I have collected different video resources together under one heading and added them to the Web Resources page. I have only included specialized sites, not YouTube or Google Video or the like.

Besides TED, Dana, Grey Matters, and other resources Greg and I have mentioned previously, I have included the Stony Brook Mind/Brain Lecture Series. A yearly series, the most recent lecturer was Patricia Churchland, who spoke on “Decisions, Responsibilities, and the Brain.”

Please, if you know of other good video resources, leave a comment! I’ll keep adding them to the list.

Of course video of Patricia Churchland is also available on YouTube. Below I’ve included Part One from a three-part series. As she discusses research on brain science, belief and morality, she has a great set-up slide entitled “Brain Based Values” which announces “Evolution sets the brain’s style of drives and emotions” AND “Experience in a culture shapes the style into specific habits and preferences using the reward system.”

As regular readers will know, those are two great statements, BUT the proof is in the pudding, the devil in the details: good use of evolutionary theory, sophisticated understanding of subjective experience, effective use of the culture concept, an embodied approach to habits, and a more open and distributed view of the “reward system” than is normal in neuroscience. Does Churchland accomplish these things? I’ll let you decide.

But I will say that it is a perilous leap from “is” to “ought”…