Re circularity, generalising seems to be a basic capacity of any organism: ‘food/not-food’, and later ‘food/mate’Edelman explains how it happens neurologically in animals, as perception, and in larger brained animals as perception of perception.
To mansplain what [Edelman] means by perception of perception I’d have to drag up his whole theory of neuronal group selection.
Aside from his books there’s a bunch of papers that summarise it. You could start here which is free to download...
Edelman, G. M. (2003). Naturalizing consciousness: a theoretical framework. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(9), 5520-5524.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, ‘food/not-food’ and ‘food/mate’ are (linguistic) discriminations, not generalisations.
[2] On Edelman's model, a perceptual category is established through instances being determined as alike in terms of both value-weighted perceptual features and adaptive motor response. This is achieved neurally through repeated value-guided firings of neuronal groups in global mappings for each instance. Each firing strengthens the synaptic connections within the group, making the group more likely — selecting it — to fire again under similar conditions in the future.
[3] To be clear, Edelman (2003) makes no mention of "perception of perception", but in Edelman's model, the brain further categorises its own categorising performances. For example, in categorising perceptual categorising, the brain creates what Edelman terms 'concepts', but what SFL Theory would interpret as perceptual systems (perceptions organised into systems).
[4] For interpretations of Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection in terms of SFL Theory, see the 72 posts here.
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