The Structure of Thinking: A Process-oriented Account of Mind

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Science has perennially struggled to give an objective or third person account of first person subjectivity. The third person language of science, inevitably, leaves little room for concepts such as 'agency' , 'qualia' , 'free will' and the like. But Weed articulates an ontological framework that goes a long way to bridging the 'explanatory gap' - the apparent conundrum of how that three-and- a-half pound gelatinous blob which we call the brain presumably causes consciousness.

Weed proposes an enhanced notion of causation - or what she dubs 'kausation' - as a way of overcoming the deficiencies that attend the conventional understandings of causation in science and philosophy.

Kausation is an inextricable part of x-type thinking; of object-positing. Kausation is part of the observation process itself, and it essentially refers to the fact that objects in the real world impinge upon our awareness. It is the way in which some aspect of someone's world impinges on his or her consciousness, when the knower focuses on it, or pays attention to it. Weed's view is Realist in some sense, as she argues that reality is mind independent.

But there is a touch of Idealism at work in the sense that kausation requires a point of view and hence kausation is minddependent.

The notion of kausation, however, allows for a reciprocal relationship between experience and the world, something entirely lacking in efficient causation, which is essentially a one-way affair. In other words, consciousness is no longer a 'causally' inert epiphenomenon.

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Weed's book is a sustained and perceptive deconstruction of the Cartesian outlook, particularly as it continues to inform - or infect - the materialism that claims to have left Descartes behind. Weed is hardly alone in debunking Cartesianism. The problem with many a project that has debunked Descartes' Cogito is that all that seems to be left over is the notion that 'man is a machine', a soulless automaton.

Weed's contribution is to show that many anti-Cartesians have let Cartesian assumptions in through the back door. Hence, Weed opens up a promising new way of approaching the philosophy of mind that excises more than one Cartesian ghost. I began this review with a poem by Emily Dickinson. Her words are appropriate for a number of reasons. First, in the ontology Weed presents, the sharp distinction between inner and outer is overcome. There is no need for cumbersome 'sense-data' or representations, as our experience is reality. Second, dualism most versions of which tend to be inflationary and reductive materialism which is deflationary are revealed as false choices - the fact that 'kausation' requires both 'a point of view' and a reciprocal relationship between experience and the world preserves concepts like 'agency' while eliminating the dreaded homunculus.

Third, a syntactical engine, no matter how complex, cannot give rise to semantics. But we are, as Dickinson's lines intimate, creatures whose self-understanding is suffused with a rich semantical texture. As Aristotle noted more than 2, years ago, metaphor the life blood of poetry is one of humanity's most remarkable capacities, for it allows featherless bipeds like ourselves to express truths that go beyond any formal or notational system. Such truths do not exist in some ethereal Platonic realm, but neither are they to be found in the syntactical calculus of the reductive materialist.

We must look at human experience as a complex and dynamic interaction between an organism and the world. Science attempts to describe our experience objectively; such descriptions are inherently prosaic, and only part of the story. The Structure of Thinking is a powerfully argued reminder that we are not complex algorithms running on networks of neurons, we are creatures with 'a point of view'.

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Start reading The Structure of Thinking on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? Imprint Academic 29 January Language: Be the first to review this item Amazon Bestsellers Rank: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a product review. Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon. How does a three-and-half gelatinous blob -- the human brain --give rise to consciousness?

Our teetering bulbs of dread and dream, as the poet Russell Edson once described the brain, are the most complex objects in the known universe. But despite the vast power of the cerebral cortex we still do not understand that most implacable of mysteries, our neurologically and bodily based selves. Laura Weed in her vastly edifying "The Structure of Thinking" sheds an enormous amount of light into the dark recesses of the human mind.

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Weed's book is one of the best accounts of what thought is, and what it is not. Thought, according to Weed, isn't reducible to syntax, thought is not just an algorithm or computer program, the crunching of abstract symbols as part of some sort of neuronally based computation. Thought requires an 'intentional' aspect, a point of view, and our neural systems have evolved to interpret, categorize, or mark out aspects of our experience in specific ways, ways that are not reducible to computation.

Weed provides some very creative and original ways of reassessing our approach to consciousness, including a very promising discussion on 'intentional causation' or what Weed dubs 'Kausation' as a way of overcoming difficulties associated with the notion of 'efficient causation' which dominates most thinking in the cognitive sciences. My summary here is necessarily an over simplification of a rich and very subtle book.

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But for anyone interested in a post-Cartesian process account of mind "The Structure of Thinking" is a uniquely rewarding book. Get to Know Us. Delivery and Returns see our delivery rates and policies thinking of returning an item? See our Returns Policy.