The Intentionality And Volition Of Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 112):

Consciousness shows intentionality; it is of or about things or events. It is also to some extent bound up with volition.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the things or events that consciousness 'is of or about' are construals of experience as meaning, the content of consciousness itself.

The 'volition' of consciousness is desideration, one of the four most general processes of consciousness, along with cognition, perception and emotion.  Of these four, only desideration and cognition can project the contents of consciousness into existence; perception and emotion are limited to ranging over, or being caused by, the contents of consciousness.

The 'Jamesian' Properties Of Consciousnesss Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 111):

Consider what I call its "Jamesian" properties (after James, who discussed them): It is personal (possessed by individuals or selves); it is changing, yet continuous; it deals with objects independent of itself; and it is selective in time, that is, it does not exhaust all aspects of the objects with which it deals.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional linguistic theory, the experiential nucleus of human consciousness is individual, but the content of consciousness is collective.

This is because the experiential nucleus of consciousness is a senser mediating mental processes, or a sayer mediating verbal processes, whereas the content of consciousness is the meaning potential of language.

The objects that consciousness 'deals with' are construals of experience as meaning, the content of consciousness itself.

Because the potential meanings afforded by experience are inexhaustible, the ways that experience is construed as meaning vary according to culture, and within cultures, according to cultural context, including theories and ideologies, and potentially changes over time, as texts unfold, as meaning potential develops in the life-time of individuals, and as meaning potential evolves in communities.

Edelman's 'Concept Formation' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [4]

Edelman (1992: 110):

With this notion of concepts, in which the brain categorises its own activities (particularly its perceptual categorisations), it becomes possible to see how generalised categories and images might be embodied. It is also possible to see how events may be categorised as "past" without necessitating their being played out in present brain activities, as they must be for short-term memory and for the hippocampal succession leading to long-term memory. Furthermore, one can see how concept areas, by recursively restimulating portions of global mappings containing previous synaptic changes, give rise to combinations of relationships and categories. There is no need for any inherent logical order, classical categorisation, or prior explicit programming. Yet the means of concept formation described here could quite naturally be responsible for establishing the complex categories that I take up in the Postscript. Finally, because concept formation is based on the central triad of perceptual categorisation, memory, and learning, it is, by its very nature, intentional.

Blogger Comments: 

From the perspective of Systemic Functional linguistic theory, the formation of concepts through the brain categorising its own perceptual categorisations is the material means by which perceptual meanings, construed of experience, are organised into combinations of systems of related perceptual meaning, from the most general to the most delicate. Importantly, the intentionality of concept formation is of these meanings construed of experience.

Edelman's 'Concept Formation' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [3]

Edelman (1992: 109):

Brain areas giving rise to concepts must be able not only to stimulate parts of past global mappings but also to do so independently of current sensory input. They must also be able to distinguish classes of global mappings (for instance, those corresponding to objects from those corresponding to movements). They must then be able to connect reactivated portions of global mappings and mediate the long-term storage of such activities. This is necessary because concept formation requires memory.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the formation of concepts through the brain distinguishing classes of global mappings is the material means by which perceptual meanings, construed of experience, are organised into systems of related perceptual meaning, such as the distinction between objects and movements.

Edelman's 'Concept Formation' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Edelman (1992: 109):

Structures able to perform these activities are likely to be found in the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices of the brain. They must represent a mapping of types of maps. Indeed, they must be able to activate or reconstruct portions of past activities of global mappings of different types — for example, those involving different sensory modalities. They must also be able to recombine or compare them. This means that special reentrant connections from these higher-order cortical areas to other cortical areas and to the hippocampus and basal ganglia must exist to carry out concepts.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the formation of concepts through the brain mapping of types of maps is the material means by which perceptual meanings, construed of experience, are organised into systems of related perceptual meaning.

Edelman's 'Concept Formation' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Edelman (1992: 109):

The TNGS suggests that in forming concepts, the brain constructs maps of its own activities, not just of external stimuli, as in perception. According to the theory, the brain areas responsible for concept formation contain structures that categorise, discriminate, and recombine the various brain activities occurring in different kinds of global mappings. Such structures in the brain, instead of categorising outside inputs from sensory modalities, categorise parts of past global mappings according to modality, the presence or absence of movement, and the presence or absence of relationships between perceptual categorisations.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the formation of concepts through the brain constructing maps of its own activities occurring in different kinds of global mappings is the material means by which perceptual meanings, construed of experience, are organised into systems of related perceptual meaning.

Edelman's 'Conceptual Categorisations' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

 Edelman (1992: 109):

Conceptual categorisations are enormously heterogeneous and general. Concepts involve mixtures of relations concerning the real world, memories, and past behaviour. Unlike the brain areas mediating perceptions, those mediating concepts must be able to operate without immediate input.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, conceptual categorisations constitute, in the first instance, the organisation of ongoing construals of experience ("the real world") as perceptual meaning into systems of perceptual potential.  The operation of the brain areas subserving such concepts constitutes the instantiation of perceptual potential.

