Karl Gfesser, Universität Stuttgart, Germany (kgfesser@web.de)

Abstract

How does mind come about? Or more precisely, since long existent, how does mind reveal itself from matter – from the biotic, complex and highly organized matter of the brain? In trying to answer this question, philosophers get entangled in subtly differentiated hypotheses such as the identity of mind and matter, causality through matter, correlation to matter, representation of matter, reduction to matter, emergence from matter, supervenience on matter – mind understood here as consciousness and matter then as the brain, even though both terms correctly apply only in their processuality. The idea of a condition, used in this context, remains conceptually unclear and is not applicable.

In this paper, I will try to identify, as clearly as possible, what kind the processes under discussion are. To avoid misinterpretations, I will try my best to shun inappropriate metaphors, analogies and pleonasms. Epistemological curiosity – an instinct, by the way, whose neurological exploration is still pending – is pressing for further research, even though some claim it is a futile endeavor: we are denied neurological access to our consciousness, they say, since the brain is structured as an organ of survival and not made to reach self-awareness. I do not lay claim to bridging this gap of cognition, neither do I intend to avoid the problem out of resignation. However, no inappropriate explanans shall be added to the explanandum, but such an explanans shall be hypostatized, which will allow a conclusive explanat. Neurosemiosis should be readily comprehensible in terms of meta- and object language in order to make clear what the object under discussion is. I will make the bold assumption that the human brain is a semiosic system. For this reason, the descriptive object language shall be semiosically oriented, the controlling meta language shall be semiotic; if both were to coincide, the object, the neuronal process and the resulting process of consciousness could not be grasped. In particular, I will investigate the issue of free will, contested by some brain researchers, because without willful, conscious intentionality, we could not conceive of a self-aware personality, without which we could not explain cognitivity and, ultimately, we would not understand reason, which is the epitome of all that.

It is certainly difficult to define what constitutes consciousness without using twisted metaphors that all too often turn out to be pleonasms. The use of possessive, instrumental, local and directive prepositions (in the example of the hypotheses cited above), probably unavoidable, gives a hint how normal language – in other situations so helpful – can be misleading, as it insinuates that the relation of the brain to mind were instrumental, the relation of consciousness to the brain were spatial. And the research of neuroscientists in turn has not reached beyond results dealing with perception – namely, vision, audition, gustation, olfaction and tactility –, in addition to interoception such as thirst and hunger, pain and pleasure, as well as proprioception, self-perception in time and space, not to forget affections such as fear, aggression, emotional attachment. The greatest enigma, however, we have not yet solved: apperception and self-aware cognition. Philosophers and cognitive scientists as well as brain- and neuroscientists have some problems in describing, or rather circumscribing, neuronal and cognitive processes and the connection between the two. There is monistic agreement about this connection that is only questioned by a few persistent dualists. It goes without saying that any circumscription of a process is not the process itself.

Neurological researchers, in describing their work – which ultimately is the activity of their own brain – cannot avoid using so-called natural language. If language is natural, it points to its origin, to the nature of man who has created this language both as part of nature and through conflict with nature and with himself and his own kind. In trying to understand brain activity, we apply a measure that comes from this very activity of the brain itself. We presuppose hypotheses and make experimental use of equipment with the aim to confirm those hypotheses according to a given theory – just as cerebral activity, consciously or unconsciously, brings about mental activity, which is also formed by language and therefore may be understood in semiotic terms, since natural language is the sign system all other sign systems are derived from. Our aim is to trace the genesis of semiosis.

Semiosis owns its genesis to the primary sense of sight and to the intention to handle and make something, at first by hand, later through the use of tools and then machines and nowadays with technology enabling access to the nano range. To intend something, to see, to illustrate, to depict, imagine, treat, represent, reflect on, realize, understand, conclude, reach, discuss, negotiate are examples of performative verbs referring to possibility, reality, causality, finality, intentionality, activity, communicativity.

