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Jonathan,
Thank you for the considerate reflections. Your description of the right brain is probably more accurate, given it is a dynamic process and thermodynamic responses might be considered more reactive and emotionally static. The primary reason I started thinking in terms of the thermostat was due to E.O. Wilson's description of the insect brain as a thermostat, alongside those experiments on ants that showed they count as a navigation tool. So while your view might be more perceptual, I'm probably looking at it as a more inclusive, ie. generalized description. Having spent my life working with horses, as well as other animals, I have a very basic foundation in cognitive functions, but that might give me some degree of clarity not always apparent to a more classic education. What other life forms lack in intellectual complexity, they often make up for in situational awareness, while people tend to be distracted. Thus we view emotion and intuition as mysterious, but they are those cumulative responses which appear non-linear.
One additional thought that has become more clear, due to one of my usual debates with Tom Ray, since writing that paper, is that cause and effect is not a function of sequence, but energy exchange. Yesterday doesn't cause today, any more than one rung on a ladder causes the next. It is the sun radiating on a rotating planet, which causes the sequence of events called 'days.' On the other hand, my typing these keys does cause letters to appear on the screen, because there is a causal chain of energy transfer.
So while we tend to think in retrospect that time is linear, from one event to the next, emotion and intuition tend to be more focused on the energy dynamic, which is cumulative and dissipative. This goes to my original dichotomy of energy, vs. information.
While I haven't read Jill Bolte Talyer's book, I did see her TED talk video. Unfortunately, my spare time is limited and since getting on the internet, some 15 years ago, my book reading time has been reduced to zip. I go for the condensed version of everything these days.
I did read your essay, but will have to review it, given the number of entries I've tried to cover. As for your bringing up this point about the directions of time, present to the future, vs. events to the past, I wish it would get more attention, because it becomes ever more apparent, reading these essays and thinking through other information, the truth of my first comment, that physics primarily treats time as a measure from one event to the next and this only re-enforces the sequence effect. Julian Barbour would be the prime example. Edward Anderson would be another. It will obviously take someone with more clout and clarity than I, to make this point effectively.