James Olson

Who is James Olson?

James Olson is an American philosopher and author. A generalist, his primary focus is on the effects of functional lateralization on consciousness and human behavior. Olson is the author of The Whole-Brain Path to Peace, a book that seeks to explain human behavior by focusing on mental perspective, the initial stage of perception, rather than on the whole of perception—the latter being the more common approach to understanding the roots of behavior.

As shared in Olson’s speaking engagements and radio interviews, his passion is to help bring a greater measure of peace to this planet by reducing the level of conflict through greater self-understanding. Olson believes that mental conflict is initiated in the brain/mind complex, the result of profound differences in the polar left hemisphere and the non-polar right hemisphere as expressed though the unique perspectives and ideas that they generate. According to Olson, the perceptual and ideological conflicts that arise can often be consciously eliminated by understanding the two hemispheres as a complementary whole rather than as parts.