The genesis of semiosis (Gfesser 2004) also goes back to the intentional impulse as well as to the explorative drive of man, in systemic unity of brain, body and the outside world. "[...] the brain's architecture is [...] dynamically coupled with the systems in which it is embodied and the environment in which it is embedded." (Welshon 2011: 263) This also applies to the semiosis of cognition. (Gfesser 1997)

Those systems are the organs of the human body, not least the peripheral and the central nervous system of which the brain is a part. This is the most complex of all systems, consisting of 10¹⁰ to 10¹² neurons, each connected to, "on average 7,000" other neurons, some with "as many as 100,000 connections", 10¹⁴ connections in bit/sec. The number of synapses in the human brain varies "between 60 and 500 trillion in adults and approaching perhaps 1,000 trillion – a quadrillion – in prepubescent children." (Welshon 2011: 331)

The brain's components are manyfold: from the bigger parts, the midbrain, hindbrain and forebrain only the latter will be mentioned, composed of the cortical cerebrum consisting of the prefrontal, frontal, temporal, parietal, occipital, and cingulate cortex, the subcortical cerebrum consisting of the corpus callosum, claustrum, basal ganglia, the limbic system consisting of nucleus accumbens and amygdala, the subcerebral system consisting of pituiarity, hypothalamus, epithalamus, and thalamus. Welshon declares: (2011: 324–26):

Finally, there is the neocortex, or, as it is also called, isocortex. These terms refer to the phylogenetically young and structurally complex cortex that constitutes 90 per cent of all human cortex. [...] Within the category of neocortex, functional subdivisions are usually introduced. First, we can subdivide between idiotypic cortex and homotypic cortex or association cortex. Idiotypic areas include primary motor cortex, primary somatosensory cortex, primary visual cortex und primary auditory cortex. Association cortex constitutes the largest region of the human brain.

If one part of the brain is able to be the core of consciousness then it may be this region because "there are unimodal or modal-specific zones, heteromodal [...] higher-order zones and supramodal higher-order zones." (Welshon 2011: 326) This is the region where special functions interact and create loops. (Harth 1995: 70–73) Those creative loops will be able to culminate in consciousness. Harth assumes: (1995: 145):

Consciousness is like a wedge driven between the whence and the hence [...] where intentionality, volition, and creativity is spawned. The sources that feed into these loops may be sensory inputs that then are modified by the system. [...] Other sources are concepts, nascent ideas, originating at higher cognitive levels, for example, through associations, that then generate images. Finally, [...] the cerebral dynamics may be affected by fluctuations of neural activity [...]. [...] these fluctuations contain bits of old memories and associations of different strengths, the faintest ones blending into and becoming part of the neural background noise. Any one of these may be admitted into self-referent loops and, once selected, will be amplified and lead to further elaboration and imagery.

The grammatic concepts of subjunctive II – if it would have happened – and future perfect – it will have happened – may serve to illustrate what is meant by the whence and the hence: consciousness, being here and now, nonetheless is switching from the present into the past, transmitting the past into the present or future by hypothesizing now that, which already would have been done or will be done. Consciousness is meant as an indivisible but discernible mental or psychic process, an instant mode of sensitive, appetitive, self-aware, emotional, intuitional, intentional, perceptional, experiential, cognitive moment.

The development of the brain from hominid to homo sapiens sapiens, knowing and self-aware man, occurred through the tools-creating use of the hands and the cognition-guiding use of language, through conscious attention and directed effort in the cingulate cortex, in alternation with thinking and decision-making in the prefrontal cortex and emotional and episodic weighting of these processes in the limbic system. First and foremost, this development is due to the behavior of humans in their environment: locomotion accompanied by emotion, extension condensed to intention. Once the existing external object was abstracted to an imagined internal object, it could be lingually externalized and thus be communicated. This perspective throws some light on the opaque origin of consciousness.

