A letter about Jean Fernel by Charles Sherrington and the mind–brain connection

2021 ◽  
pp. 096777201985823
Author(s):  
Charles T Ambrose
Keyword(s):  
Early Phase ◽  
Common Interest ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Medical Work ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Brain Connection ◽  
Jean Fernel ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
French Physician

In 1940 during the early phase of the Nazi aerial assault on Britain, the English neurophysiologist, C.S. Sherrington, age 83 years, had just published a philosophical work, Man on His Nature, and was researching the writings of Jean Fernel, a 16th century French physician . Sherrington’s study of Fernel stemmed from a common interest they shared in the association between the mind and the brain. This essay was prompted by a short letter penned by Sherrington in December 1940 and bound years later in his biography, The Endeavour of Jean Fernel, published in 1946. The letter requested information about a particular medical work by Fernel but also mentioned in passing Sherrington’s recent forced evacuation from his home in Ipswich, threatened by German bombing and invasion. The letter in the book invited a reprise of his remarkable career and a study of his last neurological concern – the mind–brain mystery.

scholarly journals Sir Charles Sherrington y la naturaleza de lo mental

2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Blanco
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
Jean Fernel ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University ◽  
French Physician

RESUMENLa figura del británico Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952) ocupa un lugar privilegiado en la historia de la neurofisiología. Su principal contribución estriba en su descubrimiento de la «función integradora del sistema nervioso», en cuyo desarrollo se compendian sus importantes aportaciones al estudio de la diferenciación entre acciones inhibidoras y acciones excitadoras. Menos conocida resulta, sin embargo, su intensa pasión por la filosofía, por la historia (consagró una biografía al médico francés del siglo XVI Jean Fernel) y por la literatura (en especial, por la poesía de Goethe; él mismo compuso numerosos versos, publicados en obras como The Assaying of Brabantius and other Verse, de 1925). Sus amplias inquietudes filosóficas se plasmaron en el libro Man on His Nature, cristalización de las Gifford Lectures que impartió en la Universidad de Edimburgo entre mayo de 1937 y junio de 1938. Su profundidad conceptual y sus implicaciones para el debate contemporáneo en torno al problema mente-cerebro son insoslayables. En este trabajo nos detendremos, precisamente, en el análisis de la propuesta filosófica de Sherrington sobre la naturaleza de la mente humana.PALABRAS CLAVESHERRINGTON, PROBLEMA MENTE-CEREBRO, CONCIENCIA, DUALISMO, PAMPSIQUISMOABSTRACTSir Charles Sherrington (1857-1952) has played a privileged role in the history of Neurophysiology. His main contribution is based on his discovery of the «integrative function of the nervous system», the development of which synthesizes some of his important experimental results concerning the study of inhibitory and excitatory actions. However, it is less known that Sherrington cultivated a deep passion for philosophy, history (he wrote a biography of the 16th century French physician Jean Fernel), and literature (especially, Goethe’s poetry; Sherrington himself composed numerous verses, published in works like The Assaying of Brabantius and other Verse, de 1925). His broad philosophical interests were condensed in Man on His Nature, which contains his Gifford Lectures, given at the University of Edinburgh between May 1947 and June 1938. Its conceptual scope and its implications for the contemporary debate on the mind-body problem are analyzed in this paper, which aims to examine Sherrington’s ideas about the nature of the human mind.KEY WORDSSHERRINGTON, MIND-BODY PROBLEM, CONSCIOUSNESS, DUALISM, PAMSYCHISM

Alter Galenus: Jean Fernel et son interprétation plantonico-chrétienne de Galien

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiro Hirai
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Christian Platonism ◽  
Jean Fernel ◽  
French Physician

AbstractInspired by Christian Platonism as developed in the late fifteenth-century Florentine milieu, the French physician Jean Fernel proposed a particular interpretation of Galen in a medico-philosophical work entitled On the Hidden Causes of Things (Paris, 1548). With this interpretation, he responded to the serious and urgent need for a reconciliation of the newly reconstituted Galen of Renaissance humanism with Christian faith. The present study examines Fernel's strategy and method in constructing this singular Galenic body of doctrine, special attention being given to the roles attributed to the Creator, the formative force, and the soul. Subsequently, an analysis of the notions of spirit and of its innate heat as indispensable instruments of Fernel's physiology will uncover the very target of his criticism of materialism.

An Emerging Theory

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-48
Author(s):  
Stanley Finger
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Medical Degree ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Innate Faculty

Gall built a successful practice after obtaining his medical degree in 1785. He lived in a fashionable part of Vienna and in 1790 married Katharina Leisler, who he knew from Strasbourg. He published his first book in 1791, a philosophical work on the mind and the art of healing, in which he dispensed with metaphysics and loosely presented some ideas (e.g., innate faculties, individual differences) but not others (e.g., localizing faculties) that he would develop in his later “organology.” Shortly after, he met a young musical prodigy named Bianchi, who was ordinary in other ways. Although this convinced him that music had to be an innate faculty of mind, he did not correlate this trait with a distinctive cranial bump at this time. Nonetheless, her case seemed to have reminded him of the good memorizers of his youth, who had bulging eyes, also leading him to his new theory of mind. By 1796, he was lecturing from his home about many independent faculties of mind, the parts of the brain associated with them, and skull markers as a means to correlate behavioral functions with underlying brain structures. Two years later, he published a letter to Joseph Friedrich Freiherr Retzer, the Viennese censor, laying out his doctrine and methods with humans and animals. In it, he presented himself as a physiognomist.

Lighting Up the Brain to Illuminate the Mind

2004 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 713-716
Author(s):  
Ellen S. Berscheid
Keyword(s):  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

How Does the Brain Make the Mind? We Do Not Know.

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (32) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Was
Keyword(s):  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Big Heads title page

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
vernon thornton
Keyword(s):  
Title Page ◽  
Language Of Thought ◽  
Correct Version ◽  
Evolutionary Context ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

A description of of the mind and its relationship to the brain, set in an evolutionary context. Introduction of a correct version of 'language-of-thought' called 'thinkish'.

Zombies and Dolls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcello Massimini ◽  
Giulio Tononi
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Turing Test ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter uses thought experiments and practical examples to introduce, in a very accessible way, the hard problem of consciousness. Soon, machines may behave like us to pass the Turing test and scientists may succeed in copying and simulating the inner workings of the brain. Will all this take us any closer to solving the mysteries of consciousness? The reader is taken to meet different kind of zombies, the philosophical, the digital, and the inner ones, to understand why many, scientists and philosophers alike, doubt that the mind–body problem will ever be solved.

scholarly journals Agency, Responsibility, Selves, and the Mechanical Mind

Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Fiorella Battaglia
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Human Machine Interaction ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Legal Perspective ◽  
Area Of Concern ◽  
Third Person Perspective ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Brain

Moral issues arise not only when neural technology directly influences and affects people’s lives, but also when the impact of its interventions indirectly conceptualizes the mind in new, and unexpected ways. It is the case that theories of consciousness, theories of subjectivity, and third person perspective on the brain provide rival perspectives addressing the mind. Through a review of these three main approaches to the mind, and particularly as applied to an “extended mind”, the paper identifies a major area of transformation in philosophy of action, which is understood in terms of additional epistemic devices—including a legal perspective of regulating the human–machine interaction and a personality theory of the symbiotic connection between human and machine. I argue this is a new area of concern within philosophy, which will be characterized in terms of self-objectification, which becomes “alienation” following Ernst Kapp’s philosophy of technology. The paper argues that intervening in the brain can affect how we conceptualize the mind and modify its predicaments.

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
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