Social Consciousness Pedagogy E-Book

Charles Pidgeon, PhD

• Herausgeber: MainspringBooks
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 309

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Dr. Pidgeon is a UCSF graduate in pharmaceutical chemistry. He is most known in the pharmaceutical drug discovery process for immobilized artificial membrane (IAM) technology that was commercialized and is used today in big pharma thirty years after discovery. Currently, over a million discovery molecules have been evaluated using this technology, and some of the work can be found on the Regis IAM References website. This book represents his thinking on bridging commercial globalization with social globalization. The question pursued was, “Does there exist practical technology that will forge a bridge between social and commercial globalization?” Such a global bridge must apply to every social group (e.g., religions, addicts, alcoholics, abused women, and other groups). Stated differently, there is a social-commercial binding problem, metaphorically similar to the mind-brain binding problem. Dr. Pidgeon is attempting to bring awareness of this problem to the general public, and the book represents suggestions on how national and international groups may corroborate with each other’s group missions.

Leseprobe

Copyright © 2020 by Charles Pidgeon, PH.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-64133-645-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64133-643-7 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-64133-644-4 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021900010

MainSpring Books

5901 W. Century Blvd

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Los Angeles, CA, US, 90045

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To Social Superheroes

All people who can turn the light on when someone’s mind is in a dark place

List of Contributors

Sehej Bindra

West Windsor North High School North, Twelfth Grade

Gustav Edward Escher III

Greater Trenton, Inc.

Nandita Gupta

West Windsor High School North, Tenth Grade

David Pan

West Windsor High School North, Eleventh Grade

Rishi Patel

West Windsor High School North, Tenth Grade

Charles Pidgeon*

Retired Professor

*For inquires, send an email to [email protected] with the subject heading “hSW Book.”

Arnav Rastogi

West Windsor High School North, Twelfth Grade

Keshav Ratra

West Windsor High School North, Eleventh Grade

Delilah Ware

West Windsor High School South, Tenth Grade

Sharvari Deshpande

10th Grade, West Windsor - Plainsboro High School North

Ishita Jha

10th Grade, West Windsor - Plainsboro High School North

Sara Karnik

10th Grade, West Windsor - Plainsboro High School North

Victoria Li

10th Grade, West Windsor - Plainsboro High School North

Janani Rajan

10th Grade, West Windsor - Plainsboro High School North

Kanika Sharma

10th Grade, West Windsor - Plainsboro High School North

Jeeya Tyagi

10th Grade, West Windsor - Plainsboro High School North

Contents

Preface

Reference

Acknowledgments

Author’s Recommendation for Reading

TED Talks and Google Scholar Talks Recommended Throughout the Book

Mind Money™

Section 1 Opening Comments

1.1 Oxymoron

1.2 Problem and Implementation

1.3 Definitions: Social Wisdom, Social Global Wisdom, Social Navigation, Social Globalization, and Preality

Section 2 Introduction: Embodied Cognition (Mind) and Human Social Wisdom

2.1 Embodied Cognition Creates Social Wisdom

2.1.1 Mosquitos

2.2 Embodied Mind (EM) and Explaining Human Behavior

2.3 Brain Creates Consciousness as a Controlled Hallucination Because the Brain Is an Inference Generator

2.4 Theory of Mind (ToM)

2.4.1 False Beliefs and ToM

2.5 Social Wisdom Based on Human Beings (Creation of the hSW)

2.6 Origin of Gods, Embodied Cognition, and hSW

2.7 Social Navigation and Social Wisdom

2.8 Evolution, Brain Growth, and Brain Reorganization

2.8.1 Argument for Evolutionary Pressure From the Physical Environment to the Social Environment During Evolution and ToM

