This paper proposes that neurodynamic system theory may be used to connect structural and functional aspects of neural organization. The paper claims that generalized causal dynamic models are proper tools for describing the self-organizing mechanism of the nervous system. In particular, it is pointed out that ontogeny, development, normal performance, learning, and plasticity, can be treated by coherent concepts and formalism. Taking into account the self-referential character of the brain, autopoiesis, endophysics and hermeneutics are offered as elements of (...) a poststructuralist brain (-mind-computer) theory. (shrink)

Study of electroencephalographic brain activity in behaving animals has guided development of a model for the self-organization of goal-directed behavior. Synthesis of a dynamical representation of brain function is based in the concept of intentionality as the organizing principle of animal and human behavior. The constructions of patterns of brain activity constitute meaning and not information or representations. The three accepted meanings of intention: "aboutness," goal-seeking, and wound healing, can be incorporated into the dynamics of meaningful behavior, centered in (...) the limbic system interacting with the sensory and motor systems. Evidence is noted for the maintenance in cortical neuropil of a felt work of synaptic connections, that have incorporated past experience by changes in learning, and that act as a unified whole in shaping each intentional action at each moment. This constitutes the intentional structure of the brain. Meaning is a focus having a place without edges in this structure. The focus continually moves through it along a chaotic trajectory; the meaning occupies the whole structure. In this view, consciousness is the active state of an intentional structure, and awareness is the subjective aspect of the shifting focus. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience. This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of skilled intentionality from the perspective of the self-organization of the brain-body-environment system, while doing justice to the (...) phenomenology of skilled action. In previous work, we have characterized skilled intentionality as the organism's tendency toward an optimal grip on multiple relevant affordances simultaneously. Affordances are possibilities for action provided by the environment. In the first part of this paper, we introduce the notion of skilled intentionality and the phenomenon of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances. Second, we use Friston's work on neurodynamics, but embed a very minimal version of his Free Energy Principle in the ecological niche of the animal. Thus amended, this principle is helpful for understanding the embeddedness of neurodynamics within the dynamics of the system “brain-body-landscape of affordances.” Next, we show how we can use this adjusted principle to understand the neurodynamics of selective openness to the environment: interacting action-readiness patterns at multiple timescales contribute to the organism's selective openness to relevant affordances. In the final part of the paper, we emphasize the important role of metastable dynamics in both the brain and the brain-body-environment system for adequate affordance-responsiveness. We exemplify our integrative approach by presenting research on the impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on affordance responsiveness of OCD patients. (shrink)

For Merleau-Ponty,consciousness in skillful coping is a matter of prereflective ‘I can’ and not explicit ‘I think that.’ The body unifies many domain-specific capacities. There exists a direct link between the perceived possibilities for action in the situation (‘affordances’) and the organism’s capacities. From Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions it is clear that in a flow of skillful actions, the leading ‘I can’ may change from moment to moment without explicit deliberation. How these transitions occur, however, is less clear. Given that Merleau-Ponty suggested (...) that a better understanding of the self-organization of brain and behavior is important, I will re-read his descriptions of skillful coping in the light of recent ideas on neurodynamics. Affective processes play a crucial role in evaluating the motivational significance of objects and contribute to the individual’s prereflective responsiveness to relevant affordances. (shrink)

A summary of topics and theoretical approaches to dynamical systems and psychology. Includes chapters on physical systems, self-organization, state space and dimensionality, networks, neurodynamics, fractals and how such concepts help to explain cognition and the mind.

Dynamicism has provided cognitive science with important tools to understand some aspects of “how cognitive agents work” but the issue of “what makes something cognitive” has not been sufficiently addressed yet, and, we argue, the former will never be complete without the later. Behavioristic characterizations of cognitive properties are criticized in favor of an organizational approach focused on the internal dynamic relationships that constitute cognitive systems. A definition of cognition as adaptive-autonomy in the embodied and situated neurodynamic domain is (...) provided: the compensatory regulation of a web of stability dependencies between sensorimotor structures, is created and preserved during a historical/developmental process. We highlight the functional role of emotional embodiment: internal bioregulatory processes coupled to the formation and adaptive regulation of neurodynamic autonomy. Finally, we discuss a “minimally cognitive behavior program” in evolutionary simulation modelling suggesting that much is to be learned from a complementary “minimally cognitive organization program”. (shrink)

This is a description of the aims, agenda and organization of a conference, organized by Foundations of Mind and hosted by the CIIS Centre for Consciousness Studies that took place on 31st January, 2017. Teh proceedings of this conference are published in this special edition. The topic was 'Quantum Mechanics Meets Neurodynamics: An Emerging 21st Century Science of Consciousness'. This the fourth Foundations fo Mind conference. The proceedings of the other three conferences have also been published in Cosmos and (...) History. (shrink)

The result of the second Appalachian conference on neurodynamics, this volume focuses on the problem of "order," its origins, evolution, and future.

