Positioning of my text

The following is an attempt at positioning the text "SELF-DETERMINATION - thoughts on self-concept"  within the wider contemporary discourse.

There are close relations to the following philosophical positions:

 "Hypothetical realism" The view that there is at least one reality independent from the human being. This reality has a structure according to causal relations (a cause and effect relationship objectively exists), and these real structures are at least partly recognizable (structural realism).

 "Nonreductive physicalism" All phenomena that exist in the real world have a physical basis. Phenomena cannot exclusively be described using physical vocabulary, however. In the case of complex systems and the living world a distinction needs to be made whether an underlying cause or its purpose is of interest, which requires distinguishing between causes and reasons. For matters pertaining to the living world, purposes or reasons will usually provide better explanations;  in the area of the consciousness, explanations can almost only be provided by reasons.

Bernd Lindemann refers to systems theory in his book Mechanisms in World and Mind  (2014), arguing that according to the stage model of systems theory causality can affect the upper level only from the lower level. A reverse operating direction is not possible. According to my interpretation a few key priorities of his arguments are: Causality actually takes place only at a physical zero level; universal system levels are introduced to make things more readily accessible. The different levels are connected by identity. For pragmatic reasons, the level that illustrates the causal relationship best is chosen as a base. Systems theory thus serves the purpose of enhanced illustration, in view of our limited imagination. Substantive (Concreta) and virtual (Abstracta) are different categories between which no causal correlation can exist. Material objects can be localized in space and time and causally linked. Whereas thoughts, plans and symbols, purpose and reason are virtual, i.e. immaterial; they cannot be localized in space and therefore cannot act causally. Thoughts are both Concreta and Abstracta. Their contents exist outside of matter as Abstracta but have a specific neural basis on which they depend. Consciousness "supervenes" on their neural basis. The causal chain through this thought-base causes the neurons to fire, initiating a voluntary motor response. If under specific conditions many neurons communicate in a structured manner, a new level above the level of neurons is created on the material basis. According to the system theory the system property at the upper level is "more" than the sum of the properties on the lower level. Nevertheless, this higher system property can be reduced to the physical zero level, even down several steps, although a reduction down several steps is increasingly hard to grasp.

Moreover, I believe that basically nothing should speak against interpreting certain neuronal processes as communication processes in the form of an experience that are not tied to sensations while being in thought or e.g. in a dream during sleep. Their purpose is to constitute the mental. The neuronal processes are only a means to an end. Thus understood such neuronal processes only serve as "carriers" for all mental abilities, including e.g. thought. A comparable example would be a telephone line, which is only a means to an end, namely the "carrier" for language transmission. Thus understood a causal determination of the "carrier" is by no means questionable but on the contrary a requirement for good functioning. The content of the experience format e.g. during thinking is not controlled by an external causal influence but exclusively subject to the internal flow of information.

With regard to the naturalism debate this means that mental abilities can be imagined as realized between neurons and described, albeit vaguely, using the natural science vocabulary e.g. neuroimaging. The natural science vocabulary would not be very useful or even useless for explaining and conveying a sense of "how something feels". In his book Consciousness and the Brain. Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014), the French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene explains how contents of consciousness can be extrapolated from brain imaging.

According to Bernard J. Baars (2009) the purpose of consciousness is that already at the neuronal level environmental information important for survival but also autobiographical knowledge is available in parallel and simultaneously on a "bulletin-board" allowing associations; thus we can respond to new environmental conditions quickly and effectively. Thus consciousness is for internal communication.

Qualia, i.e. color perception, pain or feelings, provides an important contribution via well-being on this bulletin-board, and were therefore also realized at neuronal level in evolution.

Attemptive definitions of Consciousness, Experience, Spirit, Intellect: Consciousness and the flux of subjective experience as a functionality of the human brain can be understood as "providing, periodically, a large amount of preselected and pre-evaluated information simultaneously via neural structures". It is assumed that a meaningful evaluation of a situation or an object is only possible if large amounts of oscillation-triggered partial information are simultaneously available and a relation between them can be established. In this process, pre-evaluated neural information is an essential component, for example feelings, pain, and color perception, because it is very important in evolutionary terms and for human survival (biological evolution must have exercised a very strong selection pressure on the shaping of actionable mechanisms. Emotions, feelings and impulses are therefore assumed to be the product of evolutionary evaluations by the human brain). This comprehensive, simultaneous availability and establishing of a relation between amounts of partial information can be understood as "consciousness". Therefore "zombies", i.e. creatures that have the same evaluation structure and thus an "intellect" but no consciousness, are unthinkable.

