Posts filed under: how we think

Thomas Kuhn (1970) arrived at his concept of the paradigm from his interest in the history of science. Because science is so well documented in objective form, it provides the ideal resource for study of the way a group advances...
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I learned psychiatry in a mental hospital, which had its spectacular moments of irrational chaos, but the loony bin I analyse in my book, “Welcome”, is this world that contains us all. As a psychiatrist I had no difficulty recognising the insanity...
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In 1954 the first antipsychotic drug, chlorpromazine, appeared. It calmed the acutely disturbed psychotic patient remarkably well. In the decade that followed chemists produced variations, which did much the same, but all had side-effects. They induce a dullness of mind...
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We feel the masters of our thoughts. We have no awareness of the automatic processing that makes perception meaningful and thought possible. Nor does self-awareness bring home how much our ideas come from others. We use the knowledge and skills...
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I put aside for the time being major horrors such as Nazi Germany or English soccer crowds on the rampage to begin with a minor example of errant group mind. In my home town in November 2012 the local newspaper...
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All animal life achieves centrally organised awareness. Each species specialises during evolution in some way to perceive better its environment. Birds excel at  vision and dogs at smell. The vulture manages both. Humans turned inwards to achieve self-awareness. Zoltan Torey (link...
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We are the creatures of our times, and they are a’changing. The first turning of the saeculum (see the group mind) following World War II generated a wave of drug addiction. In those halcyon days throughout the western world a...
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The Ancient Greeks made great strides in knowledge using mind exercises alone. The analysis of the irreducible units of matter brought Democritus to a remarkably modern understanding of atoms and energy. Aristotle sought the atom, so to speak, of thought....
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Humans succeed so well at using causes to achieve desired effects that David Hume’s assertion in 1739 still seems preposterous. He held that we cannot know the connection between cause and effect. We overlook the way we gain what knowledge...
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