Bi-cameral brains and Heidegger
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Wed Feb 10 11:29:37 CST 2016
i have it ordered too. Thanks for this group read.
On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 12:22 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
wrote:
> My library doesn't have M&HE yet, but I recently learned that I can ask
> them to get it and they will order it for me, ship it to my house, and give
> me two months to read it. I'm headed to the library today.
>
> I know that your reporting is interpretive, as is all such, and the
> contexts offered sound intriguing. I look forward to the read and thank you
> for bringing this one to the table, Joseph.
>
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 12:09 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> no, not quite (yet) to me. Cultures can be self-destructive and others
>> not, with the same human beings with bi-cameral brains.
>>
>> And, as even neuroscientists say, willing a new action starts a new habit
>> if continued. Writ large, we have a new culture.
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes he is aware of exactly your concern but he clearly feels so
>>> persuaded by the case that hemisheric differences play out as cultural and
>>> thus historical patterns that in the second half of the book he admits to
>>> opening himself to this critique and begins to trace what he sees as an
>>> historic overview of western development as influenced by hemispheric
>>> bias. In my reading thus far ( I am just starting the second half, going
>>> rather slower as I try to absorb the material) find myself already leaning
>>> to the validity of and need for such an interpretation. It just feels more
>>> satisfying than a moral overview or a technological overview, both of which
>>> have been given considerable attention but which fail in my mind to
>>> describe certain self destructive tendencies in the internal dynamics of
>>> human societies and the western development. Isn’t it altogether probable
>>> that the tendencies of brain function would be a powerful shaping force for
>>> larger social patterns, and might speak more precisely and with a kind of
>>> dipassionate understanding to those patterns?
>>>
>>>
>>> > On Feb 9, 2016, at 5:10 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > I wrote a longer piece based on stuff said so far re The Master and
>>> His Emissary but the short version is: I am resistant
>>> > IF it will be used in arguing something substantive about writers of
>>> genius. I'll make my cases then if necessary.
>>> > The author's explanatory connections between
>>> > the bi-cameral mind and culture and history is one thing.........gonna
>>> be interesting to read.
>>> >
>>> > But as we all know aggregate truths do not easily apply to individual
>>> human cases in meaningful ways.
>>> > This is simply akin to all the combinatory statistical truths we know
>>> yet all that giving us almost no predictive insight into
>>> > any singular example.
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 11:11 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>>> wrote:
>>> > The Master and His Emissary draws frequently on the work of
>>> philosophers. But he finds Heidegger particularly insightful about the
>>> nature of the brain and the corresponding struggles in the larger modern
>>> culture. I know there were one or 2 p-listers who hold high regard for
>>> Heidegger’s philosphical work so thought to mention it.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > -
>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>> >
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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