Еnactivist Criticism of the Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-80
Author(s):  
Anastasia O. Shabalina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Science Methods ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Neural Substrate ◽  
Critical Revision ◽  
Concept Of Information ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Person Experience

The article considers the main arguments against the neurobiological theory of consciousness from the point of view of the enactivist approach within the philosophy of mind. The neurobiological theory of consciousness, which reduces consciousness to neural activity, is currently the dominant approach to the mind-body problem. The neurobiological theory emerged as a result of advances in research on the phenomena of consciousness and through the development of technologies for visualizing the internal processes of mind. However, at the very heart of this theory, there is a number of logical contradictions. The non-reductive enactivist approach to consciousness, introduced in this article, contributes to the existing argumentation against the reduction of consciousness to neural processes with remonstrations that take into account the modern neuroscientific data. The article analyzes the argumentation of the sensorimotor enactivism developed by A. Noe and offers the account of the teleosemantic approach to the concept of information provided by R. Cao. The key problems of the neurobiological theory of consciousness are highlighted, and the objections emerging within the framework of the enactivist approach are analyzed. Since the main concepts on which the neural theory is based are the concepts of neural substrate, cognition as representation, and information as a unit of cognition, the author of the article presents three key enactivist ideas that oppose them. First, the enactivist concept of cognition as action allows us to consider the first-person experience as a mode of action, and not as a state of the brain substrate. Second, the article deals with the “explanatory externalism” argument proposed by Noe, who refutes the image of cognition as a representation in the brain. Finally, in order to critically revise the concept of information as a unit of cognition, the author analyzes Cao’s idea, which represents a teleosemantic approach, but is in line with the general enactivist argumentation. Cao shows that the application of the concept “information” to neural processes is problematic: no naturalized information is found in the brain as a physical substrate. A critical revision of beliefs associated with the neural theory of consciousness leads us to recognize that there are not enough grounds for reducing consciousness to processes that take place in the brain. That is why Noe calls expectations that the visualization of processes taking place in the brain with the help of the modern equipment will be able to depict the experience of consciousness the “new phrenology”, thus indicating the naive character of neural reduction. The article concludes that natural science methods are insufficient for the study of consciousness.

Filling-in is for finding out

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 781-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Pessoa ◽  
Evan Thompson ◽  
Alva Noë
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
World Model ◽  
Perceptual Mapping ◽  
Neural Processes ◽  
Perceptual Completion ◽  
The World ◽  
Neural Substrate ◽  
The Brain

The following points are discussed in response to the commentaries: (1) A taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena should rely on both phenomenological and mechanistic criteria. (2) Certain forms of perceptual completion are caused by topographically organized neural processes – neural filling-in. (3) The bridge locus, understood as the final site of perceptual experience in the brain, should be replaced by the principle that each token percept has a neural substrate that is nomically sufficient for it, all else being equal. (4) Analytic isomorphism – the view that there must be a pictorial or spatial neural-perceptual isomorphism at the bridge locus – should be rejected. Although more abstract kinds of isomorphism are central to the neural-perceptual mapping, the perceptual cannot be exhaustively explained in terms of the neural, and therefore the explanation of perception cannot be reduced to uncovering neural-perceptual isomorphisms. (5) The task of vision is to guide action in the world, not to construct a detailed world-model in the head. (6) Neural filling-in facilitates the integration of information and thereby helps the animal find out about its environment. (7) Perceptual content needs to be understood at the level of the person or animal interacting in the world.

scholarly journals El dolor de los marcianos. Un análisis fenomenológico contra Rorty

2014 ◽  
pp. 313
Author(s):  
Agustín Serrano de Haro
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Physiological State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lived Body ◽  
Objective State ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Phenomenological Point ◽  
Person Experience ◽  
Sobre Todo

