A Conceptual Model Of Selfhood Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 131-2):

How does one become "conscious of being conscious"? In order to acquire this capacity, systems of memory must be related to a conceptual representation of a true self (or social self) acting on an environment and vice versa. A conceptual model of selfhood must be built, as well as a model of the past.  A number of steps of developmental learning that alter the individual's relation to the immediate present are necessary for this to take place.

Brain repertoires are required that are able to delay responses. (Repertoires of this type are known to be present in the frontal cortex.) These repertoires must be able to categorise the processes of primary consciousness itself. This is achieved largely through symbolic means…

Long-term storage of symbolic relations, acquired through interactions with other individuals of the same species, is critical to the self-concept. This acquisition is accompanied by the categorisation of sentences related to self and nonself and their connection to events in primary consciousness.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the ontogenesis of the social self relates to the interpersonal dimension of language, in which the self and intersubjective relations are enacted as meaning.  In terms of Edelman's TNGS, this suggests a correlation of systems of linguistic meaning potential with the systems of value-weighted perceptual potential that enable primary consciousness.

The Actualisation Of Meaning Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 130): 

It is not the case that the language centres "contain" concepts or that concepts "arise" from speech. Meaning arises from the interaction of value category memory with the combined activity of conceptual areas and speech areas. 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, systems of linguistic meaning potential correlate with systems of perceptual meaning potential (conceptual value-category memory).  Linguistic meaning arises for the speaker when such potential is instantiated, and for the hearer when such instances are correlated with potential.

The Notion Of A Genetically Programmed Language-Acquisition Device

Edelman (1992: 126):

Speech is special and unique to Homo sapiens. Can we account for its evolutionary emergence without creating a gulf between linguistic theory and biology? Yes, provided that we account for speech in epigenetic as well as genetic terms. This means abandoning any notion of a genetically programmed language-acquisition device. It does not mean, however, that specialised heritable structures were not necessary for speech to arise. Indeed, the evidence for the existence of specialised heritable structures related to speech is not hard to find.

Blogger Comments:

The notion of a genetically programmed language-acquisition device is the sine qua non of Chomskyan Formal Linguistics, a theory couched in terms of Platonic Essentialism and the Cartesian res cogitans.

The Necessary Bases For Linguistic Meanings Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 126):

I propose that before language evolved, the brain already had the necessary bases for meanings in its capacities to produce and act on concepts. The evolution in primates of rich conceptual memories, and in hominids of phonological capabilities and special brain regions for the production, ordering, and memory of speech sounds, then opened up the possibility of the emergence of higher-order consciousness.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the systems of value-weighted perceptual potential (Edelman's 'concepts'), which opened up the possibility of the emergence of primary consciousness, are the necessary bases for the emergence of the meanings of protolanguage, from which the meanings of language later emerged, opening up the possibility of the emergence of higher-order consciousness.

Primary Consciousness As A Prerequisite For Language, Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 126):

The considerations presented so far suggest that a model for speech acquisition requires primary consciousness. Furthermore, the development of a rich syntax and grammar is highly improbable without the prior evolution of a neural means for concepts. If this turns out to be true, it will be obvious why computers are unable to deal with semantic situations. Their embodiment is wrong; it does not lead to consciousness.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, in requiring primary consciousness, the emergence of language, phylogenetically and ontogenetically, thus requires the prior ability to correlate current construals of experience as instances of perceptual meaning with systems of value-weighted perceptual potential.

(Semiotic) Prerequisites For (Proto-)Language Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 125-6):

To trace how these abilities may have developed through the evolutionary emergence of a symbolic memory, it will be necessary to consider how speech evolved and how it is acquired. Therefore, I will first consider how the emergence of true language required the evolution of the vocal tract and the brain centres for speech production and comprehension. I then will confront an issue central to this essay: whether concepts are formed prior to speech. In doing so, I will conclude that a model of self-nonself interaction probably had to emerge prior to true speech.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, concepts — in Edelman's sense of self-nonself interactions — are systems of value weighted perceptual potential, and as such, must evolve even before the social semiotic systems of protolanguage that come to be correlated with them.

The Ability To Construct A Socially Based Selfhood Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 125):

Higher-order consciousness obviously requires the continued operation of the structures serving primary consciousness. In addition, it involves the ability to construct a socially based selfhood, to model the world in terms of the past and the future, and to be directly aware. Without a symbolic memory, these abilities cannot develop.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the ability to construct a socially based selfhood is afforded by social semiotic systems, and begins in protolanguage, where a systemic distinction is made between the intersubjective and the objective.

