In What We Are, Dr. Michael Adix II uses his experiences as a neurointerventional surgeon to explore epistemological and ontological approaches to reality.
Adix, for instance, is able to demonstrate how medical imaging accesses the relational structure of the brain (i.e. “the spatial relationship between vessels, the flow dynamics of contrast material, the anatomical architecture of the brain”), and to show how this reproducible, “intersubjectively verifiable” and “mathematically expressible” knowledge corresponds to what the patient subjectively feels.
This demonstration supports one of two basic axioms the author discusses, viz. that “physical reality…has two aspects: the structural-relational aspect that physics describes, and an intrinsic proto-experiential aspect that relational description cannot access.” The second axiom is that “proto experiential properties integrate along with the structural properties.” Building on these axioms, Adix develops a philosophical system termed “Integrative Realism.” Among the concepts integral to this system are the ideas that both consciousness and life (as opposed to non-life) are derived from ever-more-complex integrations. These integrations, as processes, require time, “at minimum, a sequential dimension in which one state gives way to another.”
Throughout, Adix intersperses life stories of people who serve as examples for his concepts. These narratives, which the author indicates are at least partially written by his collaborative AI, are composed with unusual warmth and sensitivity. For instance, the author says of Joyce Nelson that “she protects the people she loves with a ferocity that would be alarming if it were not so clearly rooted in genuine empathy.”
The problem with these stories, however, is that they are more suited to books written for popular consumption than for one mostly given over to highly technical scientific and philosophic arguments. The result is jarring. Additionally, Adix’s repetition throughout the book of some arguments and metaphors (like the concept of convex and concave) becomes tedious.
Because of its sheer abstraction and complexity, What We Are is likely to attract a limited readership from an audience of philosophers and scientists.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.