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Full Idea
When you get maps all over the brain signalling to each other by reentry you have what Edelman calls 'global mapping', and this allows the system not only to have perceptual categories and generalisation, but also to coordinate perception and action.
Clarification
'Reentry' is interchange of signals in the brain
Gist of Idea
Concepts and generalisations result from brain 'global mapping' by 'reentry'
Source
report of G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000]) by John Searle - The Mystery of Consciousness Ch.3
Book Ref
Searle,John R.: 'The Mystery of Consciousness' [Granta 1997], p.42
A Reaction
This is the nearest we have got to a proper scientific account of thought (as opposed to untested speculation about Turing machines). Something like this account must be right. A concept is a sustained process, not a static item.
| 19372 | Concepts are ordered, and show eternal possibilities, deriving from God [Leibniz, by Arthur,R] |
| 16912 | Some concepts can be made a priori, which are general thoughts of objects, like quantity or cause [Kant] |
| 24129 | We start with images, then words, and then concepts, to which emotions attach [Nietzsche] |
| 23187 | Whatever their origin, concepts survive by being useful [Nietzsche] |
| 19633 | We use concepts to master our fears; saying 'death' releases us from confronting it [Cioran] |
| 10645 | We reach concepts by clarification, or by definition, or by habitual experience [Price,HH] |
| 8781 | The mind does not lift concepts from experience; it creates them, and then applies them [Geach] |
| 11859 | The mind conceptualizes objects; yet objects impinge upon the mind [Wiggins] |
| 12658 | Nobody knows how concepts are acquired [Fodor] |
| 17722 | The concept 'red' is tied to what actually individuates red things [Peacocke] |
| 5793 | Concepts and generalisations result from brain 'global mapping' by 'reentry' [Edelman/Tononi, by Searle] |
| 4926 | Concepts arise when the brain maps its own activities [Edelman/Tononi] |