Cognitive Neuroscience

Sam Harris, in his book The Moral Landscape, argues that “science can determine human values.” Against this view, I argue that while secular moral philosophy can certainly help us to determine our values, science—at least as that word is commonly understood—must play a subservient role. To the extent that science can “determine” what we ought to do, it is only by providing us with empirical information, which can then be slotted into a chain of deductive (moral) reasoning. The premises of such reasoning, however, can in no way be derived from the scientific method: they come, instead, from philosophy—and common sense.

Kahneman's analysis of thinking is close to a
metatheory of human nature. In highly readable
prose he explains how numerous psychological
experiments document the interplay of two ways
human brains process and act upon the myriad
of stimuli encountered in daily life.

Recent research suggests that romantic love may be literally addictive. Although the exact nature of the relationship between love and addiction has been described in inconsistent terms throughout the literature, we offer a framework that distinguishes between a narrow view and a broad view of love addiction. The narrow view counts only the most extreme, harmful forms of love or love-related behaviors as being potentially addictive in nature. The broad view, by contrast, counts even basic social attachment as being on a spectrum of addictive motivations, underwritten by similar neurochemical processes as more conventional addictions. We argue that on either understanding of love-as-addiction, treatment decisions should hinge on considerations of harm and well-being rather than on definitions of disease. Implications for the ethical use of anti-love biotechnology are considered.

Resumen

Se aborda el fenómeno del individualismo contemporáneo, las transformaciones de la intimidad y la fragilidad de los vínculos humanos. Se muestra cómo las sociedades telemáticas dan lugar a nuevas formas de fuga y ausencia del mundo, a un malestar cultural, donde hombres escindidos entre la agresión y el temor, experimentan derivas identitarias y zozobras existenciales ante la exacerbación del consumo, la alienación del trabajo y el terror difuso de las ciudades del pánico.

Este artículo presenta un proyecto de investigación teórica y aplicada, en donde se ha dado inicio a una fase de revisión bibliográfica, como parte del estado del arte que se pretende obtener del modelo teórico de los cambios de contexto enfocados a los procesos de compra. Las ciencias del comportamiento se están constituyendo como uno de los campos más fuertes y sólidos para proveer de un marco explicativo a los negocios internacionales y a las ciencias económicas y financieras. Se emplearon herramientas bibliométricas para el análisis de las bases de datos y se llevaron a cabo meta-análisis para filtrar la información obtenida. El rastreo hecho en grandes bases de datos como Web of Science, Scopus y Pubmed han permitido entender que hay 887 artículos científicos que abordan el cambio de contexto desde el análisis experimental de la conducta, permitiendo que se posibilite armar un esqueleto teórico de la teoría del cambio de contexto. Este riguroso rastreo elucida que los procesos de compra aplicados a los negocios internacionales y a las ciencias económicas y financieras, se constituye como un marco explicativo altamente eficaz para la comprensión de las conductas de consumo en los mercados de todo el mundo.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia in older adults and an important public health problem. The purpose of this review article is to provide a brief introduction to AD and the related concept of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The article emphasizes clinical and neurobiological aspects of AD and MCI that medical students should be familiar with. In addition, the article describes advances in the use of biomarkers for diagnosis of AD and highlights ongoing efforts to develop novel therapies.

This essay addresses the questions raised by the distinctly human trait of creating images. For instance, why do humans create images and what are their features that make them special? How are image-making and the uses of images related? What is the purpose of images? This " problem of images " is examined through the lens of modern neuroscience, and the author suggests why and how neuroscience can investigate our relationship with art and aesthetics, framing this empirical approach as " experimental aesthetics. " He illustrates how recent discoveries have revolutionized our ideas about perception, action, and cognition and the relationship among them, allowing a fresh look—complementary to the humanistic approach—at the problem of images. He proposes a new model of perception and cognition called embodied simulation, which reveals the constitutive relationship between body and creative expression.

