Emergence and non-linear dynamics

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        <i>Emergence and non-linear dynamics</i>
      
      
        
      
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        Enaction, as a concrete research perspective studies mental acts as emerging from the 
        concurrent participation of several functionally distinct and topographically distributed 
        regions of the brain and their sensori-motor embodiment. It is the complex task of 
        relating and integrating these different components that is at the root of the arising of 
        a distinct yet inseparable higher-level, coherent center that can be called an identity, a 
        cognitive self.
      
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        Such a view in current scientific research is only possible because is rooted in the tools 
        derived from the modern tools referred to as 
      
      
        <u>non-linear dynamics</u>
      
      
         , (also referred to as complexity or chaos theory, emergent or self-organizing 
        processes). This dynamical turn stands in stark contrast to the cognitivist tradition that 
        finds its natural expression in syntactic information-processing models. The constellation 
        of these notions represents one of the most essential mutation in science since Freud's 
        time, and they are called to play an essential role in retelling the narratives that 
        reveal the subject in quasi-object existence.
      
      
        <u><http://www.etatsgeneraux-psychanalyse.net/archives/texte183.html></u>
      
      
         Since these ideas are a central part of the transference between science and 
        psychoanalysis, a brief evocation is in order, even if it is sketchy.
      
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        Non-linear dynamics has revolutionized the entire framework of modern science in all 
        domains by providing a new vision of causality : a consequence arises from a 
      
      
        <u>network of multiple causes</u>
      
      
        , rather than a linear single cause. In contrast to the dominant computer (or hydraulic) 
        metaphors in vogue for the study of organisms, in complex dynamics the quest is to 
        discover how the simple constituents can lead to a 
      
      
        <u>global</u>
      
      
         (or higher level) emergence. This global emergence has a clear mode or existence (an 
        identity of some kind) but it cannot be localized or situated except in its dynamic 
        transience. The scientific work has been to give (mathematical and empirical) substance to 
        this intuitive notion that the whole is more than the sum of the parts; research seeks to 
        spell out the how of this emergent surplus. The core principle is the same: the passage 
        from the local to the global. In the case that concerns us this points directly to a 
        codetermination of neural elements and a global cognitive subject, which belongs to an 
        emergent level and has that mode of existence
      
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        (For this minimal notion of a subject see the recent discussion by Shaun Gallagher (2000). 
      
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        Now the principle of emergence is normally interpreted with a rather reductionist twist. 
        That is, many will accept that the self is an emergent property arising from a 
        neural/bodily base. However the 
      
      
        <u>reverse</u>
      
      
         statement is typically missed: If the neural components and dynamics act as local agents 
        that can give rise to a self, then it follows that this global level, the self, has direct 
      
      
        <u>efficacious actions</u>
      
      
         over the local components. It's a two-way street: the local components give rise to this 
        emergent mind, but, vice versa, the emergent mind constrains, affects directly these local 
        components. Research provides many examples of this functioning on a somatic level.
      
      
        <u><http://www.etatsgeneraux-psychanalyse.net/archives/texte183.html></u>
      
      
        
      
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        Furthermore, the multiplicity of non-linear causes brings to its full force the 
        realization that a cognitive subject is not a single-locus, isolated process. It can only 
        operate in its extended network of action, most clearly in human intersubjective 
        circulation. An agent is thus a distributed pattern that can only be singular in its 
        social dissemination. Current scientific research concentrates its work on intersubjective 
        enaction from the study of early infancy, as well as imitation throughout the primate 
        groups. Enaction must thus be seen as extending into the phenomena of the transference.
      
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