Compared to the development of the hominid to homo erectus who lived on a somewhat animal level for millions of years, the development of human consciousness took a very short time, about 200,000 years. Once the process had started, the use of the hands, now communicable through language, accelerated – even though we have to assume that language is not of genuinely communicative but rather imaginative origin. Similar perceptions evoked analog imagination that called for designations to allow repeated use, it called for a repertoire of individual signs that could be shared supraindividually and thus serve for communication. Physically, this was made possible through the lowering of the larynx and through an enlarged pharynx that provided space and resonance for articulated sounds.

Consciousness is individually embodied, ecologically embedded, and socially distributed, (Gfesser 1997: 147–148; Walter 2014: 30–32) based on sentience in iconic similarity, observation in indexical identity und meaning in symbolic interpretation. Iconic-indexical denoting progressed to the point of symbolic denoting. (Peirce 1960: CP 2.247–2.249) People communicated an idea by pointing at something and thus denoting it, which found expression in the grammatical function of verb, subject and object. This is to be found in all languages analyzed for this structure and reveals the unity behind multiplicity.

Grammatical functions as such are semiotic functions stemming from neuronal functions. Within these neuronal causes, I would like to differentiate between a causa efficiens, an efficient cause, and a causa finalis, a final cause, which acts back on the efficient cause. The final cause is intentional, the efficient cause is neuronal in nature. The intention activates dynamic neuronal patterns thereby ascertaining itself. The frequently used expressions supervenience and emergence, however, are functionally unclear expressions referring to their logical complement, namely subvenience and substance, which in both cases is nothing but the brain itself. Materially, these expressions explain nothing.

Materially, the brain is an efficient cause, just like the human organism as a whole. For this reason, it is an error in judgement for brain researchers – who confine themselves to the examination of the brain and, besides, are only able to examine smaller parts of the brain, due to technological limitations, – to make general statements about human abilities. The brain is part of the whole, but it doesn’t stand for the whole. Neuronal semiosis commences in the peripheral nervous system, not in the cerebral system, even though it culminates there in the neocortex. “The neocortex records patterns in a hierarchy” that it retrieves “autoassociatively”. (Hawkins 2006: 88) Hierarchy here means the six layers of the neocortex. Within these layers, the neurons form patterns, i.e. a collective neuronal activity, (Hawkins 2006: 136) but the neurons also interact between the layers of the above named regions of the cortex in an ascending and descending manner.

The patterns of the neocortex, which may be considered a causa formalis, a formal cause, offer a prediction for an intended neuronal activity. “Prediction is […] the primary function of the neocortex and the basis for intelligence“. (Hawkins 2006: 112) “Prediction is the application of invariant memory sequences on new situations. Therefore, all cortical predictions are predictions by analogy”, (2006: 222) allowing for intentional and imaginative recourse. Foucault speaks metaphorically of a "murmuring of similarities", an "always possible recourse of imagination". (1971: 104) Johnson states: "...any adequate account of meaning and rationality must give a central place to embodied and imaginative structures of understanding by which we grasp our world." (1987: XIII)

Neuronal interaction occurs through dendrites and axons. Dendrites receive signals. Axons, if within an electrical readiness potential lasting about a millisecond, informally known as spikes, send signals to other neurons by secreting chemical neurotransmitters at synapses. “The number of possible patterns that can exist on only one thousand axons is larger than the number of all molecules in the universe.” (Hawkins 2006: 163) Harth calls the descending and ascending neuronal interaction between the layers of the cortex “the loop”. The loop is “self-referent” and “is to be accomplished by an optimization process [...]” (1995: 107) Werth explains this self-reference as physical-psychic intereffect: “certain neuronal processes bring about feelings,” but it is also the other way round, “feelings bring about neuronal processes.” (2010: 151) “This could be called the complementarity principle of neurobiological phenomena and feelings.” (2010: 152) It would be futile “to look for a consciousness independent from sensory perception, thoughts and emotions. Their entirety make up consciousness.” (2010: 86)