RESUMEN:
La psicología analítica es la obra de Carl Gustav Jung y sus seguidores. También conocida como psicología de los complejos, el término aparece oficialmente en 1913 para designar una ampliación del psicoanálisis, razón por la cual se la tiene tanto por una escuela de psicoanálisis como por una tendencia de la psicología profunda, según la expresión de Bleuler para caracterizar a toda psicología que parta de la hipótesis de la existencia de una psique inconsciente.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) era un joven psiquiatra ya reconocido por la profesión cuando asumió la defensa de la obra de Freud, tanto en los foros psiquiátricos como en su propia obra, iniciada en 1902. Su estrecha colaboración desde 1907 se rompería en 1913 a instancias de Freud, para quien los desarrollos Junguianos del psicoanálisis no resultaban acordes con su propia teoría. Atrás quedarán los años en los que Jung fue el presidente de la Asociación Psicoanalítica Internacional desde su fundación en 1910 hasta el inicio de la primera Guerra Mundial. Una época en la que se constituye y alcanza una dimensión internacional (Europa y Estados Unidos) el movimiento psicoanalítico nacido en Viena alrededor de Freud a partir de 1900.
Entre el inmenso legado de Carl Jung, aquel que ha pasado a la historia por sus teorías y métodos revolucionarios en el mundo de la psicología, hay un tema que sobresale y ha sido su herencia más duradera: La Teoría de los Arquetipos.
Jung busca e investiga a los arquetipos en las doctrinas de las tribus primitivas, en las doctrinas secretas esotéricas, en las religiones, en los mitos y leyendas, en los símbolos del Tarot, en las imágenes de la Alquimia y muy especialmente en los sueños, en los que se apoya para la psicoterapia.
Hay que empezar por decir que Jung pensaba que no venimos al mundo como una tabula rasa, no venimos ‘en blanco’ como planteaba Freud, el ser humano según Jung, ya nace con información y ciertas creencias: “no existe una sola idea o concepción esencial que no posea antecedentes históricos”. Estos antecedentes históricos llegan a nosotros inconscientemente, y otros los vamos aprendiendo por medio de mitos, leyendas y la experiencia.
Es fácil identificar diferentes tipos de patrones de conducta en los mitos y leyendas de las culturas antiguas, todas tienden a tener un mismo héroe y trama, tienden, básicamente, a repetirse. Esta continua repetición de historias con los mismos personajes y el mismo guión es lo que llamamos Arquetipos.
Dr. ADOLFO VÁSQUEZ ROCCA

Se pueden identificar palabras cargadas de emoción
en un grupo de clase, debido a la construcción
social que dichas palabras han obtenido a
través del uso cotidiano, de manera coloquial. En
el lenguaje se dan palabras que contienen una
carga emocional, debido a una construcción social
previa que le ha dotado de una significación entrelazada
con emociones (Peñuelas, 2017). Así,
se tendrán palabras específicas del registro coloquial
de un grupo de clase, por ejemplo, “hostia”,
“chido”, “chévere”, “está guay”, etc. que tendrán
aceptación dentro de ese grupo particular de clase
que las utiliza, y evocarán en ellos una respuesta
emocional a través de la circunstancia
en que se use la palabra.

