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Microgenetic Theory: Reflections and Prospects

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Jason Brown
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66 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10021, e-mail:

Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Jason Brown (2001) Microgenetic Theory: Reflections and Prospects, Neuropsychoanalysis: An
Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 3:1, 61-74, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2001.10773337
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61

Microgenetic Theory: Reflections and Prospects

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Jason Brown (New York)

Abstract: This paper reviews the development ofthe microgenetic theory of the mind-brain state, its roots in genetic and process
psychology, and its application to a variety of problems in neuropsychology and the theory of mind. The temporal or process perspective of microgenesis, its subjectivism, and its concept of
actualization and internal relations are in sharp contrast to the
substantialism, logical atomism, and theory ofinteraction byexternal relations that characterize much of cognitivist theory. It is
my belief that microgenesis can help to bring neuropathological
phenomena and inferred normal psychic processes into relation
with process-based psychoanalytic formulations such as those proposed by Paul Schilder and David Rapaport, among others.

I am grateful to Ed Nersessian and Mark Solms for

the invitation (in response to my commentary on Semenza; this issue) to revisit the theory of microgenesis,
to provide a personal reflection on the history of this
theory in the context of the neuropsychology of its
day, and update the progress in my own thinking and
the direction of my current work. The time seems ripe
for a retelling of this story. Interest in localization
and computational models has waned as distributed or
network theories have gained a footing and evolutionary concepts have come back into vogue. All of these
changes are congenial to process thought.
In neurology, the predominant mode of thought
at the onset of my studies was that of localization of
function. The split-brain studies of the early 1960s and
the advances in brain imaging soon after were made
to order for localization concepts. This came together
in the revival of disconnection concepts that traced
to the association and faculty psychology of the 19th
century. The success of the approach owed its appeal
not only to anatomical findings but also to reinforcement by deeper currents in philosophy and psycholinguistics, especially computational models in cognitive
psychology. Different modes of cognition were reported for the right and left hemispheres. Components
Jason Brown, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Neurology at the New
York University Medical Center.

of language were localized to discrete brain areas.

Each behavior had its own hypothetical neural architecture. The older schemas of classical neurology were
replaced by organs for separate functions, a processor
for grammatical intuitions, a dictionary for names, a
store for word meanings, a center for word images, a
module for form recognition, and so on. The approach
was pragmatic. There was no overarching theory of
reading, language, or perception, no concept of brain
organization relating to the functions and connected
areas. And, the public bought it. As Kant wrote, "there
is no art in being intelligible if one renounces all thoroughness of insight."
The concept of encapsulated systems that interact
brought to interhemispheric function a computerdriven logic that accommodated the notion of withinhemisphere modularity. If right and left hemispheres
were different boxes connected by wires, why not
smaller boxes within each hemisphere similarly connected? And if one substitutes a computer chip for a
box, and a circuit board for a brain, the analogy is
complete. The metaphor or simile, "the brain is like
a computer" finally became frozen in, "the brain is a
computer." What a far cry from Housman's "this
brain that fills the skull with schemes/and its humming
hive of dreams."
Gradually, the areas (modules) multiplied, as did
the fractionation of functions into finer constituents.
The products of an analytic cognition became its ingredients. One could say, the functions hypothesized
from the analysis were reconstituted from the outputs.
Thought moves in a direction from wholes to parts,
so the very process of thinking delivered the parts that
were assumed to be its constituents. Modularity is an
outcome of specification. The part functions are products, not building blocks. What I mean to say is that
the analytic trend of scientific explanation is itself the
pattern of mental process, not necessarily a description
of how things are. Santayana wrote, glibly, that perceptions fall into the brain like seeds in a furrowed