Mi ensayo trata de mostrar que es insostenible la ficción de Rorty de una civilización avanzada científicamente cuyos habitantes no sintieran el dolor como una vivencia sufrida en primera persona y que únicamente lo captaran como una excitación objetiva de su sistema nervioso. Entre otras dudas relativas a que esa captación objetiva y exacta se hallaría en indefinida reconstrucción teórica y a que ella no puede ser la experiencia primera del dolor ni siquiera en esa otra galaxia, aduzco que tener un estado fisiológico no equivale por principio a captarlo y que captar determinados rasgos objetivos no puede equivaler por principio a sufrir, a padecer. Concluyo señalando que Rorty, en su empeño por impugnar las representaciones mentales, pierde de vista cómo la experiencia del dolor manifiesta sobre todo la condición originaria del cuerpo vivido.My paper tries to show that Rorty’s fiction of a scientifically developed civilization whose inhabitants should not feel pain as a first-person experience, but would grasp it rather as an objective state of their nervous system, is unsustainable from a phenomenological point of view. I point out several doubts concerning the facts that such an objective apprehension would be in an indefinite process of theoretical reconstruction, and that even in that other galaxy it could not be valid as the original pain situation (for example, among children). But then I focus on the principles that to have a physiological state cannot be equiva-lent to grasping it, and second that to grasp several objective features cannot be equivalent to suffering or to undergoing pain. I conclude by suggesting that Rorty’s eagerness to discard mental representations made him neglect the lived body as implied in everyday experience: the body, not the mind, comes to the fore in the experience of pain.

scholarly journals [MIND AND BRAIN IN PHILOSOPHY AND NEUROSCIENCES]

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Nannini
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Brain Dynamics ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind

[After a brief review of the solutions given to the mind-body problem by philosophers I propose a naturalistic-materialistic solution that is based on a collaboration between the philosophy of mind and neurosciences. According to this solution the three fundamental characteristics of every human state of consciousness – that is, having a content and being conscious and self-conscious - are identified with three higher order properties of brain dynamics from an ontological point of view, although each of them can be described and explained in the language of neuroscience, cognitive psychology and folk-psychology.]

Moral Responsibility

1875 ◽  
Vol 21 (94) ◽  
pp. 251-266
Author(s):  
S. Messenger Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Mental Process ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Physico Chemical ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Positive Knowledge ◽  
The Brain

Moral Responsibility, although often treated from a metaphysical point of view, has seldom been regarded from a physical or physiological side, and yet it is from this source alone that we are at present able to gain any accurate information respecting the working of the mind, and it is chiefly from this basis that I purpose here regarding it. The means of observation which metaphysicians employ have been known to, and employed by, philosophers for the last two thousand years, and yet it must be admitted with but a poor result. Until physiology came to their aid, they had not arrived at a knowledge of the fact that the grey cortical matter of the brain is the seat of the mind, and that intellectual action involves definite physico-chemical changes which we are to some extent capable of estimating. The psychologists, indeed, fixing their attention solely upon subjective phenomena, resemble those fatuous fakirs, who, intent upon a particular point in their own bodies, come to believe that the umbilicus is the seat of wisdom; or, rather, they resemble the horse in a threshing floor, which, however rapidly it may seem to advance, only retraces its steps in one small unending circle. It is a simple fact that, whatever positive knowledge we possess of the mental process has been obtained by the aid of physiology, and it is equally certain that all the knowledge we are likely to attain for a long time, if not always, must be derived from the same source.

Meaningful Relations

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Enactive Cognitive Science ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Mind

This collection of works is a contribution to the current debates on the mind-body-problem. It discusses how mind and body make contact in sense-making processes from the point of view of enactive cognitive science and 4E approaches to cognition. It also offers a critical view on non-representational approaches to cognition. The book covers sociology, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, computer science and HRI, media studies, literature and cognitive science. It offers cutting-edge research both for students and for junior and senior researchers in the fields mentioned above.

The Importance of Disturbances of the Personality in Mental Disorders

1914 ◽  
Vol 60 (249) ◽  
pp. 192-224
Author(s):  
R. G. Rows
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Scientific Journals ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

It is interesting at the present time to notice that disorders of the mind are being considered from a broader point of view. No longer is it reckoned sufficient to enumerate the psychic symptoms and to label the case accordingly. In the scientific journals it is not unusual to find the statement that a certain case does not fit into any division of our present-day classification. It is recognised that to describe a case as an atypical example of a disease is equivalent to saying that some factor has escaped our notice, or is one we cannot explain; that ætiology, from the psychogenic as well as the pathogenic point of view, must be considered, and that bodily and nervous symptoms may be as much a part of the illness as are the psychic; in fact, these last are often merely a symbol expressing some change in the function of an organ outside the brain.