This paper is about consciousness and how it is structured, and how it may be navigated. Presented here is a psychophysical map, a guide for 21st century psychonauts (those highly inquisitive individuals motivated to explore altered states of awareness, states attained through natural ability, or through drugs, prayer, meditation, dreams, religious rituals, or physical exercises). I have been exploring non-ordinary noetic dimensions for almost fifty years now, ever since, as a young physics student between semesters at Rice University (during the “Summer of Love” in 1967), I first experienced the full impact of ranges and dimensions of my mind tuning in to bandwidths far beyond my normal spectrum of awareness, beyond anything I could ever have previously imagined.
My lifelong search for a map of consciousness began around a small campfire on a lovely Pacific Ocean beach just south of Big Sur, California, at around midnight on a clear July night, shortly after ingesting three small yellow tablets of LSD (“Owsley acid”). Having just completed the third year of a double major program in mathematics and electrical engineering, my vision of the universe was deeply influenced by such things as frequency charts, Fourier and Laplace transforms, and electromagnetic theories describing invisible energy waves. Suddenly all of these dry theories became vividly alive for me, overlaid and energized by the direct visual, auditory, and tactile experience of other entities in an enormous sea of energy. Astonished, I found myself floating on the vast depths of oceans of consciousness that I had never realized lay beyond the shores of my own familiar mind, and I realized that we are all immersed in planetary and galactic energy fields swirling in and out of our own limited islands of awareness.
The map presented in this book is derived from direct experience. It is also an extension of several major new concepts that have emerged in recent quantum physics and brain research, primarily the “holonomic mind/brain” theory put forth by the neurosurgeon Karl Pribram and the cosmology of the “Implicate/Explicate orders” proposed by the British quantum physicist David Bohm. Woven together, a synergy emerges as the holoflux hypothesis, revealing a new map of consciousness in an expanding universe. The holoflux hypothesis presented here offers a new paradigm which is shown to be consistent with physics and found surprisingly to be in accord with the writings and verbal traditions of the numerous metaphysical interpretations brought back by millenia of introspective mystics, saints, and shamanic psychonauts.

Resumen:
El presente artículo se propone dar cuenta del elusivo fenómeno de la conciencia desde la original perspectiva de la neurofenomenología de Francisco Varela, quien a partir de nociones tales como neuroplasticidad, enacción y emergencia, explica, cómo ocurren los procesos cerebrales que fundan la conciencia y la “unidad” de la vivencia. Describiendo como la conciencia aparece en el vivir encarnado: en la regulación con el cuerpo entero; en sus relaciones sensorio-motoras con el mundo y en una red ínter-subjetiva de acciones y de lenguaje.
Palabras clave: Neurociencias, biología cultural, ciencias cognitivas, cuerpo, mundo, ética, enacción, saber-cómo.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca

Este artículo es la fase final de una investigación que se encuentra en su segundo año de ejecución y que ya ha generado una publicación para revistas especializadas. Las herramientas de neuroimagen, como elemento innovador y altamente preciso es lo que se aborda en este manuscrito, pues las técnicas provenidas de la neurociencia son decisivas en la actualidad para definir la economía y los movimientos bursátiles. Se emplearon herramientas bibliométricas para el análisis de las bases de datos y se llevaron a cabo meta-análisis para filtrar la información obtenida. El rastreo hecho en las más prestigiosas y rigurosas bases de datos como el Index Medicus, Medline, HealthSTAR, BioMedNet y la National Library of Medicine (NLM), han posibilitado hacer una recolección y delimitación de los datos para correlacionar la relevancia de la neuroimagen ligada a las ciencias económicas. Las herramientas de neuroimagen han demostrado en gran parte de la literatura científica, que las neurociencias y la economía conductual están en condiciones de darle un nuevo y más firme soporte a las disciplinas económicas, comerciales y financieras basadas en la especulación y en la inversión.

Why do humans create images and what are their features that make them special? How are image-making and the use of images related? What is the purpose of images? The " problem of images " is addressed through the lens of contemporary neuroscience, arguing why and how neuroscience can investigate our relationship with art and aesthetics, framing this empirical approach as " experimental aesthetics. " Recent discoveries are presented that changed our ideas about perception, action, and cognition and the relationship among them, allowing a new look—complementary to the humanistic approach—at the problem of images. A new model of perception and cognition is proposed, called embodied simulation, which reveals the constitutive relationship between brain-body and the reception of human creative expressions.

