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Showing posts with the label neuroscience

The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul

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Today's post is by Eva Jablonka (right) and Simona Ginzburg (left).  Jablonka (Tel-Aviv University) is the coauthor of Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life and the coeditor of Transformations of Lamarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology, both published by MIT Press.  Ginsburg is a neurobiologist who retired from the Open University of Israel, where she headed the MA Program in Biological Thought. Her recent work focuses on the evolution of early nervous systems and the evolutionary transitions to consciousness in the animal world. In this post they introduce their new book, The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness (MIT Press, 2019). The gap between third-person, scientific, publically shared investigations, such as the neuroscience of echolocation, and first-person subjective experiencing such as echolocation-based subjective perception, has been described...

Responsible Brains

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Today's post is by Katrina Sifferd  (pictured below). She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from King’s College London, and is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Elmhurst College. After leaving King’s, Katrina held a post-doctoral position as Rockefeller Fellow in Law and Public Policy and Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College. Before becoming a philosopher, Katrina earned a Juris Doctorate and worked as a senior research analyst on criminal justice projects for the National Institute of Justice. Many thanks to Lisa for her kind invitation to introduce our recently published book, Responsible Brains: Neuroscience, Law, and Human Culpability . Bill Hirstein , Tyler Fagan , and I , who are philosophers at Elmhurst College, researched and wrote the book with the support of a Templeton sub-grant from the Philosophy and Science of Self-Control Project  managed by Al Mele at Florida State University. Responsible Brains joins a larger discussion about the ways evidence generated ...