2.9 Religion and Globalization

2.9.1 Left Brain, Dopaminergic Minds, and Today’s Neurotransmitters Role as Social Drivers for Human Behavior

2.10 Conclusions

2.11 Social Navigation in High School

2.11.1 Introduction

2.11.2 Teenager-Parent Prealities

2.11.3 Children: Teaching Social Wisdom After Theory of Mind Is Developed

Section 3 Traditional Religions, Spirituality, and Social Wisdom

3.0 Religion: Read Me First

3.1 Christians

3.2 Buddhism and Social Wisdom

3.2.1 Introduction

3.3 A Protestant Perspective

3.4 Sikh Spirituality and Social Wisdom

3.4.1 History of Sikh Principles and Spirituality

3.4.2 A Sikh’s Perspective on Social Navigation

3.4.3 Sikh, Social Wisdom, Children, Adolescents, and Parenting

3.4.4 Famous Sikhs

3.4.5 Conclusions

3.5 Chinese Confucianism and Social Wisdom

3.5.1 History of Confucian Principles and Key Confucian Principles

3.5.2 Confucianism in Relation to Social Wisdom (hSW)

3.5.3 Shangdi and Embodied Cognition

3.5.4 Chinese, Westerners, Sense of Self, and Others

3.5.5 On the Practice of Social Wisdom

3.6 Atheism and Social Wisdom

3.7 Agnostics and Social Wisdom

3.8 Hindu Spirituality and Social Wisdom (hSW)

3.8.1 Brief History of Hindu Principles

3.8.2 A Hindu’s Perspective on Social Navigation

3.8.3 Hindu, Social Wisdom, Children, Adolescence, and Parenting

3.9 Secular Humanism

Section 4 Labeled Social Groups

4.1 Abused Women

4.1.1 Preemptive Guidance by Good Parenting

4.1.2 Trust

4.2 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

4.2.1 Introduction

4.2.2 Newcomers to AA

4.2.3 hSW or Serenity Prayer? Medical Considerations

4.2.4 Alcoholics Anonymous Supplement: Contextual List of the Word God in the AA Big Book

Section 5 Suggestions for Approaching Social Globalization

5.1 Mind Money™

5.1.1 Introduction

5.1.2 Thought Experiment: President Trump on US Currency

5.1.3.1 Modification of the $100 Bill from In GOD WE TRUST to IN MIND WE TRUST.

5.1.4 Credit Card Mind Money™

5.1.5 Credit Card Enactment Is Simplified

5.2 Cognitive Anchors: Both Human Body-Brain Images and “We the People” on Credit Cards and Minds instead of God on American Currency

Section 6 Summary and Conclusions

6.1 Tradition

6.2 Moneymen

6.3 People

6.4 Teenagers and the Future

6.5 Prior Art: Evolution of the Dopamine Mind and Social Consequences

Section 7 What’s Next?

7.1. Brain-Body-Environment and Mind

7.2.1 Preality Contrasted to Mind

7.2.2 Mind and Environment

7.3.3 Mind and Interoception (The Brain’s Monitoring of Visceral and Somatosensory Body Functions)

7.3.4 Mind and Brain

7.4 Religious Preality and Globalization

7.5 Embodied Mind, Preality, and Emotional Recovery (ER)

7.6 Upgrading/Modernizing Emergency Recovery (ER) Programs

7.7 Mind Money: Social Impact Going Forward

7.8 Planning and Execution of Policy to Enhance Social Consciousness: Government and Academic Idea Exchange

7.8.1 Example (Lying)

Index

List of Figures

Figure 2.2.1 A diagram demonstrating why reality is similar to a movie because

the brain’s updating of consciousness is faster than typical motion in the environment

Figure 2.6.1 Schematic comparing the chicken-and-egg adage, with the theological-

scientific discussions of whether God created everything, including Mind, or whether

the mind created God concepts

Figure 2.8.1 Human intestinal anatomy

Figure 2.9.1.1 Evolution of the dopaminergic mind

Figure 2.11.3.1 Brain regions active during activities involving self

Figure 3.2.1 Vietnam Buddhist students studying

Figure 3.5.1 The Chinese philosopher Confucius

Figure 3.8.1 The Hindu god Vishnu

Figure 5.1.3.1 Modification of the US currency from “In God we trust” to

“In Minds we trust” on the back of a $100 bill

List of Tables

Table 2.8.1 Evolutionary brain size increases after cooking were discovered.

Preface

Pedagogy denotes “the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept” (Google). The teaching subject matter being addressed in this book is social consciousness.

Many established principles of global social consciousness are discussed from modern or contemporary perspectives. In this regard, modern established principles of psychology, neuroscience, emotions, etc., are used to elucidate new thinking about the personal social constructs of the interpersonal minds during human interactions among many different social groups. Since each person has a unique reality, the term preality (personal reality) is used throughout the book.

