Ontology III: From the World to Consciousness

2018 ◽  
pp. 315-348
Author(s):  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
Main Argument ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Spatiotemporal Scale ◽  
The World ◽  
World Brain ◽  
The Brain

Summary I so far focused mainly on the brain and how it is related to consciousness. This let me suppose that the brain, through its relation to the world, i.e., the world-brain relation, is necessary connected to consciousness (chapter 10). While this highlighted the central importance of the brain for the existence and reality of consciousness, the world itself and its ontological role were rather neglected so far – that shall be the focus in this chapter. My main argument is that the world is indispensable for consciousness and mental features in general: without world, there could no world-brain relation, which, in turn, renders impossible consciousness. I will discuss the role of the world for consciousness in terms of three arguments, the “argument of calibration”, the “argument of structure”, and the “argument of location”. First, as discussed in the “argument of calibration”, the world serves as “spatiotemporal frame”; this makes it possible for world-brain relation to serve as “spatiotemporal baseline” and “space of possible experience” for calibrating the possible objects or events for consciousness. That, as I argue, is central for yielding specifically the phenomenal features of consciousness. Secondly, as discussed in the “argument of structure”, the world itself can ontologically be characterized by “spatiotemporal nestedness”: the brain and its smaller spatiotemporal scale are contained and nested within the larger spatiotemporal scale of the world. Such “spatiotemporal nestedness” is an ontological feature of the world which is necessary for and makes possible, i.e., predisposes, consciousness. Finally, as discussed in the “argument of location”, the world allows for “complex location” of both brain and consciousness as part of and within the world as distinguished from both “simple location” and “non-location”. In sum, inclusion of the world in our ontology is indispensable if one wants to understand the existence and reality of mental features which, if reduced or limited to either brain or mind, remain unclear. I conclude that we need to include both world and brain including their relation, i.e., world-brain relation, in our ontology of consciousness – this amounts to what I describe as world-brain problem. Otherwise, when considering either brain or world alone as in “brain problem” and “world-problem” as I say, one leaves a gap between world and brain which makes it impossible to account for the existence and reality of mental features like consciousness.

Is Our Brain an Open or Closed System? Prediction Model of Brain and World–Brain Relation

2018 ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Model ◽  
Closed System ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Clinical Symptoms ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
The World ◽  
World Brain ◽  
The Brain

Some recent philosophical discussions consider whether the brain is best understood as an open or closed system. This issue has major epistemic consequences akin to the scepticism engendered by the famous Cartesian demon. Specifically, one and the same empirical theory of brain function, predictive coding, entailing a prediction model of brain, have been associated with contradictory views of the brain as either open (Clark, 2012, 2013) or closed (Hohwy, 2013, 2014). Based on recent empirical evidence, the present paper argues that contrary to appearances, these views of the brain are compatible with one another. I suggest that there are two main forms of neural activity in the brain, one of which can be characterized as open, and the other as closed. Stimulus-induced activity, because it relies on predictive coding is indeed closed to the world, which entails that in certain respects, the brain is an inferentially secluded and self-evidencing system. In contrast, the brain’s resting state or spontaneous activity is best taken as open because it is a world-evidencing system that allows for the brain’s neural activity to align with the statistically-based spatiotemporal structure of objects and events in the world. This model requires an important caveat, however. Due to its statistically-based nature, the resting state’s alignment to the world comes in degrees. In extreme cases, the degree of alignment can be extremely low, resulting in a resting state that is barely if at all aligned to the world. This is for instance the case in schizophrenia. Clinical symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations in schizophrenics are indicative of the fundamental delicateness of the alignment between the brain’s resting-state and the world’s phenomena. Nevertheless, I argue that so long as we are dealing with a well-functioning brain, the more dire epistemic implications of predictive coding can be forestalled. That the brain is in part a self-evidencing system does not yield any generalizable reason to worry that human cognition is out of step with the real world. Instead, the brain is aligned to the world accounting for “world-brain relation” that mitigates sceptistic worries.

