Almost Ten Years On: Why are we still talking about The Essential Difference?

Simon Baron-Cohen’s book, The Essential Difference: The Truth About The Male And Female Brain (2003), is almost a decade old now, but his thesis keeps popping up in various places. For example, in a recent (and truly delightful) book on neuroscience and religion, Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not (2011), Robert McCauley uses Baron-Cohen’s work to suggest that researchers looking for “hyper-empathetic” subjects might want to check out the local convent.

Baron-Cohen’s main argument is that, on average, men and women have different cognitive strengths and weaknesses: men are more adept at “systematizing” and less adept at “empathizing,” while women are more adept at “empathizing” and less adept at “systematizing.” He goes on to argue that people with autism have “hyper-male” brains (in other words, they are especially good at systemizing and particularly poor at empathizing). According to Baron-Cohen, these differences in cognitive abilities are likely to be the result of genetic differences (both in the case of men and women and in the case of people with autism and people without autism).

I will leave it to others with more knowledge about autism to continue to debate Baron-Cohen’s thesis that autism is characterized by an aptitude for systematizing and by deficits in empathizing abilities, and will focus instead on his argument about sex/gender difference. His argument that these differences are primarily genetic or “hardwired” has been ably critiqued by Lesley Rogers. On average, men and women may have different ways of thinking, but these differences are undoubtedly influenced by gender role socialization (in addition to genetic factors). In societies in which women were denied access to education and were given primary responsibility for childcare, differences in patterns of thinking were most likely exaggerated. In theory, we could further reduce differences (or even reverse the averages) if we sent boys to schools in which only language and social etiquette skills were taught and if we sent girls to schools in which only math, science, and motor skills were taught.[1]

I see an even bigger problem
with Baron-Cohen’s argument in how he uses the constructs “empathizing” and “systematizing.”
When looking at averages, researchers have found small sex/gender differences in
cognitive, motor, and personality characteristics. Yet, these differences have
been found in very specific domains (i.e. on average, men may be better at some
types of visual-spatial processing while women may be better at some aspects of
language processing and some aspects of empathizing).[2] Baron-Cohen chooses to amalgamate
all of these different domains under the two constructs of empathizing and
systematizing; thereby suggesting that a number of small differences in degree should
be seen as two differences in kind (empathic vs. non-empathic and systematizing
vs. non-systematizing). By arguing that more men are good systematizers and
poor empathizers, and more women are good empathizers and poor systematizers,
he thereby suggests that male and female brains (on average) don’t differ from
each other by degree in some domains but in fact constitute two different
kinds.



 

And although Baron-Cohen
denies it, his definition of what counts as “systematizing” seems highly
reliant on gender stereotypes. When talking about boys and men, he sees their
interest in memorizing sports statistics as evidence of their systematizing
ability. He also sees their preoccupation with gaining social status through
force as evidence for their lack of empathizing abilities and as
evidence for their abundance of systematizing abilities because, in this case,
“social hierarchies are systems” (36). Yet, when talking about girls and women,
he interprets their preoccupation with gaining social status through covert
actions as evidence of their empathizing abilities but he does not see this as
evidence of their systematizing abilities (in this case, social hierarchies are
apparently not systems?). Elsewhere, he argues that girls are better at gaining
access to a group of strangers because girls are “more likely to stand and
watch for awhile in order to find out what is going on, and then try to fit in
with the ongoing activity” (42). Again, this is interpreted as evidence for
empathizing abilities but not as evidence for systematizing abilities. Why
wouldn’t we interpret this, sans evidence to the contrary, as support for the
idea that girls are both empathic and systematic?




 

It seems to me that
Baron-Cohen simply takes everything that girls and women do as evidence for
their empathizing and “theory of mind” abilities but not as evidence for
their systematizing abilities, while taking everything that boys and men do as
evidence for their systematizing abilities and as evidence for their
lack of empathizing and theory of mind abilities. In this way, Baron-Cohen is
simply drawing on the centuries-old association of masculinity with rationality
and femininity with emotionality. For me, this raises the question: why do so
many scholars, both within cognitive science and within those fields that
connect cognitive science to the social sciences and humanities, remain so
enamored with Baron-Cohen’s thesis?

