The brain as a mediator of the mind and the world

Cortex ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (7) ◽  
pp. 904-905
Author(s):  
Zhicheng Lin
Keyword(s):  
The World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Consciousness

2020 ◽  
pp. 651-676
Author(s):  
David Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Computational Process ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Our understanding of the numerous and significant problems of consciousness is inseparable from the often incommensurable disciplinary frameworks through which the topic has been approached. Music may offer a range of perspectives on consciousness, some issuing from interdisciplinary alliances (such as with cognitive psychology and neuroscience), others tapping into what is distinctively musical about music and what music shares with comparable aesthetic formations. Philosophically speaking, music might afford valuable complementary perspectives to approaches within the empirical sciences that see consciousness as essentially a computational process (Pinker, Dennett), or as solely an epiphenomenon of neural activity within the brain. This chapter will look to experiences of music that support views of the mind as extended and embodied, and that see consciousness as ecologically bound up with Being-in-the-world, to adopt notions from Gibson and Heidegger respectively. In this way, music studies can make a contribution to the philosophical study of consciousness from epistemological, phenomenological, and ontological standpoints.

Conclusion: Copernican Revolution—Is the Brain’s Spontaneous Activity an Empirical, Epistemic, and Ontological Game Changer in Neuroscience and Philosophy?

2018 ◽  
pp. 435-438
Author(s):  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
Spontaneous Activity ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Copernican Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
World Brain ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Game Changer

Are the brain and its spontaneous activity a “game changer” in our pursuit of the question of the existence and reality of mental features? A game changer is something that allows to take something into view that hitherto remained invisible and was not yet discovered. That, for instance, makes it possible to raise a novel question or problem replacing the previous one. I argue that the brain’s spontaneous activity is indeed a game changer in this sense, an “empirical and ontological game changer” in that it allows us to replace the mind–body problem with the world–brain problem....

scholarly journals „Nie myślę, lecz jestem”: mózg, umysł i serce filmowej postaci zombie w kontekście paradygmatu posthumanistycznego

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Jacek Nowakowski
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Popular Films ◽  
The World ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The article presents the character of the zombie popular in the contemporary audio-visual culture by placing it in the context of post humanist paradigm. He concentrates on the brain symbolism representative for the character, which, in the classical understanding of the living dead, due to dissimilar functioning, makes it different from humans and their brain-like traits: the mind and heart. Analysing the recent films such as Warm Bodies and The Girl with All the Gifts, he demonstrates the present inadequacy of such a division. Unlike the classical Night of the Living Dead, they are in line with post anthropocentric and new materialism philosophy, by differently symbolically depicting the role and place of the human in the world. It is presently tantamount to the place of non-humans: animals, objects, artefacts and monsters including the living dead. The change of the cultural and film paradigm observed in zombie horrors indicates a deeper strategy of authors of those popular films.

Semantic Pragmatism and A Priori Knawledge (or ‘Yes we could all be brains in a vat’)

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Jackman
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
Semantic Externalism ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Acceptability ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain In A Vat

Hilary Putnam has famously argued that we can know that we are not brains in a vat because the hypothesis that we are is self-refuting. While Putnam's argument has generated interest primarily as a novel response to skepticism, he originally introduced his brain in a vat scenario to help illustrate a point about the ‘mind/world relationship.’ In particular, he intended it to be part of an argument against the coherence of metaphysical realism, and thus to be part of a defense of his conception of truth as idealized rational acceptability. Putnam's discussion has already inspired a substantial body of criticism, but it will be argued here that these criticisms fail to capture the central problem with his argument. Indeed, it will be shown that, rather than simply following from his semantic externalism, Putnam's conclusions about the self-refuting character of the brain in a vat hypothesis are actually out of line with central and plausible aspects of his own account of the relationship between our minds and the world.

Summary of the Argument of Compassionate Reasoning: Changing the Mind to Change the World and Implications for Training

2021 ◽  
pp. 221-242
Author(s):  
Marc Gopin
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Future Orientation ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Neural Pathways ◽  
Global Level ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter summarizes the major arguments of the book and outlines recommendations for implementation of Compassionate Reasoning in society through measuring its cultivation at the local and global level, including assessment of schools, communities, workplaces, and cities. Educational systems develop cultivation of habits of Compassionate Reasoning at every life stage. Habits of thinking, speaking, and doing are the three areas that help the brain strengthen neural pathways of compassion. Compassionate Reasoning empowers the person or group to move beyond the paralysis of excessive empathy with the pain of others (burnout), but it also helps those who do not feel enough compassion for others. Training in Compassionate Reasoning forms good social and governmental policies as it helps workers, policymakers, diplomats, and law enforcement to successfully confront painful moral dilemmas. A key component of Compassionate Reasoning is a future orientation that opens the mind to new possibilities.

