THE TRANSCENDENT FUNCTION OF THE BILATERAL BRAIN

Abstract. A "transcendent function," which integrates conscious and unconscious elements, can be characterized for the human mind. From Carl Jung's model of four basic functions of the psyche—thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition—a modified compass of the psyche is constructed to conform to the neurobio-logical structure of the bilateral brain. The transcendent function can be correlated with the principal states of consciousness existent between waking and sleep. Dreams, myth, and the experience of deity, of related unconscious content, are manifest in hybrid states of consciousness. The exercise of the transcendent function is of creative value in the arts and sciences and paramount to human survival.     

Bioethics and the breakdown of the bicameral mind: Sacks and Luria revisited

Since antiquity, individuals have attempted to relate mental processes to circumscribed areas of the brain. In 1935 the neurologist Wilder Penfield purported to know, "the humming of the mind's machinery, and where words come from," after he electrically stimulated areas of the exposed human cortex. Recent theories have suggested a functional separation of the dominant and the nondominant hemispheres, the right brain/left brain concept of thought and personality. One author has even proposed that human consciousness and modern civilization developed when the bicameral mind broke down, and the left brain achieved mastery over the right nondominant temporal lobe. Compared to these mechanistic approaches to brain function and human personality, the Russian neurologist, A.R. Luria and his American follower, Oliver Sacks, have developed a more intellectually satisfying and clinically useful approach which relies on a fuller understanding of the doctor-patient....     

A space for measuring mind and brain: interdisciplinarity and digital tools in the development of brain mapping and functional imaging, 1980-1990

Brain mapping is said to have opened up the possibility of a new collaboration between the sciences of mind and the sciences of the brain, potentially leading to a new kind of scientist, sometimes called "cognitive neuroscientist." This article traces the recent history of brain mapping and analyzes the processes that have led to a new "close working relationship" between the sciences of mind and brain. A key part of the working relationship is shown to be constituted through the development of the Talairach system, a digital space in which to measure structure and function. The development of meaningful brain mapping data involves the creation of measurement spaces that allow interdisciplinary collaboration and is not the result solely of theoretical developments or of the application of a technology.     

Theoretic Note: The Relation of Embryology to Linguistic and Cognitive Process

This paper is a conceptual essay that views the unfolding or individuation from the ovum to mind/brain form and process as the outcome of a unitary highly conserved pattern of epigenetic growth. The principle question concerns the extent to which the cognitive process can be understood as an extension or replication of primordial trends in the growth of organism. There are several lines of embryological study, some with a clear relation to cognitive process, others perhaps merely analogous, but there are sufficient data to support the claim that fundamental patterns in development recur in a momentary act of thought or perception. Indeed, the Bauplan that accounts for brain maturation at the cellular level accounts for the generation of the mind/brain state in maturity. The specification of cells in fetal brain growth corresponds with the progressive individuation of psychic structures in the course of early development. Growth trends in epigenetic process that translate the genetic code to morphology and physiology persist in the brain or psyche as patterns of mental process. Psychic structure is temporal, not spatial, and the structure of the mind/brain is ongoing formative process, not the resultant stabilities. One can say that in the brain, morphology is the form that process takes early in development, while brain function is the form process takes once structure is relatively settled. Put otherwise, morphogenesis first lays down form as structure, then lays down form as function (see Goodwin in J Theor Biol 97:43–55, 1982). The structure of the mind/brain is not a circuit board that outputs function, but is a recurrent activity that actualizes in behavior. Cognition is a mode of growth that is carried over from embryonic to adult life.     

PERSONS AND THE EXTENDED-MIND THESIS

The extended-mind thesis (EM) is the claim that mentality need not be situated just in the brain, or even within the boundaries of the skin. Some versions take "extended selves" be to relatively transitory couplings of biological organisms and external resources. First, I show how EM can be seen as an extension of traditional views of mind. Then, after voicing a couple of qualms about EM, I reject EM in favor of a more modest hypothesis that recognizes enduring subjects of experience and agents with integrated bodies. Nonetheless, my modest hypothesis allows subpersonal states to have nonbiological parts that play essential roles in cognitive processing. I present empirical warrant for this modest hypothesis and show how it leaves room for science and religion to coexist.     

