COVID-19 has exposed the core of almost every national ethos around the Planet. It is causing untold harm to the health and well-being of virtually everyone. Economies that were chugging along have come to an abrupt halt as people are retreating indoors to avoid exposure to the virus. Medical facilities are beginning to become overloaded, even in highly developed countries. Here in the US, President Trump, worried about the political fallout, is said to be weighing the lifting of the social distancing strategy that, so far, has been the primary public health response to the virus. Congress is about to… Read More
Continue ReadingThomas Kuhn, Iain McGilchrist, and the Divided-Brain
I am always looking for examples of dichotomous situations that add to the credibility of McGilchrist’s divided-brain model. The more instances that it explains something important, the more likely it will be accepted as a new, paradigmatic design model for attacking those “big,” persistent problems in our individual and cultural lives we are struggling to overcome. Last night, as I was in bed, trying to quiet my thoughts, one really good one popped up. I have been reading a series of essays by Richard Rorty, collected in his book, Philosophy and Social Hope (great read). One is devoted to a… Read More
Continue ReadingJohn Dewey and the Brain
I realize that the divided-brain model is unfamiliar and strange to most of my readers and followers. I included some examples of how it works in explaining a wide variety of social and individual actions in the book, but I will use this blog, from time to time, to point to additional examples. Today, I have an excerpt from John Dewey’s, Liberalism and Social Action. This work was published in 1935, relatively late in his extraordinarily long productive life. He wrote: Let me mention three changes that have taken place in one of the institutions in which immense shifts have… Read More
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