The (latest) crisis in confidence in social psychology has generated much heated discussion about the importance of replication, including how it should be carried out as well as interpreted by scholars in the field. For example, what does it mean if a replication attempt “fails”—does it mean that the original results, or the theory that predicted them, have been falsified? And how should “failed” replications affect our belief in the validity of the original research? In this paper, we consider the replication debate from a historical and philosophical perspective, and provide a conceptual analysis of both replication and falsification as they pertain to this important discussion. Along the way, we highlight the importance of auxiliary assumptions (for both testing theories and attempting replications), and introduce a Bayesian framework for assessing “failed” replications in terms of how they should affect our confidence in original findings.

Alla luce delle più recenti scoperte sul cervello umano e sulla presenza di "automatismi" (ossia, azioni compiute involontariamente), il diritto deve rivedere le proprie convinzioni sotto i profili dell'imputabilità e della colpevolezza, in ambito penale, e della capacità di agire, in ambito civile, al fine di avvicinare il più possibile la concezione giuridica dell'uomo a quella biologico-scientifica.

The first part of the paper develops the argument that geographers should learn to decompose human memory into its constituent parts because then and then alone will we become attuned to the full range of ways in which we incorporate places into our beings. The second part of the paper articulates Stephen Hill's comments on episodic memory with my recent work on wisdom.

The human brain is complex. Along with performing millions of mundane acts; it is much, much bigger than any (current) computer. The total available memory unit in photon’s for exploration to exhaustion in a highest functional brain (HFB) in a span of 100 years when encoding one variable of an entity of knowledge (VEK) per second is 1.26 x 109 ṗs (photo seconds); and theoretically there is no human being that can exhaust it. The mechanism of memory formation (MMF) is based on 7 theories that work in harmony. These theories unraveled the mystery of the mind, the harmony of all the memory complexes (MC) in the brain to form the basis of consciousness; the memory unit (MU) which is the basic structural unit of memory formation that encode for a VEK, the simultaneous instantaneous coding unit (SICU) which is the functional unit of memory formation that encode for an entity of knowledge (EK). The highest value of the constant of interaction (K) of the entire free neuron in a newly born child is equivalent to brain capacity (BC). These theories gave a concise detail on how neurons packages, process and retrieve information from the six brain sense organ lobes. This theory was brought into life out of self observation of human nature, critical thinking to unravel the mechanism of memory formation (MMF) with a concomitant backing by the work of some of the eminent scholars in the field of neuropsychology & neuroscience. The aim of this paper is to give a theoretical explanation with a room for critique on how the brain achieve the three main processes involved in human memory, with the following objectives; to differentiate between the structural and the functional unit of memory formation, to give a concise detail on neuronal packaging processes and retrieval of information, and to unraveled the mystery of the mind.

RESUMEN
El presente artículo se propone dar cuenta del elusivo fenómeno de la conciencia desde la original perspectiva de la neurofenomenología de Francisco Varela, quien a partir de nociones tales como neuroplasticidad, enacción y emergencia, explica, cómo ocurren los procesos cerebrales que fundan la conciencia y la “unidad” de la vivencia. Describiendo como la conciencia aparece en el vivir encarnado: en la regulación con el cuerpo entero; en sus relaciones sensorio-motoras con el mundo y en una red ínter-subjetiva de acciones y de lenguaje.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca
Keywords:  Neurociencias, ciencias cognitivas, ética, yo, cuerpo, neuroplasticidad, enacción, acciones corporeizadas,  biología cultural,  saber-cómo.
Neuroscience, cognitive science, ethics, self, body, neuroplasticity, enaction, actions embodied experiences, cultural biology,  know-how.
-Francisco Varela: neurophenomenology, enactive approach to cognition, minds without me and the elusive phenomenon of consciousness.
DR. ADOLFO VÁSQUEZ ROCCA

Surprising new findings indicate that many conclusions about sex differences and similarities in cognitive abilities need to be reexamined. Cognitive sex differences are changing, decreasing for some tasks whereas remaining stable or increasing for other tasks. Some sex differences are detected in infancy, but the data are complex and depend on task characteristics. Diverse disciplines have revolutionized our understanding of why these differences exist. For instance, fraternal-twin studies align with earlier literature to help establish the role of prenatal androgens and large international datasets help ex- plain how cultural factors such as economic prosperity and gender equity affect females and males differently. Understanding how biological and environmental factors interact could help maximize cognitive potential and address pressing societal issues.