--Kristina Gupta

Emory Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Ph.D. Candidate,

Emory Neuroethics Scholars Program Fellow

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Gupta, K. (2012). Almost Ten Years On: Why are we still talking about The Essential Difference? The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/01/almost-ten-years-on-why-are-we-still.html

---

[1] For an example of how these differences might be attenuated through learning, see the article“Playing an Action Video Game Reduces Gender Differences in Spatial Cognition” by Feng, Spence, and Pratt (2008).

[2] For a recent review of sex/gender differences in cognitive, motor, and personality characteristics, see Hine 2010. Many studies have tested sex/gender differences in empathy using different measures and have found statistically significant differences between men and women (for a review of sex/gender differences in empathy, see Schulte-Rüther et al 2008). A number of studies have found that on average, men are better at tasks such as targeting, mental rotation, and visuospatial processing (for a recent study of sex/gender differences in targeting abilities, see Moreno-Briseño et al 2010).

AJOB Neuroscience Grad Student Issue -Deadline Extended and Prize

~~~Deadline Extension~~~

The American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience is putting together an entire issue featuring the work of graduate students to be published in the Summer of 2012.

To encourage the submission of articles by all interested graduate students, the deadline for submission has been extended until February 20th.

As a reminder, articles are limited to 3000 words and can be on any topic in neuroethics.

PLUS

A $250 Travel Award to the 2012 International Neuroethics Society Meeting (http://www.neuroethicssociety.org) will be awarded to the best graduate student submission.

If you have any questions, please email the Graduate Student Issue guest editor Meera Modi at meera.modi@gmail.com

Take advantage of this great opportunity to be published in one of the preeminent neuroethics journals!

For more details, see the attached flier.

Looking forward to your submissions,

The AJOB Neuroscience Editorial Board

Neuroethics Debates by Emory Neuroscience Graduate Students

In addition to writing blog posts about neuroethical issues provided to each group (as posted on the blog already), Emory neuroscience graduate students in the Neuroscience: Communication and Ethics Seminar held debates on neuroethical issues of their choosing. The idea behind the debates came from trying to develop better ways for the students to be engaged with concepts of neuroethics. Whereas discussions about neuroethical issues in a classroom often become discussions between the more vocal students and leave quieter students voiceless, the debate format would allow each student a set amount of time to voice their opinions. Course director Dr. Andy Jenkins arranged an instructional session for the class with Bill Newman, coach of the Barkley Forum, Emory’s award winning debate team. At the beginning of the semester, the instructors provided a handful of potential debate topics and allowed the students to contribute ideas that they came up with throughout the semester. A few weeks before the debates, the student groups selected the topics they wanted to debate.




The format for the debates was established as follows to allow each student time to speak and equal time for the affirmative and negative sides:

First Affirmative Speech 6 min

Cross examination by 2^nd Negative Speaker 3 min

First Negative Speech 8 min

Cross examination by 1^st Affirmative Speaker 3 min

Second Affirmative Speech 5 min

Negative Rebuttal 6 min

Affirmative Rebuttal 3 min

Following each debate, the audience was allowed to discuss the issues raised in the debate and discuss elements each side did well and could have improved on. These open discussions became quite lively and without the time constraints of the class could have continued on indefinitely. In addition, votes were taken before and after the debate to see which side was more persuasive and where the audience fell on the debate topics.

The first debate topic was “Use of cogniceuticals by healthy persons should be encouraged”.

The second debate topic was “Religion provides the best guide for the ethical conduct of science”. 

The third debate topic was “fMRI represents an invasion of privacy”. 

With all said and done, the students seemed to enjoy participating in the debates. Some students indicated that whereas other classroom discussions merely presented neuroethics issues, the debate format allowed each student to dive in and be fully engaged with a topic of interest and work to communicate their viewpoints. Watching the videos definitely prove that to be the case!

--Karl Schmidt

Emory Neuroscience Graduate Student, Weinshenker laboratory

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Schmidt, K. (2012). Neuroethics Debates by Emory Neuroscience Graduate Students. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
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Disgust and a New Political Neuropsychology