A core assumption during the preparation of this book is “that religion is a product of complex interactions between cultural systems and basic human brain function” (Uffe Schjoedt, Geertz, and Roepstorff 2009). Basic human brain functions condense to the conclusion that the minds of humans created God concepts in their own cultural environment. This inspired my substitution of Mind(s) for God in traditional thinking and, in particular, the Serenity Prayer.

For instance, the “We” version of the original spiritual-based Serenity Prayer,

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

has been rewritten as

Minds, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The substitution of the word Minds for God retained the social wisdom of the prayer but attributes human Minds as being responsible for executing the personal and social wisdom; using Minds instead of God humanizes the deity-based Serenity Prayer but keeps the social wisdom alive; hence, the term hSW (i.e., human social wisdom) is the root concept created by substituting Minds for God. Thus, the hSW is not a prayer because it has no reference to any religious deity and can be used in any social system regardless of religion, sexual orientation, age groups, etc.

Considering the many social situations, the use of the hSW in parenting is described in the parenting section. The well-established and accepted psychological theory of mind (ToM) recognizes that virtually all children intuitively understand that other people have their own mind that is separate from their own; this occurs at three to five years old. More important, children who have achieved the ToM developmental milestone recognize that people’s actions are based on what is in the mind of the other person (not what is in their own childhood Mind). In contrast, people are not born with religion, ethics, or morals; these are taught and are concepts from their specific environment. Thus, the abstract concept of a god is virtually impossible for children under ages three to five (i.e., the age where ToM has been achieved). In other words, the concept of having a mind is understood several years prior to having a true belief in God or any adult concept of God/god.

Consider next parenting a child who is emotionally upset over not being allowed to consume large quantities of cookies because of the sugar content. If this child was taught by his parents the hSW (perhaps instead of a nighttime prayer), then the child will be taught early in life that he/she must accept the things they cannot change. In other words, we are suggesting that the hSW could be a parenting tool to reduce conflict while parenting during childhood development. A dramatic example is for parents with a son/daughter who is LGBT. If the hSW is used for parenting early in the child’s life, when the individual starts feeling (i.e., has LGBT thoughts and is being different from others), they will likely be in a mental position to recognize in their mind to accept what they cannot change. Effectively, they may have internalized, “It is not my fault.” A direct consequence of this is that their identity, self-esteem, and perhaps the emotion experienced for both the parents and the child may be diminished, minimized, or even perhaps eliminated when the individual begins to come out.

Another concept suggested in the book is changing US currency that bears the word God (i.e., modification of “In God We Trust”). Since all of society was created, imagined, or conceived by humans using their Minds, this justifies the proposed modification of US Currency. Thus, we proposed, in the book, that US currency change “In God We Trust” to “In Mind We Trust,” which is a more culturally logical statement in today’s world, particularly regarding how many people in America have culturally evolved toward a non-religious (but spiritual) personal belief system. In other words, their spiritual preality (personal reality) is feeling spiritual and not religious.

Since money is important to both commercial and social systems, and credit card transactions are the primary transaction mechanism for purchasing goods and services, a concept using credit card transactions was proposed. The concept is to attach a one-to-two-penny social society fee on each credit card transaction. There are trillions of credit card transactions in America each year, and this fee would generate more than a billion dollars for a social purpose; for instance, Medicare for all. The political quid pro quo feature of this suggestion is that the people benefiting from universal health care would be paying a portion of their own health care when they use their credit cards (see back cover).

Several religions are discussed with reference to the use or acceptance of the hSW. Hence, chapters/sections on Christians, Buddhists, Protestants, Sikhs, Confucianists, atheists, agnostics, Hindus, and Secular Humanism were prepared. Consequently, this book may be useful as course material for introductory to religion courses.

Two labeled groups of society were discussed: abused women and Alcoholics Anonymous. The advice to abused women is to first clearly understand that it is not their fault. However, this is only a thought and perhaps a long-term memory. The follow-up recommendation is to build a belief system (much more mentally inflexible than a simple learned thought from memory) regarding the concept that “it is not my fault.” This is similar to a child learning the letters of the alphabet. First, they achieve a vulnerable understanding, but as they get older and read the letters more, their use becomes unquestionable, which is similar to having a strong belief system. Hopefully, converting the concept of “it is not my fault” to a belief system in their preality may increase the rate of recovery of abused women. The section on Alcoholics Anonymous provides a new psychological perspective of why AA works based on the theory and practice of AA groups. The chapter also contains an appendix that lists the contextual use of the word God from pages 1 to 179 of the first Alcoholics Anonymous edition. Many contextual uses of the word God is highly uncontemporary in all book editions.

