Objectivism Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Edelman (1992: 152):

The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories. (It is true, however, that some "natural objects" appear to follow these categories because of the interactive features of our phenotype and the physical properties of these objects.) … Physics, which studies such a world, describes its formal correlative properties but does not contain a theory of unique categories for the partitioning of macroscopic objects. As I point out in the Postscript, objectivism fails.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, 'the world of categories' is the world of meaning construed of experience.  'Natural objects' and their physical properties are construals of experience as material order meaning (phenomena).  Physics involves reconstruing the material order meanings of language as the meanings of the language of theory.  Objectivism fails because meaning is immanent within semiotic systems, not transcendent of them.

The Construction Of An 'Imaginative Domain' Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 151-2):

For now, we can only speculate on such matters. But we do know that higher-order consciousness leads to the construction of an imaginative domain, one of feeling, emotion, thought, fantasy, self, and will. It constructs artificial objects that are mental. In culture, these acts lead to studies of stable relations among things (science), of stable relations among stable mental objects (mathematics), and of stable relations between sentences that are applicable to things and to mental objects (logic). One possible reason for the incompleteness of such domains, as shown for mathematics by Kurt Gödel, is that pattern formation in the mind always requires the higher-order bootstraps that are necessary for consciousness. Thinking occurs in terms of synthesised patterns, not logic, and for this reason, it may always exceed in its reach syntactical, or mechanical, relationships.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, it is the meaning potential of language that provides higher-order consciousness. Through the mental processes of consciousness, afforded by language, a universe of meaning (phenomena) can be perceived, felt, thought and desired — meanings which can then be reconstrued as the meanings of science and other theoretical fields. Through the verbal processes of consciousness, the wordings that realise these meanings can be exchanged between individuals in a community. Any "incompleteness" in the domain of meaning relates to the fact that it is an evolving system whose material basis is the selection of variant neuronal groups in global mappings in the brains of individuals in communities, continuously down the generations.

The Qualia Of Higher-Order Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Edelman (1992: 151):

To remain scientific, the extended TNGS must assume that both the human subject and the human scientific observer who studies that subject experience qualia. This assumption is necessary to assure that meaningful intersubjective scientific exchange occurs. According to the theory, qualia are categorisations by higher-order consciousness of the "scenes" and "memories" provided by primary consciousness. They involve recategorical relationships that are ultimately governed by how evolutionarily selected values interact with memory. Creatures that have primary consciousness alone can neither report qualia nor reflect on them. If they experience them (and we can only infer that they do), they experience them solely in the remembered present.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the "scenes" and "memories" provided by primary consciousness are value-weighted systems of perceptual meaning.  The qualia of higher-order consciousness are the linguistic values assigned to such perceptual tokens, through the correlation of systems of perceptual meaning with systems of linguistic meaning.

'Objects In The Physical World' Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 150-1):

"Objective" science and language both depend on the metastability or constancy of objects in the physical world. The consciousness theory assumes that physics and evolution, supplemented by the assumptions of the TNGS, are sufficient to construct a science of mind. No scientific theory of a single actual mind is possible, however, any more than a scientific account of all historical events in the world is possible.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, 'objects in the physical world' are construals of experience as perceptual meaning, which in humans, is correlated with the meaning of language, the content of higher-order consciousness.  By the same token, the meanings of the field of science are reconstruals of the meanings of language.

Philosophical And Mythological Models Of The Mind Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 148):

Is it any wonder that philosophers, thinking about the problem of the mind without this knowledge [of brain organisation], were tempted to postulate entities, that physicists have been tempted to postulate exotic new material fields, and that those in hope of immortality continue to postulate eternal spirits? It may come as a disappointment to such thinkers that the answers to many of the fundamental problems of mind will come from analysing the complexity of its organisation, which is governed by novel ordering principles.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the entities postulated in philosophy and the eternal spirits postulated in mythology in thinking about the mind are reconstruals of the meanings construed of experience by language.

The notion of 'mind' itself, as an entity, is a reconstrual of the Medium of various types of mental Process: cognition, perception, emotion, desideration, though the Medium of the last of these has also been reconstrued in philosophy as the 'Will'.