Consciousness in its entirety is produced by a cerebral vibration of 40 Hertz, a “temporal structuring of brain activity, thus the creation of simultaneity everywhere in the brain.” (Pöppel 1982: 183) Pöppel deduces “that all activities that occur within a temporal frame in different regions of the brain are the experience of perception itself.” Roth declares: "In terms of its cellular components and intrinsic synaptic structure, the cortex is very homogenous […]." (1996: 106)

The meta language of brain research is chemical, physical, cybernetic, biological, but also metaphysical: there are verbs used like to react, to cause, to determine, to signal, to inform, to correspond, to stimulate, to effect, to fire, to embody, to influence, to mirror, to model. Janich urges brain researchers “to relate descriptions of neuronal processes to descriptions of people’s verbal and cognitive performances.” (2009: 74) The point here is that brain researchers take sentences of observation about some brain activities as fact, and assume they are using an object language, although they are caught in an arbitrary meta language without having defined its “normative basis”. (2009: 179) An object language in turn requires operationalization so that “an explanandum – a phenomenon to be explained – is sufficiently defined.” (2009: 179)

With regard to the models of brain researchers, Janich urges to make a distinction between “a model of” and “a model for”. “The former should be taken as a partial model of the structure of an object, the latter as a partial model of its function or functions. It must be possible to describe both in the form of ‘X is model of/for Y in relation to criteria C’.” Epistemologically, this concerns the question “whether nature provides a structure to the model or whether the model presets or imposes a structure or a function on nature.” (2009: 165–166)

To make a decision for the one or the other above-mentioned model resides with the individual brain researcher. After all, the ones doing the research are the brain researchers themselves, and not just their brains. One such researcher, for example, wants to make us believe that the self or the ego has vanished: “In reality […], a concept such as ‘the’ self does not exist.” (Metzinger 2011: 23) That is an assumption due to over-determined, over-interpreted studies of cerebral action patterns that are merely isolated, local and barely regional in scope. The concept of the self or the ego eludes this type of studies because it cannot be mereologically defined, and is physiologically not perceivable.

Feyerabend does not think mereologically, i.e. not pars pro toto, in noting: “[...] the world is a projection of the brain, which in turn is part of the world [...]” But “the totality of world-brain is lacking the resources required to know itself.” (1997:137) Likewise, McGinn (1996: 72) believes that the brain can neither make its phylogenetic origin nor its ontogenetic development an object of examination – which is inconsistent, even if it may be true. “Who can be so smart, for evolutionary reasons, to consider mankind, for evolutionary reasons, too dumb for true self-awareness?” (Janich 2009: 78) Nørretranders notes succinctly: “Since consciousness is a primary entity that is exclusively measured through conscious experience, we have to face the fact that the only criteria for consciousness is itself. [...] Conscious is only the conscious mind.” (1994: 321)

Now, what about Libet’s well-known and repeatedly reconstructed experiment, which showed that the decision to move a hand only becomes conscious after “an average of about 350 ms” (1983: 623) and thus, at the very first, is not a conscious and therefore not a deliberate decision? Libet et al. state: (1983: 635–636):

It is clear that neuronal processes that precede a self-initiated voluntary action, as reflected in the readiness-potential, generally begin substantially before the reported appearance of conscious intention to perform that specific act. This temporal difference of several hundreds of milliseconds appeared fairly consistently regardless of which of the available criteria for onset of RP or for the time of awareness are adopted.

Experiments of this kind are concerned with actions, according to Janich, (2009: 160) and not with behavior or reflexes. “But it goes without saying that acting cannot be subject of experimentation for the very fact that it is not sheer, natural behavior.” Acting yields personal experience. And “experience can be defined as what has befallen a person in acting. A person acting experiences success or failure of his actions.” (Janich 2009: 149) We learn from experience, which in turn will influence our future actions. Logically and practically, an action cannot be repeated. This does not fully apply to the study participants in Libet‘s experiment. They only followed instructions and behaved accordingly, they were not truly performing volitional actions.

