The issue of brain/mind irreducibility is crucial for several reasons. First because people tend to equate soul with mind and as such they often take reducibility as proof that the only existing things are naturalistic. While it is possible to maintain a spirituality that is based upon a naturalistic mind as the physical product of brain, the possibility of mind as a basic product of nature and irreducible offers the prospect of a dimension not reducible to the physical and thus shatters naturalism/materialism from the outset. It is also possible to produce God arguments based upon a non reductive reading of mind. Moreover, the reductionist reading provides the basis for deterministic ideology that threatens to reduce the value of humanity and to eliminate he integrity of human agency.
Theoretically non Reduceable.
By way of
explanation of the two sides, I will take property dualism as representative of
the pro-mind side, on the proviso that it’s not the only position. Panpsychism
can be thought of as a subset (one of four types) of property dualism.[1] I
will compare them with John Searle’s article “why I’m Not a Property Dualist.”[2]
Searle
summarizes the property dualist position:
(1)
Empirical reality exits in two
categories, physical and mental.
(2)
Because mental states are not
reducible to physical states they are something over and above the physical.
The irreducibility in and of itself is enough to demonstrate that there is more
than just the neurobiological.
(3)
Mental phenomena do not constitute
separate objects of substances but rather are features of properties of a
composite, such as human or animal. Thus humans or animals have two types of
features or properties, mental and physical.[3]
Searle takes issue with this in that he ascribes the
categories to just one world. There are not two sets of characteristics. We
have one world, everything is physical, but we can describe it in a number of
ways. Searle may be thought of as part of the pro-mind side, but he is not a
property dualist. He explains why in terms of the problem of the mental and the
causal. If the mental is removed from physical then it can’t play a causal
role. Ultimately he’s going to argue that the conventional terms are the
problem because they invite us to discuss the issue in dualistic ways. So
Searle accepts the premise of the reductionists that everything is physical and
material but he can’t be called a reducationist because also recognizes the
importance of ontology. He says neurobiological there is one world and
consciousness is a product of the causal process. On the other hand, since
descriptively our mental states are not reducible or accessible by others there
is an ontological dimension that can’t be reduced. He seems to take the
ontological as a descriptive dimension. As argument against the ramifications
of Property dualism he lays out a dilemma. If consciousness is closed from the
physical realm its not part of the causal mechanism and that means our behavior
has nothing to do with consciousness. The alternative is that if the conscious
is part of the causal it creates a dualistic causality in which case each
action has two explanations, the mental and physical.[4]
It seems rather coherent to me to appeal to the mental as motivation for
movement and to the physical as the actual mechanics of carrying out the
“enabling legislation” so to speak.
I agree
with Searle that a large part of the problem is the dualistic nature of
language. We are forced into categories of dualism by the way we are led to
speak about the distinction between physical and mental. I can accept Searle’s
position, even as a Christian, with the proviso that we can’t understand God
and God is obviously an exception to what we know and could contradict all of
it. The qualities in humanity that make us “eternal sprits” and put us above
the realm of the mere physical can be described in functional terms rather than
taken as “essentialist.” That is to say, we can see “spirit” as mind,
and mind as mental phenomena without positing a discrete entity or ghost in the
machine. On the other hand I hold back from commitment to Searle’s position due
to one question that he doesn’t seem to answer. When we say “consciousness” do
we mean the actual awareness, or even the texture of mental awareness that
comes with mental states, or do we mean the apparatus that makes that texture
possible? That seems crucial because if we mean the apparatus then I would
agree with his position in so far as we stipulate for biological life only; for
biological life consciousness is rooted in the neurobiological. We need not
confine our understanding of the texture of awareness or the function of
awareness to biological life. If the texture is what we mean by
“consciousness,” then it could be much more vast and irreducible to the
neurobiological. This is an explanation of the term “source of consciousness.”
That term I apply to God.
