Missing Shades of Grue

I've often had the feeling I was being followed.

Olaf Blanke and colleagues at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne say their discovery might help shed light on brain processes that contribute to the symptoms of schizophrenia, which can include the sensation that one's own actions are being performed by someone else.

Doctors evaluating a woman with no history of psychiatric problems found stimulation of an area of her brain called the left temporoparietal junction caused her to believe a person was standing behind her.

The patient reported that "person" adopted the same bodily positions as her, although she didn't recognize the effect as an illusion. At one point in the investigation, the patient was asked to lean forward and clasp her knees: this led to a sensation that the shadow figure was embracing her, which she described as unpleasant.

The finding could be a step towards understanding psychiatric affects such as feelings of paranoia, persecution and alien control, say neuroscientists.

What about the people who are following me but not imitating my every move?

Brain stimulation creates shadow person

Kim Sterelny reviews Dennett's Breaking the Spell.

Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking The Spell adds to the growing list of books on religion as a natural phenomenon but is strikingly different in tone and content from its predecessors. It is written for Americans, whose world is not secular: In the United States, it is impossible for an open skeptic to be a serious political figure, and even the skeptical take religion to be of profound moral and social significance. Dennett devotes much of his energy to trying to convince his nonsecular readers that it is legitimate to inquire scientifically into the roots of religious belief and to assess its moral consequences, good and bad. Reading this, I felt like a member of an alien species; it was a strange experience for a secular boy from a secular world.

Sterelny argues that Dennett's project is "doomed": religious leaders won't take it seriously because they will see the secular model of religion's origins to be corrosive. I suspect that Sterelny is right about that. I thought Dennett spent too much space attempting to appease the intended religious critic when, in fact, the religious critics are not going to take the proposal seriously, if they even read the book.

But I'm not convinced that Sterelny is fair when he claims that "Religious commitment cannot both be the result of natural selection for (for example) enhanced social cohesion and be a response to something that is actually divine." Of course, if each explanation is intended to be exhaustive, then if one is correct, the other is incorrect. But one can imagine circumstances where one adaptation favoring social cohesion puts one in a favorable position to appreciate or come to understand something the truly refers to something divine. Now I don't have any reason to think there is anything divine to appreciate or come to understand, but I don't see that these two explanations are inconsistent anytime they are employed in larger explanations of human behavior. Adaptations might get me looking in a certain direction and something else might be responsible for my seeing what I see, and perhaps for my continuing to look in that direction. Social cohesion may be partially at work in forming scientific communities and institutions, but it might also be the accuracy of results (and empirical success) that contributes to the ongoing existence of scientific practices.

American Scientist Online - Escaping Illusion?

A very interesting discussion on self-deception and deceit with Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers can be found in the current Seed magazine.

In the 1970s, a Harvard class taught by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers ignited a controversy that would escalate into the "sociobiology wars." His papers provided a Darwinian basis for understanding complex human activities and relationships. Across town at MIT, revolutionary linguist Noam Chomsky had earned a reputation as a leading opponent of the Vietnam War. Throughout those pivotal years, and in the following decades, the two explored similar ideas from different perspectives. Long aware of each other's work, they had never met until a couple of months ago, when they sat down to compare notes on some common interests: deceit and self-deception.

There is also a nice video to accompany the transcript. How wonderful to read insightful political analysis in which Bush and Cheney are referred to as "organisms."

Seed: Noam Chomsky & Robert Trivers

The Iranian intellectual Ramin Jahanbegloo, who has been held in the Iranian Evin prison since April of 2006, was released on bail on August 30. Upon leaving jail he stopped by a Iranian news agency and granted an interview in which he discussed the reasons for his imprisonment (duped by the US into aiding a "Velvet Revolution") and his near-future plans: he'll return to India to complete his studies and avoid political discourse. How a reformer and student of democracy is going to stay away from politics is difficult to discern.

What's the price of his freedom?

...it seems that he was promised freedom and a passport if he gave an interview to "an agency of his choice", in order to tell them "just what he has confessed under interrogation." The offer had a twist: to make sure that Ramin would keep his side of the bargain, he had to post two houses as bail ? his mother's as well as his own. The student news agency interview was the result.

Iran is clearly trying to restrain its public intellectuals and purge its liberal and secular professors. The leash is short and getting shorter. I just hate it when proponents of repressive, right-wing, fundamentalist regimes attack reformers, public intellectuals, and liberal and secular professors.

Ramin Jahanbegloo: a repressive release Rasool Nafisi - openDemocracy
Postal interviews Jahanbegloo at Logos

UPDATE: More background and analysis of Jahanbegloo's release and interview can be found at Aljazeera and at Hossein Derakhshan's blog Editor:Myself.

The Skeptic features a rather skeptical account of the Artificial Intelligence research. After critically reviewing the history of AI research, Peter Kasson concludes

After more than 50 years of pursuing human- level artificial intelligence, we have nothing but promises and failures. The quest has become a degenerating research program (or actually, an ever-increasing number of competing ones), pursuing an ever-increasing number of irrelevant activities as the original goal recedes ever further into the future ? like the mirage it is.

I'm skeptical of the suggestion that we should give all hope of success after reading one short article in the Skeptic--even if the challenges he cites really are challenges and the footnotes are useful.

Skeptic: The Magazine:AI Gone Awry

Newsweek has an article on the recent proliferation of books--by Harris, Dennett, and Dawkins--on atheism. We start with Harris's endeavor.

Americans answered the atrocities of September 11, overwhelmingly, with faith. Attacked in the name of God, they turned to God for comfort; in the week after the attacks, nearly 70 percent said they were praying more than usual. Confronted by a hatred that seemed inexplicable, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson proclaimed that God was mad at America because it harbored feminists, gays and civil libertarians. Sam Harris, then a 34-year-old graduate student in neuroscience, had a different reaction. On Sept. 12, he began a book. If, he reasoned, young men were slaughtering people in the name of religion?something that had been going on since long before 2001, of course?then perhaps the problem was religion itself.

A rather mild treatment follows, which is all I would expect from a brief Newsweek article. The last few lines, however, sound a little ominous--a warning of sorts.

If Dawkins, Dennett and Harris are right, the five-century-long competition between science and religion is sharpening. People are choosing sides. And when that happens, people get hurt.

But aren't people getting hurt anyway?

Being an Atheist in America Isn't Easy - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com