Neurosemiosis – Switching Between Physical and Mental States

Trajectories occur right at the beginning of the universe. But let us leave big bang aside, along with another crucial trajectory, the one leading from inorganic to organic states on earth, the beginning of life. Let us start with the trajectory of homo sapiens, with modern humans, with us, and our brain’s abilities for reception, perception and apperception. It begins with reception and perception through our senses and the transmission of sensory data to the brain where these data, on the basis of neuronal processes, are transformed into the mental dimension of apperception. It is still unknown how neuronal processes change to mental ones, namely to feeling and emotion, and to thinking such as deliberating, considering, deciding – in short, to all those emotive, volitional, decisive and logical abilities. There is no doubt that both neuronal and mental processes happen in one and the same biotic organ, in the brain, which functions chemoelectrically, i.e. physically. And, both neuronal and mental processes are in causal interaction. Reception, of course, is purely physical: through light, sound, taste, smell, touch, we are in continuous contact with the outside world, even though, most of the time, we might not be conscious of this. Our organism is always interacting with the outside world, getting intertwined with it through our senses, nerves and neurons, which themselves are interconnected in form of clusters. Inside neurons, on the smallest scale, there are microtubules at work that probably enable another trajectory, one that is not yet completed. Unlike the two transitions mentioned at the outset; this one is still operating quantum physically by entangled microparticles called qubits. Two entangled microparticles act as if they were one, and they do this without requiring time and energy, it is an instantaneous process even on the macrophysical level. Certainly, quantum physical processes are so fragile that they collapse immediately when they get distracted on the macrophysical level. Nonetheless, one may hypothesize that in the brain, a trajectory from microphysical to macrophysical states takes place, the qubits are travelling through the connectome, the entire neuronal network, thus initiating a consecutive trajectory from the connectome to the mental dimension. And, it is not inconceivable that the latter trajectory already acts along the lines of neurosemiosis: entangled ions in microtubules switch from physical to mental states, a formation that enables an electrochemical transformation to cognitive information, from the qualisign and the index to the argument and, retrosemiosically, from the argument and the index to the qualisign, and from the medium and the object to the interpretant and vice versa.
País: 
Germany
Tema e machados: 
Semiótica e ciências cognitivas
Instituição: 
Universität Stuttgart
Mail: 
kgfesser@web.de

Estado del abstract

Estado del abstract: 
Accepted
Desarrollado por gcoop.