“The adult world has so much less to offer than adolescence does.” ––Tampa, by Alissa Nutting, pg. 140 “If we are merely slaves to our groupish tendencies and our inbuilt decision-making machinery, then what of free will, moral responsibility, and intellectual growth? But take heart, fellow travelers: Ironically, the very social processes that constrain […]
“I’d be the sexual yardstick for his whole life: Jack would spend the rest of his days trying but failing to relive the experience of being given everything at a time when he knew nothing. Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he’d have afterward would have to pass through the gate of my […]
“The evolution of the mammalian brain involves tight links between the reward (positive and negative) system and the prefrontal cortex. These links support controlled behavior, behavior that is appropriate to the life-maintaining business of the animal in its physical and social world. Developing patterns of self-control during maturation is critical to the acquisition of skills […]
“Probably we should abandon the notion that free will entails actions originating with conscious thought. Even the fruit fly data cited above suggest that advanced conscious thought is not the place where actions originate. The role of consciousness is to evaluate, elaborate, refine, and in other ways alter, rather than start, the causal sequence that […]
“I think of free will as the capacity for free action. Free action means that the person could do different things in the same situation. In essence, the question of whether someone acted freely is a question of whether the person could have done something differently. This is highly relevant to moral judgment and moral […]
“‘Basically, kid, what this all means is that life is a lot tougher than it used to be, in the Good Old Days, back before you were born. Things used to be awesome, but now they’re kinda terrifying. To be honest, the future doesn’t look too bright. You were born at a pretty crappy time […]
“The cry of this bird was audible only to certain special people, who were guided by it toward inescapable ruin. The will of human beings meant nothing, then, as the veterinarian always seemed to feel. People were no more than dolls set on tabletops, the springs in their backs wound up tight, dolls set to […]
“It’s like when you put instant rice pudding mix in a bowl in the microwave and push the button, and you take the cover off when it rings, and there you’ve got rice pudding. I mean, what happens in between the time when you push the switch and when the microwave rings? You can’t tell […]
“Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall. There were tigers in one section, but no tigers in another. Maybe it was as simple as that. And […]
“Mental states both emerge from (bottom-up) and constrain (top-down) neural activity. With this formulation, one of the traditional ideas in neuroscience––that brain activity precedes conscious thought and that brain-generated beliefs do not constrain brain activity––is also challenged. The concept of ‘bidirectional causation’ underscores the fact that in order to understand the nature of brain-enabled conscious […]