These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.
I still haven't checked out a book-length explication of your biocognitive model -- I will though, it looks intriguing. Regarding refuting the no-free-will argument: at one point Sam Harris and a cluster of other hip worthies were putting out material supporting that hypothesis. I was never convinced, it just seemed voguish nihilism framed as tough-minded realism. A dead duck.
Robert Hughes was a very good writer. I remember him mentioning somewhere that when he was young he was urged to get out of Australia or he'd end up a terminal "village explainer." I don't know whether that's true today. It certainly is in New Zealand.
I wonder what the Australian cultural scene would have been like if the exodus he was part of, along with Barry Humphries, Clive James, and Germaine Greer, would have been like. At least Patrick White and Helen Garner stayed put.
In New Zealand Janet Frame was compelled to blunt her scalpel: as an aberrant female in the sixties, if she had a scathing, outspoken attitude like Dorothy Parker, it would have been back in hospital and the planned lobotomy would have resumed.
I still haven't checked out a book-length explication of your biocognitive model -- I will though, it looks intriguing. Regarding refuting the no-free-will argument: at one point Sam Harris and a cluster of other hip worthies were putting out material supporting that hypothesis. I was never convinced, it just seemed voguish nihilism framed as tough-minded realism. A dead duck.
Robert Hughes was a very good writer. I remember him mentioning somewhere that when he was young he was urged to get out of Australia or he'd end up a terminal "village explainer." I don't know whether that's true today. It certainly is in New Zealand.
I wonder what the Australian cultural scene would have been like if the exodus he was part of, along with Barry Humphries, Clive James, and Germaine Greer, would have been like. At least Patrick White and Helen Garner stayed put.
In New Zealand Janet Frame was compelled to blunt her scalpel: as an aberrant female in the sixties, if she had a scathing, outspoken attitude like Dorothy Parker, it would have been back in hospital and the planned lobotomy would have resumed.