COVID-19 Beyond the Lungs

2022 ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Omar El Hiba ◽  
Hicham Chatoui ◽  
Nadia Zouhairi ◽  
Lahoucine Bahi ◽  
Lhoussaine Ammouta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
Clinical Symptoms ◽  
Case Reports ◽  
The World ◽  
Acute Pneumonia ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Cardinal Feature ◽  
Shed Light

Since December 2019, the world has been shaken by the spread of a highly pathogen virus, causing severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-Cov2), which emerged in Wuhan, China. SARS-Cov2 is known to cause acute pneumonia: the cardinal feature of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Clinical features of the disease include respiratory distress, loss of spontaneous breathing, and sometimes neurologic signs such as headache and nausea and anosmia, leading to suppose a possible involvement of the nervous system as a potential target of SARS-CoV2. The chapter will shed light on the recent clinical and experimental data sustaining the involvement of the nervous system in the pathophysiology of COVID-19, based on several case reports and experimental data reporting the possible transmission of SARS-CoV2 throughout the peripheral nerves to the brain cardiorespiratory centers. Thus, understanding the role of the nervous system in the course of clinical symptoms of COVID-19 is important in determining the appropriate therapeutic approach to combat the disease.

Understanding as Living

2019 ◽  
pp. 7-53
Author(s):  
James W. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Laboratory Research ◽  
Interactive System ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Network Studies ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Religious Understanding

Drawing upon clinical psychoanalysis and laboratory research, this chapter develops an “embodied-relational” epistemology. The chapter reviews major research findings on the ways embodiment influences the cognitive processes by which we understand ourselves and the world. It also reviews current neuro-network studies whose findings imply the brain can be understood as a single, interactive system and not simply a collection of relatively autonomous domains. The emphasis here is on the brain’s complexity, integration, and a certain degree of openness. Sensory experience is understood as an active, not passive process, involving an intimate interconnection between self and world. The role of proprioception, as well as the five basic senses, is analyzed. The implications of such research findings for human understanding, and especially religious understanding, are elaborated.

scholarly journals Inflammation and Cognition in Depression: A Narrative Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (24) ◽  
pp. 5859
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Wachowska ◽  
Piotr Gałecki
Keyword(s):  
Inflammatory Markers ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
Narrative Review ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Mediating Factors ◽  
Hormonal Imbalance ◽  
The World ◽  
Depressive Patients ◽  
The Brain

The authors aim to present a narrative review of research on the inflammatory aetiology of depression. Depression is a psychiatric disorder, constituting the most common reason of disability due to a health condition. It has been estimated that at least one in six people suffer from depression at some point of their lives. The aetiology of depression, although researched extensively all around the world, still remains unclear. Authors discuss the possible role of inflammation in depression, the neurodevelopmental theory of depression as well as associations between cognition and depression. Possible associations between memory dysfunction among depressive patients and inflammatory markers are included. The associations between the immune system, depression and cognition are observed. Possible mediating factors between these areas include personality traits, hormonal imbalance and functioning of the brain areas. The question as to what mediating factors are involved is still open to research.

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....

Ontology I: From Brain to World–Brain Relation

2018 ◽  
pp. 239-268
Author(s):  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Relational View ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The World ◽  
Ontological Dimension ◽  
World Brain ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Brain

How can we account for the brain’s existence and reality? I now shift my focus from the empirical (Part I and II) context in the previous chapters to the ontological dimension. Specifically, I focus on an “ontology of brain” as part of a wider “philosophy of brain” (Northoff 2004). Based on the empirical data, I argue that the brain’s existence and reality is based on structure and relation rather than elements like properties. This makes possible to determine the brain’s existence and reality by world-brain relation rather than physical or mental properties within the brain itself. That is well compatible with ontic structural realism (OSR). More specifically, the world-brain relation can be understood in spatiotemporal terms entailing what I describe as “spatiotemporal ontology”. Time and space are here no longer understood in observational terms, e.g., “observational time and space”, but rather as relational in the sense of OSR, i.e., “relational time and space”. Taken together, I ontologically characterize the brain by world-brain relation presupposing relation and structure as in OSR. This amounts to a “relational view” of the brain in our “ontology of brain”. Such relational view of the brain’s existence and reality can be specified by “relational time and space” (as I say) as distinguished from “observational time and space”. That opens the door for a novel ontological characterization of consciousness in the terms of world-brain relation and OSR – this shall be the focus in the next chapter.

scholarly journals Visual stability

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1564) ◽  
pp. 468-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Melcher
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Clinical Neurology ◽  
Visual Stability ◽  
Retinal Motion ◽  
Brain Circuits ◽  
The World ◽  
The Brain

