Player FM 앱으로 오프라인으로 전환하세요!
Metamorphosis pt. 2: The Cognitive Evolutionary Avant-Garde
Manage episode 363878222 series 2815818
We assess the future of our evolutionary journey by asking what it was like, experientially, to be at the forefront of ancestral human cognition. We examine the role of choice in human evolutionary history, describing expression changes in synaptic genes of the prefrontal cortex as a key driver of our cognition, and see how such changes are driven by behavior, by our ancestors choosing to live at the limits of their cognitive abilities. We examine the embodied metaphors on which abstract thought is based, the original function of the brain region that was recruited for language, and the drawbacks to inhabiting a symbolic world. Does the experience of meditation parallel the greater self-control our ancestors found with an enlarging prefrontal cortex? Were those who saw beyond the confines of ancestral human abilities treated as outsiders, as deviants so often are? Finally, what would it be like to live at the limits of our abilities, and thus promote further evolution, today? What limits would we seek to transgress? We offer a tentative answer in the abandonment of worldviews based on psychological need, in favor of simply seeing the world as it is, confronting any horrors that emerge along the way.
80 에피소드
Manage episode 363878222 series 2815818
We assess the future of our evolutionary journey by asking what it was like, experientially, to be at the forefront of ancestral human cognition. We examine the role of choice in human evolutionary history, describing expression changes in synaptic genes of the prefrontal cortex as a key driver of our cognition, and see how such changes are driven by behavior, by our ancestors choosing to live at the limits of their cognitive abilities. We examine the embodied metaphors on which abstract thought is based, the original function of the brain region that was recruited for language, and the drawbacks to inhabiting a symbolic world. Does the experience of meditation parallel the greater self-control our ancestors found with an enlarging prefrontal cortex? Were those who saw beyond the confines of ancestral human abilities treated as outsiders, as deviants so often are? Finally, what would it be like to live at the limits of our abilities, and thus promote further evolution, today? What limits would we seek to transgress? We offer a tentative answer in the abandonment of worldviews based on psychological need, in favor of simply seeing the world as it is, confronting any horrors that emerge along the way.
80 에피소드
Minden epizód
×플레이어 FM에 오신것을 환영합니다!
플레이어 FM은 웹에서 고품질 팟캐스트를 검색하여 지금 바로 즐길 수 있도록 합니다. 최고의 팟캐스트 앱이며 Android, iPhone 및 웹에서도 작동합니다. 장치 간 구독 동기화를 위해 가입하세요.