Book Summary: Better Angels of Our Nature (PDF)

Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature - NORTH SENTINEL ISLAND TRIBE - Contrary to popular belief, violence in the world has actually decreased over time 1: Examples of accepted violence - how violent people were in the past. - attitudes toward violence have changed - no longer thi...

Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature - NORTH SENTINEL ISLAND TRIBE - Contrary to popular belief, violence in the world has actually decreased over time 1: Examples of accepted violence - how violent people were in the past. - attitudes toward violence have changed - no longer think it reasonable to rape enemy combatants’ wives by the hundreds, enslave others. We’re repulsed by these things, and Pinker uses that repulsion to great effect, illustrating that a cultural change 2: The Pacification Process (Government) - philosopher Thomas Hobbes proposed a theory in which a government pacifies quarrels between its subjects to preserve its own interests in limited damage - State violence becomes an issue but there are fewer deaths by violence in a complex society, because it has an interest in maintaining peace. 3: The Civilizing Process (Urbanization — commerce and infrastructure) - The Civilizing Process describes how an urbanised society discourages violence. - Such a society evolves safer norms, since people are forced to live in close proximity to each other and thus will benefit from mutual support. - Urban people will be engaged in commerce with each other, and it benefits a merchant to consider the wishes of his clientele and solicit their favour - Such a society = more stable government capable of imposing the law and dispensing favours, so people have less incentive toward violence and more incentive to court favour with the government. - interesting discussion of instances when these social norms have not caught on or have worked backwards - American South where violence is still at a higher level. - Culture doesn’t value self control, they missed out on some urbanisation. - Historically, places in the mountains etc.. didn’t get the same rule of law from the government in the start (e.g.Wild West) - places maintain that mindset. 4: The Humanitarian Revolution (education) - Change from torture as a public spectacle to empathy for others & valuing human life - Worldwide declines in torture, human sacrifice, religious persecution, capital punishment, slavery especially in the 18th & 19th centuries. - One cause is novels, which pushed people into sympathy with others - Pinker situates this progress toward empathy in Enlightenment Humanism (emphasis rationality of thought and action) - Reasons to not be violent are moral discoveries, and intellectuals in search of the truth can be expected to come to less violent conclusions. - When you start a business, you learn that you want to please your customers. It doesn’t help you to kill people. Instead, you want to learn how to put yourself in their shoes and learn how to sell them things. You learn how to accomplish goals in ways other than violence. So, education ups empathy levels in several direct and indirect ways. 5: The Long Peace (international wars in the last fifty years) - Long Peace the world has been experiencing since end of WWII. - Conventional wisdom holds that wars have been increasingly violent over time, or that wars occur in cycles, but Pinker debunks both these ideas- the timing of wars is random - there is no relationship between small wars and big wars - Pinker suggests several explanations, including the presence of nuclear weapons as a deterrent and the spread of democracy. 6: The New Peace (other types of war)  - Colonial wars, civil wars, genocides, and terrorism also reduced - Pins it mostly on the spread of democracy, since anocracies (dysfunctional governments) are the most likely to harbour civil wars, and totalitarian governments carry out most of the genocides. - Terrorism is a special case in which people perceive a great danger but very few people are killed by terrorists, most terrorist groups fall apart quickly. 7: Rights Revolutions - Humanitarian Revolution explains interpersonal/discriminatory violence reduction - Women’s rights, African American rights, gay rights, children’s rights, and animal rights have all been part of the Rights Revolutions of the twentieth century. (violence against these groups is going down). - Proponents of rights made moral arguments, but brought minority viewpoints into the public consciousness. - Moral arguments were products of shift toward empathy - Concern for animal welfare is one of the most powerful examples of how nonviolent the world is really becoming, since animals are not capable of arguing for themselves, and giving them better treatment offers no reciprocal benefit to humans. 8: Inner Demons. - How do people function, and why are they now functioning less violently? - People generally perceive their own actions as accidental and minimally hurtful to others, but when others harm them, the action is perceived as purposeful, deeply harmful, and unforgettable. This contributes to spirals of violence, as each side believes itself to be suffering disproportionate harm. - Pinker also talks about how taking the victims’ POV makes violence look like mindless total evil, but there are actually many motivations for violence. - Motivations are Predation, dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideology. 