"So Haidt's first distinction is between what he calls mind and body. And what he points out there is that though much of our bodily regulation happens through the brain, there are independent loci of processing. In particular, the gut, our digestive organs, can run relatively independently of the brain, and he provides some examples of that.
But strikingly, one of the things that he does not discuss is the famous example of Mike, the headless rooster, who was a rooster — here he is on the cover of Life magazine — who soon after the Second World War was beheaded, and who went on to live for another 18 months, perfectly happily. Here he is dancing. And if you go on YouTube, you can actually watch a live version of Mike the headless chicken. Those of you who have pledged to turn off your Internet: I’m regretting it now.
So the point about Mike the headless chicken is that there's a whole bunch of motor control representations that take place not in the organ where one would typically expect it, in the head, but rather along the spinal cord in various ways. The first division to which Haidt adverts is the fact that it's actually a biological feature of us. That regulation of action happens through all sorts of biological processes, some of which are located up here, and others of which communicate with the parts of our limbs and so on, only through lower parts of the spinal cord."
© Tamar Gendler
Yale Lectures on Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature, 2011
[link]
But strikingly, one of the things that he does not discuss is the famous example of Mike, the headless rooster, who was a rooster — here he is on the cover of Life magazine — who soon after the Second World War was beheaded, and who went on to live for another 18 months, perfectly happily. Here he is dancing. And if you go on YouTube, you can actually watch a live version of Mike the headless chicken. Those of you who have pledged to turn off your Internet: I’m regretting it now.
So the point about Mike the headless chicken is that there's a whole bunch of motor control representations that take place not in the organ where one would typically expect it, in the head, but rather along the spinal cord in various ways. The first division to which Haidt adverts is the fact that it's actually a biological feature of us. That regulation of action happens through all sorts of biological processes, some of which are located up here, and others of which communicate with the parts of our limbs and so on, only through lower parts of the spinal cord."
© Tamar Gendler
Yale Lectures on Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature, 2011
[link]
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