Do politicians disgust you? If you are shown a photo of a politician you despise, chances are you will suddenly feel as though you were gulping down your least favorite food. But beyond the personality flaws of our politicians, a tendency toward being easily disgusted can affect a person’s view on political issues. In studies where participants are shown sickening images, such as a person eating worms, conservatives report higher levels of disgust than do liberals (Smith et. al, 2011). The emotion of disgust encourages humans to avoid infection; images of disfigurement and infection temporarily increase behavioral avoidance of novelty (Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller 2011). For a long time, the prevailing theory was that we form opinions and make decisions based on formal reasoning (Kohlberg, 1975). The theory of social intuitionism proposes that we use reasoning to justify our opinions ad hoc. It is possible that formal reasoning has more influence in other parts of human thinking, but the emphasis on irrationality of social intuitionist theory seems well suited for political thought.

 The Science behind Disgust

Along with a greater propensity toward disgust, conservatives tend to see purity as a moral characteristic while liberals do not. This has the mundane consequence that liberals have messier bedrooms. More exciting is that conservatives are more likely to view premarital sex as immoral because it conflicts with the notion of purity. Disgust, as a reaction to impurity, is one of the most powerful emotions. According to the theory of social intuitionism, disgust for homosexuality would drive conservative opposition to gay marriage. In the Smith (2011) study, the correlation between disgust sensitivity and conservative social values is strong, but there is little or no correlation between disgust sensitivity and political attitudes on tax policy and foreign aid. Liberals have little use for purity and do not generally oppose gay marriage. Anatomical MRI has recently corroborated the psychological evidence supporting social intuitionist theory.

The insula cortex is frequently active when a person experiences disgust, and sure enough at least one study found that the insula is larger in conservatives (Kanai et. al 2011). The insula is involved in many cognitive processes, and imaging research does not prove that a larger insula in conservatives is responsible for the power of disgust over cognition. The right amygdala, a region of the brain well known to be involved in fear processing, is also larger in conservatives. Liberals have a larger cingulate cortex, and the authors (Kanai et. al 2011) infer that liberals have a greater capacity for “increased sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern.” The authors talk around it, but the implication of the research is that conservatives are driven more by fear and disgust than liberals. 

 The Insular Cortex

The interpretation of fMRI data deserves its own blog post, but for an excellent primer on the limitations of fMRI, I recommend Logothetis’s 2008 review in Nature.  Even if the currently favored hypotheses are disproven, political neuroscience will continue to dredge up uncomfortable truths for all political groups. How will scientists be able to discuss these issues dispassionately when they will undoubtedly be subject to increased scrutiny and attacks from angry citizens who are proud of their political beliefs? Scientists feel comfortable speculating on data that has no political relevance, but simultaneously feel the need to self-sensor when publishing on the neuroscience of politics. Scientists will be accused of fitting their personal political agenda to the data, and these accusations may have merit in some cases. But how can we discuss this research honestly without drawing the ire of an interested public? This is not a dilemma with an easy way out.

(Political neuropsychology can also help us explain the causes of political events from the past. In the past ten years, gay marriage has gone from being wildly unpopular to the law of the land in several states. But how can that be? A study from 2006 (Schiappa, Gregg, and Hewes) points to popular sitcom “Will and Grace.” The popular television show exposed lovable gay characters to viewers who may never have met a gay person in their own lives. Now it is not noteworthy at all for there to be a gay character on television. With likeable gay characters in every living room, suddenly gay marriage seems less disgusting to most Americans.)

Political consultants and spin-doctors create the advertisements to help candidates win office, but rarely are those ads based on solid research. But it is not hard to imagine moneyed interests organizing ad campaigns based on knowledge gained from social intuitionism theory. Proponents of gay marriage could run ads that further lessen the disgust for homosexuality. Conservatives frequently accuse Hollywood of promoting the homosexual agenda, and it’s true that “Milk” and “Brokeback Mountain” played on our emotions, perhaps overriding any lingering disgust. With few barriers to political spending, the American viewer will become a participant in a test of social intuitionist theory. In a sense, the viewer always has been an unwitting participant, because there is no Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the Federal Communications Commission. It is a great irony that a psychology experiment on a few dozen college students that weakened disgust would certainly be shunned by the IRB, but the same experiment could be broadcast to millions of homes for the right price.

