‘The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.’

Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

In his new book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt argues that our political and religious preferences — a perennial source of divisiveness and conflict — are an expression of our underlying moral psychology, and he anticipates that an understanding of our moral psychology may help to bring people together, offer them a new perspective on ongoing conflicts, and possibly facilitate conflict resolution.  His goal is to drain some of the heat, anger, and divisiveness out of political and religious debate and replace them with awe, wonder, and curiosity. Arguably, a core question for Haidt is what type of understanding will truly help people to resolve conflicts?  Read More »

Charles Duell, the U.S. patent commissioner of 1899, reputedly said that everything that could be invented had been invented. The belief was clearly mistaken. Since then, the products of human inventiveness have grown exponentially. We live in creative times, ceaselessly innovating and devising novel solutions in both living and non-living systems, and all this achieved, most likely, by those taught using a standard educational model. But have we not arrived at a similar juncture to Duell — can we be any more creative and, if so, should creativity be cultivated in the classroom?

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Steve Jobs, in his famous Stanford University Commencement Address (2005), advised students not to let the “noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice”, but rather “have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”. Few psychologists would deny that we possess a subtle mind that can be a great source of strength, joy, and creative insight. However, as psychological scientists, our task is to understand how the subtle, ‘intuitive’ mind works and thus avoid any simple-minded, romantic proclamations.

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In order to implement human intelligence in computer systems the challenge is to build a functional architecture that simulates the interconnected and dynamic workings of perception, motivation, emotion, cognition, and action in a changing environment. Read More »

….so we should open ourselves to the impossible and embrace a psychology of possibility.

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‘When your soul awakens, your destiny becomes urgent with creativity’

John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, p. 111

I was not surprised to discover only one degree of separation between Daniel Siegel and me. Siegel’s view of physical, mental, and relational health is inspired in part by the flowing metaphors of a fellow Irishman, John O’Donohue—a man I recall very well, sitting patiently, ready to sign his book for another customer in my grandmother’s bookshop. Reading Siegel’s thought-provoking book, Mindsight: the new science of personal transformation, brought me back in time to that place where I paused dusting off granny’s books and began reading them instead—upon which, much like Daniel Siegel did, I discovered biological science, psychological science, and the fascinating enigma of systems science. It is into the sphere of systems science that Siegel takes us in the opening sections of his book.

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For those familiar with Aristotle’s Golden Mean, the Buddhist Middle Way, or Bertalanffy’s principle of dynamic equilibrium, the emergence of a new synthesis of positive and negative psychology will be no surprise.

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Many of us are comfortable with the belief that analogy plays an important role in the creativity process. But the ongoing debate as regards the existence of mental imagery has some of us feeling uncomfortable in relation to the mental images — the visions and simulations — we see and use during acts of creation.

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In his incredibly insightful, entertaining, and thought-provoking new book, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest For What Makes Us Human, Ramachandran begins by challenging readers to consider Disreali’s rhetorical question, “Is man an ape or angel?”

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It is sometimes said that biology flows downhill — we are endlessly concerned with the well-being and competency and future adaptive success of our children.

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