New Light on the Mind-Brain Problem: How Mental Events Could Influence Neural Events

1985 ◽  
pp. 81-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Eccles
Keyword(s):  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events

A unitary hypothesis of mind-brain interaction in the cerebral cortex

1990 ◽  
Vol 240 (1299) ◽  
pp. 433-451 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cerebral Cortex ◽  
Pyramidal Cells ◽  
Neuronal Structure ◽  
Mental Experience ◽  
Effective Selection ◽  
Global Nature ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Apical Dendrites ◽  
The Brain

A brief introduction to the brain-mind problem leads on to a survey of the neuronal structure of the cerebral cortex. It is proposed that the basic receptive units are the bundles or clusters of apical dendrites of the pyramidal cells of laminae V and III-II as described by Fleischhauer and Peters and their associates. There are up to 100 apical dendrites in these receptive units, named dendrons. Each dendron would have an input of up to 100000 spine synapses. There are about 40 million dendrons in the human cerebral cortex. A study of the influence of mental events on the brain leads to the hypothesis that all mental events, the whole of the World 2 of Popper, are composed of mental units, each carrying its own characteristic mental experience. It is further proposed that each mental unit, named psychon, is uniquely linked to a dendron. So the mind-brain problem reduces to the interaction between a dendron and its psychon for all the 40 million linked units. In my 1986 paper ( Proc. R. Soc. Lond . B 227, 411-428) on the mind-brain problem, there was developed the concept that the operation of the synaptic microsites involved displacement of particles so small that they were within range of the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg. The psychon-dendron interaction provides a much improved basis for effective selection by a process analogous to a quantal probability field. In the fully developed hypothesis psychons act on dendrons in the whole world of conscious experiences and dendrons act on psychons in all perceptions and memories. It is shown how these interactions involve no violation of the conservation laws. There are great potentialities of these unitary concepts, for example as an explanation of the global nature of a visual experience from moment to moment. It would seem that there can be psychons not linked to dendrons, but only to other psychons, creating what we may call a psychon world.

scholarly journals A Framework for Building Cognitive Process Models

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Bianca Jarecki ◽  
Jolene Tan ◽  
Mirjam Jenny
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Information Transformation ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Specific Modeling ◽  
Reverse Inference

The term process model is widely used but rarely agreed upon. This paper proposes a framework for characterizing and building cognitive process models. Process models model not only inputs and outputs but also model the ongoing information transformations at a given level of abstraction. We argue that four dimensions characterize process models: They specify intermediate stages containing the hypothesized mental information processing. They make predictions not only for the behavior of interest but also for process-related variables. Third, the models’ process predictions can be derived from the input without reverse inference from the output data. Fourth, the presumed information transformation steps are not contradicting current knowledge of human cognitive capacities. Finally, process models require a conceptual scope specifying what the model refers to, that is, the information entering the mind, the proposed mental events, and the behavior of interest. This framework can be used for refining models before testing them or after testing them empirically, and it does not rely on specific modeling paradigms. It can be a guideline for developing cognitive process models. Moreover, the framework can advance currently unresolved debates about which models belong to the category of process models.

The Process of Inference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Mole
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Belief Revision ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Belief States ◽  
Mental Events

The set of entities that serves as the domain for our discourse about the mind is metaphysically heterogenous. It includes processes, events, properties, modes, and states. In the latter part of the twentieth century, philosophers started to suppose that a philosophical theory of the mind should be primarily concerned with the explanation of mental states. Those states could be mentioned in the explanations that would need to be given for mental entities of other sorts. If, for example, we had a prior explanation of belief states, then those states could figure in our subsequent explanation of inferences: inferences, on this approach, are to be identified with certain processes of belief revision. This states-first approach was not favoured by earlier theorists of the mind, who tended to suppose that mental events and processes are explanatorily more basic than mental states. The current states-first approach faces insuperable difficulties, which the earlier approach avoids.

scholarly journals A framework for building cognitive process models

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 1218-1229
Author(s):  
Jana B. Jarecki ◽  
Jolene H. Tan ◽  
Mirjam A. Jenny
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Process Model ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Information Transformation ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Specific Modeling ◽  
Reverse Inference

AbstractThe term process model is widely used, but rarely agreed upon. This paper proposes a framework for characterizing and building cognitive process models. Process models model not only inputs and outputs but also model the ongoing information transformations at a given level of abstraction. We argue that the following dimensions characterize process models: They have a scope that includes different levels of abstraction. They specify a hypothesized mental information transformation. They make predictions not only for the behavior of interest but also for processes. The models’ predictions for the processes can be derived from the input, without reverse inference from the output data. Moreover, the presumed information transformation steps are not contradicting current knowledge of human cognitive capacities. Lastly, process models require a conceptual scope specifying levels of abstraction for the information entering the mind, the proposed mental events, and the behavior of interest. This framework can be used for refining models before testing them or after testing them empirically, and it does not rely on specific modeling paradigms. It can be a guideline for developing cognitive process models. Moreover, the framework can advance currently unresolved debates about which models belong to the category of process models.

