Cyborg Buddha Project
Cyborg Buddha Blog
Mindfulness meditation, one type of meditation technique, has been shown to enhance emotional awareness and psychological flexibility as well as induce well-being and emotional balance. Scientists have also begun to examine how meditation may influence brain functions. This talk will examine the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on the brain systems in which psychological functions such as attention, emotional reactivity, emotion regulation, and self-view are instantiated. We will also discuss how different forms of meditation practices are being studied using neuroscientific technologies and are being integrated into clinical practice to address symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress.
Philippe is a research scientist and heads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience group in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. He spent 6 years in India and Nepal studying various languages, Buddhist philosophy and debate at Namgyal Monastery and the Dialectic Monastic Institute, and serving as an interpreter for various Tibetan Buddhist lamas. He then returned to the U.S. to complete a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University. His NIH-funded clinical research focuses on (a) functional neuroimaging investigations of cognitive-affective mechanisms in adults with anxiety disorders, (b) comparing the effects of mindfulness meditation and cognitive-behavioral therapy on brain-behavior correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation, and (c) training children in family and elementary school settings in mindfulness skills to reduce anxiety and enhance compassion, self-esteem and quality of family interactions.
DOWNLOAD/LISTEN/VIEWMar 6, 2008
Science of Love, and the Future of Women
TED Talks“Anthropologist Helen Fisher studies love: its evolution, its biochemical foundations and its vital importance to human society. She outlines the three stages of love (lust, infatuation and long-term attachment), shedding light on eternal questions like why we love, and why we cheat. She also discusses the natural talents of women, and their new significance in the modern world. She ends with a warning about the widespread use of antidepressants—and a truly hilarious story of romantic pursuit.”
Feb 25, 2008
George Wins Three 2008 Blogisattva Awards
The 2008 Blogisattva Award winners have been announced - the awards for best Buddhist blogging - and our George Dvorsky has again scored a number of awards for Sentient Developments.
Jan 29, 2008
Sam Harris on Enhancement
Edge.orgSam Harris is a favorite of us trans-spiritual Cyborg Buddhist types because he is an atheist who is nonetheless open to, and investigates, meditation. In this latest edition of the Edge.org round-up of interesting ideas Harris gives us another reason to applaud him: he gets it on enhancement and human evolution:
Mother Nature is Not Our Friend
...Considering humanity as a whole, there is nothing about natural selection that suggests our optimal design. We are probably not even optimized for the Paleolithic, much less for life in the 21st century. And yet, we are now acquiring the tools that will enable us to attempt our own optimization. Many people think this project is fraught with risk. But is it riskier than doing nothing? There may be current threats to civilization that we cannot even perceive, much less resolve, at our current level of intelligence. Could any rational strategy be more dangerous than following the whims of Nature? This is not to say that our growing capacity to meddle with the human genome couldn’t present some moments of Faustian over-reach. But our fears on this front must be tempered by a sober understanding of how we got here. Mother Nature is not now, nor has she ever been, looking out for us.
Jan 27, 2008
JBS Haldane’s “The Last Judgment”
Possible Worlds
In “The Last Judgment, a Scientist’s Vision of the Future of Man” (in Possible Worlds and Other Essays Chatto & Windus, London, 1927) the biologist JBS Haldane argues that the further evolution of humanity will take place over millions of years, just as our evolution to this point took millions of years. He speculates on the terraforming and colonization of Venus, and on the enhancement of posthumans to be able to live on Venus and other planets. He concludes:
The end towards which ‘the whole of creation groaneth and travaileth’ is the emergence of a new kind of being which will bear the same relation to mind as do mind to life and life to matter. It is the urge towards this which finds its expression in the higher forms of religion. Without necessarily accepting such a view, one can express some of its implications in a myth…
Man’s little world will end. The human mind can envisage that end. If humanity can enlarge the scope of its will as it has enlarged the reach of its intellect it will escape that end. If not the judgment will have gone out against it, and man and all his works will perish eternally. Either the human race will prove that its destiny is eternity and infinity, and that the value of the individual is negligible in comparison with that of destiny, or the time will come
When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on
When even lovers find their peace at last
And Earth is but a star that once had shone
Jan 25, 2008
Bertrand Russell on Engineering Kindness and the Ends of Science
Icarus or The Future of Science
From ”Icarus or The Future of Science” Bertrand Russell’s 1924 reply to JBS Haldane’s 1923 essay ”Daedalus, or Science and the Future.” Russell’s essay may be the first modern Left bioconservative argument: science will always and only empower the already powerful.
