Jan Höglund's Blog

Category: Attention

  • Deep Metaphysical Assumptions

    I find many of Iain McGilchrist’s deep metaphysical assumptions wonderfully resonant, but not all. Let’s explore! What are McGilchrist’s deep metaphysical assumptions? McGilchrist says: I’ve really always been philosophically minded. There were a number of things that occurred to me and seemed terribly important… These were things like that:[1] The whole is never the same…

  • A Critique of Iain McGilchrist

    McGilchrist says that attention is a moral act, but what if he doesn’t see what he doesn’t see? He has replaced one formula (it’s not either/or but both/and) with another more complicated, and, notably, more subtle, one (it’s not either/or or both/and, but either/or and both/and). He loves it! He’s very good at this kind…

  • The Hemisphere Hypothesis

    This post is about Iain McGilchrist’s hemisphere hypothesis. The post is written as a fictional conversation between McGilchrist and myself. I have taken McGilchrist’s answers from his two books The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things. I end the post with some of my own thoughts. (My emphasis in italics.) What is…

  • Iain McGilchrist on Wholeness

    The purpose of this post is to highlight some of what Iain McGilchrist writes about wholeness in his two books The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things together with my questions. Ian McGilchrist writes (my emphasis in italics): …there is the primacy of wholeness: the right hemisphere deals with the world before…

  • Jon Young on Deep Connection

    The following is from a conversation with Jon Young on Nature Connection and How to Prepare for the Future on March 15, 2020. Jon Young said: We can all go sit in nature and remember what it feels like to be connected to it. …and then remember we’re part of this living earth, and that it…

  • Retrospective 2024-39

    This is a retrospective of week 39, 2024 (2024-09-23–2024-09-29). I’ve continued immersing myself in Iain McGilchrist’s work this week. I was also reminded by Christopher Alexander’s work in two articles by Bonnitta Roy and Or Ettinger, respectively. I will come back to that. I’ve reviewed what McGilchrist writes about lateralization during the week, but came,…

  • Christopher Alexander on Observation

    Christopher Alexander has the following to say about the new method of observation which he proposes in The Nature of Order, Book One: The Phenomenon of Life (italics in the original text): [The method of observation] goes directly to the intuitions which are widely shared and raises them to a formal level as techniques of…

  • Leanne Whitney on wholeness and attention

    The following quotes are from Hannelie Venucia’s interview with Leanne Whitney on Oct 22, 2018. Whitney speaks about the embodied feeling of wholeness and attention, among other things. Wholeness The embodied feeling of wholeness is a peace, a calm with a joy. It’s not a joy like a happiness that sort of comes and goes.…