I think
Searle is wrong in assuming that two dimensions of human being (mental and
physical) make for two causes in every action. One cause beginning with the
motivation (mental) and working itself out as a cause over two dimensions of
our being. That argument is not proof that mental can be reduced to the
physical, nor does the threat of being dualistic disprove the reality of
dualism. David Chalmers has an argument, or several arguments, for the
irreducealbity of consciousness.[5]
Chalmers observes that consciousness escapes the reductive net and is not
easily reduced to the physical by the assumptions reductionists make. It’s
natural to assume that everything reduces to the physical, that consciousness supervenes
upon the physical. No physical explanation can wholly account for the nature of
consciousness. The argument is in what I call the “texture” or the “conscious
nature” of consciousness itself.[6]
Chalmers argues that consciousness does not logically supervene upon the
physical. The reductionists pull a biat and switch by demonstrating the
reduction of brain function to the physical, obviously, then speaking as though
they have demonstrated that consciousness is the same as brain function when in
fact they have no such demonstration. The very nature of consciousness resists
such a demonstration, yet the reductionist is often blind to this fact because
they can’t stop identifying consciousness with brain function.
Chalmers
full argument entails the theory of the supervenient but he also makes
arguments without it. He says one can do it either way. I will avoid the
complex and highly specialized issue in order to keep it simple; otherwise I am
apt to become confused. He sets up the arguments so that they can be made and
make sense without the supervenient analysis.[7]
The basic argument is grounded in the nature of consciousness which is seen in
the so called “hard problem,” the inability to explain the nature of
consciousness without losing the phenomena of consciousness. To illustrate the
hard problem Chalmers constructs the notion of the philolophical zombie.
Philosophical zombies differ from Hollywood zombies in
that they are not mindless automatons who can’t think wondering about doing
someone’s bidding. They are identical to us in every way so they cannot be
identified as such externally. The only difference is they don’t have mental
states or the “texture” of consciousness. They can think they can react
logically and reason but they don’t have the mental experience going on inside.
The zombie can’t feel the good morning but she can say “good morning” and in a
way that implies that she means it. It doesn’t matter weather such zombies are
actually possible or not. This is not a possible worlds argument its really
more of an analogy that illustrates the distinction between the conscious and
brain function.[8] The upshot of the
zombie thing is that one could have all the brain function to memic everything
humans do, but still lack consciousness and that illustrates hat consciousness
is not explained by brain function. If the organism with all the brain we have
lacks the texture of consciousness then the two don’t share the same properties
one is not dependent upon the other. Of
course the opponent will argue that we are making more of consciousness than we
should and that in imagining a world of such zombies we are inherently putting
in the mental states just in ascribing to them our behaviors. The burden of
proof is on them to prove that there is nothing more to the texture of
consciousness than behavior.[9]
The
epistemic asymmetry of consciousness affords Chalmers a powerful argument.
Conscious experience is a complete surprise given the relationship between
mathematics and the rest of reality. That is to say, if not for our actual
experience of consciousness we could never theorize or guess as to its’
existence just based upon scientific knowledge about brain function or the
physical world. A world of philosophical zombies in which there was no
experience of consciousness with all the scientific understanding we have could
never come to realization that consciousness must exist for some beings
somewhere.
From
all the low-level facts about physical configurations and causation, we can in
principle derive all sorts of high-level facts about macroscopic systems, their
organization, and the causation among them. One could determine all the facts about
biological function, and about human behavior and the brain
mechanisms by which it is caused. But
nothing in this vast causal story would lead one who had
not experienced it directly to believe that there should
be any consciousness. The very idea would be unreasonable; almost
mystical, perhaps. It is true that the physical facts
about the world might provide some indirect evidence for
the existence of consciousness. For
example, from these facts one could ascertain that there
were a lot of organism’s that claimed to be conscious, and said they had mysterious subjective experiences. Still, this evidence would be quite
inconclusive, and it might be most natural to draw an
eliminative conclusion—that there was in fact no experience present in these creatures, just a lot of talk.[10]
If consciousness was dependent upon the physical entirely as
a shared property of the physical it would be deducible immediately by its
relation to the physical. We should be able to deduce anything that is physical
by understanding its physical break down. We can’t even get at a definition of
consciousness that doesn’t exclude the mental qualia and reduce to brain
function. That is not an explanation (though its taken for one by reductionts)
it’s nothing more than losing the phenomena and re-labeling.
