A Physical Science Of The Brain Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 11):

Keeping in line with physics, should we declare an embargo on all the psychological traits we talk about in everyday life: consciousness, thought, beliefs, desires? Should we adopt the elaborate sanitary regimes of behaviourism? Should amorous partners say to each other: "That was good for you; was it good for me too?" The ludicrousness of this last resort becomes evident when we consider the denial it entails. Either we deny the existence of what we experience before we "become scientists" (for example, our own awareness), or we declare that science (read "physical science") cannot deal with such matters.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, physical science models the brain in terms of the material and relational processes from which emerge the conscious processes, mental and verbal, that project ideas (thoughts and desires) and locutions (spoken and written texts).  The relation between the two levels can be construed as a realisational relation between neurological form and semiotic function, wherein semiotic functions become established through being encoded by reference to neurological form.

Physiological Models Of The Brain Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 11):

But as Whitehead duly noted, the mind was put back into nature with the rise of physiology and physiological psychology in the latter part of the nineteenth century. We have had an embarrassing time knowing what to do with it ever since. just as there is something special about relativity and quantum mechanics, there is something special about the problems raised by these physiological developments. Are observers themselves "things," like the rest of the objects in their world? How do we account for the curious ability of observers (indeed, their compelled need) to carve up their world into categories of things — to refer to things of the world when things themselves can never so refer? When we ourselves observe observers, this property of intentionality is unavoidable.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the rise of physiology and physiological psychology did not put the mind into nature; it merely began the study of the brain from within the confines of Galilean epistemology.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, physiological models of the brain are concerned only with the outer domains of experience, doing and being; they are not concerned with the 'conscious-semiotic centre of the ideational universe' (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 131): the symbolic processing of sensing and saying that creates content — meaning and wording — through projection.

From this perspective, observers are 'conscious things', and it is this that distinguishes them from non-observers.  Human observers "carve up their world", not by "referring to things in the world", but by construing their experience as meanings, such as 'observer', 'object' and so on.

'Einsteinian And Heisenbergian Observers' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 10-1):

Even with the startling revelations that at velocities approaching that of light or at very small distances the observer is embedded in his or her measurements, the goal of physics remains Galilean: to describe laws that are invariant. We have no reason to abandon this goal. This is because Einsteinian and Heisenbergian observers, while embedded in their own measurements, are still psychologically transparent. Their consciousness and motives, despite occasional arguments about their importance to quantum measurements by philosophers of physics, do not have to be taken into account to practise physics. The mind remains well removed from nature.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, physics doesn't describe laws, but reconstrues material phenomena — construed of experience — as theoretical meanings, including laws.  The laws are a feature of the semiotic description, not of the described material.  The description and the described are different orders of construed experience.  Moreover, in terms of interpersonal meaning, physical laws are modalised statements (probability and usuality), not commands or modulated statements (obligation), as the limit of physics, quantum theory, demonstrates.

Einsteinian and Heisenbergian observers are "embedded in their own measurements" in the sense that any perception of material phenomena requires a senser through which the mental process of perception unfolds.  It is in this sense that consciousness has been introduced into physical descriptions of nature, thereby creating an inconsistency with the Galilean epistemology that forms their foundation, as previously explained.  This is, however, distinct from any desiderative mental processes ("motives") of observers, which, as Edelman says, do not have to be taken into account to practise physics.

The Inconsistency Between Galilean Epistemology And Quantum Physics Though Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 9-10):

Even today after the Einsteinian revolution and the emergence of quantum mechanics, the Galilean procedure has not been swept aside. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity showed how the position and the velocity of the observer altered the measurement of space and time, and by taking acceleration into account it altered the very meaning of the word matter. Quantum mechanics showed that the operation of measurement in the domain of the very small ineluctably involves the actions of the observer who has to choose, within the uncertainty dictated by Planck's constant, the level of precision with which he or she wishes to know either the position or the momentum of a subatomic particle. This reflects what physicists call the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Blogger Comments:

While it is true that 'the Galilean procedure has not been swept aside' after the emergence of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, these theories differ significantly from 'the Galilean procedure' in as much as both involve the observer in the theory.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, by including the observer, the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics construe experience as meanings that are the cognitive projections of conscious processing — senser and mental process — whereas the original Galilean procedure construes experience as meanings in the absence of the conscious processing that projects them.

As shown in previous posts on Quantum theory, it is this (unrecognised) inconsistency between the two epistemologies that confuses physicists with regard to the "intrusion" of consciousness into the Galilean domain of primary qualities: the position and motion of bodies.