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Ecology of the Brain. The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind

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Thomas Fuchs at Heidelberg University
Thomas Fuchs
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Present day neuroscience places the brain at the center of study. But what if researchers viewed the brain not as the foundation of life, rather as a mediating organ? Ecology of the Brain addresses this very question. It considers the human body as a collective, a living being which uses the brain to mediate interactions. Those interactions may be both within the human body and between the human body and its environment. Within this framework, the mind is seen not as a product of the brain but as an activity of the living being; an activity which integrates the brain within the everyday functions of the human body. Going further, Fuchs reformulates the traditional mind-brain problem, presenting it as a dual aspect of the living being: the lived body and the subjective body-the living body and the objective body. The processes of living and experiencing life, Fuchs argues, are in fact inextricably linked; it is not the brain, but the human being who feels, thinks and acts. For students and academics, Ecology of the Brain will be of interest to those studying or researching theory of mind, social and cultural interaction, psychiatry, and psychotherapy.
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Ecology of the Brain
The phenomenology and biology of the embodied mind
By Thomas Fuchs
(Oxford | Paperback | Dec 14, 2017 | 368 Pages |£34.99| ISBN: 9780199646883)
Present day neuroscience places the brain at the center of study. But what if researchers
viewed the brain not as the foundation of life, rather as a mediating organ?
Ecology of the Brain addresses this very question. It considers the human body as a collective, a
living being which uses the brain to mediate interactions. Those interactions may be both
within the human body and between the human body and its environment.
Within this framework, the mind is seen not as a product of the brain but as an activity of the
living being; an activity which integrates the brain within the everyday functions of the human
body. Going further, Fuchs reformulates the traditional mind-brain problem, presenting it as a
dual aspect of the living being: the lived body and the subjective body - the living body and the
objective body. The processes of living and experiencing life, Fuchs argues, are in fact
inextricably linked; it is not the brain, but the human being who feels, thinks and acts.
For students and academics, Ecology of the Brain will be of interest to those studying or
researching theory of mind, social and cultural interaction, psychiatry, and psychotherapy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Fuchs, MD, PhD, is Karl Jaspers Professor of Philosophy and Psychiatry at Heidelberg
University, Germany. His main areas of expertise include phenomenological philosophy and
psychopathology as well as embodied and enactive cognitive science, with a particular
emphasis on non-representational, interactive concepts of social cognition. He was Coordinator
and Principal Investigator of several large national and international grants, among them the
European Research Training Network Towards an Embodied Science of Intersubjectivity (TESIS,
2011-2016). He has authored over 300 journal articles, book chapters and several books. He is
also co-editor of Psychopathology and editorial board member of 4 scientific journals.
Contents
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Preface v
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xxiii
Part 1: Criticism of neurobiological reductionism
1 Cosmos in the head? 3
1.1 The idealistic legacy of brain research 5
1.2 First criticism: embodied perception 8
1.3 Second criticism: The objectivity of the phenomenal world 19
1.4 Third criticism: the reality of colours 23
1.5 Summary 26
2 The brain as the subject’s heir? 29
2.1 First critique: the irreducibility of subjectivity 32
2.2 Second criticism: category mistakes 43
2.4 Summary: the primacy of the lifeworld 61
Part 2: Body, person, and the brain
3 Foundations: subjectivity and life 69
3.1 Embodied subjectivity 69
3.2 Ecological and enactive biology 83
3.3 The circular and integral causality of living beings 94
4 The brain as organ of the living being 107
4.1 The brain in the context of the organism 109
4.2 The unity of brain, organism and environment 126
5 The brain as organ of the person 173
5.1 Primary intersubjectivity 176
5.2 Neurobiological foundations 182
5.3 Secondary intersubjectivity 192
5.4 Summary: brain and culture 205
6 The concept of dual aspectivity 209
6.1 Mental, physical and life attributes 209
6.2 Differentiation from identity theories 216
6.3 Emergence 219
6.4 Consequences for psychophysical relations 232
6.5 Summary 247
7 Implications for psychiatry and psychological medicine 251
7.1 Neurobiological reductionism in psychiatry 251
7.2 Mental disorders as circular processes 255
7.3 Circular causality in pathogenesis 262
7.4 Circular processes in therapy 268
7.5 Summary: the role of subjectivity 275
8 Conclusion 279
8.1 Brain and person 279
8.2 The scope of neurobiological research 283
8.3 Naturalistic versus personalistic concept of the human being 285
References 293
Register 325
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... Lower levels can lead to phenomena at higher levels, exhibiting characteristics not shared by phenomena at that level. While bottom-up causation can lead to emergence, top-down causation-without epiphenomenalism, i.e., the belief that consciousness is a by-product of the physical state-finds that mental and physical events have no effect or relationship [16,17]. Consider instead, as Fuchs explains, that the brain is not the creator of the mind and the experienced world, but a mediating organ that structures the mind itself [16]. ...
... While bottom-up causation can lead to emergence, top-down causation-without epiphenomenalism, i.e., the belief that consciousness is a by-product of the physical state-finds that mental and physical events have no effect or relationship [16,17]. Consider instead, as Fuchs explains, that the brain is not the creator of the mind and the experienced world, but a mediating organ that structures the mind itself [16]. Experience, when regarded as an epiphenomenon of brain activity, separates the brain from the living body and the person's intentional interactions with their environment. ...
... Applying the concept of autopoiesis to circular causality and homeostasis, Fuchs further explains that homeostatic cycles within the brain and body form the basis of prereflective self-awareness, basal state, or the "feeling of being alive," which, through interoceptive signals serving homeostasis, are integrated by centers in the brainstem, diencephalon, and hypothalamus [16]. Circularity characterizes the structural dynamics of the organism (part to whole, and the processes of development over time) in which higher-and lower-level processes, the whole, and its parts are macro-and micro-level reciprocal relations of self-organizing systems. ...
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... The structure of human embodiment is fundamentally characterized by the polarity or ambivalence between the embodied subjectively lived body and the objectified body, or between being-a-body and having-a-body (Merleau-Ponty, 1974;Plessner, 1928). Research in this field lays foundation for psychological interventions, psychotherapy and a more holistic understanding of human consciousness (Dreyfus, 2014;Fuchs, 2010aFuchs, , 2018. The study was preregistered (https://osf.io/gh34y/?view_only= 0dd5e02b7f5745409c76cbb2f235244e). ...
... Or, as Dreyfus (2014) describes it, the state is marked by unreflective skillful coping where action is nuanced and adequately synchronized with the affordances that the context of the world brings. In this mode of being the body as the medium of agency becomes transparent or 'forgotten' so that consciousness is fully aware and focused on the activity, and not of its double aspect (being a body and having a body) (Wehrle, 2020), which is associated with the eccentric position of reflective consciousness (Fuchs, 2018;Merleau-Ponty, 1974;Plessner, 1928). This mode of being is connected with participants' descriptions of good dives, attempts to let go (especially in the free fall) and being fully present without distracting thoughts or unexpected body sensations which could cause them to switch back to the reflective conscious mode of being. ...
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