34 quotes
There is a physical neurobiological substrate to all human knowledge, including thoughts, memories, perceptions and emotions. To this end, mental states and thought processes are physical.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Each high point in the history of human civilisation has taken place where the conditions were ripe and has borrowed and built on the achievements of other cultures whose golden age may have passed.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Human beings are largely motivated by their emotional repertoire, manifested through their need for attachment, physical security, a sense of belonging and a positive personal and collective identity.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Ultimately, I conclude that however we understand existence, what gives meaning to our lives are those things that serve our neurochemically based emotional self-interest in a sustainable way.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Almost every golden age of geo-cultural domains has been characterised by good governance, exchanges, borrowing, innovation and the adaptation of earlier contributions to forms of knowledge, and rationalism.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Indeed, collective triumph will also depend both on the application of reason and the recognition that a great deal of knowledge is indeterminate and may be temporally, spatially and perhaps culturally constrained.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Security, stability and prosperity will depend on the application of the multi-sum security principle that captures the multi-dimensional aspects of security and insists on the centrality of global justice for lasting security.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Human beings are emotional amoral egoists, driven above all by emotional self-interest. All of our thoughts, beliefs and motivations are neurochemically mediated, some predetermined for survival, others alterable.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
I define sustainable history as a durable progressive trajectory in which the quality of life on this planet or other planets is premised on the guarantee of human dignity for all at all times and under all circumstances.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Addictive drugs misuse the brain’s existing pre-programming, activating reward mechanisms and extreme feelings of pleasure. When stimulated, the brain’s pleasure centres emit signals to repeat the behaviour. In this sense, the brain is pre-programmed to feel good.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Many of the great achievements in history that are commonly attributed to one geo-cultural domain often owe a great debt to those of others. In this sense, some of the greatest achievements of human civilisation have been collective efforts and are part of the same human story.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Focusing purely on extremism, whether in the Arab-Islamic world or the West, will not alleviate the root causes of tensions between members of different cultures. It will only alienate those who do not recognise themselves in those stereotypes, and generate fear and misunderstanding.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Morally relevant emotions are essential for living in social groups and they provide the basis on which we may construct conceptual frameworks that help guide our actions, but human beings should more accurately be thought of as being endowed with morally relevant capacities rather than innate moral knowledge.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)
Cultural essentialism is, thus, intimately tied to power relations. Fixity, homogeneity and separateness are prioritised within an essentialist framework. Therefore, part of any effort to resist essentialism is recognising diversity within difference, contingency, mutability and connectedness.
Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009)