Neurology of affective prosody and its functional-anatomic organization in right hemisphere

Unlike the aphasic syndromes, the organization of affective prosody in brain has remained controversial because affective-prosodic deficits may occur after left or right brain damage. However, different patterns of deficits are observed following left and right brain damage that suggest affective prosody is a dominant and lateralized function of the right hemisphere. Using the Aprosodia Battery, which was developed to differentiate left and right hemisphere patterns of affective-prosodic deficits, functional-anatomic evidence is presented in patients with focal ischemic strokes to support the concepts that (1) affective prosody is a dominant and lateralized function of the right hemisphere, (2) the intrahemispheric organization of affective prosody in the right hemisphere, with the partial exception of Repetition, is analogous to the organization of propositional language in the left hemisphere and (3) the aprosodic syndromes are cortically based as part of evolutionary adaptations underlying human language and communication.     

成人期个体心理理论的发展、研究范式与神经机制

成人心理理论的发展有助于个体顺利地进行社会互动,更好地适应社会。个体的心理理论能力会随着个体认知能力的发展以及大脑的发育而呈现出不断发展变化的趋势。研究者采取众多研究范式测量了成人心理理论。在进行心理理论加工时,青春期个体更多的激活了内侧前额叶皮层的后部,而青年期个体更多的激活了右颞上沟。根据研究结果,学者们构建了两成分认知模型、共享回路与中线结构整合模型以及心理理论多层次模型来解释成人心理理论能力。在进一步的研究中,成人心理理论的研究还应开发有效的研究范式来逐步揭示心理理论本身发展的特征、心理理论与外界因素如生活环境的关系以及解读互动心理的特征。     

Busting Out: Predictive Brains,Embodied Minds,and the Puzzle of the Evidentiary Veil

Biological brains are increasingly cast as ‘prediction machines’: evolved organs whose core operating principle is to learn about the world by trying to predict their own patterns of sensory stimulation. This, some argue, should lead us to embrace a brain‐bound ‘neurocentric’ vision of the mind. The mind, such views suggest, consists entirely in the skull‐bound activity of the predictive brain. In this paper I reject the inference from predictive brains to skull‐bound minds. Predictive brains, I hope to show, can be apt participants in larger cognitive circuits. The path is thus cleared for a new synthesis in which predictive brains act as entry‐points for ‘extended minds’, and embodiment and action contribute constitutively to knowing contact with the world.     

BRAIN SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Abstract. In recent decades of its brief history, brain science has shed light on the source of motives. We review the chemistry and anatomy of the neural core of human motivation; it seems to penetrate the hemispheric cognitive fields asymmetrically, subjecting them to differing evaluations by self-organizing states of mind. The brain core generates and responds to the rhythm and color of emotions, giving moral control to relationships and setting values and meanings in communication. The newborn human mind is ready to share transcendent states with an empathic partner. Fantasy-making play of a child in friendships presages adult rituals. Mystic rites and mythic symbols express feelings essential to time- and space-defying cooperation within the ancestral culture.     

CRISIS OF BRAIN AND SELF

Abstract. Neuroscientific evidence requires a monistic understanding of brain/mind. Truly appropriating what this means confronts us with the vulnerability of the human condition. Ca-muss absurd and Tillich's despair are extreme expressions of a similar confrontation. This crisis demands a type of courage that is consistent with scientific truth and does not undermine the spiritual dimension of life. That dimension is not a separate substance but the process by which brain/mind meaningfully wrestles with its crisis through aesthetic symbols, religious faith, and ethical affirmation. The validity of these activities does not depend upon human autonomy but instead upon the fact that they exist. Furthermore, they constitute the self, which Dennett calls a "center of narrative gravity."     

