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The chapters in this volume attempt to establish some foundational principles of a theory of the mind/brain grounded in evolutionary and process theory. From this standpoint, the book discusses some main problems in philosophical psychology, including the nature and origins of the mind/brain state, experience and consciousness, feeling, subjective time and free will. The approach - that of microgenesis - holds that formative phases in the generation of the mental state are the primary focus of explanation, not the assumed properties of logical solids. For microgenesis, the process leading to a conscious end point is, together with the final content, part of an epochal state, the outcome of which, an act, object or word, incorporates earlier segments of that series, such as value, meaning and belief.

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Philosophie et théologie

Philosophy of mind

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	06 mai 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781845408121
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0750€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Microgenetic Theory and Process Thought
Jason W. Brown
imprint-academic.com

Publisher information
2015 digital version by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © Jason W. Brown, 2015
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.
Originally published in the UK by
Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK
Originally distributed in the USA by
Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd., La Vergne, TN 37086, USA

Epigraph
Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
-W.B. Yeats, The Circus Animal’s Desertion

Preface
I
Theoretical Background
The chapters in this collection attempt to establish, on a psychological basis, some foundational principles of a philosophy of mind that are grounded in process (microgenetic) theory and evolutionary principles. The approach diverges widely from conventional methods in that the contextual and historical (diachronic) aspects of mental contents and the mind/brain states in which they are ingredient are the primary focus of investigation, instead of treating them as logical solids and debating their assumed properties. In my view, in spite of the massive literature that has accumulated over forty years of research in cognitive science, psychology made a wrong turn implementing a methodology to mimic physical science and reinforce linguistic and analytic philosophy, namely, the study of mental components in isolation, conceived as nodes in a network or circuit-board, and aided by imaging techniques that purport to justify the psychological method by weak, imaginary or fictitious correlations. In experimental cognition, the locus and connectivity of mental contents replace the transition and temporality in which they are embedded. The result is that the dynamic and subjectivity that flow from the underpinnings of conscious experience are shredded, and the psyche is conceived as a compilation of inter-connected sub-routines.
For microgenesis, the micro-temporal process leading to a conscious endpoint is, together with the final content, part of an epochal state. The outcome of a state, such as an object or word, is not a resultant of the preceding series but incorporates earlier segments of that series - value, meaning, belief - as part of what it is. An object includes its formative phases. The subjective has inner and outer segments. The world is the surface of the mental state. Final actualities specify pre-object phases which detach and articulate mind-external. Some remarks of Stout (1902) are germane to the current impasse. “Psychology investigates the history of individual consciousness, and this coincides with the history of the process through which the world comes to be presented in consciousness... The aim of psychology is purely retrospective... to go back upon the traces of experience, and ascertain how [an] existing standpoint has arisen... When, on the other hand, the nature of knowledge is considered apart from its genesis, and in abstraction from its time-vicissitudes, it becomes the subject-matter, not of psychology, but of metaphysics.” The aim of this book, as James might have put it, is for a tidal wave of process thought to surge upon the dry shoals of metaphysical speculation.
One salutary effect of process-thinking is a return to continuities between diverse aspects of cognition that, once fractured by analysis, become engraved in the mind and solidified by empirical or quantitative study, all in the hope of recombination once dismemberment is complete. The vanity of the cognitivist paradigm is exposed in the attempt to unify a multitude of isolates by the ad hoc postulate of a “binding mechanism” to repair the failed heuristics of demarcation, interaction and external relations. In scientific thought, wholes are sums of parts. In process thought, wholes are potentials for virtual partitions or categories for specification. Parts are not in situ in wholes but are novel derivations that can serve as sub-categories for ensuing partitions. A qualitative account of wholes and parts from a “genetic” perspective (Brown, 2005a) provides an alternative to the causal theory of the mind/brain in that it reveals a correspondence between brain and mental process over correlated phases, such that the mental state can be conceived as isomorphic with the brain state.
