Neurocognitive Mechanisms by Gualtiero Piccinini, critical review

Abstract: Neurocognitive Mechanisms (2020), by Gualtiero Piccinini, is a philosophical and neuroscientific work, seeking to ground cognition and its phenomena in a comprehensive neurocomputational theory. But the philosophical treatment is wrong. The introduction of “aspects” of a single level of reality also introduces something that looks independently of that single level. We fall back on … Read more

What is a genius?

“Talent hits a target that no one else can reach; the genius hits a target that no one else can see.”Arthur Schopenhauer Innate and acquired knowledge No one has the time and the means to unravel the history of science. We are forced to take for granted most of the knowledge used on a daily … Read more

How does the brain represent the world?

A brain that gets brushed! A baby looks at a brush. The object has no meaning for her. She sketches one when her mother grabs it to straighten her hair. Years later, the brush is part of a rich mental universe of utensils with well-defined functions. It proposes itself to the consciousness of the baby … Read more

Transactional Analysis and Psociety

Proven usefulness in psychotherapy Eric Berne is a pioneer in the description of psychic persona , that is to say recognizable states that can take the ego of a person. He sees 3 fundamentals, Parent Child and Adult. The Parent is protector and director, the imaginative Child plaintive and playful, the Adult objective and independent. … Read more

Two speeds for thought?

Pretentious turtle and dumb rabbit In psychology, theories with double thought processes generally oppose unconscious automatic mode and conscious controlled mode. They were popularized in particular by Daniel Kahneman in ‘System 1 / System 2, The Two Speeds of Thought‘ (2012). If the book has been so successful, it is because it is easy to … Read more

Is a place a framework or a mental agent?

This article will be of interest to philosophers of the mind. It develops the principle of mental inner scene and explains it neurologically. It connects the notions of reactive and cognitive agent, in other words our automatisms of perception and our decision generators. Is a place a framework or an agent? Perhaps the question seems … Read more

Do words create the idea?

It’s clear! Bertrand Perier, lawyer: “It is quite clear to me that words create the idea and not the other way around.” Amazing divinization of communication, words that would be there before their constituent abstractions. It is the transposition to the language of creationism; a God formed of all possible words is at the origin … Read more

Neuroscience and justice

The philosopher’s outstretched hand I have not found a better synthesis on this subject than a remarkable issue (60) of Cités published in 2014 (french): “What do cognitive neuroscience think and want?”. The theme allows the confrontation between philosophers and neuroscientists about the mind/body problem. Yves Charles Zarka, for philosophers, begins by giving a hand: … Read more

Explaining consciousness as a phenomenon

Abstract: Can we explain consciousness as a phenomenon today? The problem is already rooted in matter: why do unexpected properties arise from certain physical organizations? Important subsidiary remark: these properties only appear at something at least as complex. It is therefore impossible to reduce the points of view of the constitution and the emergence to each other. It is in this opposition that a fragment of consciousness is born, whose planes are surimposed as reality becomes more complex, first in the material levels of information, then virtual in the depth of neural networks. Each level of reality constructs its own bidirectional interaction, the one that constitutes and the one that experiences its constitution. The higher the complexity, the richer and deeper the experienced phenomenon.

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Mental hierarchy supported by graph theory

Abstract : The 1st part of the article summarizes the theory of mind called Stratium, the only one to date to fully explain consciousness even in its phenomenal aspect. If you already know it, jump straight to the 2nd part, which explains the nature of the new mathematical proof fleshing out graph theory. The supposed regularity of phase transitions in very large graphs is confirmed and allows predictions about their behavior. Part 3 explains how Stratium is strengthened as a model of the mind by this evidence. Phase transitions are the potential support for the symbolic coding of information by neural groups, as well as its hierarchical nesting, from 1st rank neurons to the workspace of consciousness.

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