“...it is of the greatest importance to inquire whether any method of strengthening kindly impulses exists. I have no doubt that their strength or weakness depends upon discoverable physiological causes; let us assume that it depends upon the glands. If so, an international secret society of physiologists could bring about the millennium by kidnapping, on a given day, all the rulers of the world, and injecting into their blood some substance which would fill them with benevolence towards their fellow-creatures.
Suddenly M. Poincare would wish well to Ruhr miners, Lord Curzon to Indian nationalists, Mr. Smuts to the natives of what was German South West Africa, the American government to its political prisoners and its victims in Ellis Island.
But alas, the physiologists would first have to administer the love-philtre to themselves before they would undertake such a task. Otherwise, they would prefer to win titles and fortunes by injecting military ferocity into recruits. And so we come back to the old dilemma: only kindliness can save the world, and even if we knew how to produce kindliness we should not do so unless we were already kindly....
We may sum up this discussion in a few words. Science has not given men more self-control, more kindliness, or more power of discounting their passions in deciding upon a course of action. It has given communities more power to indulge their collective passions, but, by making society more organic, it has diminished the part played by private passions. Men’s collective passions are mainly evil; far the strongest of them are hatred and rivalry directed towards other groups. Therefore at present all that gives men power to indulge their collective passions is bad. That is why science threatens to cause the destruction of our civilization.
The only solid hope seems to lie in the possibility of world-wide domination by one group, say the United States, leading to the gradual formation of an orderly economic and political world-government. But perhaps, in view of the sterility of the Roman Empire, the collapse of our civilization would in the end be preferable to this alternative.”
Jan 20, 2008
Jonathan Haidt: Enlightenment 2.0 requires Morality 2.0
Beyond BeliefJonathan Haidt, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, studies the emotional basis of moral judgment and political ideology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and then did post-doctoral research in cultural psychology at the University of Chicago. He was awarded the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology in 2001 and is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.
Jan 4, 2008
Can your mind control your weight and blood pressure?
by Marshall BrainThe first thing we have to do is assume that the scientific study that we are about to discuss is valid. Its results are so bizarre that I fear that there might be something wrong with the methodology. It has a little bit of a “cold fusion” vibe going on. But assuming that the study is valid, then it truly is interesting: Hotel Maids Challenge the Placebo Effect
Jan 3, 2008
Happiness, Virtue, and Transcendance in a Neurotechological Future
Templeton Transhumanism LecturesThe Templeton Research Lectures on “Facing the Challenges of Transhumanism: Religion, Science, and Technology” hosted by The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University have produced a podcast of the audio of the lectures and there’s links to other material on their web site.
Talks include:
* John Tooby: Can Beauty Build Adapted Minds
* Ashok Gangadean: A Missing Global Blueprint for Integral Life and Culture
* James Hughes: Happiness, Virtue, and Transcendance in a Neurotechological Future
* John Tooby: Reconciling Universal Human Nature and Genetic Uniqueness
* Pascal Boyer: The Blind Spot of Humanism and Transhumanism
* Sander van der Leeuw: Could Transhumans be Humans After All?
* William Grassie: Transhumanism at the Crossroads of Science and Religion
* Leda Cosmides: Are We Already Transhuman?: Evolutionary Psychology and Human Nature
Nov 24, 2007
IEET Blog