The recursively generational brain. (October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: van Deventer, Vasi
• Other Names: Lux Vanessa guest-editor.; van Ommen Clifford guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Theory & psychology. Volume 26:Number 5(2016:Oct.)
• Page Start: 647
• Page End: 664
• Publication Date: 2016-10
• Subjects: brain -- différance -- generation -- recursion -- self-representation -- simulation -- symmetry -- undecidable -- undefinable; Psychology -- Periodicals; 150.1
• DOI: 10.1177/0959354316668277
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0959-3543

Abstract

Modern understandings of the brain involve computation in one form or another. In large brain projects the synthesis of brain and computer is taken to its ultimate conclusion by super computer simulations of the brain and the export of brain processes in the form of neuromorphic computing. But behind these computations lurks the reality of a brain calling upon itself in the representation of itself, with each call establishing a new generation of itself. This is a recursively generational brain, a brain that is both generating and generated. This article conceptualises these processes in terms of the relational symmetries of the generating brain and the generated brain. Abstract constructs are made more tangible in an example in which geometric characteristics of a triangle are used to model the functioning of a simplified recursively generational brain. In conclusion, it is claimed that a proper simulation of the brain would necessarily be cyborgian.