Half brain fables and figs in paradise [[electronic resource] /] / Jacques M. Chevalier

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910783800203321
• Autore: Chevalier Jacques M. <1949->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Montreal ; ; Ithaca, : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2002
• ISBN: 1-282-86041-0; 9786612860416; 0-7735-7016-0
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (205 p.)
• Collana: The 3-D mind ; ; v. 1
• Disciplina: 302.0
• Soggetti: Neuropsychology; Semiotics - Psychological aspects; Semiotics; Psycholinguistics; Language and languages - Philosophy; Neurophysiology
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [183]-188) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front Matter -- Contents -- Log On: Hyperlinks -- Cratylus Returns -- The Neural Web -- Half Brain Talk -- Two Brains Are Better Than One -- A Childless Father and a Rose Is a Rose -- Meetings of Synkretismos and Diakritikos -- Semiotic Weavings -- In the Synaptic Clefts -- What’s in a Name? -- The Forest Primeval -- Who Gives a Fig? -- The Corn Boy and the Iguana -- Philosophical Lines -- A Theoreticle Approach -- Pigeons, Doves, and Ghosts -- A Jungle in Versailles -- The Nervous Line -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: Half-Brain Fables and Figs in Paradise starts the trilogy on the lateral plane and explores the tendency of each hemisphere to specialize but also to complement or supplement the other hemisphere. Brain and sign processing is thus shown to involve bimodal weavings or reticles of right-hemispheric similarities and left-hemispheric differences. Chevalier goes on to illustrate how whole-brain connectivity generates the crisscrossings of oppositions and metaphors in language, using symbolically rich material ranging from Western naming practices to ; expressions of ethnobotany in the bible (figs in Genesis), poetry (Longfellow's Evangeline), and native Mexican mythology. Three major philosophical implications follow from Chevalier's "theoreticle" perspective on the weavings of signs and synapse. First, the integrative concept of "nervous sign processing" should be substituted for models of the brain and the intellect that separate biology from mental and cultural activity. The subject matter of "semiosis" is both physical and communicational. Second, sign reticles are orderly and chaotic at the same time. They are subject to patterns of convergence but also to lines of divergence that defy simple modeling, whether analytical or dialectical. Third, sign events are governed by the principle of conferencing, not referencing. They do not refer to things or thoughts signified through representational means. Rather they confer meaning through "signaptic" conversations, reticles of fine lines evolving in language and in neural cells alike.