The first part of the book delineates the recent emergence
of characteristic psychopathologies of cognitive capitalism,
which have resulted from the unique concatenation of socialpolitical-
psychological-economic relations that have produced
distinct stresses and forms of derangement upon the factory
of the brain. This leads to the second stream, referred to as
“the cognitive turn” in cognitive capitalism. For example, as
a result of the necessity for an efficient brain-mind to labor
in the advanced and constantly accelerating conditions of
the knowledge economy highly sophisticated and nuanced
forms of attention have become compulsory well beyond what
was considered essential in the older regimes of the modern.
As such new dispositifs of normalization and governmentalization
have arisen to, on the one hand, diffuse the attention
necessary for multi-tasking, and on the other, to enhance the
production of a hyper-attention. It is upon these and other
similar conditions that this book concentrates. It calls for the
identification of the causative factors of these psychopathologies
as well as attempting to invent the counter conditions with
which to thwart their emergence. Contributors include Ina Blom, Arne De Boever, Pascal Gielen, Sanford Kwinter, Maurizio Lazzarato, Karl Lyden, Yann Moulier Boutang, Matteo Pasquinelli, Alexie Penzin, Patricia Reed, John Roberts, Liss C. Werner, Charles T. Wolfe

The purpose of this chapter is to assess the future of Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian, this volume) as a tool for exploring a variety of linguistic phenomena along with their intra-group and inter-group cultural instantiations. As a subfield of linguistics, Cultural Linguistics has the potential to bring forth a model that successfully melds together complementary approaches, e.g., viewing language as ‘a complex adaptive system’ and bringing to bear upon it concepts drawn from cognitive science such as ‘distributed cognition’ and ‘multi-agent dynamic systems theory’. This will allow us to move away from essentialist models of the entity we call ‘language’ (Frank, 2008) and hence to adopt and build on theoretical approaches, e.g. ‘enactive cognitivism’, already being exploited by researchers working in related areas more characteristic of the cognitive sciences, that is, by those who no longer subscribe to the tenets of ‘classic cognitivism’. The paradigm emerging from research in Cultural Linguistics draws on a highly nuanced multi-disciplinarily informed approach that allows for a greater appreciation for individual choices and the motivations behind these choices as they coalesce into and around ‘cultural conceptualizations’ (Sharifian, 2003, 2009a, this volume).

NOTE: IF YOU USE IDEAS FROM THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR OWN PAPERS, PLEASE CITE IT. THANKS.
Citation:
Harsin, J. (2018). Post-truth and critical communication studies. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford University Press. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.757
Print Version: Harsin, J. H. (2019). Post-Truth and Critical Communication. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication and Critical Cultural Studies. Retrieved from https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780190459611.001.0001/acref-9780190459611-e-757

