IEET Executive Director James Hughes - a former Buddhist monk and attenuated Buddho-Unitarian - is writing a book tentatively titled Cyborg Buddha: Using Neurotechnology to Become Better People.
IEET Board member Mike LaTorra - a Zen priest and author of A Warrior Blends with Life: A Modern Tao - runs the Trans-Spirit list promoting discussion of neurotheology, neuroethics, techno-spirituality and altered states of consciousness.
IEET Board member George Dvorsky - a practicing Buddhist - writes and podcasts frequently from a rationalist, transhumanist, and Buddhist point of view, winning him an award this year as one of the best Buddhist blogs.
The three of us are launching the IEET Cyborg Buddha Project to combine our efforts and promote discussion of the impact that neuroscience and emerging neurotechnologies will have on happiness, spirituality, cognitive liberty, moral behavior and the exploration of meditational and ecstatic states of mind.
Cyborg Buddha Blog
Apr 19, 2007
Mirror Neurons, Mirrorhouses, and the Algebraic Structure of the Self
Ben Goertzel, Onar Aam, F. Tony Smith, Kent Palmer
Abstract. Recent neurological and psychological research suggests that the individual human mind is effectively modeled as involving a group of interacting social actors: both various subselves representing coherent aspects of personality; and virtual actors embodying “internalizations of others,” often biologically associated with collections of mirror neurons. Taking up this theme, we study the mathematical and conceptual structure of sets of inter-observing actors, noting that this structure is mathematically isomorphic to the structure of physical entities called “mirrorhouses.” Mirrorhouses are naturally modeled in terms of abstract algebras such as quaternions and octonions (which also play a central role in physics), which leads to the conclusion that the presence within a single human mind of multiple inter-observing actors naturally gives rise to a mirrorhouse-type cognitive structure and hence to a quaternionic and octonionic algebraic structure as a significant aspect of human intelligence. Similar conclusions would apply to nonhuman intelligences such as AI’s, we suggest, so long as these intelligences included empathic social modeling (and/or other cognitive dynamics leading to the creation of simultaneously active subselves or other internal autonomous actors) as a significant component.
Chip Walter argues that our bodies and brains co-evolved the capacities that set us off from other animals: big toes, opposable thumbs, laughter and tears, kissing and speech. This is leading us to our next stage, the “cybersapien.”
Neuroplasticity can allow for treatment of senility, post-traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and depression—and Buddhists have been capitalizing on it for millenia.
Dutch researchers tested people who believed their psychological problems were caused by their past lives. Subjects were asked to recite a list of unfamiliar names. The next day, after being shown a list with those names, new names, and the names of famous people, the alleged reincarnates were more likely than those without such recollections to misidentify more of the previously recited names as belonging to famous people. The research suggests that epople remembering previous lives are subject to an error about the original source of a memory.
The World Health Organization defines health as, “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
“The suffering itself is not so bad, it’s the resentment against suffering that is the real pain.” -Alan Ginsberg
“A Tibetan scholar once complained to me of Zen’s severe reductionism. The scholar was right. Zen is so reductive by nature that it actually self-destructs. The longer I practice Zen the less I have of anything, including Zen itself.”—Lin Jensen; More.
Paul Broks reviews Nicholas Humphrey’s take on consciousness: “One day I’ll be dead. It’s an oddly exhilarating thought. Something unimaginable—nothingness—awaits us all. I have a hunch that getting an imaginative purchase on mental nothingness would help us also grasp the “somethingness” of sentience. What else was conscious in that summer’s evening scene? The tree? No. The bugs? I doubt it. The cat? Who knows? I had an intuition that it felt like something to be the cat, that the animal had some awareness of the cacophony of the cicadas’ mating calls, an awareness to which I would ascribe the sensory quality sound. As it stretched and rolled, I imagined it experienced a bodily sensation, which might be labelled pleasure. And I am pretty sure that if I had walked over and stamped on its tail, then it would have experienced pain. But it was just an intuition. An intuition, yes, but one I could surely back up with neurology.”
“The biggest obstacle [today for contemplative practitioners] is that Western 21st century culture provides very little support for spiritual practice and in fact its major thrust (consumerism) runs counter to spiritual growth.” More.
Computer-based therapy for such things as depression should be available to all patients in England from April, says the government.
“The reason we experience disgust today is that the response protected our ancestors,” said Dan Fessler, associate professor of anthropology and director of UCLA’s Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture. “The emotion allowed our ancestors to survive long enough to produce offspring, who in turn passed the same sensitivities on to us.”
I recently picked up the DVD of Jesus Camp and I let it sit on the shelf for a couple of weeks. I was reluctant to watch it because I knew how upset it would make me.
A study in the Public Library of Science suggests that the gregariousness of a mouse can be predicted on the basis of a gene which creates neurochemical rewards for interacting with other mice.
A study in the Journal of Neuroscience shows that the drug Ecstasy (MDMA) causes a surge of oxytocin in the brain - the hormone that helps bond couples, as well as mothers to their babies.
Mahzarin Banaji reflects on the writings of Columbia University professor John Erskine on the relationship of competence, goodness and moral obligation:
“if we haven’t exhausted every opportunity to know whether what we are doing is right, it will be no excuse for us to say that we meant well.”
Instead Erskine saw the rise of anti-intellectualism based on the notion that goodness could be separated from intelligence.
“(Men are) divided into those who wish to be men – whatever that means – and those who wish to be intelligent men, and those who unconscious of blasphemy or humor, prefer not to be intelligent, but to do the will of God.”
Banaji agrees with Erskine that goodness is inseparable from intelligence, but notes that unfortunately
There are known and established limits on the human ability to introspect and know, limits on the ability to compute and assess, limits placed on us by the situations of our existence, by the experiences we have, by the fact that our brains and minds evolved in the ways in which they did. I have argued that the bounds on rationality, the very ones that keep us from being smart also keep us from being good.
Religiousness, Antisocial Behavior, and Altruism: Genetic and Environmental Mediation
Laura B. Koenig, Matt McGue, Robert F. Krueger, and Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr.
ABSTRACT Although religiousness is considered a protective factor against antisocial behaviors and a positive influence on prosocial behaviors, it remains unclear whether these associations are primarily genetically or environmentally mediated. In order to investigate this question, religiousness, antisocial behavior, and altruistic behavior were assessed by self-report in a sample of adult male twins (165 MZ and 100 DZ full pairs, mean age of 33 years). Religiousness, both retrospective and current, was shown to be modestly negatively correlated with antisocial behavior and modestly positively correlated with altruistic behavior. Joint biometric analyses of religiousness and antisocial behavior or altruistic behavior were completed. The relationship between religiousness and antisocial behavior was due to both genetic and shared environmental effects. Altruistic behavior also shared most all of its genetic influence, but only half of its shared environmental influence, with religiousness.
Neuroethics Society scholars, scientists and clinicians who share an interest in the social, legal, ethical and policy implications of advances in neuroscience.
Neuroethics at UPenn a source of information on neuroethics, provided by Martha Farah of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience
The Hedonistic Imperative Advocates the development of neurotechnology to permit the elimination of all suffering
Abolitionist SocietyPromotes eliminating involuntary suffering and increasing lifelong individual happiness through science
Altered States of Consciousness and Transcendence
Trans-Spirit list a transhumanist research program into religion and spirituality. It seeks to understand religion and spirituality in terms of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology, and to project the future of religion and spirituality in the dawning transhuman era.
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