Section 2 is the most difficult to read, the longest chapter, but it is the precursor information to all the other chapters. This chapter is the foundation for the remaining topics in the book.

Time should be taken to read and understand this chapter before directly navigating to one of the other sections. This section describes/explains the embodied mind, perception, theory of mind, and more.

Finally, and most important from the author’s perspective, if the hSW was globally accepted as a true belief system in each person’s preality, there would likely be less fear and anxiety in America and globally that was created from the currently ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. People would tend to accept what they cannot change in their minds, which is the COVID-19.

Charles Pidgeon, PhD

Reference

Uffe Schjoedt, Hans Stødkilde-Jørgensen, Armin W. Geertz, and Andreas Roepstorff. 2009. “Highly Religious Participants Recruit Areas of Social Cognition in Personal Prayer.” Soc. Cog. and Affect. Neuro. 4 (2): 199–207.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Charles Pidgeon is very grateful to Gustav Edward Escher III for both writing a section and discussing the manuscript from start to finish. He is also grateful for the expertise of Dr. Fred H. Previc for scrutinizing the entire content from his understanding of psychology, religion, and social cognitive neuroscience. He wishes to recognize the student authors who spent one to three years learning from him the science needed for their sections.

Author’s Recommendation for Reading

This book was not intended to be read sequentially, which is done with a typical novel or similar science fiction story. This book aims to provide the fundamental background information first, but each section is understandable if read independently of the other sections.

Several places in the text inform readers to skip some text in each section if the reader does not want to understand, study, or learn the science associated with the concept under study.

TED Talks and Google Scholar Talks Recommended Throughout the Book

(In the order mentioned in the book)

Achor, S. 2011. “The Happy Secret to Better Work.” TEDxBloomngton. www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work?rid=54ktSWtrKd0o&utm_source=recommendation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=explore&utm_term=watchNow.

Dennett, D. 2006. “Let’s Teach Religion—All Religions—in Schools.” TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_dennett_s_response_to_rick_warren?language=en.

Liberman, M. 2019. “The Social Brain and the Workplace.” Talks at Google. https://www.youtube.com › watch.

Saxe, R. 2009. “How We Read Each Other’s Mind.” TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.

Seth, A. 2017. “Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality.” TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality/discussion.

Herculano-Houzel, S. 2013. “What Is So Special About the Human Brain.” TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_special_about_the_human_brain?language=en#t-705995.

Merzenich, M. 2009. “Growing Evidence of Brain Plasticity.” TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_merzenich_on_the_elastic_brain.

Shapiro, S. 2017. “The Power of Mindfulness: What You Practice Grows Stronger.” TED Talks. TEDxWashingtonSquare. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeblJdB2-Vo. Accessed 21 June 2019.

Zapolsky, R. 2017. “The Biology or Our Best and Worst Selves.” TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_biology_of_our_best_and_worst_selves.

Grown, B. 2012. “Listening to Shame.” TED 2012. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.

Carter, J. 2015. “Why I Believe the Mistreatment of Women Is the Number One Human Rights Abuse.” TEDWomen. https://www.ted.com/talks/jimmy_carter_why_i_believe_the_mistreatment_of_women_is_the_number_one_human_rights_abuse.

Judd, A. 2016. “How Online Violence of Women Has Spiraled Out of Control.” TEDWomen, TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/ashley_judd_how_online_abuse_of_women_has_spiraled_out_of_control#t-959579.

Rosenthal, J. B. 2018. “The Journey Through Loss and Grief.” TED 2028. https://www.ted.com/talks/jason_b_rosenthal_the_journey_through_loss_and_grief.

Steiner, L. M. 2012. “Why Domestic Violence Victims Don’t Leave.” TEDxRainer. https://www.ted.com/talks/leslie_morgan_steiner_why_domestic_violence_victims_don_t_leave.

Solomon, A. 2014. “How the Worst Moments in Our Lives Make Us Who We Are.” TED 2014. https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_how_the_worst_moments_in_our_lives_make_us_who_we_are.