If you want to know more about social intuitionism, I recommend Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Righteous Mind:Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.” Emory has its own political guru in Drew Westen: “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.” Finally, if you really want to understand American political psychology, watch Dr. Strangelove: 

  --Kevin Fomalont 


Kevin Fomalont is an Emory Neuroscience graduate student in the Graduate Certificate Program in Brain, Mind, and Culture. The Center for Brain, Mind, and Culture fosters interdisciplinary discussion from multiple explanatory perspectives at Emory University. Their list of scheduled events for the semester is located on their website: http://cmbc.emory.edu/events/  

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Fomalont, K. (2012). Disgust and a New Political Neuropsychology. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
, from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/01/disgust-and-new-political.html

References

Kanai R, Feilden T, Firth C, Rees G (2011). Political Orientations Are Correlated with

          Brain Structure in Young Adults Current Biology, 21(8), 677-680.

Kohlberg L, Elfenbein D (1975). The Development of Moral Judgements Concerning

          Capital Punishment. Am J Orthopsychiatry, 45(4), 614-640.

Logothetis NK (2008). What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI. Nature, 453,

          869-878.

Neuberg SL, Kenrick DT, Schaller M (2011). Human Threat Managment Systems:

         Self-Protection and Disease Avoidance. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews,

         35, 1042-1051

Schiappa E, Gregg PB, Hewes DE (2006). Can One TV Show Make a Difference? Will &

        Grace and the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis. J Homosexuality, 51(4).

Smith KB, Oxley D, Hibbing MV, Alford JR, & Hibbing JR (2011). Disgust Sensitivity and the Neurophysiology of Left-Right Political Orientations. (A. Serino, Ed.) PLoS ONE, 6(10)

Careers in Neuroscience: Women in Science, is pregnancy a "disability"?

16 significant women in science for details visit: http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/

My entering class of 2002 at Emory University consisted almost entirely women with the exception of maybe 2-3 men in a large group of maybe 15 or so people. This super-sized class was a complete fluke--almost everyone who received offers from Emory chose Emory as their top pick that year to the chagrin of many fine graduate neuroscience programs. In retaliation, other schools moved their deadlines up the following year. I felt lucky to have such a large diverse class, like I had a better sampling of the population of future neuroscientists.



Read more here: http://emoryethics.blogspot.com/2012/01/women-in-science-is-pregnancy-short.html 

Neurogenetics and its Implications

In October 2007, The Sunday Times Magazine ran an interview that contained the following:

"He says that he is 'inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa' because 'all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really', and I know that this 'hot potato' is going to be difficult to address…His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that 'people who have to deal with black employees find this not true'."

So who said this? None other than James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist famous for discovering the structure of DNA.  The interview, understandably, generated a storm of controversy and led to Watson retiring from his position at the ColdSpring Harbor Laboratory. He later clarified his statements and said: "To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

 James Watson

This incident could be written off as a one-off remark from a man (with a history of being controversial) who, while brilliant, is still entrenched in the racist views of an earlier time. But it could also be seen as part of the larger issues relating to the field of neurogenetics (the relationship between genes and the brain), which will need to be addressed as scientists continue to learn more in that field.  

Genes definitely play a role in human brain development, just like they do in the development of other bodily systems. For example, genes such as Microcephalin and HAR1F are thought to be responsible for making the human brain unique among primates and jumpstarting human evolution. But the idea that the genes we are born with can explain our intelligence, behavior, and even personality can be troubling, and, at first, might seem to support ideologies ranging from determinism and the absence of free will to racism and eugenics.  

RNA secondary structure for HAR1F

In a talk titled “Subjectivity and Healing in the Neurogenetic Age: Where is the Person? Where is the Culture?” (which was part of a lecture series hosted by The Emory Center for Ethics at the end of October) Emory Anthropology professor Melvin Konner argued that neurogenetics does not support those ideas and, in fact, can even provide evidence against them. Regarding ethnicity and culture, Konner argued that neurogenetics can oppose racism, since despite our cultural and (external) physical differences, all people have human brains with similar capacities for learning, thinking, and feeling. He supported this with data from his fieldwork with the hunter-gatherer !Kung Bushmen who are, in many ways, socially, emotionally, and intellectually similar to those living in modern, industrialized societies despite their radically different culture. 