Our vision remains stable even though the movements of our eyes, head and bodies create a motion pattern on the retina. One of the most important, yet basic, feats of the visual system is to correctly determine whether this retinal motion is owing to real movement in the world or rather our own self-movement. This problem has occupied many great thinkers, such as Descartes and Helmholtz, at least since the time of Alhazen. This theme issue brings together leading researchers from animal neurophysiology, clinical neurology, psychophysics and cognitive neuroscience to summarize the state of the art in the study of visual stability. Recently, there has been significant progress in understanding the limits of visual stability in humans and in identifying many of the brain circuits involved in maintaining a stable percept of the world. Clinical studies and new experimental methods, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, now make it possible to test the causal role of different brain regions in creating visual stability and also allow us to measure the consequences when the mechanisms of visual stability break down.

scholarly journals ‘Philosophizing with’

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17
Author(s):  
Nina Bonderup Dohn
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Philosophical View ◽  
The Third ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Applied Philosophy ◽  
The World

In this essay, I shall present key points from my dr.phil thesis (Higher Doctorate/Habilitation), Epistemological concerns – querying the learning field from a philosophical point of view (Dohn, 2017).1 The aim is to provide an overview of the thesis and to present its main argument for a form of applied philosophy where philosophy takes on the role of dialogue partner with a voice of its own. By way of illustration, I shall highlight some of the issues I have engaged with in this role as well as the answers which dialogue with other disciplines has led me to as regards these issues. First, I present the field, aim, and structure of the thesis. Second, I explicate what I mean by ‘philosophizing with’ and point out four different ways in which one can undertake this venture. Philosophy may dialogue with many disciplines in many areas; the ones I have engaged with fall within the learning field. To further the comprehensibility of my more specific concerns within this field, in the third section I articulate the philosophical outset from which I speak: With inspiration from Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein and Dreyfus, I hold a view of human existence as being-in-the-world and an approach to knowledge as fundamentally involving tacit aspects. This outset is developed throughout the thesis, in dialogue with other disciplines. In section four, I briefly present the resulting philosophical view of knowledge. In section five, I articulate more specifically a number of the issues within the learning field which have helped me develop this view. Section six conversely summarizes some key points which my philosophizing with on these issues have led me to contribute to the disciplines. I end with a few concluding remarks on concerns to engage with in continuation from the results of my thesis.

scholarly journals Learning to see in 3D with two eyes: the role of experience, plasticity and neurochemistry

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 12-17
Author(s):  
Betina Ip ◽  
Holly Bridge
Keyword(s):  
Cerebral Cortex ◽  
Binocular Vision ◽  
Early Experience ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Computational Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Accurate Performance ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Binocular Depth

Humans, along with other predators, have forward-facing eyes which restrict the area of the world that can be seen when compared to animals with eyes on the side of the head. Why would we sacrifice this panoramic vision? The answer is the very precise ability that having two eyes with overlapping and slightly different viewpoints provides to determine fine differences in depth. While interpreting this type of ‘binocular depth’ appears effortless, the precise calculations necessary for perceiving binocular depth require significant computational power in the cerebral cortex and the fine tuning of neurochemical interactions. This processing occurs in the visual regions of the brain and must be honed through early experience for accurate performance. By considering each stage of binocular processing and the neurochemical interactions required for integrating signals from the two eyes, we can begin to understand how the inherent ability of the brain to learn might help us when binocular vision goes wrong.

Copernican Revolution in Neuroscience and Philosophy: Vantage Point from beyond Brain

2018 ◽  
pp. 403-434
Author(s):  
Georg Northoff
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Logical Space ◽  
Copernican Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
World Brain ◽  
Mind Body Problem

How can we eliminate the “intuition of mind”? I demonstrated that the “intuition of mind” can be traced to our pre-Copernican vantage point from within mind or brain (chapter 20). Analogous to Copernicus, we need to radically shift our vantage point to eliminate the intuition of mind and take into view the necessary ontological connection between brain and mental features. For that, we need shift our vantage point from within either mind or brain to a “vantage point from beyond brain”. My main argument in the present chapter is that, analogous to Copernicus with regard to earth, we need to replace the pre-Copernican “vantage point from within mind” (or from within brain) by a post-Copernican “vantage point from beyond brain”. Unlike the “vantage point from within mind” (or brain), the “vantage point from beyond brain” includes relation, i.e., world-brain relation, as possible epistemic option within its “logical space of knowledge”. This allows us to take into view the necessary ontological connection between brain and mental features through world-brain relation as ontological predisposition of consciousness (chapter 10). Most importantly, this renders superfluous if not impossible both “intuition of mind” and mind-body problem which then can be replaced by world-brain relation and world-brain problem. I conclude that such “vantage point from beyond brain” with the world-brain problem amounts to nothing less than a Copernican revolution in neuroscience and philosophy.

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