Category: Cognition
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Politically Correct Mania
Four years ago, I was invited to contribute a chapter to a proposed book titled, “The impact of speech complaints on instructors in higher education.” This is an unlikely title to stir a runaway best seller. What motivated the book’s editors was personal experience of toxic political correctness upon collegiality, course content, and employment. Professors…
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Capitalism and the Fate of Big and Little
You rightfully may wonder why does a shrink concern himself with social-political issues. Culture, society, and its trappings are interdependent. We live within the matrix, and just as the characteristics of water effect the health of fish, so the social-political matrix effects human physical and mental health. At the onset of this essay, I declare…
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Limits of Binary and Zero-sum Mindset
The binary framework has deep roots in Western culture. The binary framework applies to systems defined by restricted logics such as board games and to science and digital applications, such as Newtonian physics and programing. Binary logics rely upon axiomatic, self-referential, closed systems. Inputs to the system must accord with the system, otherwise inputs are…
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Brain and Mind
Cognitive neuroscience demonstrates the link between brain and mind. Change in thought, emotion, or perception is associated with activation of neural networks. Change induced in the brain through chemicals, neurotransmitters, lesions, or trans-magnetic stimulation is coupled with change in thought, emotion, or perception. Mind and brain seem so different yet isomorphic. They seem different because…
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The Path to Will
Will may be connected with passion, but passion is not enough since passion may be blind. Passion is significant, but must be associated with disciplined practice. Passion alone will not create the works of the artist or the products of the writer. Superior results require practice. Disciplined real-world, practice creates congruent local networks. This is…
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Why Will May Fail
A substantial neuro-physiological and neuro-psychological literature suggests that mind is so organized that at least two general systems organize thought and behavior. In my articles, the first of these systems I term the “logico-linguistic system”, and the second, the “configural system” (van den Daele, 1994). In the Western culture belt, the logico-linguistic system is identified…