One must also remember that Hamann confessed that he could not conceive of a Creative Spirit without genitalia; indeed, he was quite happy to assert that the genitals are the unique bond between creature and Creator.
You cannot tickle yourself—tickle requires a non-self, animate entity on the surface of your skin. This non-self, animate other is the most primitive social stimulus. Self-produced cutaneous stimuli are not ticklish because our nervous system cancels their effects, perhaps in the cerebellum. In the absence of such cancellation, we would be constantly tickling ourselves by accident.
The same mechanism that detects non-self, ticklish stimuli generates the sense of self. Although our sense of identity involves more than self/nonself discrimination, such a mechanism is at its foundation and a first step toward the evolution of personhood and the neurological computation of its boundaries.
( ... tālāk ... )At the request of the League of Nations, Einstein and Freud collaborated in writing Why War? (1933). By the time the exchange between Einstein and Freud was published, Hitler, who was to drive both men into exile, was already in power, and the letters never achieved the wide circulation intended for them. The first German edition (Warum Krieg?) of the pamphlet is reported to have been limited to only 2,000 copies.
Einstein asks Freud: “What is to be done to rid mankind of the war menace?”
Research in psychology has cast doubt on the long–standing view that a person's moral character is the dominant factor in whether he or she does the right thing. In one amusing set of experiments, theology students were told to prepare a lecture on the parable of the good Samaritan. They were given a briefing about the lecture in one building before being told to walk to another, where they were to give the lecture. On leaving the first building, they passed a stranger who was groaning by the side of the path, apparently in need of assistance. Students who had been told they needed to hurry to give their lecture were six times less likely to offer help than those who were told they had plenty of time.
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