Complex Systems and the Evolution of Mind-Brain

Abstract

How can one explain the emergence of brain and mind? The chapter starts with a short history of the mind-body problem. Besides religious traditions, the concepts of mind and body held by our ancestors were often influenced by the most advanced standards in science and technology (Sect. 4.1). In the framework of complex systems the brain is modeled as a complex cellular system with nonlinear dynamics. The emergence of mental states (for instance pattern recognition, feeling, thoughts) is explained by the evolution of (macroscopic) order parameters of cerebral assemblies which are caused by nonlinear (microscopic) interactions of neural cells in learning strategies far from thermal equilibrium. Pattern recognition, for instance, is interpreted as a kind of phase transition by analogy with the evolution equations which determine pattern emergence in physics, chemistry, and biology (Sect. 4.2). In recent studies in neurobiology and cognitive psychology, scientists even speculate that the emergence of consciousness and self-consciousness depends on the production rate of "meta-cell-assemblies" as neural realizations of self-reflection. The Freudian unconscious is interpreted as a (partial) switching off of order parameters referring to certain states of attention. Even our dreams and emotions seem to be governed by nonlinear dynamics (Sect. 4.3). Is the "Newton of the human brain and mind" found? Of course not. The complex system approach cannot explain what mind is. But we can model the dynamics of some mental states under certain conditions. Even the modeling of intentional behavior cannot be excluded in principle. Complex systems do not need a central processor like the fiction of "a little man" in the brain. Thus, Virchow's cynical observation that he did not find any soul in human bodies even after hundreds of operations is obsolete. A mental disposition is understood as a global state of a complex system which is caused by the local nonlinear interactions of its parts, but which cannot be reduced to its parts (Sect. 4.4). The wonder of our feeling, imagination, and creativity which has been celebrated by poets and artists since the beginning of human culture is not touched by the complex system approach, although we shall sometimes model some aspects of their nonlinear dynamics.