Ontology II: From World–Brain Relation to Consciousness

2018 ◽  
pp. 269-314
Author(s):  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
The World ◽  
World Brain ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Features ◽  
The Brain

How can we account for the existence and reality of consciousness and mental features in general? The present chapter complements the previous one by shifting the focus from the ontological determination of the brain to consciousness. I characterized the brain’s existence and reality by world-brain relation for which I presupposed relation and structure as basic units of existence and reality. This entails structural realism, that is, ontic structural realism (OSR). I now apply the definition of the brain by world-brain relation and OSR to consciousness. The main point is that I extend the spatiotemporal definition of world-brain relation to consciousness, that is, its phenomenal features as distinguished from neuronal (and physical) features (while leaving out other features of consciousness like cognitive features; chapter 7). Specifically, I argue that the world-brain relation provides the necessary non-sufficient ontological condition of possible consciousness, the “ontological predisposition of consciousness” (OPC) as I say. The world-brain relation is characterized by spatiotemporal structure with relational time and space which makes possible “upward spatiotemporal entailment” of consciousness. Accordingly, consciousness is entailed spatiotemporally by world-brain relation; this, in turn, makes possible necessary (rather than contingent) a posteriori ontological connection between brain and consciousness on the basis of their commonly underlying and shared world-brain relation. Importantly, this makes superfluous the introduction of the concept of mind to account for necessary connection of mental features to their underlying ontological basis. Therefore, I suggest replacing the concept of mind by the one of world-brain relation. This entails that the mind-body problem becomes superfluous and can be replaced by what I describe as “world-brain problem”.

The Patient

2018 ◽  
pp. 19-37
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The World ◽  
Clinical Point ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter addresses the issue of a stroke's impact on consciousness and the self, from a clinical point of view. We look at how the mind is seen by three experts—a neuroscientist, a brain surgeon, and a neuro-philosopher—and find that, instead of solving the mystery of the mind, they in fact add to it. Indeed, they all agree on the lingering mystery of consciousness, underneath and beyond the brain, as well as on the surprising rapport the self seems to establish to the world and its environment – in ways that are not constitutive to the brain itself. This suggests we might need to call on psychologists and sociologists next, to help us solve the conundrum of the self.

Ecology of the Brain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Fuchs
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Process ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Living Organism ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lived Body ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Living Being

Overcoming the brain centrism of current neuroscience, Ecology of the Brain develops an ecological and embodied concept of the brain as a mediating or resonance organ. Accordingly, the mind is not a product of the brain: it is an activity of the living being as a whole, which integrates the brain in its superordinate life functions. Similarly, consciousness is not an inner domain located somewhere within the organism, but a continuous process of engaging with the world, which extends to all objects that we are in contact with. The traditional mind–brain problem is thus reformulated as a dual aspect of the living being, conceived both as a lived or subjective body and as a living or objective body. Processes of life and of experiencing life are inseparably linked. Hence, it is not the brain, but the living human person as a whole who feels, thinks, and acts. This concept is elaborated on a broad philosophical, neurobiological, and developmental basis. Based on a phenomenology of the lived body and an enactive concept of the living organism as an autopoietic system, the brain is conceived in this book as a resonance organ, mediating the circular interactions within the body as well as the interactions between the body and the environment. Above all, a person’s relations to others continuously restructure the human brain which thus becomes an organ shaped by social interaction, biography, and culture. This concept is also crucial for a non-reductionist theory of mental disorders, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, which is developed in a special chapter.

The History of Neuropsychology at the Boston VA

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Hebben ◽  
Margaret O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Basic Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Behavioral Neurology ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Work Done ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Disciplinary Group

The Veterans Administration’s response to WWII altered the fields of psychology and neurology and made it possible for the Boston VA Hospital to evolve into an environment where neuropsychology, aphasiology, and behavioral neurology could jointly flourish. Starting with Harold Goodglass, Edith Kaplan, and Norman Geschwind in the 1950s, a multi-disciplinary group of clinicians and scientists helped usher in a transition from holistic “black box” empiricist models of the brain to models that were more localizationist and modular. Under the influence of this pioneering trio of astute observers, experimentalists, and thinkers, the Boston VA became the epicenter of basic research in human cognitive and behavioral neuroscience in the world. While signaling a revolution in psychology that unified neurobiology and behavioral principles, the work done at the Boston VA established a direct link from this neuroscience of the mind to patient care, especially as it affected the veterans of the United States.

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