Publications

Publication details [#30986]

Bartsch, Renate. 2002. Consciousness Emerging. The dynamics of perception, imagination, action, memory, thought, and language. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 39). John Benjamins. 258 pp.
Publication type
Book – monograph
Publication language
English

Annotation

This study of the workings of neural networks in perception and understanding of situations and simple sentences shows that, and how, distributed conceptual constituents are bound together in episodes within an interactive/dynamic architecture of sensorial and pre-motor maps, and maps of conceptual indicators (semantic memory) and individuating indicators (historical, episodic memory). Activation circuits between these maps make sensorial and pre-motor fields in the brain function as episodic maps creating representations, which are expressions in consciousness. It is argued that all consciousness is episodic, consisting of situational or linguistic representations, and that the mind is the whole of all conscious manifestations of the brain. Thought occurs only in the form of linguistic or image representations. The book also discusses the role of consciousness in the relationship between causal and denotational semantics, and its role for the possibility of representations and rules.