The chapters in this volume attempt to establish some foundational principles of a theory of the mind/brain grounded in evolutionary and process theory. From this standpoint, the book discusses some main problems in philosophical psychology, including the nature and origins of the mind/brain state, experience and consciousness, feeling, subjective time and free will. The approach - that of microgenesis - holds that formative phases in the generation of the mental state are the primary focus of explanation, not the assumed properties of logical solids. For microgenesis, the process leading to a conscious end point is, together with the final content, part of an epochal state, the outcome of which, an act, object or word, incorporates earlier segments of that series, such as value, meaning and belief.

Gathering 115 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, the Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought aims at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary development. Two kinds of entries are weaved together in order to interpret Whitehead secundum Whitehead and to read him from the vantage point of interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary research. The “thematic ” entries provide (i) a broad contextualisation of the issue at stake; (ii) a focus on Whitehead's treatment (if any) or of a possible Whiteheadian treatment of the issue; (iii) a history of relevant scholarship; (iv) a personal assessment by the Author. The “biographical ” entries provide (i) a brief vita of the targeted thinker; (ii) a sketch of his/her categories relevant to the Whiteheadian scholarship; (iii) a personal assessment of the actual (or possible) Whiteheadian semantic transfer to or from the thinker.

This volume celebrates the life achievements of Jason W. Brown, who, along with Jean Piaget, Heinz Werner, Alexander Luria and the Würzburg school, has significantly contributed to the development of a process-based theory of brain/mind capable of challenging the currently fashionable modularist or cybernetic approaches to understanding human thought and feeling. As a paradigm, Brown's microgenetic theory is thus applicable in both brain science (where Brown was inspired by the pioneering work of Schilder and Pick) and the philosophy of mind (where the influence of Bergson, Whitehead, Cassirer, and Merleau-Ponty can be seen). Essays with a range of focus as wide as Brown's expertise have been collected in such diverse areas as neuropsychology (microstructure of action, symptomatology, neuro-rehabilitation, neurolinguistics, locationism), theoretical psychology (consciousness, hypnosis, morphogenesis, personality development, psychoanalysis, Buddhist psychology, mysticism), and philosophy of mind (evolutionary epistemology, emergence/novelty/creativity, subjectivity, will and action, Whiteheadian process philosophy).

Many are fascinated by the phenomenon of genius and search for an understanding of its nature. Modern research is not especially helpful in elucidating the inner process or its relation to ordinary thought. The present work comes from clinical studies of focal brain injuries that dissect unconscious cognition to reveal sub-surface lines of processing. The outcome is a process (microgenetic) theory of the mental state that differs markedly from mainstream (cognitive) psychology, but with the potential to clarify many features of thought and imagery, normal and exceptional. Creativity is not an isolated problem but touches many central issues in philosophical psychology.

In this book, John Buchanan takes us on a journey through the early death of a parent, the ups and downs of addiction, the extraordinary revelations of psychedelic experiences, and the rewards of a sober and meaningful life. Reflecting on these experiences, the author identifies five pivotal events that drove him to seek a deeper understanding of the significance of extraordinary experiences, the nature of mind and the universe, the meaning of life, and most generally to ask: What is Reality? Drawing on his wide-ranging studies and explorations, Buchanan discusses the ideas that most influenced his search and led him to conclude that transpersonal psychology and process philosophy, especially as developed by Stanislav Grof and Alfred North Whitehead, offer the most satisfying answers. He presents in some detail the essence of Grof’s and Whitehead’s thought as it pertains to these basic questions about life and reality so that readers can appreciate these ideas for themselves. Buchanan argues that taken together process thought and transpersonal theory offer the kind of enspirited worldview capable of providing both the necessary inspiration and the intellectual understanding for confronting the great challenges facing our world.

Opens a dialogue between process philosophy and contemporary consciousness studies.

Presents experimental methodology, neuropsychological interpretations, and clinical applications of cognitive microgenesis theory along with research findings on visual information processing, anxiety, defense, attention, and personality assessment.

This book is an account of the psychology of romantic love in the context of a theory of emotions. The account develops out of studies in brain psychology and the extension to topics in process-philosophy, such as the nature of value and belief, and the central role of feeling in mental process. The approach is subjectivist, that is, from the internal standpoint, and in this respect it differs greatly from the externalist and objectivist trends in modern cognitive science and empiricist philosophy. Love is the ultimate in value, so that a theory of love is also a theory of the nature of value and its relation to feeling, belief, and to drive and desire. The role of intention, reason, and appraisal is critiqued. The relation to other feelings, such as jealousy, envy, anger, loss and grief is discussed in terms of a general theory of emotion and the basis in a process account of the mind/brain state.

This collection of brief essays and still briefer commentaries is a personal reflection on some topics that have been thematic in the development of my theoretical work. These essays are not meant to extend the theory into yet-uncharted territory, but rather to draw out some of its implications for clinical neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and everyday life. The point of view guiding these reflections can be found in prior works, but the discerning reader will not fail to see a departure from current models of mind and brain based on circuit board diagrams, modular and computational theories that conflict with a processual account in which the mind/brain is more like a living organism. This perspective, which is often at odds with common sense and folk psychology, has particular relevance to our concepts of the self, the inner life, subjective time, adaptive process, and the world represented in perception.

Language plays a central role in human life. However, the term ‘language’ as defined in the language sciences of the 20th century and the traditions these have drawn on, have arguably, limited our thinking about what language is and does. The two inter-linked volumes of Thibault’s study articulate crucially important aspects of an emerging new perspective shift on language - the Distributed Language view – that is now receiving more and more attention internationally. Rejecting the classical view that the fundamental architecture of language can be localized as a number of inter-related levels of formal linguistic organization that function as the coded inputs and outputs to each other, the distributed language view argues that languaging behaviour is a bio-cultural organisation of process that is embodied, multimodal, and integrated across multiple space-time scales. Thibault argues that we need to think of human languaging as the distinctively human mode of our becoming and being selves in the extended human ecology and the kinds of experiencing that this makes possible. Paradoxically, this also means thinking about language in non-linguistic ways that break the grip of the conventional meta-languages for thinking about human languaging. Thibault’s book grounds languaging in process theory: languaging and the forms of experience it actualizes is always an event, not a thing that we ‘use’. In taking a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, the book relates dialogical theories of human sense-making to the distributed view of human cognition, to recent thinking about distributed language, to ecological psychology, and to languaging as inter-individual affective dynamics grounded in the subjective lives of selves. In taking this approach, the book considers the coordination of selves in social encounters, the emergent forms of self-reflexivity that characterise these encounters, and the implications for how we think of and live our human sociality, not as something that is mediated by over-arching codes and systems, but as emerging from the endogenous subjectivities of selves when they seek to coordinate with other selves and with the situations, artefacts, social institutions, and technologies that populate the extended human ecology. The two volumes aim to bring our understanding of human languaging closer to human embodiment, experience, and feeling while also showing how languaging enables humans to transcend local circumstances and thus to dialogue with cultural tradition. Volume 1 focuses on the shorter timescales of bodily dynamics in languaging activity. Volume II integrates the shorter timescales of body dynamics to the longer cultural-historical timescales of the linguistic and cultural norms and patterns to which bodily dynamics are integrated.