks over two (or three) days. These talks were videotaped and made freely available over the web.I've only gone through 2 1/2 of the talks, but as always, studies of cognition help shed some understanding on ourselves.I'm hoping that people will be interested to listen to the talks, and to discuss the relevance of some things that they say. I think we can use this thread to talk about issues that come out of the talks, and to see if it's viable to spin a whole thread (or add comments to another thread?).Becoming Human: Brain, Mind and Emergence (Stanford University 2003)
So far, I would recommend Damasio and Sapolsky's talks, but not Hurlbut's (to be fair, his is the introductory speech).Ben
Thanks!
Ben

One of the interesting things talked about by Sapolsky (31:00 ~ 36:00 in the video) is how it is uniquely human to draw positive energy from doing the logical negation. He gave 3 examples:1. Loving those who are so vile, so without remorse, that they seem almost inhuman.
2. Atheist martyrs (Vietnamese monks dying in protest)
3. ReligionI found the third one most relevant here, so I'll expand it a bit.Sapolsky's talk is largely about drawing the line between what is not uniquely human, and what is. He has two main thrusts:1. Many things are not uniquely human (empathy, theory of mind, consequential social roles), and furthermore humans use the same mechanisms as other mammals.
2. What is uniquely human is the level and degrees to which we can take these things, that other organisms simply do not.Following a discussion of delaying pleasure (due to the role of dopamine in the brain; I will talk about this one later; it's very relevant to this forum as well), Sapolsky delves into this 'inversion' principle that I mentioned above. He talks about the first two, and then follows with this analysis of religion:(summarizing)The inversion principle is at work in religion as well. And what is interesting to know is that religion and science are not complementary. In fact, even if we could scientifically confirm some aspects of religious belief, these would not be good to the religious person. The goodness in religion itself is in the inversion--it is in the faith, in the belief. In fact, scientific confirmation AGAINST religious teachings would something; that would actually strengthen the value of the belief. Faith in the face impossibility is the strongest, most rewarding faith of all. That is the nature, almost the definition of faith--believing without 'reason' or 'evidence.'I'm sure it's been discussed here, but to hear it from a self-proclaimed atheist, a very strong scientist, was a relief for me. I think he described it well, and I would urge anyobody interested in responding to listen to the excerpt before doing so. After all, I'm trying to summarize--go to the source material (5 minutes of video for goodness sake) and see for yourself.Ben

I must be the worst topic poster on this board. Let me throw another idea I found in these lectures that is relevant to this board:Summary:
Can religious belief be explained simply by the nature of dopamine receptors?
This was also discussed by Sapolsky (27:30 ~ 31:00 in the video). The argument goes something like this:- Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure (it is manipulated by drugs such as cocaine). This is well understood in the neursciences, and is not specific to humans at all.- Dopamine does not peak at the gratification point; instead, it peaks during the ANTICIPATION of the reward. (Sapolsky talks about a delay-reward task with monkeys to describe this phenomenon)- The clear extension is that, animals will want to keep the dopamine levels as high as possible. In other words, anticipation.- Smolinksy extends this to argue that, ultimately, this is where afterlife, martyrdom, etc. come from. The reward is pushed off so far into the future, thatNow, before you get down on Smolinsky... listen to the whole talk. He talks about the wonders of faith, the

Ben,Very interesting. In Buddhism and Advaita awakening is described in terms that preclude anticipation but is sometimes described as "satisfaction itself".lfen