4 ‘inner demons’: - Predatory violence = lack of inhibiting factors, rational reason to pursue nonviolent methods has an impact on this type of violence. - Dominance= anarchy and revenge is a form of self-help justice, presence of a functioning government deters both - Sadism= evil motivation (Pinker’s analysis reveals people actually develop tastes for sadism, so societies can cut it off at the root) The more people engage in violence, the more sadistic they become. (This is why people could torture people for entertainment in the middle ages, but now, enjoying such a thing is extremely aberrant behavior). - Ideology = large-scale international violence, but open and democratic societies help prevent negative or violent ideologies from taking hold 9: Better Angels - He concludes empathy and self-control are not overwhelming contributing factors - Makes provocative allegation that “The world has far too much morality”. - morality is a “crazy angel” - certain definitions of morality can ease rates of violence, but moral sensibilities can drive people to violence if the moral system demands cleansing or punishments for heretics. !Ideology is the most pernicious inner demon! -most significant factor - Allows people to develop sophisticated systems of government and trade, which encourage peace. - Correlates with self-control & rational arguments create a circle of empathy. Ian McGlichrist : The Master and his Emissary Two Opposed Realities: What Shows These Opposed Realities? There are two opposed realities, their difference rooted in the bihemispheric structure of the brain. - Freud believed the brain shaped our entire experience of life. (believing our mental entities (id, ego, superego) shaped our world) RH shows array of possible solutions, which remain live while alternatives are explored. LH takes single solution that best fits what it already knows and latches onto it. Vision can be used as an example to show hemisphere perspectives: - LH takes a local short-term view, right hemisphere sees the bigger picture - New stimuli lead to release of noradrenaline (involved in flight or fight) in the RH - these neurons don’t fatigue and maintain condition of excitation, so exploratory attention is held open - LH is described as being ‘inadequate for the more rapid complex syntheses achieved by the right hemisphere’. - RH controls conjugate eye movements (that makes eyes move together) - Does the RH keep hemispheres together - whole world of experience - LH is biassed toward identification by parts and the RH towards the whole picture (they also differ in the way they understand what they experience) - Victims: - Subjects with right parieto-occipital lesions (producing areas of blindness) exhibit difficulty in assembling various elements when trying to draw someone (see individual elements but not the bigger picture) - RH strokes or lesions lead to difficulties in grasping visuospatial info Attention can be used an example to show hemisphere perspectives: - Differences in attention highlights hemispheres different perspectives: RH dominates exploratory attention, LH grasps what has already been prioritised - Two main axes of attention: intensity (alertness, vigilance and sustained attention) and selectivity (focused and divided attention) - RH responsible for every type of attention except focussed attention, a type of selectivity - Clear primary role for the RH in divided attention - Scanning studies suggest focused attention is associated with activity in the left orbitofrontal cortex & basal ganglia (found right by hypothalamus slightly centred in the brain if looking at a diagram) - Left Hemisphere strokes: - show increases in creativity after the stroke, possible since LH inhibits breadth of attention the RH brings (but both are involved in creativity) Brain Structure - How does it highlight the RH’s role? - The brain is structurally asymmetric, indicating asymmetric functions - RH has more white matter on the right, facilitating transfer across regions, also reflecting its attention to the global picture, where the left hemisphere prioritises local communication, transfer of information within regions. Empathy and theory of mind: LH specialises in more superficial, social emotions (e.g. anger) while the RH is more directly in touch with primary process emotionality  - Right hemispheres link to emotion and empathy: - Neurons in the right anterior cingulate cortex, an area known to be associated with the appreciation of pain, show activity whether we are hurt or witness someone else undergoing a similar painful experience - We use the right inferior parietal lobe and the right lateral prefrontal cortex (involved in inhibiting the automatic tendency to espouse one’s own point of view) to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. - RH makes attributions of the content of another’s mind (e.g. emotions) - RH helps interpret faces - looking at the face of a partner increases right insula cortex activity while looking at your own face increases left prefrontal cortex activity - ALL ASPECTS OF EMPATHIC ATTENTION ARE DISRUPTED IN AUTISM - Mirror neurons are active when we both do something and watch others do it - They are involved in the imitation of finger movements - Means of understanding another’s intentions, amongst other things, - Form part of our capacity to empathise, like mirror neurons in the right pars opercularis help imitate facial expressions - THIS AREA SILENT IN AUTISTIC CHILDREN Victims: - Patients with right frontal deficits can have a change of personality whereby they become incapable of empathy - Patient reported faces seemed ‘strangely flat, white with emphatic dark eyes’ - Prosopahnosia was linked to RH lesions who recognised inability to combine component features into a detailed facial representation Development - ToM is said to be acquired at 4 & ppl with autism may never have it but it’s still intact