Uma coisa desse mundo : auto-organização, neuroplasticidade e epigênese da consciência

Abstract

This study presents the thesis I have been calling “epigenesis of consciousness”. The main problem addressed here is how to account for a strictly materialist explanation of consciousness without resorting to an unrestricted attachment to any sort of reductive materialism and determinist naturalism. My working hypothesis takes as its starting point the Spinozist monism to state: 1. that consciousness emerges from the self-organizing matter; 2. that this self-organization follows a pattern, a layered formation which runs from the peripheral nervous system to the neocortex; 3. that this process is related to the neuroplasticity of the brain tissue and can be mapped by dynamic systems theory. Starting from this hypothesis, I apply the neurodynamics of emotions to map the three stages behind the uprising of consciousness: 1. the live present; 2. Memory; 3. Thought. The aim of this work is to state that consciousness is an evolutionary, co-emergent, subject-to-variation process, merging determinism and freedom in nature.