Description

This book presents a new and logical solution to the “hard problem” of how consciousness and brain are related. The argument rests upon how the seeing-of-an-image is actually a probabilistic event in relation to infinity and/or one’s potential nonexistence – a perspective whereby an immersive image can be envisioned as minimizing disorder and maximizing energy sufficiency while, equivalently, optimizing the “big-enoughness” of the observing self. This approach, assuming a God-centered universe, explains why a balance between self and other is actually but the visible manifestation of an ongoing relationship between order and disorder and, respectively, past and future. By looking at the relationship between an image, the motor system, and the deeper thermoregulatory centers of the brain, the book reveals the profound unity of space-time, mind, energy, and God – putting to rest once and for all the notion that matter is fundamental.

GLENN DUDLEY became interested in the mind-body problem as an undergraduate student at the University of Colorado while pursuing a pre-med major and elective studies in physics, philosophy, and Judeo-Christian theology. He received his M.D. degree in 1969, and after doing a combined psychiatry/medicine internship, he completed a two-year program at MIT’s Neurosciences Research Program. Then, sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts School of Medicine in Boston, he studied the mind-body aspects of cancer. From 1975 until his retirement in 1998, Dr. Dudley served as a primary care physician, emphasizing spirit-mind-body relationships.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

Preface
Introduction
Historical overview
Theoretical premise: the universe is personal
The origin of an image
Introspective clues
There is no conflict between a personal and a mechanical universe
Light and the illumination of self
Definitions

 

 

PART I: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

1. 1. The Expectant Brain
      Mind and brain are neither equal nor separate
      A diagrammatic approach
      Behavior and infinity anticipation
      Blobs, qualia, and other mysteries of perception

 

1. 1. From The Womb To The Tomb: The Search For Certainty
      Who or what actually sees an image?
      From small to big in the “now” of time
      Familiarity, novelty, and the natural desire for certainty

 

1. 1. The Circadian Self
      The anticipatory nature of awareness foretells the periodicity of sleep
      Which comes first, the self or its image?
      The probabilistic basis of sleep and dreams

 

1. 1. Sexuality And The Universe
      Sexuality and the fetal nature of perception
      The probabilistic basis of orgasm
      An image is a symbolic castration
      The “sex-crazed” brain
      The thermodynamic basis of pain and pleasure
      A universal principle of fecundity
      The law of privacy
      “OAGs,” orgasm, and social vision

      PART II: THE NEUROANATOMICAL SELF

 

1. 1. The Bilateral Origin Of Consciousness
      A “collocation of atoms” cannot explain consciousness
      Bilaterality and infinity anticipation
      Imagery and mediolaterality
      Axial movement and infinity
      Qualia and axial movement

 

1. 1. The Unified Brain
      The brain has an “eye” for its boundary sufficiency
      The brain has no brains
      The homuncular rationale
      Metabolic and behavioral unity

 

1. 1. Infinity Anticipation And The Brain
      The cephalad nature of awareness
      Cephalad proximities
      Lateral inhibition and the “remembered present”
      Abstraction and size sufficiency
      Does infinity have a shape?
      Space-time and the anatomy of focal-ambience
      Memory structures are key to a probabilistic, infinity-based theory

 

1. 1. The Brain In A Personal Universe
      “Neuronal models”
      Who’s the boss?
      The mediolateral brain
      Language, object recognition, and body awareness
      Specificity depends upon an infinite Person
      The three-dimensional nature of the brain in a personal universe
      Facial recognition depends upon infinity being personal

 

1. 1. The Limbic Link To Eternity
      The limbic bridge between perception and behavior
      Introspective exercises
      The reticular core monitors the ongoing probability of survival
      Hippocampal “memory” and size sufficiency
      Infinity anticipation and cortico-limbic harmony
      Limbic loops with the past rule out materialism

 

1. 1. Unity Amidst Diversity
      Perception and the interfacing of space and time
      Habituation, rhythms, and spiritual reality
      Infinity anticipation and signal-to-noise ratios
      Infinity, rage, and thermoregulation
      All structure has a mediolateral configuration
      Abstraction and the limbic “inner sanctum”
      Limbic predictions and infinity anticipation
      The limbic forebrain and physiological unity
      Circadian rhythms, thermoregulation, and infinity
      The wisdom of the body
      Thermodynamics and free will

 

1. 1. The Sleeping Brain
      “Chunking” and circadian rhythms
      The thermoregulatory function of sleep and dreams
      God, sex, and dreams

 

1. 1. Needle In A Haystack
      Where is the “locus” of infinity anticipation?
      The perception-action cycle
      A quick review of brain unity
      A developmental clue
      Falling pianos and the “interaction” of mind and body
      Hormones and the mind-body problem
      An autonomic perspective
      Oppositional systems
      A biochemical perspective
      Mind-body duality from an energy perspective

 

1. 1. Memory
      The meaning of memory
      “Home” defines our search for energy

 

1. 1. The Ethical Brain
      The anatomy of deception
      Neural design and moralityEndnotes
      Bibliography