Jason Brown

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62

field. In fact, the seeds in every pulse of mentality are

planted by the mind. Goethe put it better, "nature
always follows an analytic course-development out
of a living, mysterious whole."
The point is that things are not simply there, they
arise, and this arising, the momentary life of the thing,
is hidden in its phenomenal surface. A thread of relatedness binds the thing to its source, as it binds all
things to each other. Again, Goethe, "a great danger
for the analytic thinker arises when he applies his
method where there is no underlying synthesis ... (and that) all his observations will only prove
more and more an obstruction as their number increases."
The holist-and I consider myself
one-retraces the process leading to an object while
the analytic thinker contemplates its outcome. The
temptation for the holist is to follow this arising more
deeply to a universal ground for all entities. It is the
temperament of the holist to seek this underlying
ground, and attribute to it the source of an ever-widening array of actualities.
During all those years, there were no efforts to
document the microgenetic alternative that words
emerge from potential to actual through successive domains of meaning and word-sound relations, that an
utterance or a perception is realized over phases which
inhere in the final object, that the transition to the final
object employs, first, dream work mechanisms, and
then graded fields of conceptual and lexical-semantic
relations, phases that constitute the meaning of the
word or object. From this point there is a transition to
morphological or phonological realization, and to an
individuated word, object, or feature. The memory
trace or "store" is the entire series through which the
entity devolves; that is, long- and short-term memories
are not distinct operations but qualitative shifts from
depth to surface. Memory is a way of characterizing
perception, action, and so on, at successive moments
in realization. In this way of thinking, process articulates mind into foci of specialization, as evolution
adapts organisms to a niche in the environment. This
model has the drawback that it resists quantitative
methods, and is less didactic than the simplistic idea
of files or bins for word representations or the construction of objects from angles and lines. But there
was more at stake than heuristics and simplicity. A
novel perspective on organism injected into a sterile
debate over switchboards might have raised the possibility that the entire agenda of cognitivism was misguided.

Lures and Snares of Holism

As a spiritual descendant of German holism, who has
struggled to add some novel ideas and empirical
weight to the holistic enterprise, I would like to take
a brief detour into this topic, especially since holism,
which always promised more than it delivered, also
confounded the study of language disorders. From the
very beginning, a tension was evident between holistic
and analytic thinkers. Paul Broca and his French colleagues described deficits that were "word close,"
near the articulatory surface. Carl Wernicke and his
countrymen, including Freud, described processes that
were "thought close," involving semantic or conceptual systems. The French were intrigued with how the
words "come out," the Germans with where the
words' 'come from." Much of Germanic aphasiology,
including such writers as Pick (1931-1973), Lotmar
(1933), Conrad (1947), Goldstein, a variety of lesser
lights, and the Wtirzburgers, examined the formative
process through which words or thoughts develop. The
explanation was always centered on a phase just prior
to what could be observed or, put differently, whatever
could be observed was presumed to be a phenomenal
derivative of a phase just behind it. When gestalt and
holistic psychology were imported to this country,
method became more important than theory, and topics of study began to fragment and become exquisitely
local. The gestalt psychologist, Wertheimer, remarked
on the "piecemeal" thinking of the Americans. He
could not have foreseen the extremes to which the
reductionism would go in the mosaicist models of the
present day. Yet, from a scientific perspective, holism
was largely a critique without a portfolio. It could not
account for anatomical or cognitive diversity, while
the organismic concepts and writings of the gestaltists
were perceived as vague, even mystical.
The inability to provide a viable alternative to
localization was responsible more than any other factor for the decline of holism. It is ironic that the approach was perceived as largely critical yet, concealed
within a tactic of negation, was the clue to the nature
of mental process. An actuality is the negation of other
possibilities. An object is thrown into relief by the
elimination of competing outcomes. One might say
that the objective in perception, as a mirror of the
material world, is the negative of the real. That is why
an affirmative valuation is assigned to the subjective
and a critical valuation to the objective.
The mystics write of the unity and perfection of
the spirit, the' 'soul yonder" of Dean Inge, the fundus
animae or Seelengrund. In contrast, the temporal is

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Microgenetic Theory
banal, imperfect, and corrupt. The purity of the whole
is degraded when it is divided. This points to the other
side of the problem of holism, the psychical nature of
objects and the becoming to imperfection, along with
the negative judgment in actuality. Thus, holism seems
irrelevant from a scientific or synchronic perspective,
and mystical from a diachronic one. Instead of a theory
on the status of real objects, it offered a speculative
elaboration on their psychic ancestry.
The mystical quality of holism and its overlap
with religious thought lies in the belief-a kind of
metaphysical faith-that the unity of the whole is not
a construction but an anticipation of the manifold of
creation into which it distributes. Mysticism is a danger to which not every holist succumbs but an attraction that few can resist. The promise of a scientific
explanation latent in holism is forfeited when it turns
mystical, even in the power to persuade where reason
is ineffective, even in the beauty of the writing, for it
betrays the futility of the rational in the effort to make
contact with the divine.
Holism pursues the sources of the obvious inward, from the visible world to a secret nature, or from
the conceptual precursors of objects to the interior of
the mental life, from objects to pure objectivity, or
from concepts to pure subjectivity, from world to
Brahman, from mind to Atman, in the former to the
numinous in nature, in the latter, from things to images, or from words to the concepts behind them, then
to the antecedent forms or archetypes which are assumed to underlie all thought. Ultimately, the physical
and the psychic are grounded in the same process.
Rudolf Otto (1923) wrote of the "sinking down into
the self . . . to find the Infinite or God" and a "struggle
against all diversity" to a vision of unity-a withdrawal from the multiplicity of appearances in mind
and world-that leads, finally, to a unification of
world and perceiver. The one path begins with introspection, the other with objects, but there is only one
path-the "sinking into the self" -and God or the
absolute is not their common destination, nor does
this path need the absolute for salvation. Robert Louis
Stevenson wrote, "no man lives in the external truth
among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows
and the storied walL" Both are flowers on the same
tree of life, but the way to that understanding passes
from mind-external to mind-primordial. Holism is the
intuition-the intuitus mysticus-that a fuller account
of "external truths" includes their origins in the subjectivity of an individual mind or the mind of creative nature.