As previously argued, the notion of an 'eternal spirit' or 'soul' in mythical symbolism is a reconstrual of individuated meaning potential itself.

As previously argued, from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, theories (ordering principles) do not govern data (brain organisation), just as a map does not govern the landscape it models.  A theory accounts for data, but it does not govern it, and its 'rules' are probabilistic statements, not obligatory commands.

From Neuronal Group Selection To Language Evolution Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 148-9):

But the brain is subjected to two processes of selection, natural selection and somatic selection. The result is a subtle and multilayered affair, full of loops and layers. From genes to proteins, from cells to orderly development, from electrical activity to neurotransmitter release, from sensory sheets to maps, from shape to function and behaviour, from social communication back to any and all of these levels, we are confronted with a system of somatic selection that is continually subjected to natural selection.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, somatic selection in the brain — neuronal group selection — refers to the fact that the firing of a group of neurones increases the probability that the same group — rather than others — will fire again in the future under similar circumstances.  It is somatic selection that provides the material basis for semogenesis: the logogenesis of texts, the ontogenesis of meaning potential in (the lifetime of) the individual, and the phylogenesis of language in the species.  This can be explained as follows.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, logogenesis provides the 'material' for ontogenesis which provides the 'material' for phylogenesis. The logogenesis of a text involves the instantiation of options in systems of meaning potential.  The instantiation of such options increases the probability that these options — rather than others — will be instantiated in the future under similar circumstances.  The ontogenesis of meaning potential in the lifetime of the individual thus includes the continual alteration of instantiation probabilities.  The phylogenesis of meaning potential in the species thus includes the continual alteration of instantiation probabilities beyond the lifetime of individuals in language communities.

Importantly, somatic selection systems evolve through natural selection, but linguistic-cultural evolution occurs through somatic selection, not natural selection.  Natural selection merely provides the material basis that affords linguistic-cultural evolution.

Theories Of Mind Reached By Conscious Introspection

Edelman (1992: 145-6):

My general conclusion, important for all theories of mind, is that given the existence of acts driven by the unconscious, conclusions reached by conscious introspection may be subject to grave error. In other words, Cartesian incorrigibility is incompatible with the facts. Descartes, an adult genius with mastery over language, did not take several things into account. The first is the developmentally determined nature of higher-order consciousness. (Recall that French babies, even gifted ones, are unlikely to assert, "Je pense, donc je suis.") The second is that his linguistically based consciousness is not self-sufficient and beyond doubt. Given that it is linguistic, it is always in dialogue with some "other," even if that interlocutor is not present. The third is that unconscious mechanisms block and intervene with what we consider to be transparent and obvious lines of thought.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Chomskyan Formal Linguistic Theory is couched in terms of the Cartesian res cogitans, and concerned with modelling knowledge of language.  The data on which knowledge of language is theorised are instances of such knowledge, namely: intuitions about language gained through introspection.

Limits On The Study Of The Mind Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 136, 139):

Embodiment imposes ineluctable limits. The wish to go beyond these limits creates contradiction, fantasy, and a mystique that makes the study of the mind especially challenging, for after a certain point, in its individual creations at least, the mind lies beyond scientific reach. Scientific study recognises this limit without indulging in mystical exercises or illusions. The reason for the limit is straightforward: The forms of embodiment that lead to consciousness are unique in each individual, unique to his or her body and individual history. …

Why is there a consciousness mystique — a desire for universal explanation, for conservation of consciousness as an individual experience, time without end? A reasonable answer seems to be that each consciousness depends on its unique history and embodiment. And given that a human conscious self is constructed, somewhat paradoxically, by social interactions, yet has been selected for during evolution to realise mainly the aims and satisfactions of each biological individual, it is perhaps no surprise that as individuals we want an explanation that science cannot give. It is also perhaps no surprise that we desire immortality. 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the individual creations of the human mind are the contents of individuated consciousness: the meanings of language.  Such meanings become accessible to scientific study when they are verbally projected as instances in the form of wording (spoken and written texts).  As James Burke observed in The Day The Universe Changed:

When you read a book, you hold another's mind in your hands.

