[Bmi] brain-mind-society-culture

[Juyang Weng]

Dear Hans Kuijper,

I am glad that you wrote to us.   Do you think that human societies, 
countries, and politics, can be viewed effectively from basic principles 
of natural sciences to more scientifically address many problems facing us?

"Lifting the study of China onto a higher plane": Did you post the 
entire article?   I did not see the article, only a title.

The 2nd Open Letter to the US President Obama: Why US Should Be Friendly 
with Every Government? 
<http://www.brain-mind-magazine.org/read.php?file=BMM-V1-N2-paper5-Obama.pdf#view> 

In the above letter, I thought about international relations from a 
viewpoint of basic science.  Interestingly, humans repeat mistakes over 
and over again in history.  It is hard for them to see complex things 
through basic sciences.

Best regards,

-John

On 2/14/13 5:38 PM, hans kuijper wrote:
> Dear BMILISTS,
> Over the last three months or so, I have been following some of your 
> work with great interest, trying to understand it in the context of 
> fast developing cognitive science(s?). I do believe that *the mind is 
> embodied* and consequently biologists, particularly brain scientists, 
> (will) have a lot to say about this ill-defined 'thing'.
> However, educated in the humanities (I graduated in sinology from 
> Leyden University) and becoming increasingly interested in the science 
> of complexity, I believe that *the mind is also embedded*. For, as Lev 
> Vygotsky already argued in his book /Mind in Society/ (1930): 'The 
> mind cannot be understood in isolation from the surrounding society', 
> an original idea revisited in Andrzej Nowak, Katarzyna Winkowska-Nowak 
> and David Brée (eds.), /Complex Human Dynamics: From Mind to Society/, 
> Springer, 2013.
> Culture (that other notoriously difficult to describe 'thing', about 
> which many books have been written) seems to be the missing link 
> between mind and society. So the conundrum workers in the natural and 
> cultural (/i.e. /social and human) sciences should address 
> collaboratively is the identification, characterisation and 
> understanding of *the intimate connection between* *mind's 
> embodiedness and embeddedness*.**
> **
> Arguably, there is nothing more complex than a country, or a culture, 
> being a hypercomplex system of complex systems in context (its outside 
> world). If 'a revolution is occurring in the social sciences', as the 
> editors of /Complex Human Dynamics /claim, that easily overlooked 
> point is to be taken into account. See the article 'Lifting the study 
> of China onto a higher plane' that I recently posted on the website 
> www.academia.edu <http://www.academia.edu>. *//*
> Since I am currently working on a book provisionally entitled /The 
> Complexity of Countries/, I wonder if anyone of you could suggest what 
> I should definitely read to be well-informed about the cutting edge 
> research not only on _brain_, _mind_, _society_ and _culture_ but also 
> (and perhaps in the first place) on the relationships between these 
> intricately patterned entities.
> Needless to say, I would be most grateful if you could help me.
> Yours sincerely,
> Hans Kuijper
> Joliotplaats 5
> 3069 JJ Rotterdam
> The Netherlands

-- 
--
Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
3115 Engineering Building
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
Tel: 517-353-4388
Fax: 517-432-1061
Email: weng at cse.msu.edu
URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/
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