The author takes the reader on a tour that covers such topics as computers, evolution, Descartes, Schrodinger, and the nature of perception, language, and invididuality. He argues that biology provides the key to understanding the brain. Underlying his argument is the evolutionary view that the mind arose at a definite time in history. This book ponders connections between psychology and physics, medicine, philosophy, and more. Frequently contentious, Edelman attacks cognitive and behavioral approaches, which leave biology out of the picture, as (...) well as the currently fashionable view of the brain as a computer. (shrink)

In his bestselling work of popular science, Sir Roger Penrose takes us on a fascinating roller-coaster ride through the basic principles of physics, cosmology, mathematics, and philosophy to show that human thinking can never be emulated by a machine.

Why do many phenomena defy the explanations of conventional biology and physics? Cambridge research scientist Rupert Sheldrake, who wrote this book in India, calls into question many of our fundamental concepts about life and consciousness, reinterpreting the so called laws of nature in this path breaking book.

On the one hand, we think that our conscious perceptions are tied to some stage of whatever processing stream we have. On the other hand, we think that our conscious experiences have to resemble the computational states that instantiate them. However, nothing in our alleged stream resembles our experienced perceptions. Hence, a conflict. The question is: How can we go from what we know about neurons, their connections, and firing patterns, to explaining what conscious perceptual experiences are like? No intuitive (...) answer seems plausible. Our perceptual experiences are complex and unified; however, brains divide their processing tasks into small chunks and segregate those smaller pieces across the gray matter. In this essay, I conjecture that what corresponds to our visual perceptions are higher order patterns of bifurcation in an attractor phase space. If I am correct, then the problem of the explanatory gap in philosophy, the binding problem in psychology, and the problem of perception in neuroscience disappear. If the traditional computational perspective is wrong, and sensory processing is not piece-meal, step-wise, and segregated, then there is no need for something in the head to tie things together. (shrink)

This article provides a broad outline of a hermeneutic unity of psychology, by way of a reply to Martin's comment . It is argued that the metaphysical and ontological impasses that concern Martin may occur because of two reasons &emdash; genuine incomparability or the lack of motivation on the part of potential interlocutors. We argue that neither of these reasons necessarily precludes the dialogue and evaluation called for under this hermeneutic approach. We then show how a proper understanding of dialogue, (...) as well as a group of psychologists to facilitate this dialogue &emdash; theoretical psychologists &emdash; are keys to a coherent and unified, yet pluralistic and responsive psychology. (shrink)

This paper provides a personal view of the Bee archetype as something lying behind concepts as different as: the principle ofform; genetical memory; collective unconscious; and several related concepts. The darker side of the Bee archetype embraces retrovirus remnants and other "Egoistic DNA" sequences, collective paranoia, and the practices of a totalitarian "communist" state. The author describes his own ambivalent contacts with a Kinesthetic Giant Bee - as a metaphor and a recurrent visual image, but also as a very real (...) aspect of the repressive machinery of a State. Some other archetypes of personal importance to the author - Spider and Worm are treated in two other works to appear in this Journal. (shrink)

This paper is a sequel to my discussion of Bee and Spider archetypes . In the space of the author's personal mythology, the Worm archetype is a continuum embracing spiritual materialism, individual superstitions, and popular magic at one of its ends. The other end of the same continuum reaches the realm of Thou, Atman-Brahman, Source, Silence. The dualistic and dynamic call of Another destabilizes the status quo and leads one into wandering on the continuum in either direction and can destroy (...) one's lifestyle and very sanity with seemingly no positive consequences-but can also lead one via a kind of metaphysical metamorphosis to healing and to Wholeness. (shrink)

An archetype that seems to link the process of the growth of the human life story recording to the process of the growth and maturation of the universal myth seeds is described. This is mostly a real story about how the author's attention energy was drawn to this archetype. The unfolding ofthis story took the author along different bypaths, some of them revealing, and some obviously misleading. In a way, all these ramifications seem to speak about the bearing of this (...) archetype-Black Hen-on the classical ego-self dynamics of Advaita Vedanta, as this author understands it. (shrink)