A major challenge to the scientific study of the mind is a desiderative projection (a wish), rather than a cognitive projection (a thought), namely: the construal of mind as an immaterial soul that never dies.  The origin of this model can be explained as follows.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the language of mythology constitutes the oldest surviving use of metaphor — in this case, lexical metaphor — to reconstrue experience.  As argued here, the Creator God of Abrahamic mythology can be understood as standing for the meaning potential of language itself, with God's creation standing for the contents of consciousness, the construals of experience that can be projected, mentally or verbally, into semiotic existence. (This set of metaphors might be seen as a later rendering of the earlier Hindu conception of the god Vishnu as a dreamer whose dreaming creates the world.) To be clear, on this model, it is meaning potential itself that (modestly) construes itself as God.

On a model where meaning potential is reconstrued as God, the meaning potential of an individual is reconstrued as an individuation of God, a soul.  The immortality of the god is then attributed to its individuations, souls, in contradiction to the mortality of their embodiment.

"What Lies Beneath The Self" Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 136):

With this view of higher-order consciousness, it is possible to see roughly what lies beneath the self that connects phonology to semantics in a naming sentence. Once a self is developed through social and linguistic interactions on a base of primary consciousness, a world is developed that requires naming and intending. This world reflects inner events that are recalled, and imagined events, as well as outside events that are perceptually experienced. Tragedy becomes possible — the loss of the self by death or mental disorder, the remembrance of unassuageable pain. By the same token, a high drama of creation and endless imagination emerges.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the self of higher-order consciousness arises through the enactment of intersubjective relations as the interpersonal meaning of language; and this arises simultaneously with the construal of experience as ideational meaning of language — the transformation of the meaningless into a "world" of meaning.

Such meaning constitutes the content of consciousness: the phenomena of mental processes of perception, cognition (including remembering and imagining), desideration and emotion that unfold through a senser.  Through mental processes of cognition, thoughts/propositions can be projected into semiotic existence; through mental processes of desideration, wishes/proposals can be projected into semiotic existence.  Through verbal processes, such projected meanings can be exchanged with others in the form of wording.

The loss of each self is the loss of a world of meaning.  As Laurie Anderson observed in World Without End

When my father died it was like a whole library had burned down

The Qualia Of Higher-Order Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [1]

Edelman (1992: 136):

But with us, it is different. Qualia, individual to each of us, are recategorisations by higher-order consciousness of value-laden perceptual relations in each sensory modality or their conceptual combinations with each other. We report them crudely to others; they are more directly reportable to ourselves. This set of relationships is usually but not always connected to value. Freedom from time allows the location in time of phenomenal states by a suffering or joyous self. And the presence of appropriate language improves discrimination enormously; skill in wine tasting, for example, may be considered the result of a passion based on qualia that are increasingly refined by language.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the qualia of higher-order consciousness are the correlations of instances of value-laden perceptual meaning (of primary consciousness) with instances of linguistic meaning.  The correlation constitutes the material basis of a mental process and the medium through which the process unfolds constitutes a senser.

Clearly, the more linguistic distinctions, the more differentiated the qualia, the more refined the construal of experience.

The Qualia Of Primary Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguisics

Edelman (1992: 135-6):

If animals having only primary consciousness also have qualia, they cannot report them explicitly either to a human observer or to themselves, for they lack conceptual selves. Like flashlights illuminating a room, their qualia, if they occur, exist only for the duration of the remembered present of the scene. We can only adduce their possible presence by observing the behavioural responses of these animals.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the reason animals having only primary consciousness cannot report qualia to humans or themselves is because they lack the means of reporting them: language (which provides 'conceptual selves').

The qualia of primary consciousness are instantiations of value-weighted perceptual meaning potential — the correlation of current perceptual categorisation with the value-category memory established through previous experience.

This constitutes the instantiation of a mental process of perception, mediated by a senser, with perceptual meaning as its phenomenal range or cause.