The !Kung San

But is this correct? Are the genes that influence brain development, intelligence, and behavior the same across all populations? Konner pointed out that not everyone thinks so.  A paper published in Futures of Evolutionary Psychology argues against the commonly held notion that human behavior has not been significantly influenced by evolution since our ancestors began migrating out of the African Savannah. According to the author, Peter Frost, evolution has shaped the behaviors of different populations in response their different cultures and has also had an influential effect on how the cultures themselves developed. Similarity between genomes is often used to show how little variation there is among people, but Frost claims that is more important to look at specific genes with adaptive functions than the whole genome. One example he gives is the development of language. Research suggests that a new variant of the ASPM gene (involved in brain growth) that emerged in the Middle East and spread to Europe was responsible for the spread of phonetic alphabets.  The variation was less common in East Asia where an ideographic (symbolic) writing system was used. Since the ability to read and write was highly valued, this gene proved to be adaptive in a culture where a phonetic alphabet was used which led to an increase in the gene (and, in turn, the alphabet) among the population   

 Distribution of the ASMP alleles

Another study that Konner mentioned in his talk specifically addresses the issue of intelligence and ethnicity. The paper is titled “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence” and claims that the social environment in which Ashkenazi Jews in Medieval Europe lived selected for certain mental traits (including verbal and mathematical intelligence) leading to higher average intelligence in the population. 

It may seem that making general claims about the intelligence of various ethnic groups is a regression to the racist pseudoscience of past centuries (and, in fact, the definition and significance of “intelligence” and IQ are themselves controversial issues, but that’s a discussion for another time). But should potential social implications prevent the discovery and dissemination of neurogenetic knowledge? We need to remember that people are ultimately individuals and understand that overarching trends among populations do not describe every individual in that population.  If a behavioral trait is more common among one group, that in no way means we should treat members of that group differently. There is no need to be afraid of doing such research because of the possible implications, as long as we keep our cultural biases and ideologies out of the science. And although this is easier said than done, neurogenetics is, in fact, more likely to disprove those existing biases than it is to reinforce them.

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Queen, J. (2012). Neurogenetics and its Implications. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on
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Framing and Responsibility in Consciousness Studies: a review of Nicholas Humphrey's Soul Dust: the Magic of Consciousness

The first book I read of Nicholas Humphrey's was The Mind's I, a short, cutesy book on the evolution of intelligence. There were little cartoon men that made complementary, cliff-note-type points in thought bubbles, always poking their head in from the edges of the text. The cutesy makes sense; Humphrey has that clipped British tradition of economic phrasing, on full display in Dawkins and Hitchens, a kind of stylistic embrasure raised against Teutonic opacity. Soul Dust, the obligatory book about consciousness that all science popularizers eventually write toward the end of their life cycle, is no different. Like all those who write about consciousness, he is motivated by an ethical, indeed, the supreme ethical concern. As Jerry Fodor said, "If it isn't literally true that my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching and my itching is causally responsible for my scratching, and my believing is causally responsible for my saying... If none of that is literally true, then practically everything I believe about anything is false and it's the end of the world."

Author Nicholas Humphrey

A lot of scientists seem to dimly understand this; turning toward emergence and top-down causality the way autotrophs obliquely turn to capture light. An awareness has also been impressed of the Hard Problem - the problem of WHY something feels, not just the way it does, but at why it feels at ALL. Humphrey explains the Hard Problem, followed by: "I will make a proposal as to what the thing in the brain that the subject represents as 'being like something' really is, and I will suggest what its biological origins in nonconscious animals may have been." In other words, what the book promises, over and over again, is a Theory of Consciousness. And that theory of consciousness is... "Consciousness is a self-created entertainment for the mind." Of course, that's not really a theory, but this is quickly followed by "I may say I have some hopes for this theory, once we have properly fleshed it out."