Dynamicism has provided cognitive science with important tools to understand some aspects of “how cognitive agents work” but the issue of “what makes something cognitive” has not been sufficiently addressed yet and, we argue, the former will never be complete without the latter. Behavioristic characterizations of cognitive properties are criticized in favor of an organizational approach focused on the internal dynamic relationships that constitute cognitive systems. A definition of cognition as adaptive-autonomy in the embodied and situated neurodynamic domain is (...) provided: the compensatory regulation of a web of stability dependencies between sensorimotor structures is created and preserved during a historical/developmental process. We highlight the functional role of emotional embodiment: internal bioregulatory processes coupled to the formation and adaptive regulation of neurodynamic autonomy. Finally, we discuss a “minimally cognitive behavior program” in evolutionary simulation modeling suggesting that much is to be learned from a complementary “minimally cognitive organization program”. (shrink)

This book is a selection of papers from a conference which took place at the University of Keele in July 1982. The conference was an extraordinarily enjoyable one, and we would like to take this opportunity of thanking all participants for helping to make it so. The conference was intended to allow scholars working on different aspects of symbolic behaviour to compare findings, to look for common ground, and to identify differences between the various areas. We hope that it was (...) successful in these aims: the assiduous reader may judge for himself. Several themes emerged during the course of the conference. Some of these were: 1. There is a distinction to be made between those symbol systems which attempt, more or less directly, to represent a state of affairs in the world (e. g. language, drawing, map and navigational skill) and those in which the representational function is complemented, if not overshadowed, by properties of the symbol system itself, and the systematic inter-relations that symbols can have to one another (e. g. music, mathematics). The distinction is not absolute, for the nature of all symbolic skills is, in part, a function of the structure of the symbolic system employed. Nonetheless, this distinction helps us to understand some common acquisition difficulties, such as that experienced in mathematics, where mental manipulation of symbols can go awry if a child assumes too close a correspondence between mathematical symbols and the world they represent. 2. (shrink)

The concept of “autonomy”, once at the core of the original enactivist proposal in The Embodied Mind, is nowadays ignored or neglected by some of the most prominent contemporary enactivists approaches. Theories of autonomy, however, come to fill a theoretical gap that sensorimotor accounts of cognition cannot ignore: they provide a naturalized account of normativity and the resources to ground the identity of a cognitive subject in its specific mode of organization. There are, however, good reasons for the contemporary (...) neglect of autonomy as a relevant concept for enactivism. On the one hand, the concept of autonomy has too often been assimilated into autopoiesis and the implications are not always clear for a dynamical sensorimotor approach to cognitive science. On the other hand, the foundational enactivist proposal displays a metaphysical tension between the concept of operational closure, deployed as constitutive, and that of structural coupling ; making it hard to reconcile with the claim that experience is sensorimotorly constituted. This tension is particularly apparent when Varela et al. propose Bittorio as a model of the operational closure of the nervous system as it fails to satisfy the required conditions for a sensorimotor constitution of experience. It is, however, possible to solve these problems by re-considering autonomy at the level of sensorimotor neurodynamics. Two recent robotic simulation models are used for this task, illustrating the notion of strong sensorimotor dependency of neurodynamic patterns, and their networked intertwinement. The concept of habit is proposed as an enactivist building block for cognitive theorizing, re-conceptualizing mental life as a habit ecology, tied within an agent’s behaviour generating mechanism in coordination with its environment. Norms can be naturalized in terms of dynamic, interactively self-sustaining, coherentism. This conception of autonomous sensorimotor agency is put in contrast with those enactive approaches that reject autonomy or neglect the theoretical resources it has to offer for the project of naturalizing minds. (shrink)

We argue that cognitive functions are not reducible to biological functionality. Since only neural animals can develop complex forms of agency, we assume that genuinely cognitive processes are deeply related with the activity of the nervous system. We first analyze the significance of the appearance of the nervous system in certain multicellular organisms, arguing that it has changed the logic of their biological organization. Then, we focus on the appearance of specifically cognitive capacities within the nervous system. Considering a (...) case of a minimal form of perceptual representation, we analyze the specific functional role of this minimal form of activity in relatively earlier nervous systems, arguing that though this role is only understandable within a biological organization, yet it is not reducible to the underlying biological functionality. Finally, we conclude that the appearance of cognition is in turn linked to the emergence of an autonomous neurodynamic domain and a qualitative change in body complexity. (shrink)