The Adaptive Advantages Of Higher-Order Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 133-5):

Primary consciousness provides the ability to determine by internal criteria the salience of patterns among multiple parallel signals arising in complex environments. That salience is largely but not completely determined by the previous history and learning of the individual animal. Higher-order consciousness adds socially constructed selfhood to this picture of biological individuality. The freeing of parts of conscious thought from the constraints of an immediate present and the increased richness of social communication allow for the anticipation of future states and for planned behaviour. With that ability come the abilities to model the world, to make explicit comparisons and to weigh outcomes; through such comparisons comes the possibility of reorganising plans. Obviously, these capabilities have adaptive value.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, it is language that provides higher-order consciousness, of which 'socially constructed self-hood' is its interpersonal dimension.  It is language that enables 'the anticipation of future states' and 'planned behaviour'.  It is the ideational dimension of language that constitutes the potential to construe experience as meaning ('model the world') and reconstrue such meaning ('make explicit comparisons and to weigh outcomes [in] reorganising plans').

Higher-Order Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 133):

While the embodiment of meaning and reference can be related to real objects and events by the reentrant connections between value-category memory and perception (primary consciousness), simultaneous interactions can also occur between a symbolic memory and the same conceptual centres. An inner life, based on the emergence of language in a speech community, becomes possible. This is tied to perceptual and conceptual structures, but it is highly individual (indeed, it is personal) and it is also strongly tied to affect and reward. It is higher-order consciousness, capable of modelling the past, present, future, a self, and a world.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, "real objects and events" are construals of experience as meaning. Strictly speaking, 'objects' and 'events' are linguistic construals of experience as material-order meaning (phenomena), the content of higher-order consciousness.

Primary consciousness involves the correlation of instances of construals of experience as perceptual meaning (perception) with the system of potential perceptual meanings (value-category memory).

The personal 'inner life' that is higher-order consciousness involves the correlation of these correlations of primary consciousness with the systems of linguistic potential. Models of 'the past, present, future, a self and a world' are construals of experience as the linguistic content of higher-order consciousness.

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.

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.

Neural Value Systems And Language

Edelman (1992: 100):

Yet while perceptual categorisation and memory are necessary for learning, they are not sufficient. What is needed in addition is a connection to value systems mediated by parts of the brain that are different from those that carry out categorisation. The sufficient condition for adaptation is provided by the linkage of global mappings to the activity of the so-called hedonic centres and the limbic system of the brain in a way that satisfies homeostatic, appetitive, and consummatory needs reflecting evolutionarily established values. These value laden brain structures, such as the hypothalamus, various nuclei in the midbrain, and so on, evolved in response to ethological demands, and some of their circuits are species-specific. It is obvious why this is so: Mating activity and behaviour in birds varies widely from that in whales.

Blogger Comments:

The notion that all categorisation is guided (differentially weighted) by systems that have been evolutionarily selected for adaptive value is consistent with the SFL perspective that language itself is an expansion and projection of a system that confers biological advantage on organisms with such potential.

Perceptual Categorisation, Memory, And Learning Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 100):

The fundamental triad of higher brain functions is composed of perceptual categorisation, memory, and learning. (While these functions are often treated separately for the convenience of discussion, it should be kept in mind that, in fact, they are inseparable aspects of a common mental performance.) … Perceptual categorisation is generally necessary for memory, which is, after all, about previous categorisations. … We will see in this chapter that any kind of memory, while based on changes in synaptic strength, is a dynamic system property, one whose characteristics depend on the actual neural structures in which it occurs. To serve the adaptive needs of an animal faced with the unforeseen juxtapositions of events affecting survival, however, learning that affects behaviour is also necessary. Thus, the three fundamental functions — categorisation, memory and learning — are closely connected: The last depends on the first two.

Blogger Comments:

In Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, perceptual categorisation is effected when events on sensory sheets select specific combinations of neuronal groups out all that happen to be firing at the time.  The selection involves the strengthening of the synapses between the neurones which increases the probability of these neuronal groups — rather than others — firing again in response to the same or similar sensory stimuli.  It is in this sense that neuronal groups are 'selected'.  This process is guided by value systems of the brain, whose values are biologically selected in the history of the species.

