Aesthetics, Mind, and Nature: A Communication Approach to the Unity of Matter and Consciousness

Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1993. First Edition, first printing (complete number line). xxi, 324 pages: illustrations; 24 cm; bibliographical references (pages 299-309) and index. Fine. Appears to have been issued without a jacket. Hardcover. ISBN: 0275942961; 9780275942960

Contents: 1. Introduction -- The Concept -- The Themes -- The Axioms -- The Orientation and the Approach -- What Do We Hope For in This Book? -- 2. Nature -- Inorganic Matter -- Organic Matter -- Symmetry and Asymmetry of Living Forms -- Paradigms and Contradictions between Living and Nonliving Matter -- Order, Disorder, and Entropy -- Information Process Communication -- A Unified Model -- 3. Mind -- Origin of Consciousness -- Mind and Brain, or Philosophical Reference -- Mind as a Communication System -- Self-Production as Origin of Life and Consciousness -- Brain-Mind or Mind-Brain -- Brain-Mind Relationship (Schools of Thought) -- Memory -- Rationalism and Intuition -- Perception and Cognition -- Artificial Intelligence -- 4. Philosophy -- Eastern versus Western Wisdom -- Christianity and Western Philosophy -- Eastern Philosophies -- A Binary System Representing the Principle of the Opposites -- Chaos -- The Theory of the Opposites -- Eastern and Western Philosophies -- A Comparison -- Parallels between Quantum Physics and Mysticism -- 5. Epistemology -- Cosmic Order -- The Basis For Knowledge -- Knowledge -- Interconnection, Rooted in Human Mentality -- Objectivity and Subjectivity -- Complementary Ways of Knowing -- Romanticism and Realism -- Mental Abstractions of Cosmic Order -- Epistemology of Knowledge -- A Proposed Epistemological System -- Arts and Sciences -- Complementary Ways of Interpretation -- Knowledge -- A Product of Direct Experience -- Knowledge through a Unified View of Matter and Psyche -- Communication -- 6. Communication Arts -- Definitions of Communication Art Forms -- Constituent Components of a Human Communication -- Spacial Forms of Human Communication -- Temporal Forms of Aesthetic Communication -- Spaciotemporal Forms of Human Communication -- 7. Aesthetic Communication -- Assumptions -- Identity and Difference as Sources of Information -- Text -- Context and Information -- Communication Encompassing Matter and Psyche -- Eastern and Western Philosophy -- Communication -- Linking All Forms of Matter -- Creativity -- A Potentiality of Nature, Not Ego -- Aesthetics -- A Value Attached Communication System -- Arts as Manifestation of Symbolic Information and Communication -- Aesthetic Communication.

Minai develops the idea that an aesthetic value is not necessarily an objective value reasoned by rationality. Beauty is a matter of chance and necessity in the nature of things, a matter of the order of things and the circumstances of their interconnections, or predictable and unpredictable forces. To know such a complex system we need to establish a view of phenomenology and hermeneutics, a world view where bad and good and ugly and beautiful are part of a continuum of changes and differences. In that world view, it is essential to have an understanding of mind, nature, and the epistemology of knowing.

Communication. Nature. Thought and thinking. Philosophy. Thinking Philosophy Nature. Pensée. Philosophie. Nature. thinking. philosophy. Aesthetics. Communication. Nature. Philosophy. Thought and thinking. Bewusstsein Erkenntnistheorie Kommunikation Natur Ästhetik Esthetica. Bewustzijn. Natuur. Communicatie. Identifier: Aesthetics