Spinoza’s anticipation of contemporary affective neuroscience

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Morrison Ravven
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Emotional Contagion ◽  
The State ◽  
Affective Neuroscience ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Embodied Mind

Spinoza speculated on how ethics could emerge from biology and psychology rather than disrupt them and recent evidence suggests he might have gotten it right. His radical deconstruction and reconstruction of ethics is supported by a number of avenues of research in the cognitive and neurosciences. This paper gathers together and presents a composite picture of recent research that supports Spinoza’s theory of the emotions and of the natural origins of ethics. It enumerates twelve naturalist claims of Spinoza that now seem to be supported by substantial evidence from the neurosciences and recent cognitive science. I focus on the evidence provided by Lakoff and Johnson in their summary of recent cognitive science in Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999); by Antonio Damasio in his assessment of the state of affective neuroscience in Descartes’ Error (1994) and in The Feeling of What Happens (1999) (with passing references to his recent Looking for Spinoza (2003); and by Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese and their colleagues in the neural basis of emotional contagion and resonance, i.e., the neural basis of primitive sociality and intersubjectivity, that bear out Spinoza’s account of social psychology as rooted in the mechanism he called attention to and identified as affective imitation.

Social Psychology and Noninvasive Electrical Stimulation

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo S. Boggio ◽  
Gabriel G. Rêgo ◽  
Lucas M. Marques ◽  
Thiago L. Costa
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Social Pain ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Social Decision ◽  
Correlational Research ◽  
Neuroscience Research ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
Brain Behavior

Abstract. Social neuroscience and psychology have made substantial advances in the last few decades. Nonetheless, the field has relied mostly on behavioral, imaging, and other correlational research methods. Here we argue that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is an effective and relevant technique to be used in this field of research, allowing for the establishment of more causal brain-behavior relationships than can be achieved with most of the techniques used in this field. We review relevant brain stimulation-aided research in the fields of social pain, social interaction, prejudice, and social decision-making, with a special focus on tDCS. Despite the fact that the use of tDCS in Social Neuroscience and Psychology studies is still in its early days, results are promising. As better understanding of the processes behind social cognition becomes increasingly necessary due to political, clinical, and even philosophical demands, the fact that tDCS is arguably rare in Social Neuroscience research is very noteworthy. This review aims at inspiring researchers to employ tDCS in the investigation of issues within Social Neuroscience. We present substantial evidence that tDCS is indeed an appropriate tool for this purpose.

Social Psychology as a Cognitive Science

1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (9) ◽  
pp. 839-840
Author(s):  
James S. Uleman
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Science

In the Middle of Life

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Winter's Tale ◽  
Moral Repair ◽  
Moral Frameworks ◽  
Moral Time

This chapter explores the specific challenges that cognitive science and social psychology pose to those literary concepts and modes that are grounded in traditional moral understandings of selfhood and action, including integrity of character and notions such as tragic realization and moral repair. Focusing on the concept of moral time, the chapter explores two literary texts in which profound middle-of-life dramas take place: Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle” and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. A form of slow psychic time entirely lost to view in recent cognitive science is shown to take place in James’s tale, while The Winter’s Tale insists on the forms of moral and emotional experience that are beyond reflection and explanation. The readings presented are set in relation to key critical debates on the works, to challenge a persistent evasion of moral frameworks in contemporary anti-normative approaches.

