The Bilateral Mind as the Mirror of Nature

This book provides a framework that encompasses both physics and cognitive science integrating them into a 'theory of everything' to establish a basis for both our scientific and humanistic endeavours.

It explores the implications of brain laterality for understanding the emergence of mind and its relation to the physical world arguing that the analytic vs. holistic cognitive differences of the left and right human cerebral hemispheres are key to understanding not only human self-consciousness and language, but also sociocultural phenomena ranging from the emergence of the scientific method and axes of political orientation to the direction of development of conceptions of God and the fundamental differences between polarizing philosophical traditions.

In a further step, the book draws on the Darwinian principle that our cognitive apparatus is shaped by the environment in which it evolved to argue that human bilaterality mirrors the fundamental hylomorphic relation between formal organization and material components that constitutes physical nature itself. The logical division between holistic and analytic categories thereby offers a principled basis for a metaphilosophy.

Provides a framework that encompasses both physics and brain sciences Explores the implications of brain laterality for understanding the emergence of mind Contends that human bilaterality mirrors the fundamental hylomorphic relation between form and matter

Auteur

James Blachowicz is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago.

Contenu
Chapter 1: Introduction: Analysis and Holism.- Part I: METAPHYSICS.- Chapter 2: Reductionism and Emergence.- Chapter 3: Purely Physical Emergence.- Chapter 4: Protective Enclosures and the Emergence of Life.- Chapter 5 :Virtual Reality and the Emergence of Mind.- Chapter 6: Physics and Theology: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?.- PART II: EPISTEMOLOGY.- Chapter 7: Inter-Hemispheric Dialogue.- Chapter 8: One Method for All Inquiry.- PART III: MORAL and POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.- Chapter 9: Morality and the Rational Control of Desire.- Chapter 10: Freud and the Physics of Civilization.- Chapter 11: Hemispheric Politics.- PART IV: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION and NATURAL THEOLOGY.- Chapter 12: Archaic and Modern Religious Ontologies.- Chapter 13: An Empty Holy of Holies.- PART V: ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHY.- Chapter 14: Analytic vs. Continental Philosophy.