The Postmodern Brain
1st Edition
Published on 18. May 1995
XII, 188 pages
978-90-272-8361-0 (ISBN)
Description
This interdisciplinary work discloses an unexpected coherence between recent concepts in brain science and postmodern thought. A nonlinear dynamical model of brain states is viewed as an autopoietic, autorhoetic, self-organizing, self-tuning eruption under multiple constraints and guided by an overarching optimization principle which insures conservation of invariances and enhancement of symmetries. The nonlinear dynamical brain as developed shows quantum nonlocality, undergoes chaotic regimes, and does not compute. Heidegger and Derrida are 'appropriated' as dynamical theorists who are concerned respectively with the movement of time and being (Ereignis) and text (Différance). The chasm between postmodern thought and the thoroughly metaphysical theory that the brain computes is breached, once the nonlinear dynamical framework is adopted. The book is written in a postmodern style, making playful, opportunistic use of marginalia and dreams, and presenting a nonserial surface of broken complexity. (Series A)
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Gordon G. Globus
The Postmodern Brain
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05/1995
John Benjamins Publishing Co
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Content
- THE POSTMODERN BRAIN
- Editorial page
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Table of contents
- Acknowledgements
- PREFACE N
- CHAPTER ONE THE UNEXPURGATE D SELF-ORGANIZINGDREAM
- THE SELF-ORGANIZING DREAM
- 1. Self-organizing neural networks
- 2. A dream of three beetles
- 3. The self-organizing dream
- 4. To be a self-organizing brain
- CHAPTER TWO. DECONSTRUCTING THE CHINESE ROOM
- 1. The story of the Chinese Room
- 2. The semantic relation between syntax and world
- 3. The brain basis of semantics
- 4. Churchland and Churchland's connectionism
- 5. What neural nets do
- 6. From beings to being
- 7. Discussion
- APPENDIX ADENNETT, THE ILLUSIONIST
- APPENDIX B. NETWORK AND BACKGROUND IN SEARLE'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY
- CHAPTER THREE. THE CONTINENTAL TRADITION AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
- I. Heidegger and Connectionism:Systems that can do what Dasein does
- 1. An ontico-ontological fact forgotten
- 2. Could a machine have the "right stuff?
- 3. Traverse along the line of presence
- 4. Traverse along the line of the to be
- 5. Comment
- II. Derrida and Connectionism:Différance in neural nets
- 1. Background
- 2. Différance
- 3. The difference of Différance
- 4. The deferral of différance
- 5. Comment
- CHAPTER FOUR. TOWARD A NONCOMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVESCIENCE: THE SELF-TUNING BRAIN
- 1. Simplified neural nets
- 2. Biologically realistic nets
- 3. Noncomputation in biologically realistic nets
- 4. State space formulation
- 5. The noncomputational process of differing and deferring
- 6. The whole is the tuner
- 7. Review
- 8. Molecular "information''
- 9. Cognitive "information
- 10. The fractal geometry of state hyperspace
- 11. Evidence for fractal properties of the nervous system
- APPENDIXThe Binding Problem
- CHAPTER FIVE. PSYCHIATRY AND THE NEW DYNAMICS
- 1. The new dynamics of the brain
- 2. Psychiatry and the new dynamics
- CHAPTER SIX. THE ERUPTION OF OTHER AND SELF
- I. A DECONSTRUCTION OF CLASSICAL DYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY
- 1. Deconstruction of a psychotherapy text
- 2. Dissection: Techne
- 3. Further dissection: Psychodynamics
- 4. Exposure: The patient as autre
- II. DREAMING OF AUTRE
- APPENDIX INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOTHERAPY
- CHAPTER SEVEN. POSTMODERNISM AND THE DREAM
- 1. Modernity
- 2. Postmodernism
- 3. The eruption
- 4. The dreamer and the dream
- 5. Dream rapture
- 6. "Reality
- 7. Brain mechanisms
- 8. The world as irreality
- 9. Discussion
- APPENDIX REPORT BY REVIEWER #2
- CHAPTER EIGHT. TAKE-OFF TO QUANTUM BRAIN DYNAMICS:THE EXCISION FROM DISCOURSE
- 1. An empirical critique of brain information processing
- 2. Quantum brain dynamics
- 3. Clark v. Fodor
- NOTES
- Preface N
- Chapter One: The Self-Organizing Dream
- Chapter Two: The Chinese Room
- Chapter Three: Continental Tradition and Cognitive Science
- Chapter Four: Noncomputational Cognitive Science
- Chapter Five: Nonlinear Dynamical Psychiatry
- Chapter Six: Eruption of Other and Self
- Chapter Seven: Postmodernism and the Dream
- Chapter Eight: The Excision From Discourse
- REFERENCES
- NAME INDEX
- SUBJECT INDEX