The Humanizing Brain: An Introduction

The rediscovery of the sacred needs to take into account the neural underpinnings of faith and meaning and also draw on the insights of the emerging discipline of complexity studies, which explore a tendency toward adaptive self-organization that seemingly is inherent in the universe. Both neuroscience and complexity studies contribute to our understanding of the brain's activity as it transforms raw stimuli into recognizable patterns, and thus "humanizes" all our perceptions and understandings. The brain is our physical anchor in the natural environment— and its human capacities orbit us into the emerging world of culture (including religion), which provides a template for the brain's function of making sense of an ambiguous reality. The humanizing brain holds together scientific causality and religious meaning, working both bottom-up (linking the physical and the experiential) and top-down (beginning with the whole of things, or God). These processes we know as "mind" (experienced as intentionality, subjective consciousness, empathy, imagination, memory, adaptability). We maintain that such processes are not only subjective but built into "the way things really are." Thus, they carry the most privileged information about the nature of reality to which we human beings have access. For not only are we humans observers and logicians, but we are embedded in the larger reality; and as we strive to make sense of it all, we become both Homo sapiens and Homo religiosus .     

Metaphilosophy of Mind: how Do Minds Investigate Minds? Refutation of the Theocentric View

I shall propose metaphilosophy of mind as the philosophy of mind investigating mind. That is to say, I pose the question of how knowledge of mind provided by cognitive science, broadly construed, is constrained by the epistemic position of the knower, i.e. by the very fact that it is undertaken by a mind. Here I would like to propose a minimal framework, based on two distinctions: (i) the standard one between empirical and conceptual analysis; (ii) a new one, between the internal questions of mind and the boundary questions of mind. I shall then combine these distinctions to arrive at several ways of investigating the mind, the brain and cognition. On this ground, I will discuss the notion of epistemological theocentrism as outlined by Henry Allison and argue against the perspective I call theocentric philosophy of mind. From this angle I will be able to address skepticism which cannot be defeated but actually can be, as I put it, disarmed. Finally, metaphilosophy of mind based on the abovementioned distinctions elicits a perspective that is not sufficiently delineated by cognitive scientists and philosophers: empirical way of addressing the boundary questions of mind.     

A dilemma for non-naturalists: irrationality or immorality?

Either 1. the non-naturalist is in a state of mind that would treat as relevant information about the existence and patterns of non-natural properties and facts as they make up their mind about normative matters, or 2. the non-naturalist is in a state of mind that would treat as irrelevant information about the existence and patterns of non-natural properties and facts as they make up their mind about normative matters. The first state of mind is morally objectionable, for one should not change one’s normative beliefs to pander to the patterns of some non-natural realm. The second state of mind is irrational, for if you think you are aiming to represent non-natural properties correctly, you should (rationally) be interested to know which actions share a non-natural property and which do not, and you should (rationally) be prepared to change your mind accordingly.

     

Précis of Foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution

The goal of this study is to reintegrate the theory of generative grammar into the cognitive sciences. Generative grammar was right to focus on the child's acquisition of language as its central problem, leading to the hypothesis of an innate Universal Grammar. However, generative grammar was mistaken in assuming that the syntactic component is the sole course of combinatoriality, and that everything else is "interpretive." The proper approach is a parallel architecture, in which phonology, syntax, and semantics are autonomous generative systems linked by interface components. The parallel architecture leads to an integration within linguistics, and to a far better integration with the rest of cognitive neuroscience. It fits naturally into the larger architecture of the mind/brain and permits a properly mentalistic theory of semantics. It results in a view of linguistic performance in which the rules of grammar are directly involved in processing. Finally, it leads to a natural account of the incremental evolution of the language capacity.     

THE MIND AND THE 'SHEN-MING'a IN XUNZI

In Plan 21 of the Xunzi , the essay Dubs titles "The Removal of Prejudices"¹ and Watson calls "Dispelling Obsession"², there is a sentence one's eyes slide over rather easily until one tries to fit it into its context and that of the Xunzi generally. Dubs translates it "The mind is the ruler of the body and the master of the spirit" (p. 269); Watson shows a slight discomfort with the second clause when he gives "The mind is the ruler of the body and the master of its god-like intelligence" [whatever that is] (p. 129) Koester³ raises a few more doubts with his "Das Herz nimmt im Koerper die Stelle des Herrschers ein, es ist der Gebieter ueber die shen-ming (Geister, die im Koerper wohnen)" (p. 277). Interestingly enough, the commentatorial tradition seems to have felt no difficulties: Yang Liang's comment is merely a paraphrase of the sentence following, and Wang Xian-jian and Liang Qi-xiong simply quote him⁴.     