Given that memory is the ability to instantiate potential, and that this ability results from a process of continual re-instantiation, it might be hypothesised that one function of some forms of dreaming sleep is to instantiate such systems, and by so doing, help to establish and maintain the ability to instantiate them without immediate input from outside the brain.

Edelman's 'Conceptual Capabilities' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 108):

The word "concept" is generally used in connection with language, and is used in contexts in which one may talk of truth or falsehood. I have used the word concept, however, to refer to a capability that appears in evolution prior to the acquisition of linguistic primitives. What is this capability? 

An animal capable of having concepts identifies a thing or an action and on the basis of that identification controls its behaviour in a more or less general way. This recognition must be relational: It must be able to connect one perceptual categorisation to another, apparently unrelated one, even in the absence of the stimuli that triggered those categorisations. The relations that are captured must allow responses to general properties- "object," "up-down," "inside," and so on. Unlike elements of speech, however concepts are not conventional or arbitrary, do not require linkage to a speech community to develop, and do not depend on sequential presentation. Conceptual capabilities develop in evolution well before speech. Although they depend on perception and memory, they are constructed by the brain from elements that contribute to both of these functions.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, Edelman's 'conceptual capability' is the ability to organise construals of experience into systems of relations, a fundamental requirement for the evolution and development of semiotic systems.

At the most fundamental level, this is the ability to organise construals of experience into systems of perceptual meaning, and this, in turn, provides the means, in socio-semiotic species, of organising some of these construals, (Saussurean) signs, into systems of protolanguage, from which language evolved and develops in humans.

Recategorisation And Memory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 102, 104):

Since perceptual categories are not immutable and are altered by the ongoing behaviour of the animal, memory, in this view, results from a process of continual recategorisation. By its nature, memory is procedural and involves continual motor activity and repeated rehearsal in different contexts. Because of the new associations arising in these contexts, because of changing inputs and stimuli, and because different combinations of neuronal groups can give rise to a similar output, a given categorical response in memory may be achieved in several ways. Unlike computer-based memory, brain-based memory is inexact, but it is also capable of great degrees of generalisation.

The properties of association, inexactness, and generalisation all derive from the fact that perceptual categorisation, which is one of the initial bases of memory, is probabilistic in nature. It is no surprise that different individuals have such different memories and that they use them in such different fashions.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, each act of categorisation is an instantiation of meaning potential, and memory is the ability to instantiate potential.  On this basis, Edelman can be paraphrased to describe the ontogenesis of semiotic systems as follows:

Since semiotic systems are not immutable and are altered by ongoing behaviour, the ability to instantiate meaning potential, in this view, results from a process of continual re-instantiation. By its nature, the ability to instantiate meaning potential is procedural and involves continual motor activity and repeated rehearsal in different contexts.

The properties of association, inexactness, and generalisation all derive from the fact that the instantiation of meaning potential, the basis of the ability to instantiate meaning potential, is probabilistic in nature.

On the SFL model, a system of meaning potential is probabilistic, with its probabilities continually altered by the frequencies of feature instantiations, over the life-time of the individual.

Neural Memory And Recall Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 102):

To clarify the issue, let us agree that, whatever form it takes, memory is the ability to repeat a performance. The kind of performance depends on the structure of the system in which the memory is manifest, for memory is a system property. As such, memory in the nervous system is a dynamic property of populations of neuronal groups. … 

The TNGS proposes … that memory is the specific enhancement of a previously established ability to categorise. This kind of memory emerges as a population property from continual dynamic changes in the synaptic populations within global mappings — changes that allow a categorisation to occur in the first place. Alterations in the synaptic strengths of groups in a global mapping provide the biochemical basis of memory. …

In such a system, recall is not stereotypic. Under the influence of continually changing contexts, it changes, as the structure and dynamics of the neural populations involved in the original categorisation also change. Recall involves the activation of some, but not necessarily all, of the previously facilitated portions of global mappings. It can result in a categorisation response similar to a previous one, but at different times the elements contributing to that response are different, and in general they are likely to have been altered by ongoing behaviour.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, memory is the ability to instantiate previously encoded meaning potential, and recall is the process of instantiating previously encoded meaning potential.

Neural 'Conceptual Capabilities' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 101):

As important as the basic triad of perception, memory, and learning is, however, their functioning together cannot generate the kinds of capabilities that connect perceptual categorisations together to yield general relational properties. These properties emerge from the acquisition of conceptual capabilities — the ability to categorise in terms of general or abstract relations.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Edelman's notion of 'conceptual capabilities' refers to the ability of the brain to categorise its own activities, particularly those of perceptual categorisation.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this is the ability to organise isolated symbolic Token-Value pairs into paradigmatic systems.

In the case of perceptual categorisation, the isolated Token-Value pairs are those of sensorimotor activities (Token) and perceptual categorisations (Value), and the paradigmatic system that develops through these 'conceptual capabilities' is a somatic semiotic system: the perceptual meaning potential of an organism.

In the case of social semiotic systems, the isolated Token-Value pairs are signs: pairs of expression (Token) and content (Value), and the paradigmatic system that first develops through these 'conceptual capabilities' is the meaning potential of protolanguage, as occurs in other socio-semiotic species, and in the early stages of language development in humans, as theorised by Halliday.