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| | Features | ISBN13: 9783211094501Condition: NewNotes: 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
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| | Description | Can psychoanalysis offer a new computer model? Can computer designers help psychoanalysts to understand their theory better?In contemporary publications human psyche is often related to neural networks. Why? The wiring in computers can also be related to application software. But does this really make sense? Artificial Intelligence has tried to implement functions of human psyche. The reached achievements are remarkable; however, the goal to get a functional model of the mental apparatus was not reached. Was the selected direction incorrect?The editors are convinced: yes, and they try to give answers here. If one accepts that the brain is an information processing system, then one also has to accept that computer theories can be applied to the brain’s functions, the human mental apparatus. The contributors of this book - Solms, Panksepp, Sloman and many others who are all experts in computer design, psychoanalysis and neurology are united in one goal: finding synergy in their interdisciplinary fields. | |
| | Product Details | | Hardcover: | 453 pages | | Publisher: | Springer | | Publication Date: | November 17, 2008 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 3211094504 | | Product Length: | 9.4 inches | | Product Width: | 6.4 inches | | Product Height: | 0.9 inches | | Product Weight: | 1.95 pounds | | Package Length: | 9.4 inches | | Package Width: | 6.3 inches | | Package Height: | 1.0 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.7 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 1 reviews |
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2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
A COURAGEOUS PROJECT - OPEN QUESTIONS Jan 03, 2010
By Dr. Gerd Doeben-Henisch
PRELIMINARY
The following short review is only a preliminary discussion of only a few of the main topics of the book, which describes a fascinating, yet courageous project targeting the vision of an improved intelligent system using the findings of Psychoanalysis. Such a special interdisciplinary goal raises many questions right from the beginning and I will mention here a few which seem to be relevant from my point of view.
PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE
The overall idea is to develop a hierarchical top-down model describing the psychic apparatus (= mind) of human persons as modular as possible with clearly defined interfaces between the individual modules. The necessary knowledge for this psychic apparatus model shall be imported from Psychoanalysis assumed to have a sufficient mature (meta-)theory describing all important aspects of the mind of intelligent human beings.
EXPERIENTIAL MUST NO BE EMPIRICAL
Right from the beginning of Psychoanalysis there have been critical objections raised against the non-scientific character of the procedure how Psychoanalysis is getting its basic data. Because the psychoanalytic data are observable behavior data as well as to a large extend introspective (subjective) data these subjective data can not be subsumed under the paradigm of empirical measurement which is crucial for the empirical sciences. It is not 'experience as such' which constitutes the data of empirical sciences but 'reproducible measurement' which is independent from the measuring person and in this sense 'objective'. Although this limits the realm of empirical research considerably and although this kind of empirical measurement finally has also to presuppose some 'subjective consciousness' of a researcher, the measurement as such is not 'subjective'. This important distinction is missing in the discussions about the empirical character of Psychoanalysis. In the last years we have learned more about the importance of subjective data as necessary heuristic hints for a deeper understanding of empirical structures and about the necessity to try to develop even formal models of such subjective data, but this does not 'by magic' convert non-empirical into empirical facts.
PSYCHOANALYSIS, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
With the recourse to subjective data Psychoanalysis can be understood as an instance of the general paradigm of Phenomenology which is a philosophical method to analyze the whole space of possible direct experiences without the usual ontological commitments. The psychoanalytical data could then be interpreted as a possible subset of the phenomenological space. Having primary data it is possible to introduce more general concepts, relations etc. leading to possible formal structures or models/ theories including different kinds of 'dynamics' describing the 'changes' of the phenomena. Clearly, it would be possible to develop all of the psychoanalytic concepts within such a (formal) phenomenological framework (theory), including 'Ego', 'Id', and 'Super-Ego'. While Psychoanalysis is limiting the scope of its conceptualizations to 'special' cases, a more general phenomenological approach would allow lots of extensions including the psychoanalytic structure perhaps only as special cases. Furthermore one has to ask whether the early fixation of the psychoanalytic model to terms like 'Ego', 'Id' as well as 'Super-Ego' is eventually too 'dogmatic' hindering the detection and construction of more elaborated and sophisticated dynamical models.
NEUROSCIENCE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
While Freud himself turned away from the field of neurosciences after 20 years of intense work he had at that time good arguments: during that time the neurosciences could only establish some correlations between concrete structural lesions within the nervous system and directly related impairments of 'usually available observable properties'. A direct mapping between missing complex psychic or behavioral functions and distributed sub-networks of the brain were not possible. The argument, that the 'neural hardware' gives no direct clues to possible functions enabled by these structures, has since that time been repeated again and again. And, indeed, with regard to the incredible complexity of the human nervous system it is --even with the advanced measuring methods of today-- nearly impossible to measure any 'function' of the nervous system 'directly'. This is indeed a weak point of the neurosciences, which is further reinforced by the fact, that the neural structures are evolving during the onto-genetic process, are generally adaptive and are interacting in a breathtaking manner with themselves as well as with a complex body.
Despite these problems on the side of the neurosciences there have been some advances and in the long run it could be helpful to correlate a dynamic psychoanalytic model with dynamic neurological models. But to do this fruitfully one needs a completely specified formal psychoanalytic model; otherwise it would be not clear what has to be 'mapped' onto the neurological model. I do not see that we have either of these models at the moment.
TOP-DOWN VERSUS BOTTOM-UP
The book proposes a top-down approach for the modeling of intelligent systems because this shall be in a good agreement with a psychoanalytical point of view. As long as one assumes that the psychoanalytical model is already complete and valid, this can be a good approach. But it is highly questionable, whether this is the case. There is no model in sight which describes sufficiently the evolving dynamics of the neural network of the brain in interaction with the body and as well the dynamics which gives raise to the abundant set of complex functions constituting the subjective experience. In such a situation it could probably be a better strategy to work radically bottom-up by showing how onto-genetic and adaptive processes of growing complexity can evolve out of a neural machinery which itself is evolving.
FINAL REMARK
These few comments are only describing the 'tip of the iceberg'; the book is too rich, the topics too large to be adequately described here. This is an important project and I hope, I can continue with some additional comments during the next months.
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