with humans who have lost language - doesn’t depend on language. - The attunement of emotionally expressive facial expressions between mother & baby in the child’s early maturing RH means, before language is developed, it possesses a repertoire of signals to communicate its internal state. History of Western Culture in light of beliefs about the hemispheres - Romanticism (RH) - European intellectual and artistic movement in 19th century, - Landscape paintings contributed to romantic art (Claude Lorrain), with unique depth, impossible to be grasped by the LH, show distinct human perspectives on the world - Literature shows RH through expression melancholy and yeaning (e.g. Wordsworth’s poetry show longing for the past) - Modern and Postmodern World (LH) - Modern art has a failure to grasp linguistic meaning - Art has grown alienated from the world (abstract artworks like pointillism reflects LH inability to see wholes greater than their parts) - Post modern views on language fail to grasp meaning, focusing on formal structure of language itself (formal system in the LH) - Rise in mental illness, such as an increase in schizophrenia which suggest severe RH deficits Clara Flanagan: Early Socialisation - Theory of Mind: Our understanding that others have separate mental states and see the world from their point of view which differs from our own. Young children don’t have this theory of mind and can’t imagine someone else is experiencing different feelings or thoughts - Evidence that infants display emotion (an important factor in establishing relationships with others) but also respond to the emotional expression of others at an early age - This could be crucial in an early diagnosis of neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism - Some debate about when infants might be able to display this awareness of emotions - Newborn infants have a fixed focal length of 20cm and therefore might not be able to see emotional expressions clearly (like looking at a a blurred image) - However this may be sufficient to discern emotions - Bushnell et al. (1989) found most newborn infants showed a preference for their mother’s face rather than a strangers, suggesting sufficient visual discrimination to be able to perform some basic feature analysis which would allow the infant to perceive emotional expressions - How can we surely know this is enough to read precise emotions? - Tronic (1989) found by 3 months infants responded to their mother’s facial expressions for happiness, sadness or anger with appropriate expressions - Around 9 months the infant can use this information to regulate their own social behaviour - called social referencing - Shaffer concluded ‘infant emotions are adaptive in that they promote social contact and help caregivers to adjust their behaviour to the infant’s need and goals’ - Monkey Experiment: - Harry Harlow devised an experiment where single infants monkeys were caged with two dummy ‘mothers’ for the first eight months of their lives - One dummy was made out of wire-mesh cylinder with a monkey like face with a feeding bottle and the other covered in a cloth but had no feeding bottle - Harlow found monkeys only went to mother with food when they were hungry but spent most time with their cloth mother - 3 key points make a conclusion: - Evidence suggests bonding results from body contact rather than feeding - The contact needs to be interactive rather than passive, otherwise emotional development is abnormal - The lack of an interactive attachment figure can be compensated for by the presence of others such as peers, or rather, peers can be alternative attachment figures - Monkeys received only a poor version of body contact, which lacked interaction and grew up to be socially maladjusted and displayed autistic-like behaviours - Can neglect in childhood lead to misdiagnosis of learning difficulties like autism? - The development of attachment behaviour:  - Schaffer and Emerson (1964) conducted an 18 month study of Scottish infants from birth - The suggested a stage of theory of attachment development under the following headings - The asocial stage - First month of life infants produce similar responses to all inanimate or animate objects - They also react to human voices and show some recognition of their main caregivers (e.g. being more settled with them) - However, its ability to respond socially is restricted by general immobility and a lack of coordination - Indiscriminate attachments - From 2-7 months infants become more social by preferring human company and distinguishing between familiar and unfamiliar people - However, they are still relatively easily comforted by anyone and are yet to show anxiety strangers - Specific attachments - Around 7 months infants begin to show a distinctly different sort of protest when one particular person puts them down while also showing joy are reunion - Said to have formed a specific attachment - Begin to display stranger anxiety - Multiple attachments - After main attachment forms, infant also develops a wider circle of attachments depending on number of consistent relationships - Stage theories can be dangerous as they suggest a ‘fixedness’ about human development even though it is relatively fluid - Notional ages, however, are useful in identifying abnormal development such as autism - A child who hasn’t formed attachments by 1 years old would give cause for concern - Children Reared in Isolation: - When Genie was 13 her mother sought help for her - Her father believed she had a learning disability so locked her away, describing her as ‘retarded’ - He committed suicide after Genie was discovered - At 13, she looked half her age and was physically, emotionally