What
Chalmers calls the most vivid argument against the logical supervienence of
consciousness upon the physical is ‘the knowledge argument’ put forth by
Jackson (1982) and Nagel (1974). The example he uses is that of a woman he dubs
“Mary” who is the world expert on neurophysiology of color vision. She lives in
an advanced time when science has all knowledge of the physical realm. Mary has
been raised in a black and while room where she has never seen color. She
understands everything there is to know about the physical processes of producing
color but she does not know what red looks like. No amount of reasoning from
the physical facts can tell her how red appears.
It follows that the facts about the
subjective experience of color vision are not entailed by the physical facts.
If they were, Mary could in principle come to know what it is like to see red
on the basis of her knowledge of the physical facts. But she cannot. Perhaps
Mary could come to know what it is like to see red by some indirect method,
such as by manipulating her brain in the appropriate way. The point, however,
is that the knowledge does not follow from the physical knowledge alone.
Knowledge of all the physical facts will in principle allow Mary to derive all
the facts about a system’s reactions, and its various abilities and cognitive
capacities; but she will still be entirely in the dark about its experience of
red.[11]
He reinforces this idea by reference to Thomas Negal’s
famous article of the 70’s “What is It Like to be a Bat?”[12]
All the physical knowledge about bats can’t tell us what it’s like to be one.
That’s just multiplying examples at that point. We can’t know what it feels
like to be a bat because we don’t have the consciousness of a bat. The texture
of the experience is point in consciousness. The reductionists sometimes
substitute brain function for the actual nature of the experience of
consciousness. Until they get at that they can’t get at the hard problem. When they argue, as does Dennett in Consciousness
Explained, discussing the theory of multiple drafts proposes that
consciousness is just an epiphenomenal illusion that results from the process
of editing perception by the brian does in perception, just a number of still
photos shown in rapid succession become a moving picture. "You
seem to be referring to a private, ineffable something or other in you mind's
eye, a private shade of homogenous pink, but this is just how it seems to you,
not how it is."[13] There’s a lot that could be said to this point, for example see
Latnz Miller’s devastating critique of Dennett’s book in Negations. [14]
Yet the most to the point criticism that can be made is that it’s not about
consciousness. This is about the function of the brain. That doesn’t do
anything to get at the nature of consciousness itself. Tending to brain function
in this way does not prove that consciousness arises out of brain function and
has no larger reference as a basic property of nature. The only thing it does
prove is that conscious awareness is accessed through brain function.
The issue
of access is not the issue of causality. To say just exactly what is access and
what is causing what, is hard to tell. It would be necessary to know that to
resolve the argument either way. If there is a larger framework for
consciousness than just being a side effect of chemicals in the head, such as a
basic property or a principle of physical law or some such, then there must be
some way in which what seems like an emergent property is actually connected to
a larger principle. The fact that consciousness is communicated through brain
chemistry is not a disproof. It may be
the case that the evidence for irreducibility doesn’t prove it either. It would
seem that irreducibility is a good reason to think that consciousness might be
a basic property of nature. While at the same time the link between access and
brain chemistry is not proof that mind reduces to brain or that consciousness
is wholly a side effect of brain chemistry. The organizing effect of mind also
adds another valid reason to suspect that consciousness could be a basic
property.
