Margaret Talbot’s “Brain Gain”: A Summary In Margaret Talbot’s essay “Brain Gain,” she discusses the trend and implications of students, scholars, and intellectuals using neuroenhancing drugs to improve overall academic and professional performance. Talbot conducts interviews to examine how professionals and students within stressful demands of college and professional life have achieved enhanced brain functioning with the recreational use of prescription drugs. Throughout her essay, Talbot interviews three men about their experiences, opinions, and motivation for the usage of neuroenhancing drugs.…
Stephen Glould challanged the work of scientests who insisted women had smaller brains and therefore were less intelegent, when wrote the 1980’s essay “Womens Brains”. Glould talks about the inacuatrate way scientests were meassuring the size of the brain, he also told about all the factors that were not being considered when collecting data which lead to the bogus statemnts about women being less than men. For example Paul Broca measured the size and weight of the brain of both women and men. “For 292 male brains, he calculated an average weight of 1,325g; 140 female brains averaged 1,144g for a difference of 181 grams” (women’s brains). But what Broca neglected to include was that men on average are taller and weigh more than women, so of course their brains would weight more.…
Chapter Five: Conservatism and Enhancement In chapter five of Allen Buchanan’s book, Beyond Humanity? He attempts to cover the concerns that conservatives have on genetic enhancement. He argues that if conservatives believe that human nature (and cognition) is imperfect then there is room to suggest that we should be finding way to safely improve our cognitive abilities.…
For every effect, there is one distinct cause. What happened today happened because of yesterday. Nonetheless, these statements do not always hold true. Sometimes there is not one single cause for an event but rather multiple hard to decipher causes. Such thought is no exception to Susan Griffin.…
There’s a Chinese Proverb that says, “Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get back up again.” I really wish I heard that quote when I thought I was a failure, but really was just being lazy. In Carol Dweck’s article “Brainology” a study is conducted on seventh grade students and their mindsets. Their mindsets were measured and studied for two years. Dweck studied the difference between the fixed mindset and the growth mindset students and how they did in school.…
Among accounts of what it is that defines a person, two positions stand as rivals. There are arguments that assert that personal identity is purely biological, while other philosophers push that there is something more than the mere body that makes a person who they are. In this paper, I will argue that Eric Olson’s thinking-animal problem does not entail a leap from psychological to biological accounts of personal identity, on the grounds that Lynne Rudder-Baker’s Not-So-Simple Simple view of personal identity evades his objection. In attempting to refute psychological accounts of personal identity, Eric Olson offers “The Thinking-Animal Problem.” Olson begins his argument by asserting that for each human person there would appear to…
Jacob Bronowski was a distinguished scientist who spoke at the Blashfield Address for the American Academy of Art and Letters in 1966. He gave the speech “The Reach of Imagination” to an audience of top class artists and poets. The speech covered the subject of imagination within the human mind. Bronowski opens his speech with,“imagination is a specifically human gift” (193).…
YR 10 Science Evolutionary Theory Alicia Horsfield Evolution can be defined as a gradual process in which a species changes into a different and more complex form. This happens over several generations. Evolution also proves that all species are related through genetic variation. (yourgenome.org, n.e). Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was an English Naturalist, famous for creating the theory of ‘evolution’.…
Educational Autobiography Have you ever wondered where you would be today if you did not have the education you’ve had along the way? Throughout my years my motivation has stemmed from not only my parents, family and my teachers but it has come from within myself too. I strongly believe that praise and reward can help a student who is struggling or help them with their weaknesses. Carol Dweck in “Brainology” states that a growth mindset person has better odds of becoming who they want to be in life and that their intelligence will take them far (Dweck 1).…
How the Brain Forms Our Identities Our identities are formed through a very distinct process in which our senses interpret the events that we experience. By using our senses and our memories, we act according to what our brains remember and build our own identities. However, traumatic memories cannot be remembered as easily as regular memories can, making it difficult to have a strong and personal identity. Martha Stout’s “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Friday” discusses how trauma can cause the brain to incorrectly process memories, rendering them incomplete and fragmented (421).…
Analyzing “Brainology” In the following essay, we will analyze and discuss the article “Brainology” by Carol Dweck. Starting off by the title, the opening paragraphs, the claim, the author’s purpose, methods, persona and closing paragraphs as well. Because I believe Dweck’s article was more effective than ineffective, reasons of why I believe she could've done a better work will be discussed and explained in short. The title the author chooses for this article, “ Brainology”, introduces the audience to what she will be talking about, it is important to point out that the word “brainology’ induces us to think of a very broad topic which could be understood as a study of the brain.…
This point implies that human nature is not a result, but an action. The cumulative effects of internal and external actions develop people into who they are, and who they will become. Another point Griffiths makes is humans are plastic. That is, humans are metaphorically shaped differently due to differential inputs they receive throughout the course of their lives.…
Humans think that we have free will, but how free are we actually. When you make a choice you think that it is free will. But really that was what you were supposed to choose all along. We all have a path that our lives will follow no matter what we do. Now are we still free?…
In Meditation 6, we learn that Descartes comes to the conclusion that the mind and body are two separate entities. His belief is that through the idea that mind and body are separate entities, without the other, one can still exist. He comes to this conclusion by arguing that the mind, a non-extended thinking thing, is an entirely different being than the body, an extended thinking thing, is. He believes that the mind and soul are united to the body but still can be separated from each other and still exist.…
“To be a human is an amazing feat of both the universe, and to most, God” The opening line that I used on the first day of class for what would become part one of the analytical paper. Having learned abundant amounts of new information over the last three and a half months, my original idea on what it means to be human still feels correct. The three majors themes throughout the semester have been how ideas can change over time, the role of technological advancements in change, and how humans have evolved alongside these advancements and societal changes. The unit on time had the most importance in expressing these three themes. Time affects everything in a humans life from the second they are born to the second they die.…