Brain-Based Evaluating
Brain-Based Evaluating
As we saw in Module 1, it's important to acknowledge that when we refer to cognitive activities such as thinking, feeling, imagining, considering, etc., we are referring to neurological behavior that has a biological basis. Therefore if we want to conscientiously improve our language behaviors, we need to understand something about how our brains work — at least according to the current brain science.
On this page we have five short video clips about the brain that relate to our evaluating. (Unfortunately, we don't have closed captioning available on these clips.) All of these come from episodes of the Charlie Rose Show Links to an external site..
1. Overview of the cortex (5:01)
From the Charlie Rose Brain Series, Anthony Movshon provides a functional overview of the cerebral cortex and describes the four lobes that comprise the cortex.
CRose-Cortex.mp4 Download CRose-Cortex.mp4
2. The brain as a "piece of meat" (3:17)
Also from the Charlie Rose Brain Series, the panel discusses how the brain is not hard-wired like a computer, and also mentions how dependent we are on our genetics and previous life experiences.
CRose-MeatNotComputer.mp4 Download CRose-MeatNotComputer.mp4
3. Paul Allen on the brain's complexity (1:45)
Along with Bill Gates, Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft. He now owns the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trailblazers National Basketball Association franchise. More importantly for our purposes, he has created the Allen Institute for Brain Science Links to an external site.. (Christof Koch from the Module 1 afterimage demonstration is the Institute's Chief Scientific Officer.) Two weeks ago Allen sat down with Charlie Rose to talk primarily about the Super Bowl, but he also discussed his Institute and related this comparison of the brain to a computer.
CR-paulAllenshort.mp4 Download CR-paulAllenshort.mp4
4. Eric Kandel on the role of the "beholder" (2:59)
During an interview to promote his 2012 book, The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, Eric Kandel discussed his approach to studying the role of the beholder's response to art — specifically, portraiture.
cr-kandel-beholder.mp4 Download cr-kandel-beholder.mp4
5. Integration of cortex and amygdala (5:44)
Walter Mischel (of the Marshmallow Experiment in Module 1) and Daniel Kahneman discuss their two schemes for characterizing the integration of the cortex and the amygdala. Mischel uses the metaphor of hot and cool systems to compare the two, while Kahneman refers to fast and slow.
Note how similar their descriptions are to what Korzybski, in 1941, observed about the interaction of the cortex and what was then referred to as the thalamus.
If we orient ourselves predominantly by intension or verbal definitions, our orientations depend mostly on the cortical region. If we orient ourselves by extension or facts, this type of orientation by necessity follows the natural order of evaluation, and involves thalamic factors, introducing automatically cortically delayed reactions . In other words, orientations by intension tend to train our nervous systems in a split between the functions of the cortical and thalamic regions; orientations by extension involve the integration of cortico-thalamic functions.
Orientations by extension induce an automatic delay of reactions, which automatically stimulates the cortical region and regulates and protects the reactions of the usually over-stimulated thalamic region .
What was said here is elementary from the point of view of neurology. The difficulty is that this little bit of neurological knowledge is not applied in practice. Neurologists, psychiatrists, etc., have treated these problems in an 'abstract', 'academic', detached way only, somehow, entirely unaware that living human reactions depend on the working of the human nervous system, from which dependence there is no escape. No wonder 'philosophers', 'logicians', mathematicians, etc ., disregard the working of their nervous systems if even neurologists and psychiatrists still orient themselves by verbal fictions in the 'abstract'.