Brain Functioning

 

What can science tell us of the brain and its speech-generating powers? Can it resolve the long-standing disputes of philosophy: that thought cannot be independent of language, that each person creates their own world view, that private languages are impossible? Much has been done — indeed an enormous amount, impossible to summarize here — but only in broad outlines is brain functioning understood, and then not unequivocally.

 

First there is the complexity of the human nervous system. Though the greatest mass of nerve cells is collected in the brain, the nervous system links all parts of the body, in a most intimate way, the nerve cells ramifying into and connecting the cells in the bone, skin, organs of digestion, perception, respiration, etc. That needs emphasizing. The body is not a puppet jerked into life by the nervous system: the two are thoroughly interconnected, with multiple feedback systems continually in operation. Literary critics and linguists overlook what is obvious from a biological point of view: language is only one activity of the human organism. Nonetheless, it is one which (by involving the brain, the local nervous systems and the hands, mouth, throat, etc.) necessarily implicates the whole body in its activities. Body language is a cliché, but describes a blatant truth. Speech causes body changes, and vice versa. Philosophy, science and literary theory that attempt to build rational systems independent of how the body actually operates may not be helpful. Much of bodily activity is instinctive, or hidden from consciousness, but drugs, brain injury and mental illness each demonstrate that physiology affects understanding. Lacunae or opacities in our intellectual constructions are only to be expected in an organism that does not operate like an extended computer.

 

Little is settled in a discipline as young as brain science, and there is no shortage of conflicting evidence. What, for example, is consciousness? There are several views. Gerald Edelman distinguishes primary from secondary consciousness. The first encompasses feeling and intentions, being aware of the world, and having mental images of the present. It depends on specific areas of the primary and secondary cortex for the functions of sight, touch, hearing, etc., which are all linked together through a complex system of neural loops and feedbacks. There is also a reentrant loop to category memory that uses the frontal, temporal, parietal cortex, and further loops to functions of correlation sited in the hippocampus, amygdala and the septum. All respond to signals from the primary and secondary cortex, and from the brain stem, the hypothalamus and the autonomic centres.

 

Stephen Pinker takes a more orthodox, hard-science line. Though stuttering, dyslexia and specific language impairment does run in families, there seems to be no language gene as such. Language is instinctive — witness the ease with which children learn. Contrary to Edelman, he believes that Chomsky's transformational grammar is supported by laboratory testing, grammatical complexity being reflected in response times. As with scientists and philosophers generally, Pinker does not like cultural relativism, and believes that basically we are all the same. Hopi Indians are not less aware of the passage of time than Europeans, and the Eskimo do not have hundreds of words for snow, just the odd dozen that we use. Human nature is not infinitely malleable, and Pinker's model of human behaviour employs heredity, environmental factors, skills, knowledge and innate psychological mechanisms that include learning.

Language, consciousness and brain functioning are vast areas of research, but results may be just beginning to show how — contrary to Derrida and the Postmodernists — thought may be grounded in physiological processes and so precede more precise formulation in language.

An extended article, with internet references, can be found on TextEtc.

 

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Brain Functioning

 

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