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The Mind of a Visionary: The Morphology of Cognitive Anticipation as a Cardinal Symptom

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Anticipation: Learning from the Past

Part of the book series: Cognitive Systems Monographs ((COSMOS,volume 25))

Abstract

The Soviet neuroscientist and clinician Alexander Romanovich Luria was a visionary. This paper presents a summary of some of Luria’s fundamental notions and to update them according to our clinical intentions. The concepts of “function”, “functional systems”, “functional units”, “anticipation” and “symptom” are revisited. In particular, the concept of “executive function” is refined from a new theoretical perspective, based on the original sources used by Luria to build his notion of “functional systems”. This definition of executive functions is associated with the notion of “symptom”, also proposed by Luria. The morphology of cognitive “anticipation”, enacted through inferential processes, could be used to assess executive functions.

Morphology is not only a study of material things and of the forms of material things but it has its dynamical aspect, under which we deal with the interpretation, in terms of force, of the operations of Energy.

D’Arcy Wentworth Thomson. On Growth and Form (p. 19)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Labra-Spröhnle, F.: Human, All Too Human: Euclidean and Multifractal Analysis in an Experimental Diagrammatic Model of Thinking, paper presented at the session: Anticipation in biological and physiological systems; to be published in the volume titled, “Anticipation: The Interdisciplinary Perspective”, M. Nadin (Ed.), Springer Verlag.

  2. 2.

    Ibíd.

  3. 3.

    I use the word conative as it is used by J.M. Baldwin, meaning: those active dispositions or impulsive-appetitive and tendency processes of a vectorial nature (conatus in Spinoza’s sense [30]); “that furnish the context, the means of selection, the leading factor in the determination of the object” of cognition [31].

  4. 4.

    It is very tempting to speculate that conative elements play a main role in abductive inferences and affective ones in inductive inferences. Some convergent speculative lines of thinking, regarding the conative nature of cognitive anticipation and the evaluative role of affects has been suggested, although without any reference to Peirce’s inference theory [36, 39]. Nevertheless, recent analysis of the role of guessing in abduction, as Peirce put forward in his last writings, seems to favor these conjectures [40]. Another source, that supports these speculations, comes from several experimental works. First Anokhin and later Sudakov, showed the main role of “dominant motivation” as an “energetic” factor at the “afferent synthesis” stage and during the generation of the “acceptor of action results” (prognosis of the action) [37, 38].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Research Programme, School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

    Fabián Labra-Spröhnle

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  1. Fabián Labra-Spröhnle
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Correspondence to Fabián Labra-Spröhnle .

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  1. antÉ—Institute for Research in Anticipatory Systems, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas, USA

    Mihai Nadin

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Labra-Spröhnle, F. (2015). The Mind of a Visionary: The Morphology of Cognitive Anticipation as a Cardinal Symptom. In: Nadin, M. (eds) Anticipation: Learning from the Past. Cognitive Systems Monographs, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19446-2_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19446-2_22

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