Nørretranders remarks this about Libet’s experiments on readiness potential: “It is true that consciousness sets in only after the brain has become active, but on the other hand, it does set in before the hand starts moving.” (1994: 351) “0.2 seconds pass from the conscious experience of the decision to its execution. […] The conscious mind has enough time for a veto before the decision is put into action.” (1994: 351) Libet’s test persons “could interrupt themselves. Thus they had free will. The conscious mind cannot begin the action, but it can decide not to perform it.” (1994: 351–352) A person putting in a veto is able to announce it, which means “that a willful decision becomes a conscious willful decision through the fact that a person making a decision is mentally able to predict how he or she is going to behave […].” (Werth 2010: 182) It seems that consciousness needs a certain time for reflection. Libet et al. admit: (1983: 640–641):

The absence of any larger meaning in the simple quick flexion of hand and fingers, and the possibility of performing with capriciously whimsical timings, appear to exclude external psychological or other factors of controlling agents. [...] There could be a conscious 'veto' that aborts the performance even of the type of 'spontaneous' self-initiated act under study here. This remains possible because reportable conscious intention, even though it appeared distinctly later than onset of RP, did appear a substantial time (about 150 to 200 ms) before the beginning of the movement as signaled by the EMG.

There is a “neural voting” by different kinds of synapses. “Excitatory synapses say ‘yes’ because they make electrical current flow into the receiving neuron, which tends to ‘excite’ spiking. Inhibitory synapses say ‘no’ because they make current flow out of the neuron, which tends to ‘inhibit’ spiking.” (Seung 2012: 55–56) Seung calls readiness potentials action potentials. “In axons, electrical signals are brief pulses known as action potentials, each lasting about a millisecond. [...] Action potentials are informally known as ‘spikes’, owing to their pointy appearance [...]. When a neuron spikes, it is said to be ‘active’.”" (2012: 48)

Inhibition is crucial to the operation of the nervous system. Intelligent behavior is not just a matter of making appropriate responses to stimuli. Sometimes, it's even more important to not do something – not reach for a doughnut when you're on a diet, or not drink another glass of wine at the office holiday party. It's far from clear how these examples of psychological inhibition are related to inhibitory synapses, but it's at least plausible that there's some sort of connection. (Seung 2012: 56)

From Libet’s experiments with only a few probands, Metzinger, among other authors, concludes that humans cannot have free will. One of “the most stupid arguments for free will is: ‘I do know that I’m free because I experience myself as free!’” Metzinger, however, wants to make us believe that the notion of free will is a delusion, based on the incongruous argument that the world we experience “full of colorful objects” is only a world consisting of “mixed wave-lengths of the most diverse kind”. (2009: 191–192) Apart from the fact that benevolent and malicious actions have corresponding effects or consequences, Metzinger’s comparison, by equating psychic spontaneity with physical receptivity, is nothing but a category error. Besides, he contradicts himself by postulating the “unconditional will to self-awareness, to truthfulness” and a “will to clarity” (2009: 337) or by stating: “But whatever is available for volitional attention is also that, which we consciously experience.” (2009: 73)

To know to be able to want something, to not be able to want something, to be supposed to want something, in other words to know about the possibility of volition as well as about its limitation and obligation ascertains us of our existence. According to Kant

the will […] is a faculty either to produce objects corresponding to ideas, or to determine ourselves to the effecting of such objects (whether the physical power is sufficient or not); that is to determine our causality. […] Now, here there comes in a notion of causality justified by the critique of the pure reason, although not capable of being presented empirically, viz., that of freedom; […] the law of causality from freedom, that is, with a pure practical principle. (2012-2013: 14–16) Practical principles […] are subjective, or maxims, when the condition is regarded by the subject as valid only for his own will, but are objective, or practical laws, when the condition is recognized as objective, that is, valid for the will of every rational being. (2012–2 013: 16)

