The Microgenetic Theory of Mind and Brain

This book asks where ideas, objects and feelings come from and how they arise via an exploration of the nature of subjective experience and its relation to the world. Seeking an explanation for the experience of subjective duration and the present and in contrast to the conception of mental events as non-temporal logical solids, it explores a diachronic processual theory founded on psychological data and clinical observation that provides an explanatory "system" of thought adequate to the phenomena it is called on to explain. The author focuses on the intra-psychic sources and nature of subjective experience, with the intent of examining a variety of phenomena from the standpoint of microgenetic theory. The chapters deal with the origins of human subjectivity and the epochal nature of time and duration, change and the relevance of a theory of the mental state to dream and the waking present. Based on speculative psychology that flows from case studies in neuropsychology and concepts in process philosophy, it advances a theory of mind and brain that brings together previous, fragmentary research studies on this topic.

Jason W. Brown is a behavioural neurologist and, for over 30 years, was Clinical Professor of Neurology at New York University Medical Center, USA. Denys Zhadiaiev is a scholar, lecturer and Associate Professor at Dnipro University of Technology, Ukraine. Paul Stenner is Professor of Social Psychology at the Open University, UK.

Introduction Part 1: Introduction to Section 1: Time 1.1. On the Nature of the Present 1.2. Time and the Dream Part 2: Introduction to Section 2: Subjectivity 2.1. Origins of Subjective Experience 2.2. The Mind/Brain State Part 3: Introduction to Section 3: Thought and Value 3.1. From Drive to Value 3.2. Action-Feeling and Self-Conscious Mind 3.3. Thought and Belief 4. Appendix: Microgenesis and the Mind/Brain State: Interviews with Jason Brown