This article delineates the notion of conjectural artworks—that is, ways of thinking and explaining formal and relational phenomena by visual means—and presents an appraisal and review of the use of such visual ways in the work of Chilean biologists and philosophers Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Particularly, the article focuses on their recurrent uses of Cellular Automaton, that is, discrete, locally interacting, rule-based mathematical models, as conjectural artworks for understanding the concepts of autopoiesis, structural coupling, cognition and enaction: (i.e. Protobio (...) and Bittorio). Additionally, the article proposes a new model of conjectural artwork based on an extension of cellular automaton: random Boolean networks namely, binary systems with variable local connections. Such model, as it is argued, is useful to connect the theoretical frameworks by Maturana and Varela, especially structural coupling and enaction, with other relevant fields such as biosemiotics’ Umwelt-research and cognitive landscapes in neurodynamics, and to advance and explore the concepts of structurally coupled categorization and generalization. (shrink)

One of the outstanding problems in the cognitive sciences is to understand how ongoing conscious experience is related to the workings of the brain and nervous system. Neurodynamics offers a powerful approach to this problem because it provides a coherent framework for investigating change, variability, complex spatiotemporal patterns of activity, and multiscale processes (among others). In this chapter, we advocate a neurodynamical approach to consciousness that integrates mathematical tools of analysis and modeling, sophisticated physiological data recordings, and detailed phenomenological descriptions. (...) We begin by stating the basic intuition: Consciousness is an intrinsically dynamic phenomenon and must therefore be studied within a framework that is capable of rendering its dynamics intelligible. We then discuss some of the formal, analytical features of dynamical systems theory, with particular reference to neurodynamics. We then review several neuroscientific proposals that make use of dynamical systems theory in characterizing the neurophysiologi-. (shrink)

cal basis of consciousness. We continue by discussing the relation between spatiotem- One of the outstanding problems in the cog- poral patterns of brain activity and con- nitive sciences is to understand how ongo- sciousness, with particular attention to pro- ing conscious experience is related to the cesses in the gamma frequency band. We workings of the brain and nervous system. then adopt a critical perspective and high-.

This book is an analysis and discussion of the soul as a psychophysical process and its role in mental representation, meaning, understanding and agency. Grant Gillett and Walter Glannon combine contemporary neuroscience and philosophy to address fundamental issues about human existence and living and acting in the world. Based in part on Aristotle's hylomorphism and model of the psyche, their approach is informed by a neuroscientific model of the brain as a dynamic organ in which patterns of neural oscillation and (...) synchronization are shaped by biological, social and cultural factors inside and outside of it. The authors provide a richer and more robust account of the soul, or mind, than other accounts by framing it in neuroscientific and philosophical terms that do not explain it away but explain it as something that is shaped by how it responds to the natural and social environment in enabling flexible and adaptive behavior. (shrink)

The dynamics of neuronal systems, briefly neurodynamics, has developed into an attractive and influential research branch within neuroscience. In this paper, we discuss a number of conceptual issues in neurodynamics that are important for an appropriate interpretation and evaluation of its results. We demonstrate their relevance for selected topics of theoretical and empirical work. In particular, we refer to the notions of determinacy and stochasticity in neurodynamics across levels of microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic descriptions. The issue of correlations between neural, (...) mental and behavioral states is also addressed in some detail. We propose an informed discussion of conceptual foundations with respect to neurobiological results as a viable step to a fruitful future philosophy of neuroscience. (shrink)

This open access book assesses the prospects of (re)adopting organization as a pivotal concept in biology. It shows how organization can nourish biological thinking and practice, by reconnecting with the idea of biology as the science of organized systems. The book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art picture of the characterizations and uses of the concept of organization in both biological science and philosophy of biology. It also deals with a variety of themes – including evolution, organogenesis, heredity, cognition (...) and ecology – with respect to which the concept of organization can guide the elaboration of original models and new experimental protocols. It will be of interest to biologists and scholars working in philosophy of science alike. (shrink)

As individuals and as communities we have suddenly awakened to find ourselves enveloped in a welter of unprecedented changes—social, political, economic and scientific. If our minds are to keep pace with the restless current on which we are being carried along, if our senses are to become alert to the teeming dislocations that mark the present, it will be necessary to raise our sights to the farther reaches of a rapidly oncoming future. In this hurrying hour the outstanding domains of (...) man's thought are found wanting. Accepted tenets in many fields of his activity are giving way to rapidly broadening concepts. In this moment of new assessments it is safe to predict that the field of psychopathology must also gird itself for very radical alterations. It is safe to predict that present-day preoccupations with interpersonal affects, domestic transferences, sexual irregularities, marital conflicts, psychotic episodes, and the vast array of neurotic symptoms that comprise our psychiatric systems will in the scientific reckoning of the future appear to us quite obsolete and inept. They will appear to us as humdrum and archaic, I feel sure, as old wives' tales when contrasted with the basic and encompassing constructs of an organismic phylobiology. (shrink)

Research reported by Posner & Raichle may be usefully applied to the rehabilitation of persons with brain damage. Their findings are related to the “dual premotorsystems hypothesis” that reciprocally interactive medial and lateral brain systems are involved in attention and learning. Recent studies show that “brain healing” occurs through dynamic reorganization involving attentional networks postulated by Posner & Raichle.

