How our mental life happens inour nervous systems

Freely available: Three books and anarticle

byPeter Naur, winner of the ACM A. M.Turing Award 2005

Psychology – Neurology –without Cognitivism

The neural embodiment of mentallife by the synapse-state theory

Mental life as described in William James’sThePrinciples of Psychologyis shown to arise from the excitation activity in a network consisting ofnodes, neurons, and synapses. Habits are embodied in the plastic conductivitystates of the synapses. The excitation activity is shown to account for allaspects of mental life:

•      the streamof thought, including its change from one moment to the next as influenced byfeelings;

•      thingsthought of, with their associations, fringes, and the feelings aroused by them;

•      attention:the brief accentuation of certain parts of the stream of thought;

•      thespecious present: retention in the stream of thought, of parts attended torecently, providing the original experience of pastness;

•      recall ofthings thought of previously;

•      imagination:recall of sensations of things thought of previously;

•      sensationsand perceptions of influences on the sense organs, including perceptions ofspeech sounds and script;

•      themuscular activity of speech sound utterances;

•      responsehabits, manifesting themselves in situation-dependent responses, includingexpressions of personality characteristics such as sexual orientation;

•      educationof the nervous system from instincts, by imitation;

•      personalitychanges, spontaneous and as induced by hypnosis.

Downloading of the 189 pages of the book:clickHERE (1000 kilobytes)

Neural impairments in a case ofAlzheimer’s disease

According to the synapse-state theory, the activityof the neural system takes place in a network composed of neurons, nodes, andsynapses, of altogether 9 different kinds, distributed into 5 layers: senselayer, motor layer, item layer, attention layer, and specious present layer. Itis shown how all the symptoms, introspective as well as behavioral, observedover a period of 4 years in a particular case of Alzheimer’s disease, the caseof Iris Murdoch, can be understood to have arisen from the decay, one after theother, of the nodes of the item layer.

Downloading of the 29 pages of the article: clickHERE (480 kilobytes)

An anatomy of human mental life

Psychology in unideological reconstruction,incorporating the synapse-state theory of mental life.

Includes detailed criticism of behaviorism andcognitivism.

Downloading of the 283 pages of the book:clickHERE

Antiphilosophical Dictionary

Thinking - Speech - Science/Scholarship.

Reveals the philosophical misapprehensions aboutmental life.

Downloading of the 102 pages of the book: clickHERE (824 kilobytes)

Hard copies of the books may be obtained viaIngrid@polyteknisk.dk. Free copies for review may be obtained by application bypost mail to the author Peter Naur, Begoniavej 20, DK 2820 Gentofte, Denmark.