As I prepare to finish a half-written book on the human mind, I’m reviewing some of my earlier writings from my two blogs. I’m posting links to four essays which seem to me to be fundamental to my explanations of how to understand of that strange entity, the human mind.
1. The modern world as a madhouse
Back on November 27, 2007, I posted this essay, A Thomistic Take on Madness and Modernism, in which I paid particular attention to what I consider a very important book, Madness and Modernity, written by the psychologist and polymath Louis Sass. The essay deals with one of the themes in Professor Sass’ book: the similarity between schizophrenia and modern forms of thought, including those of literature and various other artistic endeavors.
2. Does the mind evolve and develop in the empirical world?
This essay, What is Mind?: Can Inadequate Formation Mimic Mental Diseases?, was first published on September 12, 2008. It was finished and uploaded on 2008/09/12. I quote an article published on the Web which discusses evidence that there are regions in the brains of schizophrenics which remain immature. The article also discusses the likelihood that schizophrenia is not one disease with one cause. I go on to a discussion of what I think to be a near certainty: the human mind as we know it developed in fairly recent historical time in a manner at least roughly similar to the proposal of Julian Jaynes in The Origin of Human Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
I don’t consider consciousness, as such, to be as important as Professor Jaynes did and my understanding of the human mind is a bit different. Yet, I seem to have learned much from his book.
Are there fossil minds in the trash-piles of ancient Athens?
On January 15, 2009, I published the essay, Preliminary Thoughts on the Evolution of the Human Mind, which, more or less, presents an argument that the human mind is a real entity though there is no ‘mind-stuff’. The mind is a set of relationships which is evolving at the racial/communal level and develops during the lifetime of individual human beings. I should note that, as a Christian, I believe and teach that a communal mind is developing within the Body of Christ in this mortal realm but the individual mind continues to exist as the individual as a whole continues to exist in that Body. It is much like God Himself, who is three Persons and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remain individuals even as They are one God. I should also note that we can see hints of that communal mind in historical narratives; it isn’t something to be detected directly as we can detect the presence of a mind in an individual human being.
Darwin, Einstein, and the Totemic Mind
Sometimes I have ideas which I consider in a humorous way. Usually, I’ll drop them but I developed on of them in the essay, Darwin, Einstein, and the Totemic Mind which was posted on January 29, 2009. I proposed the idea that our best creative thinkers are able to shape their minds to Creation to an extent that they are able to put themselves in the place of some realm of created being or some specific entity the way a totemic hunter will put himself in the place of a deer, thinking and acting along with that prey as he hunts it.
Many Essays to Fill Dull Hours of the Day and Night
Most of my weblog writings through 2010 are available in the form of a collection of essays organized into seven categories: Acts of Being. There are more than 100 essays in this collection.