Summary

While the periodizing concept “post-truth” (PT) initially appeared in the U.S. as a key word of popular politics in the form “post-truth politics” or “post-truth society,” it quickly appeared in many languages. It is now the object of increasing scholarly attention and public debate. Its popular and academic treatments sometimes differ on its meaning, but most associate it with communication forms such as fake/false news, rumors, hoaxes, political lying. They also identify causes such as polarization, and unethical politicians or unregulated social media; shoddy journalism; or simply the inevitable chaos ushered in by digital media technologies. Post-truth is sometimes posited as a social and political condition whereby citizens or audiences and politicians no longer respect truth (e.g. climate science deniers or “birthers”) but simply accept as true what they believe or feel. However, more rigorously, post-truth is actually a breakdown of social trust, which encompasses what was formerly the major institutional truth-teller or publicist—the news media. What is accepted as popular truth is really a weak form of knowledge, opinion based on trust in those who supposedly know. Critical communication approaches locate its historical legacy in the earliest forms of political persuasion and questions of ethics and epistemology, such as those raised by Plato in the Gorgias. While there are timeless similarities, post-truth is a 21st century phenomenon. It is not “after” truth but after a historical period where interlocking elite institutions were discoverers, producers and gatekeepers of truth, accepted by social trust (the church, science, governments, the school, etc.). Critical scholars have identified a more complex historical set of factors, to which popular proposed solutions have been mostly blind. Modern origins of post-truth lie in the anxious elite negotiation of mass representative liberal democracy with proposals for organizing and deploying mass communication technologies. These elites consisted of pioneers in the influence or persuasion industries, closely associated with government/political practice and funding, and university research. These influence industries were increasingly accepted not just by business but also (resource-rich) professional political actors. Their object was not policy education and argument to constituents but, increasingly strategically, emotion and attention management. Post-truth (PT) initially appeared in the U.S. as a key word of popular politics in the form “post-truth politics” or “post-truth society.” It is now the object of increasing scholarly attention and public debate. PT can usefully be understood in the context of its historical emergence, through its popular forms and responses, such as rumors, conspiracies, hoaxes, fake news, fact-checking, and filter bubbles, as well as through its multiple effects—not the least of which the discourse of panic about it.
Key Words: Fake News, Fact-checking, Rumor, Disinformation, Trust, Truth, Attention Economy, Journalism, Democracy, Political Communication

In this paper, I will argue that the evolutionary puzzle of language diversity, or Why do people speak so many different languages in the world? could be better evolutionary understood if associated with group's immunity hypothesis. Although there is only this limited evidence for my hypothesis, this study suggests that historical pathogen prevalence could also play an important role promoting human language diversity in our adapted ancestor pass.

The moral enhancement (or bioenhancement) debate seems stuck in a dilemma. On the one hand, the more radical proposals, while certainly novel and interesting, seem unlikely to be feasible in practice, or if technically feasible then most likely imprudent. But on the other hand, the more “sensible” proposals – sensible in the sense of being both practically achievable and more plausibly ethically justifiable – can be rather hard to distinguish from both “traditional” forms of moral enhancement, such as non-drug-mediated social or moral education, and non-moral forms of bioenhancement, such as “smart drug” style cognitive enhancement. In this essay, I argue that bioethicists have paid insufficient attention to an alternative form of moral bioenhancement—or at least a likely candidate—that falls somewhere between these two extremes, namely the (appropriately qualified) use of certain psychedelic drugs.

This file serves to provide a self-archived, comprehensive (200 pages single-space!) bibliography of references related to working memory and language learning (including first and second language acquisition). I am putting this up here in the hope that it can help (save some time for) those researchers and students interested in similar research topics as I am (as enthusiastic as I am with working memory and SLA research). I will try my best to update this regularly/frequently (so keep an eye on it!).
Best wishes to your academic endeavors, Enjoy!
Edward

Synthesizing the pedagogy of acting with new findings in Neuroscience and archetypal understandings of human ways of learning and seeing. This book contains practical exercises for directors, actors, and teachers to use combining these three elements.

