Off lately, I have been driven to explore cultural and cognitive studies.
Especially as to how, Culture and Cognition develop in humans.
I have been deeply influenced by the works of Joseph Campbell, Karl Gustav Jung, George Lakoff, Antonio Damasio, Mark Johnson, Rafael E Nunez, Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier.
And the more I understand Cognition and Culture Development, the more I begin to believe that unlike what was thought earlier, Consciousness and its after effects- Cognition, emotion, memory and other mental states are not emergent phenomenon.
As Gestalt theoreticians would surmise, they dont arise on their own and out of randomness.
There is much more to it.
Physicists however have a different point of view.
The example of a collective effect or emergent behaviour they give is that of magnetism, which occurs in isolation but only when many atoms are present.
Physicists call such phenomena “emergent” because they depend on a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.
By this logic Physicists surmise that consciousness may be a collective effect, too.
For those of my friends who would like to read more about conceptual blending and cognition development, I strongly suggest the book by Fauconnier and Turner-The Way we Think-Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities.
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