Clearly, any act of volition, any willful decision is biographically conditioned. An unconditional will is nobody’s will, no will at all. Will cannot be defined as such, but only in the predominant personality persisting – nonetheless experientally, cognitively and mentally changing – in the connectome, that is “the totality of connections between the neurons in a nervous system”. (Seung 2012: XIII) Even if a decision commences on the subliminal level, its effect is supraliminal, since the limen is both border and connection at the same time. Peirce remarks: (1958: CP 8.311):

I cannot admit the will is free in any appreciable measure […]. […] chance can only amount to much in a state of things closely approximating to unstable equilibrium. Now in the act of willing there is no such state of things. The freedom lies in the choice which long antecedes the will. There, a state of nearly instable equilibrium is found.

Peirce, not a neuroscientist but above all a semiotician, states after semiotic and epistemological, but also psychological studies: (1960: CP 1.112):

The observation of facts has now taught us that the ego is a mere wave in the soul, a superficial and small feature, that the soul may contain several personalities and is as complex as the brain itself, and that the facilities, while not exactly definable and not absolutely fixed, are as real as are the different convolutions of the cortex.

Peirce’s different convolutions of the brain, called connectomes by neuroscientist Seung, also contain the complexity of the soul, of the ego, of the self, of consciousness, personal identity – whatever modalities of mind one presupposes in neurophysiological studies. “[...] neuronal connectomes will vary greatly across individuals and will be strongly influenced by experiences. These are the connectomes we must study if we want to understand human uniqueness. And we should examine them for traces of the past, for what could be more integral to our uniqueness than our own memory?” (Seung 2012: 184) “The problem is that the doctrine's central quantity – the connectome – has been unobservable.” (Seung 2012: 132)

The reason is that the “brain contains 100 billion neurons, a fact that has overwhelmed even the most fearless explorers.” (Seung 2012: XIX) Neurons spread out to other neurons by branches. "A branch of a neuron, called a neurite, can extend from one side of the brain to the other, yet can also narrow to 0.1 micrometer in diameter. These dimensions differ by a factor of one million." (Seung 2012: 41) Contact between neurons is achieved through the synapses and through communicating neurotransmitters. “More than one hundred neurotransmitters have been discovered so far”, notes Seung. (2012: 43–44) “Axons send signals to other neurons by secreting neurotransmitters at synapses.” (2012: 48) “The brain secretes thoughts!” (2012: 45)

“One important property of a synapse is its strength, its weight in the vote conducted by a neuron when ‘deciding’ when to spike. It is known that synapses can strengthen and weaken; you can think of such changes as reweighting.” (Seung 2012: 77–78) “Synapses can also be created and eliminated, a phenomenon I'll call reconnection.” (2012: 78) “Reconnection provides added capacity for information storage, compared with reweighting alone." (2012: 90) “It might seem that synapses are [...] generated ‘on demand’ only if needed for cell assemblies or synaptic chains. But in fact synapses are created randomly, and then the unnecessary ones are eliminated.” (2012: 89) “We know for sure that reweighting and reconnection happen in the brain. Whether these phenomena create cell assemblies and synaptic chains is unclear, however.” (20012: 93)

It is plausible to view the cerebral reweighting and reconnecting as the balancing principle of reason. Reason judges the validity of principles. And it is preceded by an effort of the will to fathom those principles. Reason is the pursuit of knowledge, the mental desire to understand that goes back to a child’s bustling curiosity. “The connectome is where nature meets nurture.” (Seung 2012: 95) Herder speaks of the thoughtfulness of man, which is “the moderation of all his powers”, the “reason” of man. “Man has been put in the state of thoughtfulness, which is his property, and this thoughtfulness (reflection) freely asserting its influence has invented language.” (1901: 45–47) “Man shows reflection when the power of his soul is so free that it can create a wave in the ocean of his feelings that goes through all his senses, create ONE wave, if I may call it that, stop it, direct his attention to it and be conscious that it be attentive“. (Herder 1901: 47) Hegel speculates dialectically: “The understanding determines, and holds the determination fixed. Reason is negative and dialectical, since it dissolves the determinations of the understanding into nothing, it is positive, since it generates the universal, and comprehends the particular therein.” (Hegel 2010: 10)

