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Pragmatism, Neural Plasticity and Mind-Body Unity

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Abstract

Recent developments in cognitive science provide compelling leads that need to be interpreted and synthesized within the context of semiotic and biosemiotic principles. To this end, we examine the impact of the mind-body unity on the sorts of choices that an organism is predisposed to making from its Umwelt. In multicellular organisms with brains, the relationship that an organism has with its Umwelt impacts on neural plasticity, the functional specialisations that develop within the brain, and its behaviour. Clinical observations, such as those recorded by Norman Doidge, as well as historical observations from outside the field of semiotics (Plato, Aristotle, Hume) shed further light on this process, and serve to further substantiate our semiotic and biosemiotic paradigm. Our analysis develops a rather limited associationism (with reference to Peirce’s categories) into a more general and robust interpretation that is applicable to all mind-bodies, whether they be neurons, paramecia and amoebae, or humans, cats and dogs. Biosemiotics is a more universal semiotics that takes us beyond the confines of anthropocentrism, because it recognizes the role of the body in shaping Mind.

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Notes

  1. Edge 2008, Master Class 2008: Two Big Things Happening in Psychology Today (Class 4) [online] available at: http://edge.org/conversation/two-big-things-happening-in-psychology-today-class-4.

  2. For us, these signature activities are those related to the information age – reading, writing, computer literacy, electronic media, etc.

  3. Penfield was a pioneer in the use of electrical probes during brain surgery on conscious patients, to stimulate regions of a patient’s brain to observe their response.

  4. Localizationism is the idea that the brain, like a complex machine, is composed of parts, and that each part forms a specific mental function.

  5. There is evidence that some rudimentary light-sensitivity does develop within the foetus, attributable to the small amount of light that manages to pass through to the womb from outside.

  6. Abraham Kaplan’s thinking was influenced by the pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey.

  7. Animals relying on sonar form pictorial representations of 3-d space using sound instead of light. Accordingly, it is reasonable to expect that their sonar faculties contribute to their perception of depth and space.

  8. Certain cognitive dysfunctions do give rise, for example, to people without long-term memory, who live in an ever-present “now”.

  9. Which raises the question, does what we’ve discussed in relation to mind-body unity (within the context of a body as a “tool”) apply to neurons? After all, neurons also possess “tools” by which to apprehend and negotiate their ecosystem. They do this through their dendritic structures, and the synapses by which they communicate with others of their kind.

  10. NOVA, PBS. Airdate March 4, 1997. Secret of the wild child.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html.

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  1. Armadale, WA, Australia

    Stephen Jarosek

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Jarosek, S. Pragmatism, Neural Plasticity and Mind-Body Unity. Biosemiotics 6, 205–230 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-012-9145-5

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