The Mind and Mental Events

Philosophy ◽  
2006 ◽  
pp. 184-197
Author(s):  
Bryan Greetham
Keyword(s):  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events

scholarly journals Visual perception management in advertisements

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seda Nur Atasoy
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Green Color ◽  
Perception Management ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Made In

The subconscious includes all mental events that stay out of conscious perception and have no potential to access to the level of conscious. In our present day, the conscious is one of the objects where the advertisers often use it to make hidden inducements in order to influence the behaviors of the consumers and where the desire to buy a product is created, placed in it to best market and publicize their own trademarks and products. When the consumer wants to buy a product, it is necessary that the product for which advertisement is made in the mind emerge. And, this makes us question the necessity of the visual perception management in the human brain. In daily life, thousands of information, pictures and sounds go to the memory on a daily basis, and the human brain recalls them if only they are necessary. For this reason, the advertisers develop their products with such kind of methods which could be recorded in their clients’ memory for a long time.Eighty percent of the perception is structured by the eyesight. The expert psychologists work together with the art directors within the companies where the hidden messages are produced, in order to place in the pictures such images which are to attract attention of the subconscious. Such images have certain qualities which trigger and actuate the visual perception. E.g: placing into the background the green color in order to make a product look more reddish.This study includes the way of functioning of the visual perception in the advertisements together with the examples, and researches whether the attempts to actuate and induce the human feelings and motives could in fact control the behaviors and thoughts, and whether they are right ethically.Keywords: visual perception management, advertisements, subconscious, tachistoscope, poetzle effect. 

Dualism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Property Dualism ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events

Dualism is the view that mental phenomena are, in some respect, nonphysical. The best-known version is due to Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a nonphysical substance. Descartes argued that, because minds have no spatial properties and physical reality is essentially extended in space, minds are wholly nonphysical. Every human being is accordingly a composite of two objects: a physical body, and a nonphysical object that is that human being’s mind. On a weaker version of dualism, which contemporary thinkers find more acceptable, human beings are physical substances but have mental properties, and those properties are not physical. This view is known as property dualism, or the dual-aspect theory. Several considerations appear to support dualism. Mental phenomena are strikingly different from all others, and the idea that they are nonphysical may explain just how they are distinctive. Moreover, physical reality conforms to laws formulated in strictly mathematical terms. But, because mental phenomena such as thinking, desiring and sensing seem intractable to being described in mathematical terms, it is tempting to conclude that these phenomena are not physical. In addition, many mental states are conscious states – states that we are aware of in a way that seems to be wholly unmediated. And many would argue that, whatever the nature of mental phenomena that are not conscious, consciousness cannot be physical. There are also, however, reasons to resist dualism. People, and other creatures with mental endowments, presumably exist wholly within the natural order, and it is generally held that all natural phenomena are built up from basic physical constituents. Dualism, however, represents the mind as uniquely standing outside this unified physical picture. There is also a difficulty about causal relations between mind and body. Mental events often cause bodily events, as when a desire causes an action, and bodily events often cause mental events, for example in perceiving. But the causal interactions into which physical events enter are governed by laws that connect physical events. So if the mental is not physical, it would be hard to understand how mental events can interact causally with bodily events. For these reasons and others, dualism is, despite various reasons advanced in its support, a theoretically uncomfortable position.

scholarly journals The possibility of physicalism

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 242-250
Author(s):  
Eduardo Giannetti
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
The Brain

Abstract Modern science has undermined belief in countless imaginary causalities. What is the nature of the relation between mind and brain? Philosophers have debated the issue for millennia, but it is only in the last twenty years that empirical evidence has begun to uncover some of the secrets of this ancient riddle. This lecture explores the possiblity that advances in neuroscience will undermine and subvert our intuitive, mentalist understanding of the mind-body relationship. Recent findings in neuroscience seem to support the notions that (i) mental events are a subclass of neurophysiological events, and (ii) they are devoid of causal efficacy upon the workings of the brain. If physicalism is true then the belief in the causal potency of conscious thoughts and free will are bound to join company with countless other imaginary causalities exploded by the progress of science.

Mental Substances

2003 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Tim Crane
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Semantic Externalism ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Independent Entity ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events

Philosophers of mind typically conduct their discussions in terms of mental events, mental processes, mental properties, mental states—but rarely in terms of minds themselves. Sometimes this neglect is explicity acknowledged. Donald Davidson, for example, writes that ‘there are no such things as minds, but people have mental properties, which is to say that certain psychological predicates are true of them. These properties are constantly changing, and such changes are mental events’. Hilary Putnam agrees, though for somewhat different reasons:The view I have long defended is that the mind is not a thing, talk of our minds is talk of World-involving capabilities that we have and activities that we engage in. As Dewey succinctly put it, ‘Mind is primarily a verb. It denotes all the ways in which we deal consciously and expressly with the situation in which we find ourseleves. Unfortunately, an influential manner of thinking has changed modes of action into an underlying substance that performs the activities in question. It has treated mind as an independent entity which attends, purposes, cares and remembers’. But the traditional view, by treating mental states as states of the ‘underlying substance’, makes them properties of something ‘inside’, and, if one is a materialist philosopher, that means properties of our brains. So the next problem naturally seems to be: ‘Which neurological properties of our brains do these mental properties “reduce” to?’ For how could our brains have properties that aren't neurological? And this is how materialist philosphers saw the problem until the advent of such new alternatives in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language as Functionalism and Semantic Externalism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document