Stoler, E. 2013. “How We Turned the Tide on Domestic Violence (Hint: The Polaroid Helped).” TEDWomen. https://www.ted.com/talks/esta_soler_how_we_turned_the_tide_on_domestic_violence_hint_the_polaroid_helped#t-695.

Wright, T. iO. 2012. “Fifty Shades of Gay.” TEDXWomen. https://blog.ted.com/gallery-io-tillett-wright-examines-the-50-shades-of-gay/.

Quinn, E. 2018.“The Way We Think About Biological Sex Is Wrong.”TEDWomen. https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_quinn_the_way_we_think_about_biological_sex_is_wrong?rid=y0rZQJ4TPaDf&utm_source=recommendation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=explore&utm_term=watchNow.

Orenstein, P. 2016. “What Young Women Believe About Their Own

Sexual Pleasure.” TED Talks. https://www.ted.com/talks/peggy_orenstein_what_young_women_believe_about_their_own_sexual_pleasure.

Lessig, L. 2013. “Taking Back the Republic.” TED 2013. https://blog.ted.com/taking-back-the-republic-larry-lessig-at-ted2013/.

Mind Money™

Recognizing that the world was built by people using their minds facilitates social reform from being primarily guided by money considerations to at least some emphasis that money, and what it is used for, is a creation from and for society by people using their minds. A two-penny tax, discussed in the book, on each credit card transaction could annually generate $1B annually for social purposes, perhaps health care, job creation, etc. Why not? The people paying the credit card fee would benefit from their payments.

In the author’s opinion, the optimum use of billions of dollars generated annually should be to use the money for political campaign money. The penny taxes on credit card transactions is a reliable source of large amounts of money annually; surely this is enough to fund campaigns for virtually all people running for office. Most importantly, if preference was given to people running for (i) the congress, (ii) the senate, and (iii) the Presidency, there would be no need to take donor money for campaigning. Under this condition, elected politicians would not have hidden, secret, handshake deals with money men which influences their decision when casting a vote. This also means the people being elected for high offices would have to pay more attention to what the people want, not what their donors want. There will be large amounts of pressure on all congressional and senate people in power from not only the donors and their lobbyists, but also personal pressure on individual elected officials to maintain the status quo. This would change the political system in America. The ‘wall’ of barriers for each politician would have to slowly erode to make such a change.

Section 1 Opening Comments

1.1 Oxymoron

The common adage that “change is constant” is, in fact, a wise oxymoron that should include all traditional religious teachings being malleable to social changes over time. People need to accept unavoidable social changes. The lesser the need to change any form of global social wisdom, without the need for a religious, spiritual, or any social group to change, the better. The reader should not “let his/her belief system interfere with accepting and understanding facts” and think about the concept that “brains are the factories of belief systems.”

Social wisdom can exist without depending on a religious belief system, and there are forms of social wisdom that are independent of not only all belief systems but also gender, race, culture, country of origin, etc. Such wisdom is global social wisdom, which is the theme of the collection of topics in this book. Social navigation in a global society benefits from wisdom that is least likely to change with cultural diversity. We offer this book as a start for others attempting to develop, invent, or create global social wisdom. I wish I understood something that is undoubtedly true regarding people’s global sense of social justice for all. From this perspective, the American Constitution phrase “We the people” is ineffable and should be applied globally.

1.2 Problem and Implementation

Remoras are small fish following sharks that sharks don’t eat. The remoras use the shark’s skin as a food source; they eat any biological material on the shark’s skin. This helps both parties. The remoras are not eaten, and they get food, and the shark has cleaner skin with probably less fluid drag while navigating and less susceptibility to infections. Globalization is typically viewed as the commercialization of goods and services. It is the shark. The skin feeders off the backs of globalization are social groups feeding off the financial leftovers of the globalizing sharks. The ocean of business does not contain only sharks (i.e., corporate managers that ignore social consciousness). For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Warren Buffett are people using, at least partially, their wealth for global social causes.

Solving the problem of a virtual total commercial domination over social globalization is most likely to require international cooperation. Also, funding should be made available for academic universities to compete for funding to develop and test models for linking social globalization with commercial globalization. Asking scientists to propose solutions to social problems does not exist in any request for proposal (RFP) from government funding agencies.

