About
Jason W. Brown
Jason Brown is the author of 9 books and over 150 articles on
topics ranging from aphasia, apraxia and other sequelae of brain
damage to process philosophy. Each successive book carves out new
frontiers of investigation and reflection, centering on a set of
core issues related to the brain, the mind, and the processes
involved in perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting (link).
The central concept motivating, underlying and controlling this
extraordinary intellectual journey is microgenetic theory, which is
rooted simultaneously in the neurology of the central nervous system
and in process philosophy. According to microgenetic theory,
behavior unfolds simultaneously in various dimensions and scales of
time and space, in evolutionary brain processes that run from the
oldest and deepest layers of the central nervous system in a general
upward and outward direction, as a tree grows from the trunk outward
and upward through the branches to the leaves. In a fraction of a
second the brain reproduces the whole history of its evolution and
development to produce a behavior, which emerges on the surface as
the visible end of a process lying almost completely buried within.
Yet that which is buried under the surface always remains a part of
that which emerges.
In the light of this theory, the concrete symptoms of brain
damage are not caused by the termination or alteration of brain
processes, but rather by their premature eruption to the surface;
the lesion, then, lays bare the normal stages of development of a
behavior, rather than changing them in some fundamental way.
Although the earliest books, such as "Aphasia, apraxia, and
agnosia",
or "The life of the mind", reflect and develop primarily these and
other clinical implications and applications of microgenetic theory,
from the very beginning it was clear that the author's interests
were much broader than neurology, neuropsychology, or
neurolinguistics. The philosophical foundations and implications of
microgenetic theory run very deep. In particular, there are obvious
affinities with the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
The preoccupation of Western philosophy with states of being has
tended to distract thinkers from focusing on the transitions that
continually occur as being unfolds from non-being and then returns.
Living and thinking are both determined and guided, not by states of
being which in reality last only for microseconds and then give way
to the next, but by the process itself of passing from state to
state.
In his most recent works, Dr. Brown has focused on issues as
apparently diverse as the psychology of values and the
microstructure of the present moment. More important than the
apparent diversity of object and methodology, however, is the
continuity of particular intellectual problems and their resolution.
The issue of whether and in what circumstances suicide can be
justified may seem to some readers completely unrelated to the
problem of how the brain/mind organizes time into past, present, and
future, but microgenetic theory provides a way of understanding how
these and many other superficially diverse problems are in fact
various manifestations of a single process, which those who are
serious about intellectual life must try to grasp. If we understand
the processes by which perception evolves in the brain and moves out
into the world (a concept which stands on its head the traditional
notion of how perception works), then we can comprehend our mental
life as the life of representations, played out within the
mind/brain, in a deeply subjectivist interpretation that by
grounding itself in neurology avoids the trap of solipsism.
This is not a journey for the faint of heart, but for those with
the requisite passion for philosophy in its pristine sense, the
"love of wisdom," the work of Jason Brown provides a
certain exhilaration and insight that can fundamentally change the
way we understand what it means to be human.
|
