The Continuity of Mind (Oxford Psychology Series) 1st Edition by Michael Spivey (PDF)

Description

The cognitive and neural sciences have been on the brink of a paradigm shift for over a decade. The traditional information-processing framework in psychology, with its computer metaphor of the mind, is still considered to be the mainstream approach, but dynamical-systems accounts of mental activity are now receiving a more rigorous treatment, allowing them to more beyond merely brandishing trendy buzzwords. The Continuity of the Mind will help to galvanize the forces of dynamical systems theory, cognitive and computational neuroscience, connectionism, and ecological psychology that are needed to complete this paradigm shift.In The Continuity of the Mind Michael Spivey lays bare the fact that comprehending a spoken sentence, understanding a visual scene, or just thinking about the days events involves the serial coalescing of different neuronal activation patterns, i.e., a state-space trajectory that flirts with a series of point attractors. As a result, the brain cannot help but spend most of its time instantiating patterns of activity that are in between identifiable mental states rather than in them. When this scenario is combined with the fact that most cognitive processes are richly embedded in their environmental context in real time, the state space (in which brief visitations of attractor basins are your thoughts) suddenly encompasses not just neuronal dimensions, but extends to biomechanical and environmental dimensions as well. As a result, your moment-by-moment experience of the world around you, even right now, can be described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional state space that is comprised of diverse mental states. Spivey has arranged The Continuity of the Mind to present a systematic overview of how perception, cognition, and action are partially overlapping segments of one continuous mental flow, rather than three distinct mental systems. The initial chapters provide empirical demonstrations of the gray areas in mental activity that happen in between discretely labeled mental events, as well as geometric visualizations of attractors in state space that make the dynamical-systems framework seem less mathematically abstract. The middle chapters present scores of behavioral and neurophysiological studies that portray the continuous temporal dynamics inherent in categorization, language comprehension, visual perception, as well as attention, action, and reasoning. The final chapters conclude with discussions of what the mind itself must look like if its activity is continuous in time and its contents are distributed in state space.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Ever since Jerry Fodor published the widely influential book The Modularity of Mind in the 1980s, continuing from the cognitive revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, the idea that the mind works like a massively modular information processing system (namely, a computer) has been extremely popular. More recently, popular psychologists such as Steven Pinker have endorsed an easily understood and largely popular computational theory of the way that the mind works, which implicitly assumes tricky philosophies such as the internalist view of the mind, and also is implicitly assumed by evolutionary psychology, a largely nativist way of looking at the way the mind has developed.In The Continuity of Mind, Michael Spivey introduces what is probably the most convincing account so far that the mind works an entirely different way. He proposed, as others have before him, that the mind is a continuous dynamical system embodied in its environment, with perception and action being blurred in a continuous cascade of “hungry” mental operations and actions. It’s easy to see that this view is much more complicated than the straightforward modular account, but Spivey introduces the mathematics and the nitty-gritty aspects of this fascinating theory easily and without tripping over himself too much. He argues for this embodied dynamical view of cognition with convincing evidence from fields such as visual perception and language, and finishes with hopeful hints that similarly convincing evidence will soon emerge in fields such as reasoning and decision making. The final two chapters on the book lay out the implications that this new and exciting view of the mind has for philosophy of mind at large, touching on concepts of free will, consciousness, and government.Spivey is eloquent and witty, and asserts his arguments with respect for the history that he is building upon. Since this book has come out, research has pointed to this embodied continuous dynamical system view of the mind fitting in quite well with social perception and decision making, and slowly people are beginning to realize that this dynamical systems account of cognition isn’t quite as complicated and unintuitive as it has long been believed to be. In fact, one of Spivey’s most convincing arguments is that this view of cognition is really much more valid neurophysiologically than its modular counterpart. Many people have argued for this view of cognition before, but Spivey’s execution is absolutely perfect and I have no doubt that this book will be the centerpiece for a new study of how the mind works.

⭐First of, I wish to state. That I have not yet received this book. Nor do I know or have any affiliations with the Author. I am purchasing this book because of the following reasons. 1) I have been interested in Systems Theory for the last ten years. And have read some books on it. 2) I have been interested in the concept of Set Theory for a shorter time. 3) I have had an interest in Chaos Theory since the 1980’s.I also need to say, that I have only ever done a few months of University. I left because I did not want to pay the updated fees which were added to the existing ones. This means that I have never completed a degree in any field. But I have read alot. Authors like Bernays, Russell, Pratkanis & Aronson, Chomsky, Handelman, Meerloo, Hogan, Conserva, Eldon Taylor, Kathleen Taylor, Streatfield, Winn, and the list just goes on and on. Obviously, I understand a thing or two about Propaganda, Persuasion, Brainwashing, and Mind Control. This book isn’t about those subjects. But they are why I am purchasing it.What this book seems to explain. Just by reading the blurb here on Amazon. Is something that I have known since before I studied computing (not uni). And first learnt about IPO and the like. What this book is telling me. Even though I have not even received it yet. Is something that I have known for a long, long, time. That you cannot quantify the human mind, when there is a barrage of input. Constant input. Both internal and external, to the brain.This book uses “Systems Theory”. Everything in the universe is a system. Or is part of a larger Supra System, or smaller Sub System. Unless it is just a pile of junk. And even then it is just a part of a larger whole. The brain is a system.This book uses “Set Theory”. Everything in the universe is part of a set. Everything. Everything is part of a larger set. Even if it is a singular thing. The human brain, and its inherant thoughts, fall into sets.This book uses “Chaos Theory”. Most dynamical systems, and sets, have aspects that are chaotic. Whether that is via their inputs, processes, or outputs. They have to. Because its usually an automatic process that the system generates itself. Or a process that is thrust upon it. Causing chaotic actions.Michael Spivey seems to have hit the nail on the head with this book. And I have never even written a review for an Amazon book before. And I probably wont ever again. But this book. Judging by the index alone. Is worthy of my time. And it most definately will be when it arrives. I’ve got nothing better to do than to read. Because I can’t even get a damn job. If you havent been to Uni in Australia. The you’re just not intelligent. And you’re a dole bludger.Maybe some of those people whom have been to Uni in Australia should read books like this. Might make them see something that a man who’s been on the dole for years already knows.Spivey is correct. History will prove that!

⭐In this book, Michael Spivey demonstrates the underlying flaws of the modular/discrete/computer model of mind. Full of both experimental and experiential demonstrations of the continuous, graded nature of the mind-brain, this book is simultaneously counter-intuitive and intuitive. As Spivey consistently notes throughout the book, we all want to name “things” in the mind. However, he argues strongly that most of the time, this is difficult, if not impossible. Often, the mind-brain is in a state, really a process, that defies easy description and labeling. The intuition comes if you approach his ideas with a neuroscience perspective in mind. The idea that the mind is discrete and modular when the underlying hardware is interconnected and continuous seems unlikely, and Spivey does a brilliant job of supporting this idea with empirical evidence. I suspect this will be remembered as a landmark book.

⭐M. Spivey presents some deep material. The book is just filled with evidence for a very core idea: Our understanding of the mind should be based on continuous functions, and not on the choppy file-copy concepts of a computer system (like the kind I’m typing this on). The book taps into areas that span much of what would satisfy very diverse interests: perception, language, problem solving, consciousness, with neuroscience stuff everywhere. And for any geeks, he supplies programming code at the back of this book for you to run some of the theoretical model systems he uses to demonstrate continuous theories. In short, the book is deep and interesting and will entertain and interest anyone interested in understanding the mind.

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