Nevertheless, a start at making the link stronger between commercial globalization and social globalization can be found in the last section, Mind Money™ (sections 5.1 and 5.2), which presents a few suggestions for implementing social change. Previous sections discuss some of the issues among different religions (section 3) and labeled social groups (section 4) and the roots of embodied cognition and social wisdom (section 2.1).

However, simply stated, anyone who makes a mental decision about a person’s qualia based on any biological attribute is ignorant. Biology built a good machine (i.e., humans). An attitude or opinion based on biologically derived color, facial structure, gender, and anything else is a direct assault on the genuine value of the biological diversity of human evolution. It is not biology that created social predicament in today’s world. It is the people (commercial industry sector) striving for control, money, power, recognition, etc., and globalization created the modern-day social globalized hurdles and difficulties.

Worse are the judgments based primarily or solely on religious belief systems. The social belief systems in early hominids were quite minimal, in part because they did not form large groups. Albeit true that apes had kinship group sizes with multiple apes (maybe twenty or more), they did not have the population size and global distribution of today’s social groups using the internet. Today it is not uncommon for a person to know hundreds to thousands of people. Social navigation within outside groups (i.e., their non-kinship groups) required the brain to renovate the limbic system to have cortical regulation of the animal brain for social navigation among large groups (Barger 2012; Barger et al. 2014). This is because social navigation requires control of the basic (primordial or animal-like) emotions to survive (see section 2.7 and 2.8). Several non-animal emotions are uniquely human (section 2.8) and essential for the survival of both the individual and group in modern society.

Thus, modern belief systems are a human construct of Homo sapiens, and their human minds, usually for personal peace or specific social objectives.

Although some sections can be read without the need for other sections (e.g., section 5.1, Mind Money), this book is not intended to be read sequentially, section by section. Readers are encouraged to start with section 2, then choose a belief system, or topic, from the index, and navigate directly to their section of choice; however, understanding section 2 in its entirety is essential to appreciate that reality can be understood to be the following:

A movie (with no prewritten plot) produced by the brain.A controlled hallucination because the brain is an inference generator.Your social reality being in constant change throughout your life.People have a personal reality, denoted as preality. Preality is personal intellectual property (IP) in contrast with public domain IP. It is discussed throughout the book.

1.3 Definitions: Social Wisdom, Social Global Wisdom, Social Navigation, Social Globalization, and Preality

The following definitions were used throughout the book and would be understood in the context described below.

Social wisdom: Refers to wisdom that is a guide for a particular group (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous), country (e.g., We the people for America), and globally (e.g., the hSW described in section 2.5 and 2.6). It is aimed at procedures for people to live a better life (i.e., becoming a better human being in their own environment).

Global social wisdom: Refers to the wisdom that is independent of (1) any human attribute, (2) social group, (3) either religious or non-religious groups and (4) is not intrinsic to any specific geographic location on earth.

Social navigation: The behavior and thought processes used during social interactions based on a person’s preality (personal reality). Any beliefs and formal inferences used while socially navigating are left hemisphere and dopaminergic systems that required dopamine in modern brains (section 5, figure 5.1). In fact, there is an almost linear correlation between brain dopamine levels and evolution in modern society (figure 2.9.1.1).

Social globalization: This denotes the global integration of human beings, specifically involving people’s personal reality (i.e., preality) in a commercial world. Understanding other human beings requires knowledge of the family, cultural, socioeconomic status, gender attitudes, etc., within the country. It also involves understanding how people from other countries view their own country.

Preality: A person’s personal reality. It can be defined as “enduring, unquestioned ontological representations of the world and comprise primary convictions about events, causes, agency, and objects that subjects use and accept as veridical”(Connors and Halligan 2014).

References

Barger, N. L. 2012. “Social Behavior from a Comparative Neuroanatomical Perspective: The Amygdala in Human Evolution.” eScholarship: UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations.

Barger, N., K. L. Hanson, K. Teffer, N. M. Schenker-Ahmed, and K. Semenderferi. 2014. “Evidence for Evolutionary Specialization in Human Limbic Structures.” Front. Hum. Neuro. 20 (May). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00277.

Connors, M. H., and P. W. Halligan. 2014. “A Cognitive Account of Belief: A Tentative Road Map.” Front. Psychol 5: 1588. 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01588.