On Edelman's model, memory is the ability to repeat a performance.  A perceptual memory is the ability to repeat the performance of the neuronal groups selected in the process of perceptual categorisation.  Learning is the value-guided change in the system of categorisations during the ongoing experience of an organism. 

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, Edelman's model of perceptual categorisation construes the material and relational process that underlie the construal of sensorimotor experience as perceptual meaning.  (However, what an organism 'sees' is the correlation of these perceptual meanings with the meanings of other semiotic systems, such as language in humans or protolanguage in other social species.)

By the same token, perceptual memory is the potential to instantiate the meanings of the perceptual categorisation system, and the act of remembering is the instantiation of such potential.  Learning, then, is the ontogenesis of system potential in the lifetime of an individual.

'An Unlabelled World Constrained By The Laws Of Physics' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 99):

Two apparently unrelated observations have compelled us to take a new look at how the brain might function as a recognition system. The first is the enormous diversity and individuality of brain structure. The second is that the world, although constrained by the laws of physics, is an unlabelled place.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the 'world' of experience is 'unlabelled' until it is construed as meaning.  Within meaning, there is the distinction between first-order meaning (e.g. the data for the laws of physics) and second-order meaning (e.g. the laws of physics), the latter being a reconstrual (a model) of the former.

It is not that model constrains the data, but that the data constrain the model.  And the laws of physics are not laws in the sense of modulation (obligation), but laws in the sense of modalisation (probability).

A 'Scientific' Theory Of Consciousness Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 82):

To be scientific, the theory must be based on the assumption that all cognition and all conscious experience rest solely on processes and orderings occurring in the physical world.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this criterion for 'scientific' derives from Galileo's primary qualities and Descartes' res extensa, as previously discussed on this blog.  Note that, on this model, Chomsky's Formal linguistics is not scientific, since it is concerned instead with Descartes' res cogitans.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics, this approach to 'cognition and all conscious experience' reconstrues the 'inner domain' of mental (and verbal) processes in terms of the 'outer domain' of material and relational processes.  That is, it provides the material basis for consciousness, but stops short of modelling consciousness itself.

The Theory Of Neuronal Group Selection And Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 81):

Brain science and the study of behaviour are concerned with the adaptive matching of animals to their environments. In considering brain science as a science of recognition I am implying that recognition is not an instructive process. No direct information transfer occurs, just as none occurs in evolutionary or immune processes.  Instead, recognition is selective.

Blogger Comments:

On Edelman's model of neuroscience, the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), meanings do not flow into the brain; a labelled environment does not instruct the brain in its categorisation.  Instead, impacts on sensory sheets result in the selective matching of neuronal groups to sensorimotor events.  This is consistent with the 'immanent' view of meaning on which Systemic Functional Linguistic theory is based.  In this view, there are no meanings 'out there' to flow in to the brain. Instead, impacts of the environment on the body are construed as meaning.  Edelman's neuroscientific model construes the material and relational processes that underpin the construal of experience as meaning, as proposed by Systemic Functional Linguistic theory.

'Recognition' Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 74):

By "recognition," I mean the continual adaptive matching or fitting of elements in one physical domain to novelty occurring in elements of another, more or less independent physical domain a matching that occurs without prior instruction.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, when applied to brain function, this construes the material and relational processes that underlie the construal of experience as meaning.

Population Thinking Vs Platonic Essentialism In Linguistic Theories

Edelman (1992: 73):

It is not commonly understood that there are characteristically biological modes of thought that are not present or even required in other sciences. One of the most fundamental of these is population thinking, developed largely by Darwin. Population thinking considers variation not to be an error but, as the great evolutionist Ernst Mayr put it, to be real. Individual variance in a population is the source of diversity on which natural selection acts to produce different kinds of organisms. This contrasts starkly with Platonic essentialism, which requires a typology created from the top down; instead, population thinking states that evolution produces classes of living forms from the bottom up by gradual selective processes over eons of time.