Humphrey's "theory" is that consciousness is a magic trick that the brain plays, where somehow, from one perspective, the trick seems impossible (the audience) but from another perspective (the magician) the trick is obvious. Note of course, that this is a metaphor, not a theory. He just describes the Cartesian Theater and then declares: and the brain does it! This doesn't seem to stop Humphrey. If you think I'm oversimplifying, see: "Consciousness is a magical mystery show that you lay on for yourself." You know how some books like The Tipping Point are really a New York Times article stretched into an entire book? Well, Soul Dust is a single metaphor stretched into an entire book. Not only that, but the metaphor is a dangerous one. The Cartesian Theater is something that people have at least nominally tried to avoid, especially since Consciousness Explained by Dan Dennett (in which consciousness, notably, was not explained).

Humphrey's theory also seems to indicate that consciousness is an attractor, a particular kind of mathematical description of a dynamic process (time devoted: 4 pages), but it's unclear how this integrates at all into the "magic show," besides that attractors have basins of attraction and the cyclopean aperture of perception (not his words, I mentioned that curt British thing, right?) seems kind of like a basin looking out at... the mathematical phase-space? The world? I don't know, the metaphors don't really cohere. Humphrey seems to have written the entire book in a stream of unadulterated thought, as he writes: "I did not expect our discussion to lead so soon to Plato's metaphysics" after a loose description of Plato's Cave. That's certainly forgivable, and could even be charming, if the philosophical ideas had some kind of maturity, or even self-awareness. Humphrey feels free to use sentences like "We have argued that [consciousness] is based on a contrived illusion ... which... has been designed to appear to the subject to have surreal phenomenal properties." To appear to the subject. As usual, another Theory of Consciousness that presumes what it seeks to explain. Unfortunately, Humphrey was apparently never told that anything can be proved by analogy. Consciousness is like a visual illusion seen from one perspective, but really is something different from another perspective. Of course, the problem is how we have perspectives in the first place. The issue with using analogies and metaphors is that consciousness itself always ends up being a necessary component, a priori and existent to begin with. As Julian Jaynes argued, consciousness is the very domain of metaphor, but there are no metaphors for the domain itself.

Alright, so there are some bad books written on consciousness, why exactly does this matter? Of course, the book jacket has praise from V.S. Ramachandran and Owen Flanagan - big names in the field, so it seems to act as a barometer as to what is acceptable to present to the public in consciousness studies. The real problem is the title: Soul Dust. Humphrey wants to say something about meaning, about life and death, about how to live your life. This debate matters. Thinking about consciousness as a magic trick, a preformed and forced metaphor, has consequences for the average reader. Humphrey assumes what he seeks to prove, that consciousness is a "magical mystery show." Anyone reading this book is going to have that impressed upon them (especially as it is repeated over and over again), and it's the wrong impression. That Grand Theory of Consciousness that we're all waiting for, it has consequences. This kind of dilettante public framing is irresponsible. Using a metaphor of genes being selfish was a brilliant framing job by Dawkins, but it's been shown to be wrong again and again, and it's only in the public sphere that evolutionary biology resembles the evolutionary biology portrayed in The Selfish Gene. And the Intelligent Design movement is fueled by recriminations that respond to that particular metaphor. Maybe Humphrey doesn't realize that people actually read this stuff, they pick it up off of bookshelves and get their Amazon alerts and sit down and read his book and their conception of the universe can be changed and shaped by his metaphors. Maybe he forgets that not everyone can whip out Ryle's Regress to easily combat his claims, but assume instead that a professional scientist has credible reasons for saying what he's saying. And to those folks, it's the end of the world. 

Erik P Hoel 

Center for Sleep and Consciousness, University of Madison, WI

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Hoel, E.P. (2012). Framing and Responsibility in Consciousness Studies: a review of Nicholas Humphrey's Soul Dust: the Magic of Consciousness. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2012/01/framing-and-responsibility-in.html

Citations:

Dennett, D. 1991 Consciousness Explained. Little Brown and Co., Boston.

Fodor, J. A Theory of Content and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA, Bradford Book/MIT Press, 1990. Humphrey, N. 2011. Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness. Princeton University Press, NJ. Jaynes, J. 1976 The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Mifflin/Mariner Books.