The New Brain, part 1 - hemispheres, dialectic, perspective, and navigation

In this article I will attempt to describe the iterated model of inter-hemispheric entangling in the brain, which begins as the corpus callosum but may lead to something indistinguishable from a fusion of the two former hemispheres, now regions, that came to me the other evening. But first, some background in hemispheric brain theory and the dialectic may be necessary.

Though the old model of hemispheric dominance is outdated and outmoded, the heuristic of right and left brains and their functional attributions still constitute an instructive polarity which we can explore in order to reach an understanding.

In the old model the predominance of the left-brained is linked to the fragmentation in understanding extant in our species intellect, implying perhaps that the left brain thinks in a way that separates experiences and notions into distinct spheres of thought. To conceive of a polarity in an either/or sense, separating the beautiful from the ugly or the utile from the futile, will be called the function of the left brain hemisphere. There is an isomorphism between this notion and some forms of the eight circuit model of consciousness, if you are familiar with it - survival functions require decisions of action rather than contemplation of possibility, therefore a distinguishing factor is the most immediately needed function in a brain in order to ensure the survival of its genes, and thus the first to develop en masse.

The right brain hemisphere in old hemispheric paradigm is linked not to prickly functions, but to gooey ones, as Alan Watts or whoever he quoted would say. Instead of perceiving polarities as either/or, the paradigm of both/and applies instead, and the beauty in ugliness and the futility of utility (and vice versa, of course) is drawn to attention. Holism and unity then are attributed to the right brain, heuristically.

However, holographic brain models throw this structural ease of reference into question, attributing all brain function to everywhere at once (to delve more into holonominalism is beyond the scope of this article, but Wholeness and the Implicate Order and The Holotropic Brain are good books to read if you're pursuing that line of reasoning). Yet even if the local attributions of hemispheric brain theory are flawed, the distinction between the functions attributed is still usable.

Thus in this article we will refer to traditional left-brain functions as differential or analytic, and to traditional right-brain functions as integral or synthetic, and we will claim not that these terms apply so literally to the left and right sides of the inside of your head - instead we will claim that the brain can be understood to behave in some cases as though there were an analytic apparatus and an integral apparatus functioning within it.

With most of the groundwork laid, the dialectical comes to attention. Popularized first by Hegel, the notion of the dialectical process describes the procession of ideas in his terms, of economics in Marx' terms, and, in an adapted form, of neurological processes in the terms I will be using. In the dialectical system, present trends can be extrapolated by viewing them as Thesis, finding their Antithesis, and Synthesizing the two not as a muddled mix but as an understanding of their differences and similarities as the basis for a new paradigm. This process of course repeats indefinitely, the previous Synthesis becoming the new Thesis and so on. I capitalize these words because I will be using them in equations soon.

Thesis and Antithesis, of course, are opposite ends of a polarity, and Synthesis is the mutual grasping of and learning from the two in tandem. Thesis or Antithesis, then, reminds of the analytic function's qualia, and Thesis and Antithesis ( = Synthesis) reminds of the integral function's. And then, in the next iteration of the dialectical process, the integral function's output, the previous Synthesis, becomes along with its opposite the analytic function's new Thesis and Antithesis.

To draw in the two example polarities given above and apply this process to them, a preference for utility or futility comes full circle by experiencing its opposite, and a grokking of the mutuality of the two arises. The polar opposite of this utilitarian perspective is of course the aesthetic perspective, which arises similarly through crossing beauty to ugliness or vice versa and back, and from the union of these two perspectives comes an understanding of their overlap and contrasts, a utilitarian aesthetic or aesthetic utilitarianism, depending upon how the comprehension is applied.

Now, we could apply this sort of iteration to any attributive perspective, but as with most ideas we might get to the strangest territory the most quickly by applying it to itself.

In iteration zero which I already mentioned, T[0] and A[0] were analytic perspectives and their synthesis gave rise to S[0], the integral perspective.

To transition from iteration zero to iteration one, the previous synthesis becomes the new thesis - S[0]=T[1]. The polar opposite of integration is differentiation, and the two are then synthesized into a mutual understanding of analytic and integral processes which cannot be fully grasped in our limited language, but it can be said that with this comes the knowledge that whether the world appears as a fragmented whirl of mindless parts devoid of individual meaning or as a pantheistic union of relation is a mater of perspective. T[1]=i, A[1]=a, .: S[1]=i(i+a). (i and a are integration and analysis)

The second iteration starts with the perspectival perspective pointed at above, and continues with the development of a map using to distinctions to describe the territory that can be viewed with this meta-perspective. This operational map then unites with its territory in the mind and the process of perspectival navigation is born. Because the reality tunnel created by the second analysis takes an if-then form, as question-begging was abandoned in the first iteration's synthesis, its statements describe assumptions which are not made explicit in most thought that is not self-applied and the pictures of the world that they lead to. Typically when one is shown a new reality-tunnel one is bombarded with sense data from it intermediated through another entity until one starts to tacitly but seldom explicitly grasp the underpinnings of the perspective (see: modern consensus reality), but with the iteration of metacognition one learns to pay close attention to one's assumptions (to use another heuristic proto-neurological polarity the assumptive territory rises from the unconscious to be claimed by the conscious mind). When this second level of iteration becomes 'conscious', it becomes clear that belief is the craft of thought. In that to think something nontrivial, one must speculate, but also in the sense of a craft as a vehicle one builds.

For the mathematically minded, T[2]=i(i+a), A[2]=a[i(i+a)], .: S[2]=i{i(i+a)+a[i(i+a)]}=i{(a+1)[i(i+a)]}.

At this point I would like to remind the reader of the phrase 'consciousness expansion' used to describe the purpose of meditative and other paratheoanametamystic acts (be not frightened by the sesquipedalian word, I imported it from Discordianism as a catch-all for what you already understand that I'm talking about). This phrase sounds very abstract to many who have not pursued it, often because they have not found it as something to pursue. In terms of the last mentioned polarity, the pursuit of consciousness expansion is literally the acquisition of previously unconscious territory by the conscious mind. In more modern terms this means the levation (bringing-to-attention) of what we normally ignore because it seems to us some admixture of too obvious, too obscure, too irrelevant, and most often too relevant - that is, the implications of such a thought would overturn how we have been thinking for a long time, and we often feel like such an overturn would be a massive step back. Contrarily, Socrates and many other global agents of intelligence would claim that, an unexamined life being un-worth living, the re-evaluation of perspective is the first step forwards out of a circle we've been chasing ourselves in for a very long time.

I may post a description of further iterations of the neuro-functional fractal-dialectic later in other articles or in comments. In the meantime feel free to extrapolate this system in your own minds and see where it leads. Part two, up and to the right, takes the territory of this article and crosses it in the other direction with analytic rather than integrative iterations.

In Lak'ech. (I am another yourself)