PT II —

II. Brown, Process and the Authentic Life
Jason W. Brown, Process and the Authentic Life. Toward a Psychology of Value, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought II, 2005. (700 p. ; ISBN 3-937202-73-0 ; 119 €)
The thesis advanced in this book is that feeling and cognition actualize through a process that originates in older brain formations and develops outward through limbic and cortical fields through the self-concept and private space into (as) the world. An iteration of this transition deposits acts, objects, feelings and utterances. Value is a mode of conceptual feeling that depends on the dominant phase in this transition : from desire through interest to object worth. Among the topics covered are subjective time and change, the epochal nature of objects and their temporal extensibility and the evolution of value from inorganic matter into organic form.
The theory of microgenesis informs this work. According to this theory, acts and objects evolve in milliseconds through phases that replicate patterns in forebrain evolution. The progression in the actualization of the mind/brain state is from archaic to recent in brain formation, from unity to diversity, from past to present and from mind to world. An account is given of the diversity of felt experience avoiding the reductionist moves characteristic of biological materialism and the inherent dualism of psychoanalytic and related theories.
This book is intended for any reader interested in the psychology of the inner life and philosophy of mind, including philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and others with an interest in problems of value and moral feeling.
Table of contents
Foreword (Maria Pachalska)
Author’s Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. Microgenetic theory : reflections and prospects
Chapter 2. The nature of the symptom
Chapter 3. Microgenetic approach to time and memory
Chapter 4. What is an object ?
Chapter 5. Self, subject and subjectivity
Chapter 6. Affect and idea
Chapter 7. Value in mind and nature
Chapter 8. A world of value
Chapter 9. From drive to desire
Chapter 10. Custom and evolutionary naturalism
Chapter 11. Actualization and causality
Chapter 12. Autonomy and compassion
Chapter 13. The grounds of rational decision
Chapter 14. What is a good act ?
Chapter 15. The ideal
Chapter 16. From intention to obligation
Chapter 17. Taste and manners
Chapter 18. Moral conflict
Chapter 19. Morality and suicide
Chapter 20. Luck and the pursuit of happiness
Chapter 21. Efficacy and illusions
Chapter 22. Thought and action
Chapter 23. Moral dimensions of aesthetic experience
Chapter 24. The illusory and the real
Chapter 25. Wholeness and the creative life
Chapter 26. The nature of existence
Chapter 27. Reflections on Immortality
References