Let me come to a semiotic assessment. I would claim that semiosis begins right in the neuronal system, sensually fed, of course. There is only a difference concerning the phylogenetic and ontogenetic origin of semiosis, because much of the ability for semiosis was phylogenetically developed over many generations but, from an ontogenetical perspective, is still innate. Not being a neuroscientist, my explanation of neurosemiosis is in semiotic meta language and in semiosically oriented object language. In support of my argument, I mentioned some persuasive approaches and insights in the field of brain research, mainly certain zones in the association cortex, namely the unimodal or modal-specific zones for reception, the heteromodal zones for perception, the higher-order and supramodal higher-order zones for apperception, further the creative loops and their self-reference, their selections and amplifications, the hierarchy of the six layers of the neocortex and their patterns, the ability of prediction, the ascending and descending neuronal processes, finally the reconnection and reweighting of neurons.

Semiotically speaking, according to Peirce, a sign is the relation of the quality, the object and the interpretant. (Peirce 1960: CP 2.243–2.253) The external sign relation consists of the physic-energetic quality, the external object, the external interpretant, which is an individual’s mind. The internal sign relation is the sign-internal quality, the sign-internal object, and the sign-internal interpretant. If semiosis originates in neuronal processes, neuronal processes and sign internal processes of the sign-internal quality, the sign-internal object and the sign-internal interpretant are a complement of each other, in such a way that the sign-internal quality is the spiking of neurons as “an actual existent”, (Peirce 1960: 2.243) the sign internal object are the neuronal patterns and loops, the sign internal interpretant is the connectome. There is no gap of explanation. Having said that, we are switching from semiotical terminology to semiosical terminology: the explanandum, i.e. the sign process, is complementary to the explanans, the neuronal process; they are not identical because they are different in nature, one is mental, the other biotic. The explanat belongs to the concept of neurosemiosis, which is both a neuronal and semiosical synchronic process, the ascending and descending loop in the hierarchy of the six layers of the neocortex.

Lacking a criterion for the differentiation of neuronal and semiosical processes, which would be a third category, namely a complementary neuronal-semiosical object language, I have to confine my explanation to semiotical meta language. I see similar concepts among a number of different authors. It seems to me that there is a relation between the concepts of sign processes discussed by Bense (1983: 44, 109) such as generation, degeneration, and superisation of signs and certain neuronal processes such as connection and reconnection, weighting and reweighting mentioned by Seung, and the ideas of selection, creative loops, self-reference, optimization, amplification mentioned by Harth, and finally the idea of prediction mentioned by Hawkins und Werth.

I see a link between connection and reconnection and generation and degeneration, between supramodal higher-order zones, selection and loops, and superisation, between weighting and reweighting of neurons within interactive patterns of cell assemblies or synaptic chains, and the starting point of consciousness. Weighting and reweighting is crucial for prediction and decision making. Decisions may not always be conscious, nonetheless, they are volitional. Decision-making includes deliberation, and deliberation implies intention and understanding. According to Hegel, sometimes it may be necessary to negate what we have understood because understanding is not always reasonable.

Reason as the epitome of the conscious mind, particularly amplified and optimized cognition, may be what Peirce meant by defining the “ultimate logical interpretant”, which “is of a general application […] […] a habit-change; meaning by a habit-change a modification of a person’s tendencies towards action, resulting from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a complex of both kinds of cause.” (Peirce 1960: CP 5.476)

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