A causal account of mental process, including object-perception, obligates physical properties similar if not identical to those assumed for brain. While causation in “mental process” enjoys a healthy uncertainty, the same reservations should apply to brain process. The term “mental process” or “mental activity”, liberally used in many writings, including to some extent the present one, tends to denote causation. In contrast to brain study, where stimulation of neurons induces an effect on other neurons, or on behavior, e.g. limb movement, or on psyche, e.g. an epileptic aura, the immediate experience of mental process is not of antecedence and subsequence. A thought may be followed by another thought, but thoughts are not necessarily coupled and decision does not invariably lead to action. Except for the feeling of activity and passivity, or agency and receptiveness, there is at most the feeling of a dynamic that underlies final contents, a feeling that is accentuated when the direction of activity is impeded, as in tension, hesitation or anxiety. If we could eliminate acts, objects or mental contents in a momentary cognition, mental activity would likely be felt as pure feeling without origin or subjective aim. The lack of direction or intentionality would suspend the feeling of before and after and result in a felt stasis of energy.
An account of the mind/brain invites an interpretation of change. In contrast to the common sense version of “apperception”, change in the object world is not perceived directly but is a consequence of changing conditions that are mirrored in, or realized through, overlapping reinstatements. As in the phi phenomenon, one mind/brain state is substituted for another in rapid succession, such that illusory change is created by the imposition of ensuing states on preceding ones. The overlap gives the continuity; the replacement gives the appearance of change. In this respect, the thought of Bradley is close to the claims of this book, in which the mental state and other objects are described in terms of imminent causation, i.e. self-caused change or “causal persistence”, as in the moment-to-moment replacement of objects and organisms. The similarities with the arising and perishing of point-instants in Buddhist philosophy should not escape the careful reader.
The principle axis of speculation is the theory of the mind/brain state, which is an outcome of clinical studies described in prior works, most recently Brown (2010a). To my knowledge, the microgenetic account is the only coherent and detailed theory of the mental state. It is also far removed from the tendency of philosophers to identify it with content - quale, mental statement - at a given moment. Without a theory of the mind/brain state, on which the relation of mind to brain is conditioned, philosophy can do little more than thrash about in search of adequate definitions or possible solutions but will fail to progress to explanatory closure by argument alone, especially given the deference to computational models and the resistance to subjectivist theory. The problem cannot be properly understood apart from the trajectory of the mental state and how the phase-transition of the state maps to brain process. The difficulty is compounded by uncertainty as to mental contents and properties, the presumption of causal brain process, possibly causal mental process, and the epistemic status of perceptual objects. The reader immune to internalist theory, or refractory to explanation in terms of antecedent process, or to recurrence and epochal states, will be forgiven if he closes the book at this point.
This work was conceived as a whole, though some chapters have appeared as journal articles. This has the effect, perhaps helpful to some, perplexing to others, of a repetition of theory and arguments. The justification for each chapter standing alone with slight revision of the original is that it can be more easily related to the general theory instead of scavenging the chapters to accommodate a linear exposition. It was felt there would be value for each chapter to be read independent of the others in spite of the overlap since every topic in the book owes to a common source. As Yeats wrote, “though leaves are many, the root is one.” The sole disclaimer is that a reader unwilling to look up the cited sources must accept on faith much of the groundwork for the theory, since the data that gave birth to it consist largely of patterns of error (symptom) formation in neuropsychological cases with focal brain lesions.
II
Metaphysical Principles
The nature of perception and the perception of nature, the subjective and objective, appearance and reality, ancient problems in philosophical discourse, are central topics in this work. Here, however, conclusions are not reached by logic and argument alone, or by introspection and intuition but, as mentioned, by the evidence of clinical studies, which have all been described in past writings. The prior work forms a coherent system of thought that offers a novel path into these perennial issues. The pathological data are critical in revealing the micro-structure of subjectivity, for which argumentation has little consequence, and to which introspection