How the Self Controls Its Brain

3-540-56290-7OCLC29634892

Dewey Decimal

128/.2 20LC ClassB105.M55 .E33 1994

How the Self Controls Its Brain^[1] is a book by Sir John Eccles, proposing a theory of philosophical dualism, and offering a justification of how there can be mind-brain action without violating the principle of the conservation of energy. The model was developed jointly with the nuclear physicist Friedrich Beck in the period 1991–1992.^[2]^[3]^[4]

Eccles called the fundamental neural units of the cerebral cortex "dendrons", which are cylindrical bundles of neurons arranged vertically in the six outer layers or laminae of the cortex, each cylinder being about 60 micrometres in diameter. Eccles proposed that each of the 40 million dendrons is linked with a mental unit, or "psychon", representing a unitary conscious experience. In willed actions and thought, psychons act on dendrons and, for a moment, increase the probability of the firing of selected neurons through quantum tunneling effect in synaptic exocytosis, while in perception the reverse process takes place.

Previous mention of the "psychon"

The earliest prior use of the word "psychon" with a similar meaning^[5] of an "element of consciousness" is in the book "Concerning Fluctuating and Inaudible Sounds" by K. Dunlap in 1908.^[6] The most popular prior use is in Robert Heinlein's short story Gulf, wherein a character refers to the fastest speed of thought possible as "one psychon per chronon".

References

^ Eccles, John C. (1994). How the self controls its brain. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-56290-7. OCLC 29634892.
^ Beck, Friedrich (2008). "My Odyssey with Sir John Eccles". NeuroQuantology. 6 (2): 161–163. doi:10.14704/nq.2008.6.2.170.
^ Beck, Friedrich; Eccles, John C. (1992). "Quantum aspects of brain activity and the role of consciousness" (PDF). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 89 (23): 11357–11361. Bibcode:1992PNAS...8911357B. doi:10.1073/pnas.89.23.11357. PMC 50549. PMID 1333607. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-07-27.
^ Beck, Friedrich; Eccles, John C. (1998). "Quantum processes in the brain: A scientific basis of consciousness". Cognitive Studies: Bulletin of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society. 5 (2): 95–109.
^ "psychon". Google Books ngram viewer.
^ Dunlap, K. (1908). "Concerning Fluctuating and Inaudible Sounds".

Consciousness

Figures

Philosophy	Alfred North Whitehead Arthur Schopenhauer Baruch Spinoza Bertrand Russell Brian O'Shaughnessy Charles Augustus Strong Christopher Peacocke Colin McGinn Daniel Dennett David Chalmers David Hume David Papineau David Pearce Donald Davidson Douglas Hofstadter Edmund Husserl Frank Jackson Fred Dretske Galen Strawson George Berkeley George Henry Lewes Georges Rey Gottfried Leibniz Immanuel Kant John Eccles John Locke John Polkinghorne John Searle Joseph Levine Karl Popper Keith Frankish Kenneth M. Sayre Maurice Merleau-Ponty Max Velmans Michael Tye Martin Heidegger Ned Block Patricia Churchland Paul Churchland Philip Goff René Descartes Thomas Metzinger Thomas Nagel William Kingdon Clifford William Lycan William Seager
Psychology	Carl Gustav Jung Donald D. Hoffman Franz Brentano Gustav Fechner Julian Jaynes Kurt Koffka Max Wertheimer Sigmund Freud Wilhelm Wundt William James Wolfgang Köhler
Neuroscience	Anil Seth Antonio Damasio Benjamin Libet Bernard Baars Christof Koch Francis Crick Francisco Varela Gerald Edelman Giulio Tononi Karl Pribram Lawrence Weiskrantz Michael Gazzaniga Michael Graziano Patrick Wilken Roger Sperry Stanislas Dehaene Steven Laureys Stuart Hameroff Wolf Singer
Others	Annaka Harris David Bohm Eugene Wigner Erwin Schrödinger Marvin Minsky Max Planck Roger Penrose Susan Blackmore Victor J. Stenger Wolfgang Pauli

Theories

Philosophy of mind	Anomalous monism Computationalism Double-aspect theory Eliminative materialism Emergentism Epiphenomenalism Functionalism Idealism Interactionism Materialism Mind–body dualism Monism Neutral monism New mysterianism Nondualism Panpsychism Parallelism Physicalism Property dualism Reflexive monism Revisionary materialism Solipsism Type physicalism (reductive materialism, identity theory)
Science	Attention schema theory Dynamic core hypothesis Damasio's theory of consciousness Electromagnetic theories of consciousness Global workspace theory Higher-order theories of consciousness Holonomic brain theory Integrated information theory Lamme's recurrent feedback hypothesis Multiple drafts model Orchestrated objective reduction

Philosophy of mind