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What do these observations imply for epistemological concerns? First, the historical, epigenetic, and degenerate features of the vastly complex human brain depend on bodily and environmental inputs and, above all, on action. In the original formulation of the theory of neuronal group selection, it was pointed out that perceptual categorisation itself depended on so-called global mappings. These are complex structures composed of both sensory and motor inputs and outputs. The theory states that sensory and motor systems are both necessary to develop perceptual categories.
The notion of reentry is essential for brain development and function (and) puts the emphasis not just on action but also on the interaction of brain areas.
In a selectional brain, memory, imaging, and thought itself all depend on "the brain speaking to itself" by reentry.
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If this picture of principles underlying brain-based epistemology is correct, then early formulations of thought are by nature associatively rich but relatively imprecise. How then do we come to form more precise concepts necessary for scientific pursuits? What about logic and mathematics, both of which involve precision that is essential for enlarging our knowledge and understanding?
Any attempt to answer these questions must confront the issue of language. This is certainly the case for traditional epistemology, which deals largely in prepositional or sentential terms. It is also an unavoidable issue in considering the actual development of knowledge and concepts during human history.
The onset of higher-order consciousness and its acceleration after the emergence of syntax and lexicon. The capacity to develop concepts of the past and future and to acquire a social self depends very strongly on the acquisition of language.
We are the only species with syntax based language.
Many scholars have suggested that language is biologically evolved trait, and some have even proposed that the process of specific language acquisition device that we inherited to allow us to carry out and recognise syntactically correct statements.
The theory of neuronal group selection rejects this view. It is surely the case that certain brain regions as well as bodily structures such as the vocal cords and the space above the vocal cords evolved to enhance production and recognition of vocal sounds. It is also evident that the portions of the brain known as the basal ganglia were already able to help the cortex regulate and recognise sequences of motor acts.
The interaction of basal ganglia with the motor, sensory, and prefrontal areas of the cortex may have led to a generalised capability of detecting sensorimotor sequences, that kind of “basal syntax ”. Where that is the case, a syntax based true language may have arisen as an invention based on these already evolved capabilities.
Whatever the case, the possession of language, with its enabling effects on cultural transmission , obviously led to an enormous expansion of conceptual power. Although the linguistic expansion and associative powers of metaphor can lead to poetry and imagination, language also makes possible the development of logic.
Logic may have its origin in brain events related to the persistence and disappearance of objects, to the development of operant conditioning, and to learned consequences of motor acts.
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What we have seen so far is that thought precedes language. But once language sets in, an explosion of possible thoughts occur, and there is a temptation to equate thoughts and beliefs, and even sometimes knowledge to propositions and propositions alone.
Traditional epistemology has yielded to that temptation. In its search to validate true belief, it indulges in a language game. Its goal is lofty and ambitious, but this based on a narrow set of assumptions about the means by which we think and interact in the world. Its models, which are based either on Cartesian foundationalism (implying a disassociated receiver of instruction or information ) or alternatively on Kantian mixture of a priori and a posteriori ideas, not seem to correspond to the facts. In proceeding without reference to scientific knowledge and experiment, traditional epistemology ignores how knowledge actually develops.
If a brain-based epistemology seems a sound way to proceed, what does it recognize on how much can it claim? Brain-based epistemology takes account of the heterogeneous sources of knowledge. It recognizes the primacy of natural selection but does not attempt to explain behaviour solely in evolutionary terms.
Instead, it emphasises the epigenetic origin of brain structure and dynamics. In this view, brain development depends on action in the world and, as a consequence, each brain is unique. Pattern recognition by the brain precedes logic, and early thought is creative in its pattern making through processes akin to metaphor. These processes are not free of feeling. Indeed, the constraints of value system essential to the evolution of adaptive behavior make emotional experience a necessary accompaniment to the acquisition of knowledge even after logic and formal analysis supervene at later stages.
This position helps us to understand the origin of perceptual categorisation, of concepts, and and of thoughts based on interactions between the brain, and the world. It gives a deeper understanding of such processes as imagery and memory, which are essential to the acquisition of knowledge. Finally, by providing a testable model of consciousness, it clarifies the relationship between physics and conscious thought.
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I argued that the brain is not a computer and that the world is not a piece of coded tape. The brain must, in the absence of unambiguous signals, establish regularities of behaviour under constraints of inherited value systems and of idiosyncratic perceptual and memorial events. In human beings, such systems and events necessarily involve emotions and biases.
Edelman
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