The Means Of Transcending Primary Consciousness Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 125):

How can the tyranny of this remembered present be broken? The imprecise answer is: By the evolution of new forms of symbolic memory and new systems serving social communication and transmission. In its most developed form, this means the evolutionary acquisition of the capability for language.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the limitations of primary consciousness are transcended through the emergence of social semiotic systems, from protolanguage to language.

Primary Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 125):

Perceptual categorisation, for example, is nonconscious and can be carried out by classification couples, or even by automata. It treats signals from the outside world — that is, signals from sensory sheets and organs. 

By contrast, conceptual categorisation works from within the brain, requires perceptual categorisation and memory, and treats the activities of portions of global mappings as its substrate. 

Connecting the two kinds of categorisation with an additional reentrant path for each sensory modality (that is, in addition to the path that allows conceptual learning to take place) gives rise in primary consciousness to a correlated scene, or "image." 

This image can be regenerated in part by memory in animals with primary consciousness, but it cannot be regenerated in reference to a symbolic memory. By this I mean a memory for symbols and their associated meanings. And so an animal with primary consciousness alone is strongly tied to the succession of events in real time.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, perceptual categorisation is the construal of experience (signals from sensory sheets and organs) as perceptual meaning.

By contrast, conceptual categorisation is the organisation of such perceptual meanings into systems of perceptual potential, differentially weighted, during experience, according to evolutionarily selected values (e.g. attractive vs repellent).

The correlation of ongoing construals of experience as instances of perceptual meaning with the system of value-weighted perceptual potential yields a scene or "image" that is the range or cause of a mental process unfolding through a senser (primary consciousness).

Human Primary Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 124):

It is curious that we, as human beings with higher-order consciousness, cannot "see the world" with our primary consciousness alone. Creatures with primary consciousness, while possessing mental images, have no capacity to view those images from the vantage point of a socially constructed self. Yet one who has such a self as a result of higher-order consciousness needs it to link one mental image to the next in order to appreciate the workings of primary consciousness! Higher-order consciousness cannot be abandoned without losing the descriptive power it makes possible.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, in humans, the systems of perceptual meanings of primary consciousness are correlated with the systems of linguistic meanings of higher-order consciousness, thereby making it impossible to "see the world" — construe experience as meaning — through primary consciousness alone. The descriptive power made possible by higher-order consciousness is the descriptive power of language.

The Efficacy Of Primary Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 121):

Consciousness is not merely an epiphenomenon. According to the TNGS, primary consciousness helps to abstract and organise complex changes in an environment involving multiple parallel signals. Even though some of these signals may have no direct causal connection to each other in the outside world, they may be significant indicators to the animal of danger or reward. This is because primary consciousness connects their features in terms of the saliency determined by the animal's past history and its values.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, primary consciousness 'helps to abstract and organise' construals of experience as perceptual meaning, and connects current instantiations of perceptual meaning with the system of perceptual potential, differentially weighted for adaptive value, as accumulated through the animal's past history of construing experience as perceptual meaning.

The (Primary) Conscious Process Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 121):

In the conscious process, current value-free perceptual categorisation interacts with value-dominated memory. This occurs before perceptual events contribute further to the alteration of that memory. When such events do contribute to the alteration of that memory, they are, in general, no longer in the specious or remembered present, that is, they are no longer in primary consciousness.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, in the conscious process, current construals of experience as instances of perceptual meaning are correlated with systems of value-laden perceptual potential.  This occurs before the instances alter the probabilities of the system of perceptual potential.  When such instances do contribute to the probabilities of perceptual potential, they are, in general, no longer in primary consciousness (since they are no longer being instantiated).

Primary Consciousness As A "Remembered Present" Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 119-20):

To summarise: The brain carries out a process of conceptual "self-categorisation." Self-categories are built by matching past perceptual categories with signals from value systems, a process carried out by cortical systems capable of conceptual functions. This value-category system then interacts via reentrant connections with brain areas carrying out ongoing perceptual categorisations of world events and signals. Perceptual (phenomenal) experience arises from the correlation by a conceptual memory of a set of ongoing perceptual categorisations. Primary consciousness is a kind of "remembered present."

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, primary consciousness is the correlation of systems of individually valued perceptual potential ("remembered") with current construals of experience as instances of perceptual meaning ("present").