Empirical Data:
There is No Empirical Data that proves reducibility
Both
sciences and the general public have come to accept the idea that the mind is
dependent upon the brain and that we can reduce mental activity to some
specific aspect of the bran upon which it is dependence and by which it is
produced. Within this assumption neuroimaging studies are given special
credence. These kinds of studies are given special credence probably because
the tangibility of their subject matter and the empirical data produced creates
the illusion of “proof.”[15]
Yet EEG and MRI both have resolution problems and can’t really pin point
exactly where neural activity is located.” In short, neuroimaging studies may
not be as objective as some would like to think. There are still large gaps
between observation and interpretation – gaps that are ‘filled’ by theoretical
or methodological assumptions.”[16]
Learning is not hard wired but is the result of “Plasticity.” This plasticity
is what allows us the flexibility to learn in new situations. This means that
most of our neocortex are involved in higher level psychological processes such
as learning from experiences.[17]
Our brains are developed by new experiences including skills acquisition.[18]
Exercise and mediation can change the brain.[19]
Classical
psychological reductionism assumes the mind is essentially the brain. Mental
behaviors are all explained totally in terms of brain function. Mental states
are merely reduced to brain states.
But while it may be true that certain
psychological processes are contingent on some neurophysiological
activity, we cannot necessarily say that psychological processes reduce to
‘nothing but’ that activity. Why not? – Because much of the time we are not
dealing with cause and effect, as many neuroscientists seem to think, but
rather two different and non-equivalent kinds of description. One describes mechanism,
the other contains meaning. Understanding the physical mechanisms of a
clock, for example, tells us nothing about the culturally constructed
meaning of time. In a similar vein, understanding the physiological
mechanisms underlying the human blink, tells us nothing about the
meaning inherent in a human wink (Gergen, 2010). Human meaning
often transcends its underlying mechanisms. But how does it do this?[20]
Reducing mind to brain confuses mechanism with meaning.[21]
Raymond
Tallis was a professor of Geriatric medicine at University
of Manchester, and researcher, who
retired in 2006 6o devote himself to philosophy and writing. Tallis denounces
what he calls “neurohype,” “the claims
made on behalf of neuroscience in areas outside those in which it has any kind
of explanatory power….”[22]
The fundamental assumption is that
we are our brains and this, I will argue presently, is not true. But this is
not the only reason why neuroscience does not tell us what human beings
“really” are: it does not even tell us how the brain works, how bits of the
brain work, or (even if you accept the dubious assumption that human living
could be parcelled up into a number of discrete functions) which bit of the
brain is responsible for which function. The rationale for thinking of the kind
– “This bit of the brain houses that bit of us...” – is mind-numbingly
simplistic.[23]
Specifically Tallis has refernce to experiments where the
brain is scanned while the subject does some activity and the differences are
attributed to some structure in that part of the brain. Tallis is highly
skeptical of this method.
Why is this fallacious? First, when it
is stated that a particular part of the brain lights up in response to a
particular stimulus, this is not the whole story. Much more of the brain is
already active or lit up; all that can be observed is the additional activity
associated with the stimulus. Minor changes noted diffusely are also
overlooked. Secondly, the additional activity can be identified only by a
process of averaging the results of subtractions after the stimulus has been
given repeatedly: variations in the response to successive stimuli are ironed out.
Finally, and most importantly, the experiments look at the response to very
simple stimuli – for example, a picture of the face of a loved one compared
with that of the face of one who is not loved. But, as I have pointed out
elsewhere (for the benefit of Martians), romantic love is not like a response
to a stimulus. It is not even a single enduring state, like being cold. It
encompasses many things, including not feeling in love at that moment; hunger,
indifference, delight; wanting to be kind, wanting to impress; worrying over
the logistics of meetings; lust, awe, surprise; imagining conversations,
events; speculating what the loved one is doing when one is not there; and so
on. (The most sophisticated neural imaging, by the way, cannot even distinguish
between physical pain and the pain of social rejection: they seem to “light up”
the same areas!)[24]
Hal Pashler’s study, University of California, San Diego is
discussed in an an editorial in New Scientist, he is quoted as
saying “In most of the studies that
linked brain regions to feelings including social rejection, neuroticism and
jealousy, researchers … used a method that inflates the strength of the link
between a brain region and the emotion of behaviour.”[25]
Some empirical data supports claim:
Irreducibility
There are,
however, empirical data that imply that brain is not necessary to mind. One
such datum is the humble amoeba. They swim, they find food they learn, they
multiply, all without brains or brain cell connections.[26] Various theories are proposed but none really
answer the issue. Stuart Mameroff (anesthetist from University
of Arizona) and Roger Penrose,
Mathematician form Cambridge, raise
the theory that small protein structures called microtubules found in cells
throughout the body. The problem is they don’t cause any problem with
consciousness when damaged.[27]
Nevertheless, the amoeba is a mystery in terms of how it works with no brain
cells. That leads to the recognition of a larger issue the irreducealbity
raises the question of consciousness as a basic property of nature. Like
electromagnetism, there was a time when scientists tried to explain that in
terms of other known phenomena, when they could not do so they concluded that
it was a basic property and opened up a branch of science and the
electromagnetic spectrum.[28]
David Chalmers and others have suggested the same solution for consciousness.