scholarly journals Similar levels of emotional contagion in male and female rats

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingying Han ◽  
Bo Sichterman ◽  
Maria Carrillo ◽  
Valeria Gazzola ◽  
Christian Keysers
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Emotional Contagion ◽  
Female Rats ◽  
Male Rats ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Male And Female Rats ◽  
Danger Detection ◽  
Rats And Mice ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractEmotional contagion, the ability to feel what other individuals feel, is thought to be an important element of social life. In humans, emotional contagion has been shown to be stronger in women than men. Emotional contagion has been shown to exist also in rodents, and a growing number of studies explore the neural basis of emotional contagion in male rats and mice. These studies promise to shed light on the mechanisms that might go astray in psychiatric disorders characterized by dysfunctions of emotional contagion and empathy. Here we explore whether there are sex differences in emotional contagion in rats. We use an established paradigm in which a demonstrator rat receives footshocks while freezing is measured in both the demonstrator and an observer rat, which can hear, smell and see each other. By comparing pairs of male rats with pairs of female rats, we find (i) that female demonstrators freeze less when submitted to footshocks, but that (ii) the emotional contagion response, i.e. the degree of influence across the rats, does not depend on the sex of the rats. This was true whether emotional contagion was quantified based on the slope of a regression linking demonstrator and observer average freezing, or on Granger causality estimates of moment-to-moment freezing. The lack of sex differences in emotional contagion is compatible with an interpretation of emotional contagion as serving selfish danger detection.

Law and psychoanalysis: close intertwining between Hans Kelsen and Sigmund Freud

KPGT_dlutz_1 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-35
Author(s):  
Ricardo Borrmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
The State ◽  
Pure Theory ◽  
Original Analysis ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
Personal Context ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
New Hypothesis

This paper offers an original analysis of the interconnections between law and psychoanalysis through the personal and academic exchanges between Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). After a brief analysis of the similar cultural background of both scholars as Jews who grew up in fin-de-siècle Vienna, the text focuses on the personal encounters between them and subsequently analyzes Kelsen's reception of Freud's work in “The State-Concept and Social-Psychology” (Der Begriff des Staates und die Sozialpsychologie). Kelsen’s text was originally published in 1922 in Freud’s review, Imago, resulting from a conference he held at the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society. This paper analyzes the relevance of Freud’s theory to the construction of the Pure Theory of Law, especially regarding his concept of the state. Furthermore, it presents a new hypothesis for the subjective reasons behind Kelsen’s attraction to psychoanalysis, and for his admiration of Freud, which it tries to understand through the personal context of Kelsen’s life. Finally, it deals with the possible influence of Kelsen on Freud's work, especially with regards to the term "Super-Ego."

Extensions and Limitations to Logic

2017 ◽  
pp. 141-195
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Marlowe
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Fuzzy Logic ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Probabilistic Models ◽  
Mathematical Reasoning ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Advanced Students ◽  
Solid Foundation

Classical (Aristotelean or Boolean) logics provide a solid foundation for mathematical reasoning, but are limited in expressivity and necessarily incomplete. Effective understanding of logic in the modern world entails for the instructor and advanced students an understanding of the wider context. This chapter surveys standard extensions used in mathematical reasoning, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, and natural language reasoning and understanding, as well as inherent limitations on reasoning and computing. Initial technical extensions include equality of terms, integer arithmetic and quantification over sets and relations. To deal with natural reasoning, the chapter explores temporal and modal logics, fuzzy logic and probabilistic models, and relevance logic. Finally, the chapter considers limitations to logic and knowledge, via an overview of the fundamental results of Turing, Gödel, and others, and their connection to the state of mathematics, computing and science in the modern world.

The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bryce Yaden ◽  
Jonathan Haidt ◽  
Ralph W. Hood ◽  
David R. Vago ◽  
Andrew B. Newberg
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Affective Neuroscience ◽  
Peak Experiences ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Psychological Constructs ◽  
Depersonalization Disorder ◽  
Transcendent Experience

Various forms of self-loss have been described as aspects of mental illness (e.g., depersonalization disorder), but might self-loss also be related to mental health? In this integrative review and proposed organizational framework, we focus on self-transcendent experiences (STEs)—transient mental states marked by decreased self-salience and increased feelings of connectedness. We first identify common psychological constructs that contain a self-transcendent aspect, including mindfulness, flow, peak experiences, mystical-type experiences, and certain positive emotions (e.g., love, awe). We then propose psychological and neurobiological mechanisms that may mediate the effects of STEs based on a review of the extant literature from social psychology, clinical psychology, and affective neuroscience. We conclude with future directions for further empirical research on these experiences.

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