Embodied Human Consciousness, Abrupt Global Climate Change, and Freedom - S. David Stoney, Ph.D.
VIII. ECOLOGICAL NEUROSCIENCE: A PROCESS PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH TO HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS As far as I know, there have been few (no?) attempts by practicing neuroscientists to apply process philosophical principles to the neurobiology of action, embodied consciousness, and perception. This section, very much a work in progress, shows some of my attempts to reformulate conventional, sensationist accounts of neural correlates of action, consciousness, and perception into more realistic, processural terms. These versions were originally prepared as supplementary materials for my Neuroscience lectures to the freshman medical students at the Medical College of Georgia, January - February, 2001. I have lately been revising them. As with everything else, kindly take what you like and leave the rest....
"... in order that the human mind may be able to represent relations between phenomena, there must first be phenomena, that is to say, distinct facts, cut out of the continuity of becoming. And once we posit this particular mode of cutting up such as we perceive it to-day, we posit also the intellect such as it is to-day, for it is by relation to it, and to it alone, that reality is cut up in this manner... Each being cuts up the material world according to the lines that its action must follow: it is these lines of possible action that, by intercrossing, mark out the net of experience..." (Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, Translated by Arthur Mitchell, Mineola: NY: Dover Publications, pg. 376, 1998(1911).)
"The entity of which we become aware in sense perception is the terminus of our act of perception...Perception is simply the cognition of prehensive unification; or more shortly, perception is cognition of prehension." (Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, New York: The Free Press, pgs. 70, 71, 1925.)
"In summary, both dualism and materialism are unintelligible. But if the modern premise that the elementary units of nature are insentient is accepted, dualism and materialism are the only options. This fact suggests that the premise that lies behind the modern disenchantment of the world is false." (David Ray Griffin, Introduction: The Reechantment of Science, In: The Reenchanment of Science: Postmodern Proposals, David Ray Griffin [Ed.], Albany,NY: SUNY Press, pg. 21, 1988.)
"The theory that brain function is naturally subdivided into such entities as sensation, perception, motivation, emotion and memory is not consistent with the findings of neuroscientific research." (C.H. Vanderwolf, The behavioral neurobiology of learning and memory: a conceptual reorientation, Brain Res. Revs. 19:264-97, 1994)
An introduction for MCG students, emphasizing the placebo effect. It suggests the importance of the approach, notes resources available at the MCG library and elsewhere, and outlines the scope of the effort.
Some aspects of the nature of things according to process philosophy. A brief, but nearly complete (I think!) description of the process philosophical ideas that will be required for an ecological neuroscience. The climate crisis is alluded to. I have drawn from several sources for the process ideas, particularly the recent book by John A. Jungerman, World in Process: Creativity and Interconnection in the New Physics, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000. I see, but have not yet addressed, the need to distinguish physical and intellectual prehensions.
Grendel's instruction in process philosophy John Gardner gave a rather good description of process philosophy in his book, Grendel, which is based on Beowulf from the monster's point of view. Grendel (the monster) is instructed first by a dragon and then by a priest.
Sensation and perception according to classical neural theory and ecological neuroscience A quick overview of contemporary theories of mind. The importance of neurons for nonsensory perception and for sensory perception is emphasized.
Somatic Sensibility from a process philosophical perspective A description of how the receptive field properties of certain neurons found in the parietal lobe, the premotor cortex, and the basal ganglia are very well matched to the idea that neurons signal prehensions. Certain problems with the conventional ("neuralist") approach, such as its inability to deal with the binding problem without invoking magic (or neural prehension!) and its nearly complete paralysis in the face of anosognosia for hemiplegia, are discussed. Synchronization of firing in prehensive neural networks is advanced as the neural correlate of the blossoming of a prehension into cognition.
The fundamental role of inhibition in the formation of prehensive neural networks The importance of "vertical" re-entrant connections in the DC-ML component of the somatic sensory system for stabilizing populations of afferent neurons via inhibition. This allows the formation of prehensive neural networks, whose activation constelates the act of knowing into embodied consciousness.
Go to Table of Contents. Go to Next (IX. Modern Science and the Mind Presentations) page.