Section 2 Introduction: Embodied Cognition (Mind) and Human Social Wisdom

Charles Pidgeon

2.1 Embodied Cognition Creates Social Wisdom

Everyone has some concept of social navigation, but few have a concept from human brain-body-environment interactions. The embodied mind simply denotes that what you think, or what is available to a person in their consciousness, is actually the result of the millisecond interactions between the brain, body, and the environment. The estimated times per second, or perhaps frames of reality per second, are approximately forty. This indicates that the brain-body-environment cycles the sensory input from the environment and monitors the bodily physiology (heart rate, temperature, hunger, etc.) at a rate of forty times each second. The brain does not process the input in steps of forty times per second (~ 25 milliseconds per conscious moment); rather, the brain continuously is processing all information available, which included memories stored in the brain. For instance, if mild electric shocks are sequentially given on a microsecond time scale (much faster than twenty-five milliseconds), the brain neurons approximately sum (not necessarily additive) the information, and more pain is perceived (e.g., the experimental design in Allen et al. [2016]). The significance is that the minimal conscious moment is constructed rapidly from several rapid inputs from the external world over approximately twenty-five milliseconds, and this includes internal body interoception by the brain (insula) and stored memories. Therefore, what is in your mind or consciousness is due to the millisecond interactions between the brain-body-environment. This is the embodied mind (EM).

The EM has been a feature of nature throughout evolution. However, prior to modern social group formation, hominids needed their embodied mind to focus on the harsh physical environment (i.e., social navigation skills were not as critical because people had to physically struggle with the physical environment); this is not the case today, at least for most people. Although apes have had social group sizes in the twenties participating in survival, apes did not need the emotional control that today’s people require to survive. Early hominids had such small group sizes there was little need to evolve brain changes for highly skilled social navigation. However, during evolution, inevitable brain changes occurred for social navigation when non-kin group size increased. Consequently, several new (non-animal) emotions unique to humans evolved, which is discussed in section 2.8.

Today, surviving in the social environment has created a great need for social navigation skills, and the adaptability of the human brain has physically changed the structure to meet this need. For instance, the hippocampus (memory) and amygdala (fear) and insula (i.e., interoception, decision-making, salience respectively) are subcortical brain regions that increased 60 percent, 37 percent, and 11 percent respectively over the last thirty to forty million years (Barger et al. 2014; Barger 2012).

2.1.1 Mosquitos

Mosquitos will be used to enhance an understanding of the EM. Consider being outside your home and you hear the high-frequency pitch of the mosquito’s wings in rapid motion. This allows the ear to detect the tiny sound pressure waves created by the wings. This sound detection only occurs when the mosquito is close enough to the ear to dominate the surrounding environmental sound air pressure waves. The EM can detect the mosquito’s sound, and the body can instantly react to swat it away (i.e., no mosquito bite). There is no visual or tactile sensory input only auditory.

If a mosquito is visually observed approaching, or even has landed on a human being’s skin, the EM can react fast enough, from visual input alone to the brain for the human being to either kill or swat the mosquito away. No auditory, taste, smell, or even tactile sensory input was needed.

If a mosquito bites a human being, only tactile information is available (too late, the bite itches), and the EM immediately loads the pain into the mind (via the insula’s interpretation of the sensory input). At this conscious moment, the information and the person immediately thinks or knows he/she has been bitten.

The posterior insula monitors all body activities or functions continuously (e.g., heart rate, temperature, etc.) and was part of the brain regions evaluating the pain level of the mosquito’s bite causing itch and pain. The insula is not visible when looking at the external brain because it lies just beneath the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes, but nevertheless, it has the same anatomy as all cortex (Latin for bark), which includes the gyri (ridges) and sulci (valleys) and a six-layer stack of neurons and other cells. Some define the insula as the fifth lobe of the brain. All the cortex is considered to be the bark of the brain. The insula also has unique attributes (e.g., it is responsible for the long-term disgust when tasting something horrible).

In summary, the EM can use individual or multiple sensory inputs, rapidly process the information (in the brain), load the processed information into consciousness, enabling the brain to create appropriate human behavior. Go to section 7.1 for a better understanding of ToM.

2.2 Embodied Mind (EM) and Explaining Human Behavior

It is impossible to describe any given human behavior from only the sensory system detection and processing, and subsequent brain processing (Zapolski 2017). Human behavior is too complex to be explained from a biological perspective. The reasons are that an understanding of the genetic evolution of animals to humans and the current fetal challenges from the mother’s blood supply, etc., prevent an explanation (Zapolski 2017).