Mental Images Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 119):

My use of the word "scene" is meant to convey the idea that responses to roughly contemporaneous events in the world are connected by a set of reentrant processes. As human beings possessing higher-order consciousness, we experience primary consciousness as a "picture" or a "mental image" of ongoing categorised events. But as we shall see when we examine higher-order consciousness, there is no actual image or sketch in the brain. The "image" is a correlation between different kinds of categorisations.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, a 'scene' is a correlation of perceptual meanings construed of experience.  In humans, this is further correlated with linguistic meanings construed of experience.

The Interaction Of Perceptual Categorisation and Value-Category Memory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 118-9):

A third and critical evolutionary development provides a sufficient means for the appearance of primary consciousness. This is a special reentrant circuit that emerged during evolution as a new component of neuroanatomy. This circuit allows for continual reentrant signalling between the value-category memory and the ongoing global mappings that are concerned with perceptual categorisation in real time. 

An animal without these new reentrant connections can carry out perceptual categorisations in various sensory modalities and can even develop a conceptual value-category memory. Such an animal cannot, however, link perceptual events into an ongoing scene. 

With the appearance of the new reentrant circuits in each modality, a conceptual categorisation of concurrent perceptions can occur before these perceptual signals contribute lastingly to that memory. This interaction between a special kind of memory and perceptual categorisation gives rise to primary consciousness. 

Given the appropriate reentrant circuits in the brain, this "bootstrapping process" takes place in all sensory modalities in parallel and simultaneously, thus allowing for the construction of a complex scene. The coherence of this scene is coordinated by the conceptual value-category memory even if the individual perceptual categorisation events that contribute to it are causally independent.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the interaction between ongoing perceptual categorisation and value-category memory, that gives rise to primary consciousness, is the correlation of ongoing construals of experience as instances of perceptual meaning with the value-weighted system of perceptual potential.

Value-Category Memory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 118-9):

The appearance of primary consciousness, according to the model, depends on the evolution of three functions. Two of these evolutionary developments are necessary but not sufficient for consciousness. 

The first is the development of the cortical system in such a way that when conceptual functions appeared they could be linked strongly to the limbic system, extending already existing capacities to carry out learning. 

The second is the development of a new kind of memory based on this linkage. Unlike the system of perceptual categorisation, this conceptual memory system is able to categorise responses in the different brain systems that carry out perceptual categorisation and it does this according to the demands of limbic brain stem value systems. This "value-category" memory allows conceptual responses to occur in terms of the mutual interactions of the thalamo-cortical and limbic-brain stem systems.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, conceptual functions entail the organisation of perceptual meanings into systems, and the linkage of these to the limbic system is the material means by which perceptual meanings are assigned values that have been evolutionarily selected as adaptive for the species.

Since memory is the ability to repeat a performance, the value-category memory that is based on this linkage is the ability to instantiate such value-weighted perceptual systemic potential.

The Weighting Of Construals Of Experience With Evolutionarily Selected Values Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 118):

The advantage provided by the ability to construct a scene is that events that may have had significance to an animal's past learning can be related to new events, however causally unconnected those events are in the outside world. Even more importantly, this relationship can be established in terms of the demands of the value systems of the individual animal. By these means, the salience of an event is determined not only by its position and energy in the physical world but also by the relative value it has been accorded in the past history of the individual animal as a result of learning. It is the evolutionary development of the ability to create a scene that led to the emergence of primary consciousness.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the ongoing pairing of construals of experience with evolutionarily selected values entails that the ontogenesis of systems of perceptual potential is differentially weighted according to the values of different species, and according to the different experiences of individuals within species.

Edelman's 'Scene' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 118):

But in some animal species with cortical systems, the categorisations of separate causally unconnected parts of the world can be correlated and bound into a scene. By a scene I mean a spatiotemporally ordered set of categorisations of familiar and non-familiar events, some with and some without necessary physical or causal connections to others in the same scene.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, such a 'scene' is an ongoing instantiation of perceptual meanings, construed of experience, that are the range, or cause, of mental processes unfolding through a senser.

Qualia As Forms Of Higher-Order Categorisation Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 116):

As it will turn out after we consider models for primary and higher-order consciousness, qualia may be usefully viewed as forms of higher-order categorisation, as relations reportable to the self and then somewhat less satisfactorily reportable to others with similar mental equipment.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, qualia can be understood as a senser mediating mental processes that range over, or are caused by, systems of perceptual meanings (± linguistic meanings) construed of experience.  That is, they are not the meanings (categorisations) alone.