Introduction -- Organization, society and politics -- An Aristotelian perspective -- The politics -- The public good -- The rhetoric -- Talk and texts -- The Nichomachean ethics -- Decision making and ethics -- The Poetics -- Bolshevism to ballet in three steps -- What is "public interest"?: a case study -- Where do we go from here?

An affirmative post-structural philosophy of organization inspired by Arnold Gehlen's philosophical anthropology, Michel Foucault's history of medicine and Gille Deleuze's early philosophical works. This book offers a deep and detailed analysis of the problems faced and their solutions.

As a topic, organization design is poorly understood. While it is featured in most management books as a chapter dedicated to organizational structures, it is unclear whether organization design is a one-off event or an ongoing process. Thus, it has traditionally been understood to be the same as an organizational configuration, with neat lines of communication and distribution of responsibilities following pre-set typologies. Yet what can be said to constitute organizational structure in this first half of the 21st (...) century? The extraordinary growth of digital communications, the decreasing relevance of hierarchical bureaucracies, and the general demise of command-and-control have all but decimated the traditional notion of organizational structure. Organization design needs a theoretical revamping. Using a mix of design and social science theories and concepts, Rodrigo Magalhães outlines a new human-centric interpretation of design, design principles, and design culture. He puts forward a paradigm where the organization, for purposes of its design, is considered to be a social actor in a permanent state of transformation, with significant repercussions for social and economic life. He also proposes a model of 'leaderful organization design', distinguished as practice-based, guided by values of democratic participation, and driven by design logics which places meaning-making and meaning-taking at the center of organizational life and can be adopted and adapted to suit different environments. (shrink)

The primary theme of this book is related to library and information science. The book is arranged into several chapters related to specific issues in knowledge organization and information dissemination. Library and Information science is a rapidly growing specialized field which is currently demanding ever more attention due to tremendous growth in data, information, and knowledge across the world. Therefore, to cater the growing need of library science professionals, and increasing demand for knowledge resources, this book has been compiled (...) from the research works undertaken independently and jointly by the authors containing several chapters dedicated to various aspects of LIS. Although most of the chapters have appeared as working papers in pre-print versions available in various public repositories which could be accessed via the internet, the authors have painstakingly undertook the effort to compile their works together in a formidable format for ready reference to current developments in the LIS profession. Some of the chapters have been thoroughly revised and reedited to give a fresh look to the theme and topics under discussion. (shrink)

Experimental evidence and mathematical/computational models show that in many cases chaotic, nonregular oscillations are adequate to describe the dynamical behaviour of neural systems. Further work is needed to understand the meaning of this dynamical regime for modelling information processing in the brain.

Organization in a tangled world -- Process views of organization -- Alfred North Whitehead on process -- Bruno Latour on relativizing the social, and the becoming of networks -- Niklas Luhmann on autopoiesis and recursiveness in social systems -- James March on decision processes and organization : a logic of streams -- Karl Weick on organizing and sensemaking -- A scheme for process based organizational analysis -- Some implications for organizational analysis.

Processes governing the creation, perception and production of spoken words are sensitive to the patterns of speech sounds in the language user’s lexicon. Generative linguistic theory suggests that listeners infer constraints on possible sound patterning from the lexicon and apply these constraints to all aspects of word use. In contrast, emergentist accounts suggest that these phonotactic constraints are a product of interactive associative mapping with items in the lexicon. To determine the degree to which phonotactic constraints are lexically mediated, we (...) observed the effects of learning new words that violate English phonotactic constraints on phonotactic perceptual repair processes in nonword consonant-consonant-vowel stimuli. Subjects who learned such words were less likely to “repair” illegal onset clusters and report them as legal ones. Effective connectivity analyses of MRI-constrained reconstructions of simultaneously collected magnetoencephalography and EEG data showed that these behavioral shifts were accompanied by changes in the strength of influences of lexical areas on acoustic-phonetic areas. These results strengthen the interpretation of previous results suggesting that phonotactic constraints on perception are produced by top-down lexical influences on speech processing. (shrink)