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Brain Foundational Human Mind Philosophy Pre-Human Minds

What Is It Like to Have a Mind?

Introduction If you were to ask a human being and a bat, “What is it like to have a mind?,” you would expect to get unimaginably different answers. What is less expected is that if you asked four different people the same question, you could receive four unimaginably different answers.  In 1974, philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked […]

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Contemporary Issues Psychology Spirituality

Stampede Greed and Desperate Need

(Or, What the Sackler family and the Haitian refugees have in common) What do the Sackler family and the Haitian refugees have in common? They are both using every resource they have to survive. The Sackler family has armies of highly-paid lawyers and tax specialists, unenlightened elitist judges, ubiquitous myth-manufacturing media, money-oriented medical professionals, and lobbied subservient politicians to […]

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Human Mind Pre-Human Minds Religion Spirituality

Quadrune Mind: A Secular Spirituality for the 21st Century

Introduction To define religion and spirituality is difficult to do. Yet, it is important that we have some understanding of what these words mean for the quadrune mind model of spirituality and this blog. The best definitions of “religion” and “spirituality” for the quadrune mind model come from Bowling Green State University. Spirituality is defined as “the […]

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Contemporary Issues Pre-Human Minds Spirituality

QM and Moral (But Not Spiritual) Arguments for Killing Other People

Introduction In the quadrune mind model of spirituality, there is no spiritual merit in the killing of another person—ever. In this blog we will describe some moral arguments for killing other people and indicate which level of pre-Human consciousness, as described in the quadrune mind model, best corresponds. We will end with an examination of the circumstances […]

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Contemporary Issues Foundational

The Content of Our Mind Does Not Determine the Level of Our Consciousness

(Understanding What Is Good, Great, Evil, and Human) Introduction Most of us believe that people possess one mind. Sometimes that mind has the wisdom and courage to declare in the face of widespread civil violence: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies”—a thought that surely comes to us from “the better angels of our nature.” Other […]

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Foundational Pre-Human Minds Psychology

Understanding the Pre-Human Minds: Working In the Hanford Nuclear Complex & Recovering From Trauma

The quadrune mind model of consciousness states that the human brain can support not one, but four distinctly different minds. Three of these minds are associated with parts of our brain that we share with our evolutionary ancestors: reptiles, herd mammals, and primate mammals. The fourth mind in this model, associated with the newest part […]