Wednesday 3 June 2009

2. Introducing the theory.


The central concept of the formal inversion theory may be stated very simply. The theory suggests that there is an apparent structural similarity between certain basic brain forms and certain basic mind forms and that the brain forms provide a credible explanation for the mind forms.

The basic brain forms are neuron wiring patterns present in the uppermost reaches of bilateral animal brains (including our own) that are characterised by left-right bicyclic inversion. By this I mean that signals in left brain cycles travel in inverse directions to signals in right brain cycles and that there are further mutually inverted cyclic paths for the exchange of signals between the two sides.

The basic mind forms are extremely pervasive human thought patterns characterised by formally inverted duality. One pole of each duality typically represents form-to-content or analytic patterns and the other pole content-to-form or synthetic patterns, each being the formal inverse of the other.

The dualities seem to match the clinically evident analytic and synthetic biases of left and right human brain/mind activities respectively.

Much of our mental life seems to involve a constant switching between analytically and synthetically biased thought, and the implied reinterpretation of philosophy and other subjects that will be discussed in later posts is apparently concerned with our brains being necessarily and inescapably wired for this constant switching process. The next post will describe some apparently obligatory features of the basic forms.

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