Love and Power,and the Development of the Brain,Mind, and Agency

In drawing on my own research and collaborative work with Karl Pribram, I show that love (affective attachment) and power (social control) play a central role in psychosocial evolution. When these relations are coupled in a self-regulating system of cooperative interactions, brain growth is stimulated, mind and agency develop, and stable forms of collective social organization are generated. Focusing on the endogenous dynamics of social collectives, the article is organized in four parts. (A "social collective" is defined as a durable arrangement of relations among two or more individuals that is distinguished by shared membership and collaboration in relation to a common function or goal.) Part I summarizes evidence from developmental neuropsychology and social science to show that stable psychosocial organization, across the human life span, is associated with social interaction organized along two dimensions. One dimension involves love, positive affective attachment, and the second involves power, social regulation of the aroused affective energy. Part II draws on Piaget's theory of cooperation and Bradley and Pribrams' theory of communication to describe how mind and agency are generated, and how stable organization is produced, respectively, from the relations involved in the arousal and regulation of affective energy. Combining elements of the two theories, Part III presents a sketch of a holographic model of collective organization in which goal-directed behavior is generated by a feed-forward process involving imaging and information processing of interaction along the two dimensions. Part IV shows how the model accounts for the emergence of human agency within the context of a more general evolutionary theory, such as Laszlo's. The article concludes with a discussion of my approach for building a "fully human theory of evolution."     

Dynamical agents: Consciousness, causation, and two specters of epiphenomenalism

The aim of this paper is to defend the causal efficacy of consciousness against two specters of epiphenomenalism. We argue that these challenges are best met, on the one hand, by rejecting all forms of consciousness-body dualism, and on the other, by adopting a dynamical systems approach to understanding the causal efficacy of conscious experience. We argue that this non-reductive identity theory provides the theoretical resources for reconciling the reality and efficacy of consciousness with the neurophysiology of the brain and body.

Evolutionary Guidance System: A Community Design Project

The Evolutionary Guidance System (EGS) is a holistic and inclusive model for designing self-organizing social systems. Such a model must be driven by evolutionary values articulated by the members of the system. The small community is an ideal context for the "growing" of an Evolutionary Guidance System. This paper describes the creation of an EGS in a community organization. The rational for the activity is to bring harmony and build community among the members of the organization and, at the same time, to reach out and include the larger community. This organization can provide a model for other organizations in the town, and the ultimate goal is to install an EGS as a nongovernmental design system for the town.     

Evolution and Process Thought

Five topics arising from evolutionary biology open new possibilities for fruitful dialogue between scientists and proponents of the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. These topics (with the main authors whose views are discussed) are: (1) Contingency and Teleology, Stephen Jay Gould, Simon Conway Morris; (2) The Baldwin Effect and Interiority, Bruce Weber and David DePew, Daniel Dennett, Terrence Deacon, Susan Oyama; (3) Complexity and Design, Michael Behe, David Griffin; (4) Hierarchical Levels and Downward Causation, Theo Meyering, Charles Hartshorne; and (5) Self-organization and Emergence, Terrence Deacon, Philip Clayton. In the final section, I look at the relation of science and metaphysics and ask whether the subjectivity postulated by process philosophy is accessible to scientific investigation.     

Self-organizing individual differences in brain development

Brain development is self-organizing in that the unique structure of each brain evolves in unpredictable ways through recursive modifications of synaptic networks. In this article, I review mechanisms of neural change in real time and over development, and I argue that change at each of these time scales embodies principles of self-organizing systems. I demonstrate how corticolimbic configurations that emerge within occasions lay down synaptic structure across occasions, giving rise to individual trajectories that become entrenched with age. Emotions have a powerful influence on this process.This is because the neural processes mediating emotion consolidate patterns of activation across the brain, through their enhancement of inter-regional coordination in real time and their contribution to synaptic shaping over development. The loss of corticolimbic plasticity with age is an unfortunate fact of development, but it is compensated in part by transitional phases and individual learning experiences through which habits are modified or replaced. I emphasize variations in inter-systemic coupling as a key mediator of developing individual differences, and I discuss the acquisition of anxious/depressive appraisals as an example.     

Complexity-thinking and social science: Self-organization involving human consciousness

Complexity-thinking refers to a cluster of concepts popularized in several branches of science, primarily in the physical sciences but increasingly in the social sciences. There is reason to be cautious regarding how the concepts are used across disciplines and branches of science. This paper discusses self-organization in dynamic systems, tracing its roots in social science and critiquing current usage of the term with regard to systems involving consciousness - humans and groups of humans. A brief sketch of the levels of complexity sets the groundwork for understanding the critique of self-organization to follow. I argue that consciousness fundamentally changes the terms of discussion in self-organization by adding a self/selves that is not equivalent to the system as a whole, but which directly influences what is organized, how, and toward what end. Self-organization in complex adaptive systems involving consciousness should be distinguished as self-cultivating self-organization and self-presenting self-organization.     

Language evolution as a Darwinian process: computational studies

This paper presents computational experiments that illustrate how one can precisely conceptualize language evolution as a Darwinian process. We show that there is potentially a wide diversity of replicating units and replication mechanisms involved in language evolution. Computational experiments allow us to study systemic properties coming out of populations of linguistic replicators: linguistic replicators can adapt to specific external environments; they evolve under the pressure of the cognitive constraints of their hosts, as well as under the functional pressure of communication for which they are used; one can observe neutral drift; coalitions of replicators may appear, forming higher level groups which can themselves become subject to competition and selection.

关于器官移植非优因素的哲学思考

目前器官移植是拯救器官功能衰竭患者较有效的措施,但同种及异种器官移植术中存在的大量非优因素决定了器官移植的局限性和过渡性。本文根据系统自组织理论,从哲学的角度指出：发掘人类器官组织的自组织能力必将是恢复患者衰竭器官功能最优化和最有前途的途径     

The emergence of personality: Dynamic foundations of individual variation

We conceptualize personality and individual variation from the perspective of dynamical systems. People’s thoughts, feelings, and predispositions for action are inherently dynamic, displaying constant change due to internal mechanisms and external forces, but over time the flow of thought and action converges on a narrow range of states—a fixed-point attractor—that provides cognitive, affective, and behavioral stability. An attractor for personal dynamics develops through two mechanisms: the synchronization of individuals’ internal states in social interaction, and the self-organization of thoughts and feelings with respect to a higher-order property (e.g., goal, self-concept). We present formal models of both processes and instantiate each in computer simulations. Discussion centers on the implications of interpersonal synchronization and self-organization dynamics for issues in personality psychology, including shared vs. non-shared environmental influences on personality development, the expression of personality in social interaction, personal stability vs. change, personal vs. situational causation, and the emergence of self-concept.