RESUMEN:
BIOLOGÍA CULTURAL, CONTINGENCIA DEL LENGUAJE Y ONTOLOGÍA DEL EXPLICAR.
La Emoción en la Construcción de la Teoría; Crítica a la pretensión de objetividad en el conocimiento. Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Rorty y Humberto Maturana.
En el presente artículo se esbozan controversias en torno a los sistemas de convivencia y dominios explicativos, la relación del lenguaje con la realidad, el rol constructivo del “observador”, la importancia de la experiencia estética, la reivindicación del emocionar humano y la constitución de lo patológico.
El fundamento de la biología del conocer está en el reconocimiento  del observador como constitutivo de lo observado–. Desde esta perspectiva epistémica unitaria vivir es conocer –y mientras mayor sea la plasticidad estructural de un organismo, mayor será su capacidad de conducta inteligente en la interacción con otros–.La ponencia se constituye como un espacio de investigación y experimentación a partir de preguntas que dan cuenta del desarrollo continuo de los ámbitos epistemológicos, comprensivos y explicativos que se generan a partir de abstracciones de las coherencias del vivir en los ámbitos generados por la Autopoiesis, la Deriva Natural, la Biología del Conocer, la Biología del Amar, el Conversar liberador y el habitar biológico-cultural en las Organizaciones y Comunidades Humanas.
    Se exponen los fundamentos de la teoría del conocimiento de Humberto Maturana, que surgen de tres preguntas: ¿Cuál es la organización del ser vivo? ¿Cuál es la organización del sistema nervioso? ¿Cuál es la organización del sistema social? Maturana desarrolla una teoría sobre la organización de los seres vivientes y la naturaleza del fenómeno del conocer basada en la autonomía operacional del ser vivo, proponiendo una descripción del operar cognoscitivo del ser vivo sin referencia a una realidad externa. Se esbozan controversias en torno a los sistemas de convivencia y dominios explicativos, la relación del lenguaje con la realidad, el rol constructivo del ‘observador’, la importancia de la experiencia estética, la reivindicación del emocionar humano y la constitución de lo patológico.
Espacio psíquico.  Co-inspiración (Richard Rorty)

1.- Una cultura surge como una red cerrada de conversaciones. Una nación o una época, por ejemplo, tiene una cultura particular con una red cerrada de conversaciones que uno conserva de manera consciente o inconsciente. Una familia tiene su propia cultura con una red cerrada de conversaciones que se conservan en el ejercicio de vivir. Entonces, cuando revelas esa red de conversaciones puedes orientarla de manera distinta.

Como señala  Richard Rorty[4]:

–  El mundo no habla. Sólo nosotros lo hacemos. El mundo una vez que nos hemos ajustado al programa de un lenguaje, puede hacer que sostengamos determinadas creencias.
La verdad no puede estar ahí afuera -no puede existir independientemente de la mente humana- porque as proposiciones no pueden tener esa existencia, estar ahí afuera. El mundo está ahí afuera, pero las descripciones del mundo no. Sólo las descripciones del mundo pueden ser verdaderas o falsas. El mundo de por sí –sin el auxilio de las actividades descriptivas de los seres humanos- no puede serlo.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca         
Universidad Complutense de Madrid

This dissertation aims to identify the opportunities and constraints for the implementation of biophilic design patterns and assess its need/importance in UK landscape architecture.

This dissertation has utilized various sources, including peer reviewed academic journal articles, recent publications, online
sources and personal communications with leading experts in the field of biophilic design, including William Browning, Catie Ryan, Timothy Beatley, Gayle Souter-Brown, Stephen Kellert, Val Kirby and Nick Grayson.

The methodology of this dissertation has included a literature review, professional work experience with Terrapin Bright Green (a company specialising in biophilic design in the built environment), interviews with professional UK landscape architects and biophilic design experts, two online surveys of UK based landscape architects and an educational workshop on biophilic design for UK based landscape architects.

The main findings of this dissertation have been: a knowledge deficit exists among UK landscape architects on biophilic design; no direct references to biophilic design exist in either local or national planning policy and; clients do not envision biophilic design as being important or necessary in their developments.

It is the recommendation of this dissertation to: incorporate biophilic design into landscape architecture university curricula; establish biophilic design CPD events; produce individual guidance documents for each project type on biophilic design; incentivise developers to incorporate biophilic design in their projects to increase acceptance and awareness; incorporate biophilic design into local and national planning policy and; found a national, multi disciplinary professional body for biophilic design in the UK, to oversee and help implement these recommendations.