The late Sir John Eccles, a
neuroscientist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1963 for his work on
brain cell connections (synapses) and was considered by many to be one of the
greatest neuroscientists of the twentieth century, was perhaps the most
distinguished scientist who argued in favor of such a separation between mind,
consciousness and the brain. He argued that the unity of conscious experience
was provided by the mind and not by the machinery of the brain. His view was
that the mind itself played an active role in selecting and integrating brain
cell activity and molded it into a unified whole. He considered it a mistake to
think that the brain did everything and that conscious experiences were simply
a reflection of brain activities, which he described as a common philosophical
view:
'If that were so, our conscious selves would be no more than passive spectators of the performances carried out by the neuronal machinery of the brain. Our beliefs that we can really make decisions and that we have some control over our actions would be nothing but illusions.[29]
'If that were so, our conscious selves would be no more than passive spectators of the performances carried out by the neuronal machinery of the brain. Our beliefs that we can really make decisions and that we have some control over our actions would be nothing but illusions.[29]
Top Down Causation
confirming irreducibility
Top down causation: there are different kinds but in general its when a cause is coming down from a higher system to one upon which it is not dependent, but the system receiving the causal effect is dependent upon the higher system.Top down causation would argue against reduction because you can't reduce it to the lower system. Problem of binding is an example becuase binding of all different aspects of consciousness and brain function in one package, the self awareness and integrity of the individual rather than a schizoid consciousness, is dependent upon things outside the system that produces the consciousness effects.
*problem of binding
There is a
problem with understanding what it is that binds together the unity of a
conscious experience. We have many different kinds of conscious faculty at work
in the process of being conscious, symbolic thinking, literal thinking, sense
of temporal, sense of reality, and physical perceptions. Somehow it all gets
brought together into one coherent sense of perceptions. How are the individual
aspects, such as color, form, the temporal, and united into a coherent whole
experience? Unification of experience is not achieved anatomically. There is
“no privileged places of structures in the brain where everything comes
together…either for the visual system by itself or for sensory system as a
whole ” [30] McDougall
took it as something that physicalilsm can’t explain.[31]
Dennett and Kinsbourne recognize the phenomena marking top down causation and
acknowledge it, they spin it as undermining unity.[32]
The old approach was to assume there must be an anatomical center for binding.
Without finding one the assumption was that it couldn’t be explained. Modern
explanations of unity are based upon a functional approach.
The essential concept common to all of
them is that oscillatory electrical activity in widely
distributed neural populations can be rapidly and reversibly synchronized in
the gamma band of frequencies (roughly 30-70 Hz) thereby providing a possible
mechanism for binding.” (von der Malsburg 1995). A great deal of sophisticated
experimental and theoretical work over the past 20 years demonstrates that
mechanisms do exist in the nervous system and they work in relation to the
normal perceptual synthesis. Indeed Searl’s doctrine of biological naturalism
has now crystallized neurophysiologically in the form of a family of global
workspace theories, all of which make the central claim that conscious
experience occurs specifically and only with large scale patters of gamma band
oscillatory activity linking widely separated areas of the brain. [33]
In other words if consciousness was reducible to brain
chemistry there should be an anatomical center in the brain that works to
produce the binding effect. Yet the evidence indicates that binding mechanisms
must be understood as functions of various areas outside either the brain
(nervous system) or in different parts of the brain which means
it can’t be reduced to just a physical apparatus but is systemic and that is
indicative of top down causation.