and cognitively underdeveloped - Her recovery was hampered by an unsettled time with a variety of carers who abused her further - One notably autistic feature of her behaviour was a disinterest in other people, she didn’t reject them but treated them the same as an inanimate object - Did autism come first, or did the abuse lead to this? - Can this isolation cause autism or does it cause just ‘symptoms’ of autism? Norman Doidge: The Brain That Changes Itself - Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to grow and reorganise itself in response to stimuli - Neuroplastic change occurs when a specific type of signal is sent between neurons again and again, so that a pathway is formed between them, which makes them more likely to fire in that same way in the future. - New pathways created by learning new info can transfer their electrical signals efficiently only when fat called myelin forms around the pathway. - Myelin insulates it so energy doesn’t leak as electricity travels through - The more myelin, the more efficient it becomes. - Myelination—is responsible for the development of muscle memory - Because myelination occurs on such a large scale in the brain but consists of so many micro-components, it's very difficult to study, so its role in neuroplasticity has only recently been recognized. - The critical period is a span of time in infancy when our brains are absorbing immense amounts of information and developing connections at an extremely high rate. - During the critical period, unused parts of the brain can change themselves to perform functions different from original functions. - However, the belief was that once this critical period was over, the brain was set in stone for the rest of our lives. - Critical period shown by Hubel and Wiesel’s studies showed critical period (sewed one eyelid of kitten shut during critical period, 3-8 weeks, and when unsewn found brain map of vision never fully developed) - CAN THE CRITICAL PERIOD AFFECT PLASTICITY? - MERZENICH (theories genetic predisposition is being converted into autism due to environmental factors on the rise) BELIEVES AN ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR IN THE CRITICAL PERIOD AFFECTS NEURAL CIRCUITS IN AUTISTIC CHILDREN, FORCING THE CRITICAL PERIOD TO SHUT DOWN EARLY, BEFORE BRAIN MAPS ARE FULLY DIFFERENTIATED - HOW CAN SYMPTOMS OF AUTISM BE REDUCED DURING THE CRITICAL PERIOD? HOW EARLY CAN AUTISM BE SPOTTED? - BDNF (BRAIN-DERIVED NEUROTROPHIC FACTOR) - WHEN WE PERFORM AN ACTIVITY THAT REQUIRES SPECIFIC NEURONS TO FIRE TOGETHER, THEY RELEASE BDNF - GROWTH FACTOR CONSOLIDATES CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NEURONS - BDNF PROMOTES MYELIN GROWTH TO SPEED TRANSMISSION - BDNF TURNS ON NUCLEUS BASALIS (ALLOWS US TO FOCUS) KEEPS IT ON THE ENTIRE CRITICAL PERIOD (CP) - BDNF CLOSES CP AFTER MAKING ALL CONNECTIONS - MERZENICH BELIEVES SOME SITUATIONS OVER EXCITE NEURONS IN CHILDREN WITH GENES THAT PREDISPOSE THEM TO AUTISM, LEADING TO MASSIVE AND PREMATURE RELEASE OF BDNF. - THIS MEANS ALL CONNECTIONS ARE SEALED EARLY SO THE CHILD IS LEFT WITH SCORES OF  UNDIFFERENTIATED BRAIN MAPS AND THUS PERVASIVE DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS - THIS EXPLAIN HYPERSENSITIVITY AS ONE FREQUENCY HEARD CAN CAUSE THE WHOLE AUDITORY CORTEX TO START FIRING - ALSO EXPLAINS HIGH RATES OF EPILEPSY IN AUTISM (INSTEAD OF A FEW NEURONS FIRING THE WHOLE BRAIN CAN BE SET OFF) - Neuroplastic research may even allow us to “cure” learning disabilities - By studying what areas of the brain are affected by a disability, we can create specific types of mental exercises to strengthen those areas and treat the disability. - Fast ForWord Programme - For language impaired or learning-disabled children - Exercises every basic brain function involved in language, offering seven brain exercises with a reward for each correct answer - Reward means each time the child is rewarded, his brain secretes neurotransmitters (like dopamine) which help consolidate the map he has just made - People who struggle with speaking, reading, and writing often have issues in their premotor cortex can benefit from exercises that strengthen that part of the brain. - These might include tracing exercises, which involve tracing complex characters or lines to stimulate the neurons in the premotor cortex. - A regimen like this is highly individualised. - Doidge suggests that providing all children, regardless of disability, with an individualised plan that targets their weak areas could vastly improve their education and abilities later in life. - Help for Stroke Patients - Edward Taub used research with monkeys to develop a treatment for regaining motor control called constraint-induced movement therapy - If a patient loses the ability to use one of their arms this therapy re-teaches them to use it by constraining their good hand. - Being forced to use their affected hand in everyday activities causes the brain to rewire itself to make those movements possible and then easier. - Taub’s therapy regimens are founded on three principles: training with activities we do in everyday life is more effective; training should be incremental; and training is most effective in massed practice. This means the training should be done in short, concentrated periods, which is more effective than training over a long period of time with less frequency - Autism - Hypersensitivity may be a result of overactive neural networks - May be way many of these children have epilepsy - Fast ForWord programme helped language symptoms (which is what they’re aimed for as this is related to autism) but also autistic symptoms (e.g. sense of humour, eye contact and attention spans)