Our issue is of course simple. "Love, purpose, beauty and the Everywhen, don't leave a footprint in the sand or in laboratories." At least not yet.
An argument suggests that the brain is a "Prediction Center." It makes stuff up and if this stuff seems roughly correct it becomes fixed as a belief which is difficult to dislodge. We, possibly more linear thinkers are inclined toward what we nobly call evidence, the world is obviously flat otherwise we'd fall off it, wouldn't we. The claim that possibly non-linear thinkers, who are more open minded are more likely to believe stuff unsupported by evidence is a tempting one. And in my role as a fuddy-duddy, the thing to remember is that through our history we have always been a species that cleaves to neither linear nor non-linear ways of thinking, there are two sides to our brain and we embrace both.
Perhaps a more interesting aspect of our many ways of being is explored under the subtitle of "Tribal Handshake" which is the understanding that a shared belief is more valuable than a belief supported by facts, and here it seems that when you as an individual see your group agreeing on something your brain releases the cuddle hormone, otherwise known as Oxytocin. So, it's not what the brain believes, it's the cohesion the belief creates that puts the glee into the gathering of irrational masses. And as we all know Oxytocin is psychologically addictive.
There are some, in their search to unearth the home of emotions, look for the tension between the Limbic system, where emotions are made, and the right brain, where the poetry of the non-linear lives and the left brain, where the step by step of the linear lives. The Model is called the Approach vs. Avoidance model. It's very tempting, but a tad too insular. This is how the model sees the tensions: the emotion emerges from the Limbic system, the right and left sides of the brain either approach them to the point of intimately engaging with them or having appraised the emotion in the context of a wider world avoids it. Here the left brain might relish Greed as a necessary ingredient to a line of thinking, and the right brain might eschew greed to the point of arguing against Greed as a guarantee of eternal life amongst the hoarders and spendthrifts in the Fourth Circle of Hell.
For Walking Stewart who died in the 1820's, Moral Motion and the Great Circulation, we as people are far too interrelated with the whole, you can't go round saying this brain part does x and this brain part does y and this brain part makes emotions. Oh No! We people are far too flexible and responsive to the contexts of our thoughts, there's absolutely no chance of you or I ever being able to come up with a stable moral response to a circumstance. Certainly not! We can justify anything. What happens is that something like the emotion of greed messes with the circulation, and the reality of Moral Motion is that good things make the universe better and bad things make the universe badder. The point being it's the society, the lives we live in the society that determines whether we are Beasts of the Forest or whether, like the Laplanders, we are contributing to the tranquility of sensate atoms.