* Projective activity in perceptual process
Our
brains act as a sort of “word generating virtual reality system.”[34]
That is the brain is constantly projecting and updating a model of the
perceptual environment and our relation to it. Top down cross modal sensory
interactions have been recognized as the rule rather than the exception, in
perceptions, as several studies indicate (A.K. Engle et al, 2001; Shimojo and
Shams 2001). [35] Evidence indicates that
the ultimate source of projective activity may originate outside the brain. A
great deal of knowledge is put into action for use in understanding language and
in writing. Some researchers have advanced the view that the fundamental form
of projective activity is dreaming.[36]
*Semantic or intentional content; word meaning and other
form of representation.
This has been dealt with traditionally through reductionism.
Representations were said to work by resembling things they represent. This was
disproved by Goodman and Heil (1981). [37]
In cognitive psychology there is a rule of thumb that meanings are not to be
conceived as intrinsic to words, they are defined by the functional role they
play in a sentence. The major approach
to the problem used now is connectionism, from dynamic systems theory. The
meaning of a given response such as settling of a network into one of its attracters
or firing of a volley of spikes by a neuron in the visual cortex is identified
with the aspect in the environment that produces the response. This account
can’t deal with abstract things or non existent things. There’s nothing in the
environment to trigger it. Responses do not qualify as representations nor
signs as symbols. “That something,” as Searl so effectively argued (in 1992)
“is precisely what matters.”[38]
*problem of Intentionality
Intentionality
is the ability of representational forms to be about things, to reflect meaning
and to be about events and states of affairs in the world. [39] The problem of intentionality has plagued
both psychologists and philosophers. Intentionality is inherently three ways,
involving the user, symbols, and things symbolized. Searl tells us that intentionality
of langue is secondary and derives from the intrinsic intentionality of the
mind. “Intentionality can’t be obtained from any kind of physical system
including brains.”[40]
*The Humunculus Problem
The
Homunculus was a medieval concept about human reproduction. The male was said
to have in him little men just like him with all the basic stuff that makes him
work that’s how new men get born. In this topic it’s the idea that we need in
the mind another mind or brain like structure to make the mind work. The
problem is it keeps requiring ever more little structures to make each one
before it work; in endless regression of systems. Kelly and Kelly et al site
Dennett’s attempt to solve the homunculus problem in the form of less and less
smart homunculi until the bottom level corresponding to heard ware level end
the recursion so it’s not infinite. (Dennett 1978)[41]
Searl (1992) responds that there has to be something outside the bottom level
that knows what lower level compositions mean. Cognitive models can’t function
without a homunculus because they lack minds, as Kelly tells us.[42]
No homunculus problem, however, is
posed by the structure of our conscious experience itself. The efforts of
Dennett and others to claim that there is such a problem, and to use that to
ridicule any residue of dualism, rely upon the deeply flawed metaphor of the
Cartesian theater a place where mental contents get displayed and I pop in
separately to view them. Descartes himself, James, Searl and others all have
this right: conscious experience comes to us whole and undivided, with the
qualitative feels, phenomenological content, unity, and subjective point of
view all built in, intrinsic features. I and my experience cannot be separated
in this way. [43]
[1] “Consciousness,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archives pages. Website URL: http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/archives/sum2004/entries/consciousness/#8.1
visited 1/22/11. Robert Van
Gulick ed. and Copyright. (2004)
[2] John Searle “Why I am not
a Property Dualist” originally from online document: URL: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc.
from the Google Html version, propertydualismFNL.doc. November17, 2002 visited 12/6/10. URL: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Y4Fr7m7rItQJ:socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc+consciousness+is+not+reducible+to+brain+chemistry+but+is+a+basic+property+of+nature&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
[5] David Chalmers, The
Conscious Mind: In Search of a theory. England,
New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996. on line
version: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16574382/David-Chalmers-The-Conscious-Mind-Philosophy
Scribd, David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Theory of Conscious
Experience, webstie Department of Philosophy, University
of California at Santa
Cruz, July 22
1995, visited 3/1/11
on line page numbers apply.