While the psychical sciences and parapsychology have languished over the decades and failed to produce a viable theoretical basis for their observations, great strides have been made in the neurosciences especially in the areas of neurophysiology and neurophysics. The object of these researches goes beyond just discovering how the brain functions, but to actually discover the neural correlates of mind and consciousness. Understanding how brain and consciousness relate to one another has opened a new door to understanding psi and how consciousness survives death. The new physical model of consciousness presented below goes a long way toward explaining the paradoxical nature of mind and consciousness that psi and survival present.

The phenomenon of pareidolia, of experiencing meaningful patterns in random stimuli, is explained in neurophysiological and neuropsychological terms, before its roles in rock art interpretation are considered. A case of group pareidolia in Inner Mongolia is reported in detail, and analysed together with other examples of imagined or pareidolically misinterpreted palaeoart and other phenomena. The process of etic interpretation of rock art is explained neurologically and epistemologically. It is described as a function of the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus yielding to the internal model of the visual cortex in the occipital lobe. This strategy favours incorrect causal associations to be made. It is inherent in the visual system, deriving from its efficacy in natural selection, but its application in rock art interpretation is an impediment to veracity in rock art research. Unless ethnographic information about the meaning of rock art is accessible, rock markings created by humans whose mental and cognitive world is entirely unknown cannot be interpreted with scientific credibility. In such endeavours, meaning is created purely within the brain of the 'interpreter'.

Este proyecto de tesis doctoral  intentará proponer un modelo que haga comprender mejor los éxitos (toma de decisión de compra) y fracasos (toma de decisión de NO compra, o rechazo) de estímulos comerciales, con una perspectiva novedosa basada en los recientes estudios sobre las emociones (la Neurología Afectiva) y su influencia sobre el comportamiento del consumidor.

Both human and non-human living organisms have traditionally been viewed and studied as material organisms. Within this context, life has been defined by the biochemical processes that sustain the living organisms, while mind and consciousness have been relegated to functions within the brain. Yet the body is just a complex pattern of energetic material particle exchanges to physicists when compared to the biochemical processes studied by chemists and biologists. As the scientific view of life has expanded beyond these early limits, new research has centered more upon the electric, magnetic and electromagnetic characteristics of living material bodies as well as the brain, but the overall concept of life has not kept pace or changed at all. Once these new research efforts have been taken into account, it is easy to demonstrate that life, or rather the “living force” as it was once called, can be equated to the overall matter/energy pattern of the organism, while mind and consciousness can be equated to the electric and magnetic counterparts of the matter/energy pattern of living organisms. Doing so does nothing to disrupt or disturb the current thinking that the ‘process of life’ is purely biochemical. In fact, all living organisms, from the simplest one-celled organism to the most complex living organism known, a human,  are extremely complex material/energy patterns (comprising the structural and biochemical body) superposed by the extremely complex electric (electromagnetic scalar potential) field patterns and magnetic (electromagnetic vector potential) field patterns that constitute minds and consciousness. As humans, we may have the most complex and advanced mind and consciousness, but all other living organisms display mind and consciousness at various lower levels than our human mind and consciousness. The brain alone should no longer be considered the sole source and home of mind and consciousness. Mind and consciousness have mistakenly become associated with the brain and no other part of the body because of the dense concentration of neurons in the brain, a fact which can only be understood by studying the electric and especially the magnetic characteristics of the neuron. A strict study of the magnetic (electromagnetic vector potential) field patterns associated with neurons and neural nets demonstrates how thoughts and streams of thought originate in the brain and are stored magnetically at and within the points in space-time occupied by the brain and body. Microtubules, which act as magnetic induction coils, are the primary structural bio-unit used for building, storing and retrieving memories in the mind. In a very strict sense of the concepts, mind and consciousness could be considered a mixed four-dimensional electric-magnetic potential field holographic body that maintains a semi-independent existence with the material/energy field or structural/biochemical body of every living organism. The consequences of this physical model of mind and consciousness are revolutionary and imply a physical basis for (Darwinian) evolution as well as simple explanations of many paranormal phenomena, including the survival of mind and consciousness after death of the material body.