THE BIRTH OF PSYCHOANALYSIS FROM THE SPIRIT OF TECHNIQUE1

The author aims to demonstrate, through a textual analysis of Freud's work, how the creation of psychoanalysis as a plausible set of understandings of the human mind has a methodological origin that has sometimes been overlooked: in the Greek concept of techne. Freud, an acknowledged pupil of Brentano, was well versed in Aristotelian rhetoric, and selected this instrument of investigation, dependent on language, from the outset of his efforts to describe, understand and treat the world of the unconscious mind. Working in the tradition of techne Freud actually rehabilitated ‘guessing’ (zu erraten) ‐ although it became a largely overlooked concept in Freud's work ‐ and so sought to place conjectural reason as the definitive form of knowledge for the investigation and treatment of the mind. This explains why the 1895 ‘Project’ could not succeed and why technique became irreplaceable as the via regia in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’. Its model is founded in Aristotelian rhetoric, whose conception of language was first rediscovered by Nietzsche and was used therapeutically by Freud. Freud's view is apparent in his 1923 definition of psychoanalysis which is compared to the current IPA definition, a definition which, the author suggests, gives a misleading prominence to ‘theory’ and which shows how far a questionable rationality has removed conjectural reason from the field, to its detriment. From this point of view it is argued that the ‘precious conjunction’ (Freud) between investigation and treatment has been abandoned, and the concept of historical truth and its significance for psychoanalysis obscured.     

拓扑性质知觉的大脑半球功能不对称性研究

本文以视觉的拓扑知觉理论为指导进行大脑半球功能不对称性的研究。全文共有三个实验,考察了辨别扭扑性质差异和其它几何性质差异时大脑半球的功能不对称性．拓扑性质差异包括洞（封闭性）的差异和内外关系的差异．实验结果显示：对于右利手被试,辨别拓扑性质差异时,左半球有优势。辨别距离和朝向等几何性质差异时,右半球有优势或没有统计显著的大脑半球功能不对称性。     

EMPATHY AND THE EXTENDED MIND

I draw upon the conceptual resources of the extended mind thesis (EM) to analyze empathy and interpersonal understanding. Against the dominant mentalistic paradigm, I argue that empathy is fundamentally an extended bodily activity and that much of our social understanding happens outside of the head. First, I look at how the two dominant models of interpersonal understanding, theory theory and simulation theory, portray the cognitive link between folk psychology and empathy. Next, I challenge their internalist orthodoxy and offer an alternative "extended" characterization of empathy. In support of this characterization, I analyze some narratives of individuals with Moebius syndrome, a kind of expressive deficit resulting from bilateral facial paralysis. I conclude by discussing how a Zen Buddhist ethics of responsiveness is helpful for articulating the practical significance of an extended, body-based account of empathy.     

Descartes's Regulae, mathematics, and modern psychology: "the Noblest example of all" in Light of Turing's (1936) On computable Numbers

There are surprisingly strong connections between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of mathematics. One particular important example can be seen in the Regulae (1628) of Descartes. In "the noblest example of all," he used his new abstract understanding of numbers to demonstrate how the brain can be considered as a symbol machine and how the intellect's algebraic reasoning can be mirrored as operations on this machine. Even though his attempt failed, it is illuminating to explore it because Descartes launched 2 traditions--mechanistic philosophy of mind and abstract mathematics--that would diverge until A. Turing (1936) approached symbolic reasoning in a similar "symbol machine-existence proof" way. Descrates's and Turing's thought experiments, which mark the beginning of modern psychology and cognitive science, respectively, indicate how important the development of mathematics has been for the constitution of the science of mind.