After four years of intensive research, I’ve begun writing the draft of a book that will be entitled Finding the Li: Towards a Democracy of Consciousness. It will incorporate and integrate all the themes covered in my two blogs, Tyranny of the Prefrontal Cortex and Finding the Li.
As I write each chapter , I intend to share what I’ve written with readers of my blogs, and invite any constructive comments. Click on the table of contents below to read any section, either as a blog post or pdf file.
Introduction [pdf version]
Chapter 1. The Tyranny of the Prefrontal Cortex [pdf version]
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The “tyranny” of the prefrontal cortex
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An exponential rate of change
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But why a “tyranny”?
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Archaeology of the mind/Cognitive history
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Four steps in the pfc’s rise to power
Chapter 2. So What Really Makes Us Human? [pdf version]
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A plausible story of our ancestors
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Mimetic culture
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Theory of mind
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The social brain hypothesis
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Altruistic punishment
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From social intelligence to cognitive fluidity
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What the pfc did for early humans
Chapter 3: The Magical Weave of Language [pdf version]
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Weaving a net of symbols
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What’s special about language?
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The neuroanatomy of language
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From grooming to gossip
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Language evolution: “gradual and early” or “sudden and recent”?
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The “Language Instinct”
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The co-evolution of language and the pfc
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Three stages in the evolution of language
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The metaphoric threshold
Finding the li 
Carolyn Hill said,
May 9, 2011 at 7:58 am
You know Donald Hall and Roger Ames’ work on chinese immanence, right?( Thinking from the Han, e.g.) Down your alley.
Your work is interesting!
j-man said,
May 10, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Thanks for the comment. I’ve come across their work mentioned by other authors, but your quick note inspired me to finally get their first book, “Thinking Through Confucius,” which I’ve been eyeing for a while.
8caratteri said,
July 2, 2011 at 5:18 pm
you will release chapter 4?
parentingprogressivly said,
March 18, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Wow, for sometime now I’ve been working on a theory of….well still not sure what to call it, for now call it an Integral Theory of Cognition, Meta cognition, and Learning.
In this I’ve been viewing spiritual/religious experience as a much needed learning tool. There is thinking outside the box, and Edward De Bono would perhaps say even perceiving outside the box (i.e. how you look at something), and then there is experiencing a consciousness that is ‘outside the box’. To experience an outside the box state of consciousness is to change the underlying interpretation that the brain places on our experience of reality and attend to a new experience. In my work I’m attempting to argue that the role of the prefrontal cortex is, yes executive function, but that this executive function’s core purpose is to attend to a state of experience, and that we can and should utilize tools like mindfulness, the Flow experience, and others used through history by religions to take control of this pfc (which I might term the remote control for experience), and extract insight by altering our state of consciousness.
I’ve been working on this idea for quite sometime. Then recently it took a twist that led me to your site. If you could direct me to any of your work most closely related to what I’m trying to say in this reply it would be greatly appreciated. Or to any research you’ve done. If you are interested and have the time I would love to chat sometime and pick your brain.