Blogger Comments:

Linguistic theories can be distinguished according to whether they embrace population thinking or Platonic essentialism.  

Population thinking, where variation is treated as real, underlies the dimension of instantiation in Systemic Functional Linguistics.  The frequencies of features in instances of language, texts, establish the probabilities (of instantiation) of such features in the overall system of potential.  Registers of language vary in terms of instantiation probabilities of system features, or, from the complementary perspective, text types vary in terms of the frequencies of feature instantiations.  Language change occurs when the frequency of a new variant in texts significantly raises its systemic probability of being instantiated.

Platonic essentialism, where variation is treated as error, underlies the distinction between competence and performance in Chomskyan Formal Linguistics.  As Chomsky (1965) declared:

Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its (the speech community's) language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of this language in actual performance.

Population thinking accommodates evolutionary and developmental change; Platonic essentialism does not.

Perceptual Categorisation Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 69):

Brains contain multiple maps interacting without any supervisors, yet bring unity and cohesiveness to perceptual scenes. And they let their possessors (pigeons, for example) categorise as similar a large if not endless set of diverse objects, such as pictures of different fish, after seeing only a few such pictures.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, perceptual categorisation is the construal of experience as perceptual meaning.  This is a somatic, rather than social, semiotic system.  In social species, perceptual meanings are further correlated with those of a social semiotic system, which in the case of humans, includes those of language, and what an individual "sees" depends on such correlations.

Autonomous Syntax Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 67-8):

As I discuss in the Postscript, however, proposals that the brain and the mind function like digital computers do not stand up to scrutiny. The idea of mental representations posited without reference to brain mechanisms and structures does not fare much better. An examination of how animals and people categorise the world, and how babies mentally develop, undercuts the idea that language can be adequately explained by syntactical analyses carried out in the absence of an adequate explanation of meaning.  The objectivist view of the world is at best incomplete and at worst downright wrong. The brain is not a computer and the world is not a piece of computer tape.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, syntax is the form that meaning takes, so the Chomskyan Formal Linguistics notion of autonomous syntax is nonsensical.  Meaning is the function that syntax performs.

Objectivist Cognitive Science Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 67):

The cognitive position was to adopt notions derived from logical and formal analysis, putting an emphasis on syntax. In this view, the mind, like a computer, is organised by rules and operates by mental representations. Meanings or semantics are supposed to arise by mapping these rules onto classically categorisable events and objects. Unlike behaviourism, this view allowed one to look into the mind but then described it as if it were a formal system. This description floated more or less free of the detailed structure of the brain. The semantic mapping of that description onto the world is objectivist; things and events are unequivocally described as classical categories.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, in emphasising syntax, cognitivism  takes the perspective of the lower level of symbolic abstraction on two dimensions, emphasising structure over system (axis), and emphasising form over function (stratification).  In doing so, it downplays both choice (system) and purpose (function).

In mapping its description onto the world, cognitivism takes a transcendent perspective on meaning, since it assumes a prior discriminated world onto which meanings can be mapped. In contrast, SFL theory takes the perspective that all discriminations of the world are meanings — properties of semiotic systems — construed of experience, and that meaning is intersubjective.

Behaviourist Psychology Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Edelman (1992: 67):

One reaction to this state of affairs was to declare the subject off limits and insist that science should concern itself only with behaviour that was observable in ways defined by the forms of successful scientific inquiry concerned with nonintentional objects. In an attempt to salvage the "scientific" posture without denying intentionality, and in contrast to this behaviourism, a different position was later taken by cognitive science.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the behaviourist approach to psychology is an attempt to model behaviour broadly within the mechanistic epistemological framework established by Galileo, focusing on measurable primary qualities, rather than secondary 'subjective' qualities. In Cartesian terms, this is modelling behaviour in terms of res extensa rather than res cogitans.

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, behaviourism is concerned with the behavioural manifestations of consciousness rather than consciousness itself: mental and verbal processes, and their projections, ideas (meanings) and locutions (wordings).