Emergence and Complexity

2021 ◽  
pp. 166-194
Author(s):  
Marco Bernini
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
System Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Dynamics ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The chapter argues that Beckett’s exploration of the mind is not just complicated, but targets non-linear, interacting, networking dynamics in cognition that, according to contemporary theories of complexity, classify the mind as a proper complex system. Within contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind, it is increasingly suggested that the brain should be regarded as a complex system (see, e.g., Gazzaniga 2012): as the physical site of decentralized interactions and distributed, looping causality among its neurons. Within this complex account of human cognition, also the mind and its mental properties, including consciousness and a sense of self, have been interpreted through the conceptual lenses of complex system theory. Theories of complexity in cognition, therefore, can help us thread together, and collectively reconsider, all the cognitive dynamics, patterns of emersions, and laws of the mind that Beckett has modeled when exploring consciousness and subjective experience. An emergentist reappraisal of prior chapters should give us a more complex, more global interpretation of Beckett’s early call for a formal access to (as a modeling exploration of) the “recondite relations of emergal” (D, 16) within human cognition. Also, it should support an interpretive shift from a view of Beckett as a complicated author to an account of him as an explorer of the mind’s complexity. The chapter begins by addressing the kind of problems complexity poses to modeling in general, and to narrative modeling in particular.

scholarly journals The dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience: what does philosophy of mind say?

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Cheniaux ◽  
Carlos Eduardo de Sousa Lyra
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Brain States ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Objective: To briefly review how the main monist and dualist currents of philosophy of mind approach the mind-body problem and to describe their association with arguments for and against a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.Methods: The literature was reviewed for studies in the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.Results: Some currents are incompatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neurosciences: interactionism and psychophysical parallelism, because they do not account for current knowledge about the brain; epiphenomenalism, which claims that the mind is a mere byproduct of the brain; and analytical behaviorism, eliminative materialism, reductive materialism and functionalism, because they ignore subjective experiences. In contrast, emergentism claims that mental states are dependent on brain states, but have properties that go beyond the field of neurobiology.Conclusions: Only emergentism is compatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

Moral Responsibility

1875 ◽  
Vol 21 (94) ◽  
pp. 251-266
Author(s):  
S. Messenger Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Mental Process ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Physico Chemical ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Positive Knowledge ◽  
The Brain

Moral Responsibility, although often treated from a metaphysical point of view, has seldom been regarded from a physical or physiological side, and yet it is from this source alone that we are at present able to gain any accurate information respecting the working of the mind, and it is chiefly from this basis that I purpose here regarding it. The means of observation which metaphysicians employ have been known to, and employed by, philosophers for the last two thousand years, and yet it must be admitted with but a poor result. Until physiology came to their aid, they had not arrived at a knowledge of the fact that the grey cortical matter of the brain is the seat of the mind, and that intellectual action involves definite physico-chemical changes which we are to some extent capable of estimating. The psychologists, indeed, fixing their attention solely upon subjective phenomena, resemble those fatuous fakirs, who, intent upon a particular point in their own bodies, come to believe that the umbilicus is the seat of wisdom; or, rather, they resemble the horse in a threshing floor, which, however rapidly it may seem to advance, only retraces its steps in one small unending circle. It is a simple fact that, whatever positive knowledge we possess of the mental process has been obtained by the aid of physiology, and it is equally certain that all the knowledge we are likely to attain for a long time, if not always, must be derived from the same source.

scholarly journals Attitude as an Expressible Info-Operational Reaction to a Perceived/Purposed Object/Objective

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
External Information ◽  
Psychological Concept ◽  
The Social ◽  
Controversial Problem ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

The definition of the psychological concept of attitude is still a controversial problem, and the scholars have not yet reached a consensus on this important issue. The attitude is defined in various ways, as a mental and emotional “construct” not directly detectable, or as a “psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity”. However, as attitude is an achievement of the mind during the exploration of reality, it is naturally to approach first of all the nature of mind and the relation with the cognition processes from the informational perspective. Therefore, in this paper it is investigated the concept of attitude from a completely new point of view, starting from the informational nature of consciousness. It is shown that the informational structure of consciousness can be fully described by the activity of seven distinct cognitive centers and the attitude can be defined actually as an informational reactive output with respect to an object/objective either perceived or mentally proposed. The attitude is thus the result of a decisional info-processing of an input internal or external information, expressible by the specific informational center managed by the brain associated with this activity, defined suggestively as I want. It is shown that attitude is consequently a function of all other six centers, which intervene in the decisional process as decisional criteria or as priority contributing components, and these centers can become dominant or inactive. In agreement with some previous studies and with the neuro-connections of specific regions of the brain, it is shown that emotions contribute to attitude, but also the personal state, the inherited predispositions, the social interactions, the life experience and the trust in the objective, if this is a proposed project. Associated with the attitude, behavior is different, depending on all cognitive centers.

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