Use of symbols, the key to the biosemiotics field as to many others, required bigger brains which implied a promissory note for greater energy consumption; symbols are obviously expensive. A score years before the current estimate of 18–20% for the human brain’s metabolic demand on the organism, it was known that neural tissue is metabolically dear. This paper first discusses two evolutionary responses to this demand, on both of which there is some consensus. The first, assigning care of altricial infants (...) with burgeoning brains (and in human infants the metabolic demand peaks at 65% of the total) to “allomothers” is not unique to humans. The second, using relatively small neurons as primates do, risks misfires past a certain minimal value. Moreover, in apparent paradox, there is an increasing consensus that large “Von Economo” neurons are critical for communication. This paper’s main contribution is the discussion of two further evolutionary tricks. The first is the use of self-similarity in the cortex, both in structure and process, to allow the cortex readily—and in energetic terms, parsimoniously—to shift between states in a high-dimensional space. This leads to discussion of the kind of formalism appropriate to model these shifts, a formalism which—it is tentatively suggested—may do double duty for the modeling of symbolic thought. The second trick is the superimposition on the background “white noise” of neural firing of EEG-detected waves like gamma. The paper describes a method, using the Hilbert transform, of calculating the dips in energy consumption as the brain is transitioned by gamma waves. It is hypothesized that consciousness may be a spandrel, the incidental result of a neurodynamic imperative that the brain enter a maximally sensitive (in sensory terms) “zero power” state a few times a second. If that is the case, then there are obvious benefits for health in meditation, which can be viewed as a state of consciousness extended over time by limiting afferent stimuli. (shrink)

Abstract -/- This paper has three contrasting sections. The first starts with a description of the academic context that has led researchers like Stewart Kauffmann to introduce "God" into respectable discourse. It then goes on to juxtapose his schema with similar others that his work does not reference. It is proposed that, since humanity is the cutting edge-for good and evil-of emanation/revolution, it is human development that we must focus on. This, in turn cannot properly be discussed without reference to (...) first person descriptions and their contrast with third person descriptions. Likewise the role of those contrasting accounts within and outside the academy, which is currently under threat, must be referred to. -/- -/- Accordingly, the second section begins with the delineation of subjectivity suggested by current neuroscience. It is argued that the cluster sampling of EEG will yield significantly more meaningful results than other competing methods. -/- This paper makes the admittedly radical contention that it may be intellectually responsible to engage in forms of thought and practice that engage the whole of life in a manner heretofore addressed by “religions”. Such forms of life cannot responsibly emerge from an insight into the nature of physical reality, which is the province of the academy. Rather, these forms emerge from consideration of the human psychophysical unity as it engages with a succession of different contexts and attempts to reflect on and refine its responses to them. -/- The nature of the academy early in the 21st century is a confounding factor. The corporate pressure to attenuate academic freedom is real, as is the fact that academic freedom in liberal democracies would immediately migrate to other, initially unfunded structures in civil society with the internet offering myriad opportunities for dissemination and immediate critique of ideas. Orthogonal to this is the attempt to specify and refine one's psychological life, the bane of academic psychology from 19th century German research onwards. It is argued that academic psychology has an asymptote at this point; better to distinguish between the “academy' and the “real world” in a way that best does justice to both, and allows the layperson participate in a genuine attempt to seek knowledge by providing him with a veridical cosmology and psychology, than risk a new absurdity rivaling ontological behaviourism. Many salient facts about human psychology can be discovered by oneself in the “real world”, if only because the imperatives there will always be more compelling, try as we might. -/- -/- Finally, a synthetic narrative is proposed, one in which the evolutionary ethos of the first section is interrelated with the signs of the second section. This final section may yet be read independently of its predecessors. Kauffman’s imperative “reinventing the sacred” indicates something is awry in our conceptual and political systems; it is argued that historically authentic religious movements have preserved something they considered divine, and done so on the margins of society. In fact, this marginalization may be the essence of the religious impulse. (shrink)

This paper makes two self-confessedly ambitious proposals. One is a theory of mind and world with an inventory of possible relations between the two of such generality that sensorimotor behaviour, potentially conscious cognition, and quantum mechanics fall out s special cases. The second is that the variety of neural codes is as multifarious as that of the domains in which mind functions; alternatively put, each cognitive "context" can be viewed as a field. Where cognitive "context" is lacking - a la (...) quantum mechanics - the result is the quantum field theory of researchers like Schwinger. This paper makes also makes the radical claim that dynamical systems theory provides solutions to problems plaguing neuroscience, rather than simply attractive models. It starts with the microscopic level, that of single neurons. A biologically realistic neuron model as a harmonic oscillator is shown to allow neurons do pseudo-Fourier transforms. While it is already known that spike timing becomes naturally causal in this model, we have also implemented a C++ simulation showing that it can operate on a raw power spectrum, and learning can be formulated as adjustment of delays. In short, the neural code at the microscopic level is, as Karl Pribram thought, the Fourier transform. The mesoscopic and macroscopic levels, which are at times connected in Freeman's writing, cater for the missing piece of "intentionality" ie how mind "intends - points to - things in the world. It is argued that nonequilibrium thermodynamics provides a good model here. The vocabulary of dynamical systems, starting as we already have with the periodic attractor of the harmonic oscillator qua pendulum, is proposed as a first approximation for what we need to do at the mesoscopic level. That will finally bring us to the symbolic level, at which we experience, talk to each other, and do math. It is argued that formalisms that cater for co-ordinate free flows are more appropriate here than any others. Clearly, tensor calculus and lie groups will prove useful. We also consider physicists who have eschewed cognitive neuroscience as a failure and, with some brilliance, argue that physics ideas like pilot waves will prove crucial. While this will be the most speculative part of the paper, this area is developing rapidly and quietly like all successful revolutions. (shrink)