Reflections on Edelman

Abstract

Both Dennett and Edelman are engaged in constructing models of the mind from the bottom up; but Edelman’s has the great advantage of being built directly in terms of the anatomy and processes of the brain, while Dennett’s is essentially a speculative model built in terms of the computer analogy. Their views are by no means always in conflict. Dennett’s account of a pandemonium of competing multiple drafts (which may itself perhaps owe something to recent developments in neuroscience) can be compared with the picture of ‘topobiological competition’ between neurons and neuronal groups drawn by Edelman. But at this level Edelman’s account is far more detailed and convincing. It gives a central place to the morphology and topology of brain development and to the different kinds of maps which emerge from them — an aspect of what happens in the brain that has no counterpart in Dennett’s model, apart from a brief reference to the representation of space by a ‘bit-map’ (a term which he leaves unexplained). Dennett’s account includes many insights of value, particularly perhaps with regard to narratives; but I would wish to fit them, with whatever adjustments may be necessary, into the framework of Edelman’s model, rather than vice versa.