Contemporary Articles

Better use of analysis and decision making, Inequalities, System thinking and system working, Wider determinants of health and prevention October 2024 Photo by Giu Vicente on Unsplash Making a list of ‘pros and cons’ is the first analytical technique most of us...

26 October 2024, The Tablet One of our most influential thinkers tells Abigail Frymann Rouch that the ever-proliferating crises facing the world can be traced back to society’s loss of a sense of humility and an obsession with hubristic individualism. The psychiatrist...

19 de septiembre de 2024 Integrar ciencia y espiritualidad, el camino del reconocido psiquiatra británico Iain McGilchrist En un mundo dominado por la racionalidad y la lógica, el médico británico sostiene la importancia de recuperar la dimensión de lo espiritual, lo...

Whisper it if you will, but an increasing number of observers are wondering if we are creeping towards some kind of Christian revival. High-profile public figures such as former atheist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, novelist Paul Kingsnorth, comedian Russell Brand and storyteller Martin Shaw have converted. Articles and podcasts from secular writers and thinkers extolling Christianity’s influence on Western culture, the societal benefits of faith, or a renewed appreciation of the sacred, are becoming a more common sight than those tub-thumping for atheism. . 

Our whole culture has been skewed by a belief that we have achieved a kind of wisdom which never existed in the past; and it’s just something we’ve invented in the last few decades. It’s a quite irrational position to take

Friday, August 9, 2024       The excerpts below, are from an imho EXCELLENT 88-minute discussion: "WHAT IS LIFE?" between Tim Freke & Iain McGilchrist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD7BHJHkufY Welcome to the second half of the excerpts from the EXCELLENT...

Tuesday, July 16, 2024       The excerpts below, are from an imho EXCELLENT 88-minute discussion: "WHAT IS LIFE?" between Tim Freke & Iain McGilchrist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD7BHJHkufY Tim Freke (TF):     “You & I are both human beings on...

Abstract: Diverse explanations or theories of consciousness are arrayed on a roughly physicalist-to-nonphysicalist landscape of essences and mechanisms. Categories: Materialism Theories (philosophical, neurobiological, electromagnetic field, computational and informational, homeostatic and affective, embodied and enactive, relational, representational, language, phylogenetic evolution); Non-Reductive Physicalism; Quantum Theories; Integrated Information Theory; Panpsychisms; Monisms; Dualisms; Idealisms; Anomalous and Altered States Theories; Challenge Theories. There are many subcategories, especially for Materialism Theories. Each explanation is self-described by its adherents, critique is minimal and only for clarification, and there is no attempt to adjudicate among theories. The implications of consciousness explanations or theories are assessed with respect to: meaning/purpose/value (if any); AI consciousness; virtual immortality; and survival beyond death. A Landscape of Consciousness, I suggest, offers perspective

The brain is divided down the middle, with the two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex attending to the world differently. The right hemisphere vigilantly and empathetically attends to the whole, while the left hemisphere reduces that whole into parts in order to take action in pursuit of goals.