RE: [xmca] Fwd: "The Tip of the Hippocampus"(!)

["monica.hansen" <monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu>]

Mike,
All I meant, Mike, is that it is not neuroscience that is bad or to blame for the seductive quality of what passes for factual support of opinion. I was joking about blaming the rhetoricians more than the neuroscientists.

I am not a big fan of blame and/causal relationships, actually. I just find it more productive as a person and as a teacher and as a researcher to focus on activities in development and how they can be influenced for the positive, knowing that the positive is sometimes more or less easily defined. 

I don't know if there is a singular cause for the problem of crime or poverty, and therefore, responsibility for something with multiple layers of complexity, such as the individual development of a child in a family/community of poverty, in larger community, in a government, in a world, can't be ended by implicating a singular cause that can be identified and put aside to make us all feel better about our luxuries. However, I do know that it is good for children to have food and trusting, nurturing, social relationships. So I start there every day with the children I have contact with in my life and work outward.

Responsibility comes at all levels with the people who do or do not choose to take responsibility and that includes neuroscientists and rhetoricians. It includes those who don't even realize the implications of their actions. It includes me.

One of the books that I am appreciating right now for a non-traditional view on neuroscience research is Jaak Panksepp's Archaelogy of the Mind. Panksepp is also the author of Affective Neuroscience and takes a more compassionate approach to rats and children and still manages to produce some viable bits of neuroscience.

Let's keep going after these false arguments that don't serve to clarify the actions of anyone who cares in regard to the well-being and development of all children.

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2012 1:55 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Fwd: "The Tip of the Hippocampus"(!)

Monika--

One prominent developmental neuroscientist I quote somewhere likens the environments of poor kids to rats in cages in isolation.

Who do I turn to looking for responsibility for such voluntarily offered opinions, back by the authority of "developmental science" in venues that affect public policy including the treatment of poor kids and their families?

mike

On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 7:30 AM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>wrote:

> On 27 November 2012 15:11, monica.hansen
> <monica.hansen@vandals.uidaho.edu>wrote:
>
> > This is my favorite quote of this piece, Mike: "Neuroscience has 
> > joined company with other totalizing worldviews - Marxism, 
> > Freudianism, critical theory - that have been victim to overuse and misapplication."
> >
> > I also like the term "brain porn".
> >
> > I don't think it is the fault of neuroscientists, however, that 
> > everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and use what passes for the 
> > most respected form of evidence. I think that little bit of wanting 
> > to formulate an argument with proper support has to go to the rhetoricians.
> >
> >
> And behind the rhetoricians lie the readers.
>
> Huw
>
>
>
> > Monica
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu 
> > [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On
> > Behalf Of mike cole
> > Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2012 10:51 AM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
> > Subject: [xmca] Fwd: "The Tip of the Hippocampus"(!)
> >
> > This article from the NY Times was forwarded it to me. I thought it 
> > might be of interest to others on the list.
> > mike
> >
> >
> > Date: 2012/11/25
> > Subject: "The Tip of the Hippocampus"(!)
> >
> > __________________________________________
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> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
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