A consciousness without a material basis is unthinkable. However, the result of a deliberate act can be better understood if we look for purposes.

In this context "Hypothesis of Interaction of Self-Conscious Mind and the Liaison Brain" by John C. Eccles, written in Das Ich und sein Gehirn (1989) should be mentioned. Together with Karl R. Popper he presents the "Three Worlds Theory".

My view to Eccles' hypothesis is that a specific excitation of the very complex liaison brain, which consists of functionally different and interconnected centers, necessarily constitutes consciousness. Is it not rather inconceivable that such an amount of extensive and evaluated information that is simultaneously available through a triggered system and coupled back with highly diverse retrievable memory contents exists without consciousness? I think the functionality of such a system is identical with consciousness. In the understanding of supervenience new properties appear successively. "Supervene" can be translated as "dependent".

For further references to this subject see Stanislas Dehaene, who describes his pioneering work for a theory of consciousness in his book Consciousness and the Brain. Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014).

 "Evolutionary cognition theory" This position in cognition theory plays a major role in the text. Reference is made to the works of the physicist and philosopher Gerhard Vollmer and the marine biologist and cognition theorist Rupert Riedl. I would like to refer to Rupert Riedl's book Biologie der Erkenntnis (1981), ", in which he presents the concept of four causes in all living organisms. He argues that in the sphere of influence of living organisms the efficient cause acts permanently as a force, the "final cause" as a purpose, and "material cause" and "formal cause" act from layer to layer. Let it be understood that "final cause" is not seen as a teleological cause functioning along the time axis but rather as a teleonomic cause that is at work in the effective direction of layer building in complex organic systems. Thus reasons are made understandable without leaving out material causes.

I would like to provide an excerpt of Rupert Riedl's Die Strategie der Genesis (1980, 311):

"This world probably contains only a single cause. But with the complexity of the things, it appears to us in different manners. The wall of a house may have only one effect; but in its effective direction toward the next higher layer it appears to us as the material cause of the rooms built. In its effect on the lower layer, it appears to us as the formal cause of the selected building blocks. It appears to us as the material cause and the form cause of its layer. Philosophical materialism fails in the attempt to explain all causes only from the deeper, the material causes; idealism fails on the attempt to explain all causes only from the higher, formative layers. Both concepts are impeded by their exclusive causality principle. Understanding systems requires the acknowledgement of cycles and causal interaction, which is producer of systems"..

 "Process philosophy of biology": This philosophy sees the living world as a process. A person is a lifeworld unit comprised of subjective personal experience and systemic biology, an embodied und extended mind. This triggers implications for a theory of the person. The philosophical positions of Marya Schechtmann (2014) and Anne Sophie Meincke (2019) are advocated.

The Bieri-Trilemma:

1.         Mental phenomena are not physical phenomena

2.         Mental phenomena are causally effective in the area of physical phenomena

3.         The area of physical phenomena is causally closed

This Trilemma includes the problem of mental causation. One proposed solution results from above considerations: Rule (2) must be reformulated so that mental phenomena are physical phenomena and therefore causally effective. Likewise, Rule (1) must be reworded so that mental phenomena are physical phenomena, and mental phenomena are caused by supervenience. Rule (3) is therefore valid.

 "Compatibilism" The assumption is that free will and determinism are compatible ideas. Reference is made to the views of the philosophers Peter Bieri (2009), Michael Pauen (2008) and the social scientist and philosopher Michael Schmidt Salomon (2009).  According to this concept freedom depends on whether an act is determined by its originator or other factors that are not attributable to the originator. A progress determinism that conclusively predetermines all future states of the world on the basis of a preexisting state of the world is not advocated here, as it does not constitute a justifiable position in current physics. In particle physics certain events are purely coincidental. Also, even the Euromillions lottery shows that nearly identical events  induce chance within a very short period. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged that nonlinear complex dynamic structures are open and not predictable as to their future development, which is not only due to the enormous computing requirements but from their design; this applies even where all starting conditions are fully known. Think of complex software, which, depending on a large number of parameters,  modifies its own structure by chance for optimization purposes and identifies the most preferable structure through trial and error.

All in all, the paper "SELF-DETERMINATION - Thoughts On Self-Concept" is committed to "Evolutionary Humanism". It stands for the social scientist and philosopher Michael Schmidt-Salomon (2006). In this world view there is no room for dogma, i.e. constructs based on ideologies or universalism resulting from religions, traditional values, unverifiable principles or any philosophies that are not open to criticism, nor does is leave any room for relativism that is unable to fight for global humanistic principles.