The brain is the organ of the mind (i.e., it is the physical anatomy needed for creating the mind), but the body and environment are in constant exchange of information with the brain, and the mind must be updated by the brain’s sensory input and social situation. The embodied mind produced by the brain-body-environment is schematically drawn in Figure 2.11.3.1.

Psychologists have different words to describe different models or theories and the embodied mind is from the theory of embodied cognition (figure 2.2.1). The impossibility for explaining human behavior from immediate observations were given in Zapolski’s (2016) lecture. An important parameter is epigenetics, which merely indicates that genes will upregulate or downregulate based on the environmental input (figure 2.2.1). The enormous adaptability of the brain only contributes to the explanation of human behavior, but this is incomplete. Brain adaptability includes neuron rewiring from both short-term and long-term environmental stress and non-stress or simply developing any given skill. Noteworthy, the time frame for neuroplasticity (brain adaptability) is weeks to months (Zapolsiki 2016), whereas preality (personal reality) is the immediate present.

For instance, when one learns to play the piano, the cortical volume of the brain regions responsible for the sensory and motor finger movements increases with practice (in only weeks to months). Another important parameter is short- and long-term stress. Short-term stress causes stress hormones (glucocorticoids) to be released, which helps the individual react more quickly, and the individual is in a hyper state of awareness. This is frequently a good thing (behavioral response). However, long-term stress causes changes in the brain’s neural networks (particularly the amygdala), which may result in the person being in a constant hyperawareness state. This is a bad thing (emotionally). So explaining human behavior, unfortunately, requires knowing the history of the person and their exposure to stress. Even if the person has experienced stress over the last few months, the neuroplasticity of the brain causes the amygdala to rewire to elicit hyperexcited states.

Explaining human behavior must go at least back to the fetus. During gestation or fetal development, if the mother was exposed to continuous high-stress and had high-stress hormones in her blood, the developing fetus also experiences the same dose of the hormones. Thus, during development, this may cause the fetus to have an amygdala and other brain regions already developed into a hyperawareness state, which would contribute to the observed human behavior as an adult (Zapolski 2017).

As Dr. Zapolski discussed, the time domain involved with explaining human behavior must be traced from the seconds, minutes, months, years, etc., but epigenetic changes throughout the history of man have caused epigenetic changes in the gene pool that survived long-term in the human gene pool. Therefore, the reason it is impossible to explain human behavior from a biological perspective is because that it requires understanding events not only during one’s lifetime but also throughout the evolution of man.

2.3 Brain Creates Consciousness as a Controlled Hallucination Because the Brain Is an Inference Generator

Human behavior is clearly determined by what the brain constructs and loads in one’s conscious mind. Although many estimates exist, conscious perception research finds that people experience the world as a continuous visual input at a rate of forty conscious moments (frames) per second1. For comparison, a movie requires only approximately fifteen frames/second for the viewer to observe fluid motion (today thirty frames per second are typically used for movies). This means or translates into the brain being capable of updating environmental perceptions of reality approximately every twenty-five milliseconds (one thousand milliseconds per forty conscious moments). A fluid perception of reality requires the brain to update at a rate somewhere near every twenty-five milliseconds. In other words, the brain is the movie producer of reality derived from sensory input from the environment. This means the brain must make an estimate (i.e., guesses) on what to expect next before it is loaded into consciousness (which is, metaphorically, the movie of reality), as discussed next.

Equally important is to distinguish between the brain merely operating on sensory input followed by behavior, or the brain estimating what is coming next. Stated differently, “Is the brain a deductive-reasoning machine reacting to sensory input, or an inductive (inference) machine guessing what the next dose of consciousness might be?” Remember, consciousness is updated roughly every twenty-five to fifty milliseconds. Current thinking in the neurosciences leans toward the brain being an active inference generator (e.g., Barrett and Simmons 2015). This means the brain is constantly guessing what is happening in reality at approximately every twenty-five milliseconds at a time. When the brain malfunctions, it can generate hallucinations, which can be viewed as the wrong guess of reality, but it is not. Hallucinations are uncontrolled neural activity (i.e., a medical problem), whereas reality is a controlled hallucination from the inference generation of brain properties (Seth 2017).