Skip to main content

The Mind and The Brain

Finished reading The Mind and The Brain.  I would highly recommend reading this source information on some the more recent, as in 90's developments in neuroscience.   I found it very readable.  

Its critics might argue that it's getting in to the mushy metaphysical, and it will antagonize the hard-core materialist.  Personally, this material is what I've been trying to get some understanding on for some time now.


I've read so many pop psychologist best sellers in the field of self-development, that basically make claims that seem to work for the story lines and the followers.  Some ideas have appealed to me, but somehow the lack any scientific evidence left me with a personal "pie in the sky, wishful thinking" flavor in my mouth.  I've always been a person to question deeply.  I'm not comfortable trusting the notions of every "best seller".  Too often what sells is not necessarily accurate or factual.  This may well be the case with Schwartz.  I doubt it though.  The book speaks more of evidence than theoretical concepts.

I've tested some of the folk psychology of "mind over matter".  Of course if what you set your mind to is not damaging to others and yourself, will-power seems to have a place in our thinking.  The extreme is creating a self-reality that is outside the bounds of the real world that we live in.  I'm fascinated with neuro-conditioning.

I think I got my interest piqued to read The Mind and The Brain, by a statement in a book called "Brainchildren" by Daniel Dennette.  The chapter title:  "Free Will and Free Won't" got my attention.  Of course Denette is a hard-core materialist.  It was helpful to read Schwartz cover to cover.  A strong argument in favor of "mental force" is substantiated by a wide variety of modern experiments, and across a wide field of disciplines.

I liked the application of plasticity as it relates to Quantum Theory.  Entanglement of possibilities is something so much more than, "I cannot think any differently or I'm in a rut".  Choice.  We just may have more choices that ever conceived.  I don't understand fully the ideas of quantum theory, but I've absolutely fascinated by the research that is emerging in this field.  Quantum Zeno Effect is described in detail in the next to the last chapter titled, "Attention Must Be Paid".

So I'm pondering some of the nagging feelings arising around various habitual neuro-pathways, that I've seemingly been imprinted with over the years.  I just may be able to create a few new ones that may be more helpful than others which I find a bit un-helpful.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

1-28 of 104 Rational Maxims to Control Anxious Thinking

Dr. Albert Ellis: 104 Rational Maxims to Control My anxiousThinking .  Copied from How To Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You (pages 190-205) Minimizing my absolutistic   musts, shoulds, aughts, and demands and the irrational beliefs that go with them   1.       I will  watch my unconditional, absolutistic musts and change them into strong preferences, such as "I would very much like to do well and be approved by others, but I don't have to do so and my worth as a person doesn't depend on doing anything!" 2.       I will watch my overgeneralizations and make them more concrete: "If I fail at something important, I won't always fail and may frequently succeed." 3.       I will watch my awfulizing.  "It's bad to lose out on something I really want, but it's not awful or horrible.  There's a good chance I'll get it later, but if I never do, it is just very dep...

Katherine Stewart's "The Good News Club"

  Put on your to-read list.  I could not believe all the connections between organizations that I'm familiar with!  For me, as interesting as the CEF's Good News Clubs are, most interesting are the connections of the heavy hitter "Christian Nationalists" behind the story of the Good News Clubs and especially the fall out of the US Supreme Court's ruling in Good News Clubs v. Milford Central School (2001).   Page 251- 252, does not mention ACE, but it reads:    "The campaign to remove children from public schools is quickly gathering steam.  A substantial number of fundamentalist parents have already cast their votes silently, by bringing their children home.  Between 1999 and 2007, homeschooling shot up by 74 percent, to over 1.5 million children, representing approximately 3 percent of all school-age children in the United States--a figure that is undoubtedly higher today.  The largest part of that growth came from pare...

I am

A copy of a post to my fellow gay fathers who journey with me. -------------------- Hello all. I'm doing pretty well. My partner is facing a concerning cancer diagnosis, and I keep doing my own internal work. I like to do exercises that spur my internal growth. Here is one that I found challenging and perhaps even helpful after taking some defenses down. I'd put the book down for a good while, and perhaps Blackwolf & Gina Jones' ideas on internal growth are not for all, but I felt a sense of triumph this morning, as I did some re-framing. In-spite of wading through considerable non-sense, I did tap into something that is real for me. (I tend not to read in this specific spiritual pop psychology genre. Far too often, for me, it has side-tracked me from facing reality as it is, and perhaps old mis-guided attempts at self-improvement did have a net benefit of helping me figure some things out. For my own reasons, harder sciences, better researched ideas, satisfy...