[6] Ibid, supervenient specialized
philosophical term that refers to the necessary sharing of peripheries between
two existents when one is a subset of the other.
[7] Ibid. 84
[8] ibid.84-85
[9] ibid. 90
[10] ibid,
[11] ibid
[12] in Chalmers, 90,
originally in Philosophical Review, pp. 435-50
[13] Daniel C. Dennett, op
cit, 329
[14] Lantz Miller, “the Hard
Sell of Human Consciousness, and the recovery of consciousness in the nature of
new language. part 1.” Negations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Social
Criticism. Issue 3, Winter 1998. On line copy: URL: http://negations.icaap.org/
(scroll down). For part 2 of Miller’s argument see the 2002 issue on the same
site.
[15] Brad Peters, Modern
Psychologist, “the Mind Does not Reduce to the Brain.” On line resource, blog, 2/4/12
URL: http://modernpsychologist.ca/the-mind-does-not-reduce-to-the-brain/ visited 5/3/12
Brad Peters, M.Sc. Psychologist (Cand. Reg.) • Halifax,
Nova Scotia, Canada
[16] Ibid.
[17] ibid
[18]Schore, A. N. Affect
regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional
development. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
(1994).
See also: Siegel,
D. J. The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to
shape who we are. New York, NY:
Guilford Press. (1999).
[19] Peters, ibid.
[20] ibid.
[21] K. Gergen, The
accultured brain. Theory & Psychology, 20(6), (2010). 795-816.
[22] Raymond Tallis New
Haumanist.org.uk Ideas for Godless People (blog—online researche) volume 124
Issue 6 (Nov/Dec 2009) URL: http://newhumanist.org.uk/2172/neurotrash visited 5/9/12
[23] ibid
[24] ibid
[25] quoted by Tallis, ibid.
[26] Science Research
Foundation, “Science at the horizon of life,” independent charitable
organization in UK 2007-2012. On-line resource, UFL: http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=200 visisted 5/2/12
[27] ibid
[28] ibid
[29] ibid
[30] Edward F. Kelley and
Emily Williams Kelley, et al, Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the
21st Century. Boulder, New
York, Toronto:
Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Inc, 2007/2010, 37.
[31] Ibid. 38, referring to
W.McDougall, Proceedings of scientific physical research 25, 11-29.
(1911/1961)..
[32] ibid. 38 refers to
Dennette and kinsbourne in Consciousness Explained. (op cit) 183-247
[33] ibid, sites C.Von der
Malsburg, “Binding In Models of Perception and Brain Function.” Current Opinion
in Neurobiology, 5, 520-526. also sited Crick 94; Dehaene and Naccache, 2001; Edelmon and Tononi, 2000; Engle, Fries
and Singer 2001; W.J. Freeman 2000, and others.
[34] ibid
[35] ibid, 40, he sites A.K.
Engle et al, 2001; Shimojo and Shams 2001;
[36] ibid, 41-42 sites Rodolfo Llina’s and Pare’ 1996
Llina’s and Ribary, 1994.
[37] Ibid, 42 see Heil
1981
[38] ibid, 43 see Searl
1992
[39] ibid
[40] ibid, see also studies,
puccetti 1989; Dupuy 2000 discussion of issue form opposing points of view).
[41] Ibid see Dennett 1978
and Searl 1992)
[42] ibid
[43 ibid, 44
No comments:
Post a Comment