Edelman's Individual "Soul" Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 40):

In considering our minds, we must also consider both our kinship with and our differences from other species. As I discuss in chapter 16, one difference is that each of us has an individual "soul" based on language. Whatever we find out about the properties of language, however, the sad fact is that neither psychology nor biology will permit the transmigration of souls.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, 'an individual "soul" based on language' is Edelman's higher-order consciousness.  From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, because language is a social semiotic system distributed across members of a linguistic community, each individual consciousness is a uniquely developed individuated variant of the collective consciousness afforded by the language of the community.

Edelman's Transorganismic Levels Of Brain Systems Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 7):

The findings of neuroscientists indicate that mental processes arise from the workings of enormously intricate brain systems at many different levels of organisation.  How many? Well we don't really know, but I would include molecular levels, cellular levels, organismic levels (the whole creature), and transorganismic levels (that is, communication of one sort or another).  Each level can be split even further, but for now I will consider only these basic divisions.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the inclusion of transorganismic levels of organisation, involving communication between organisms, additionally acknowledges not only the verbal domain of consciousness but also, implicitly, its interpersonal dimension.

The Thoughts Of Descartes Vs Systemic Functional Linguistics & Neural Darwinism

Russell (1961: 549):

This leads to a consideration of different kinds of ideas.  The commonest of errors, Descartes says, is to think that my ideas are like outside things.  (The word 'idea' includes sense-perceptions, as used by Descartes.)  Ideas seem to be of three sorts: (1) those that are innate, (2) those that are foreign and come from without, (3) those that are invented by me.  The second kind of ideas, we naturally suppose, are like outside objects … and it therefore seems reasonable to suppose that a foreign thing imprints its likeness on me. … The reasons for supposing that ideas of sense come from without are therefore inconclusive.

Blogger Comments:

In Systemic Functional Linguistics, "outside things" are meanings — phenomena — construed of experience.  This is not to deny the experience, merely to acknowledge that both "outside" and "things" are meanings construed of experience in language.

The grammar construes such phenomena as both the Agents and the Range of the perceptual mental processing of a Senser.

The view that "a foreign thing imprints its likeness on me" is known as instructionism.  According to the selectionist model of Gerald Edelman, the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, instructionism is not supported by an analysis of the data.  At the neuronal level, impacts of photons on the retina, for example, 'select' randomly neuronal groups in the visual cortex by strengthening their synaptic connections.  They are 'selected' in the sense that this makes more likely to fire as a unit in the future in discriminating visual inputs.