Orders Of Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 115-6):

Higher-order consciousness is based on the occurrence of direct awareness in a human being who has language and a reportable subjective life. Primary consciousness may be composed of phenomenal experiences such as mental images, but it is bound to a time around the measurable present, lacks concepts of self, past, and future, and lies beyond direct descriptive individual report from its own standpoint. Accordingly, beings with primary consciousness alone cannot construct theories of consciousness — even wrong ones!

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, if primary consciousness involves a senser sensing perceptual meanings, and higher-order consciousness involves a senser sensing linguistic meanings, then, between the two poles, are various orders of consciousness that involve a senser sensing protolinguistic meanings, as in the case of social species.

The Notion Of 'Qualia' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 114):

Qualia constitute the collection of personal or subjective experiences, feelings, and sensations that accompany awareness. They are phenomenal states — "how things seem to us" as human beings. For example, the "redness" of a red object is a quale. Qualia are discriminable parts of a mental scene that nonetheless has an overall unity. They may range in intensity and clarity from "raw feels" to highly refined discriminanda. These sensations may be very precise when they accompany perceptual experiences; in the absence of perception, they may be more or less diffuse but nonetheless discernible as "visual," "auditory," and so on. In general, in the normal waking state, qualia are accompanied by a sense of spatiotemporal continuity. Often, the phenomenal scene is accompanied by feelings or emotions, however faint. Yet the actual sequence of qualia is highly individual, resting on a series of occasions in one's own personal history or immediate experience.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the notion of qualia embraces

• mental processes actualised through sensers and 
• the phenomenal ranges or causes of such processes.  

Such phenomena are construals of an individual's experience as perceptual meanings, which, in humans, are correlated with the meanings of language.

Higher-Order Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 112):

In contrast, higher-order consciousness involves the recognition by a thinking subject of his or her own acts or affections. It embodies a model of the personal, and of the past and the future as well as the present. It exhibits direct awareness — the non-inferential or immediate awareness of mental episodes without the involvement of sense organs or receptors. It is what we as humans have in addition to primary consciousness. We are conscious of being conscious.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional linguistic theory, these features of higher-order consciousness are provided by language.

Higher-order consciousness involves a senser mediating mental processes — of perception, cognition, desideration, emotion — that range over, or are caused by, the meanings of language (phenomena) construed of experience, or a sayer mediating verbal processes that range over the wordings that realise the meanings of language.

However, more than this, higher-order consciousness involves the projection of the meanings of language into existence through a senser mediating cognitive or desiderative mental processes, or the projection of wordings that realise the meanings of language, through a sayer mediating verbal processes.

Through the projection of wordings, higher-order consciousness also involves the enactment of the self and intersubjective relations as interpersonal meaning (propositions, proposals, and assessments).

And from a textual perspective, higher-order consciousness involves the weaving together of the ideational and interpersonal dimensions of consciousness in ways that are coherent for a given context.

Primary Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 112):

I have made a distinction, which I believe is a fundamental one, between primary consciousness and higher-order consciousness. Primary consciousness is the state of being mentally aware of things in the world — of having mental images in the present. But it is not accompanied by any sense of a person with a past and future. It is what one may presume to be possessed by some nonlinguistic and nonsemantic animals (which ones they may be, I discuss later on).

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, primary conscious involves senser-mediated mental processes — of perception, cognition, desideration, cognition — ranging over (or caused by) the contents of consciousness, these being the systems of perceptual meaning potential that an organism has construed of experience.

Mental Images As A "Mirror Of Reality" Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 112):

Some psychologists suggest that consciousness is marked by the presence of mental images and by their use to regulate behaviour. But it is not a simple copy of experience (a "mirror of reality"), nor is it necessary for a good deal of behaviour. Some kinds of learning, conceptual processes, and even some forms of inference proceed without it.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, mental images are construals of experience as perceptual meaning.  In protolinguistic species, these are correlated with the meanings of the respective protolanguage, and in post-infant humans they are correlated with the meanings of language. The experience of mental images involves a senser sensing the contents of consciousness, prototypically through processes of visual perception or cognition (imagination).

The reason mental images are not a copy of experience (a "mirror of reality") is that meaning is a property of semiotic systems, not a property of the experience that is transformed into meaning.  That is, there is no meaning outside semiotic systems that can be copied or reflected.

One reason physicists regard Quantum theory as strange is that the Laws of Physics are seen as a "(mirror of) reality" instead of a semiotic reconstrual of experience.