63
In the search for unity, holism descends to the
subrational, to the first glimmerings before an object
is apparent. The genesis myth is an untutored intuition
that the organic processes of life are continuous with
creative process in nature. The Buddhists wrote of the
becoming of the seed into the flower, the longing for
release from samsara, deliverance from a world of appearances, the Orphic wheel of rebirth, a liberation
that is a negation rather than an affirmation, for absolution is transcendence, not dissolution, but not oneness with the absolute. In principle, one could be free
of illusion and not dissolve into emptiness. As the seed
prefigures the flower, or an embryo prefigures a child,
a concept prefigures the words and the objects into
which it is transformed. The initial step in the division
of unity is contrast, distinction. Unity is not divided,
it is allocated to "lesser unities" that undergo further allocation.
What it comes to in my case is that the refutations
of one theory were the strivings for another. A new
theory is often demonstrated less by proof than negation, which exposes the nuggets of truth that remain
after a mountain of error is excavated. In some ways,
negation is the core of microgenesis in that constraints
on form determine the resultants so that entities are
defined by what they cannot become rather than what
they are caused to be. The very concept of sculpting
or "parcellation" is a link to the critique of causation
in the inhibitory constraints on form. Augustine said,
it is easier to say what God is not than what God is.
An object is what it is because the constraints on its
actualization do not permit it to become anything else.
Moreover, every particular takes on value in becoming
definite. A fact is a value. Every act of knowledge is
a limitation, and an accounting. There are dangers in
excess. The method can lead to pessimism or inertia,
like the Arhat for whom all outflows have dried up.

Back to Psychology
Agreeing with Bergson that the time given up to refutation is generally time lost, I did not engage in a
public debate on the fatuity of disconnection theory
so much as frame and define my own position by way
of contrast. It seemed important to revisit each clinical
disorder, beginning with aphasia, and attempt to reconcile symptoms with a dynamic concept of mental
process. The question was, how to approach brain and
language in a truly dynamic way? The classical anatomy was insufficient for a dynamic model of language.
An insight to the patterns of mental process came from

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64

a variety of genetic theories of mind and language,

but a theory of the corresponding brain process, that
is, the neural pattern of the microgenetic sequence,
would have to wait several years.
My first book, Aphasia, Apraxia, Agnosia, published in 1972, was a review of these conditions and
an argument for a process theory of aphasia. The aim
was to show the lack of demarcation over the spectrum
of clinical pathology, to emphasize continuities rather
than boundaries. The symptom was the essential phenomenon. It represented a moment in the "bottomup" transition of a perception or an utterance. The
symptoms of the aphasias were knit together in a kind
of tapestry. I tried to show the merging of one behavior
into another in the course of testing, the fluid nature
of symptoms, and the inner relatedness of the classical
syndromes. The complex and dependent "environment" of the symptom-its spatiotemporal surround-changes together with the symptom as the
patient is observed. The transition from one disorder
to the next, the continuum of function, was worked
out in a preliminary way for disorders of language,
action, and perception.
Like the disorders of language, disorders of action and perception had been described in terms of
deficits arising from interrupted connections. A description of perceptual symptoms such as hallucination, illusion, or false recognition as phases in the
individuation of a perception was first developed in
this book, but their place in a general theory came
later. The Aphasia book aligned the symptoms of language impairment so as to retrace the process of normal language. The pivotal idea was the progression
from lexical meaning to phonological analysis, from
object concept to object form, from action plan to
implementation over levels in the evolution of the
forebrain. After the aphasia model was wor ked out, it
became apparent that the unfolding of an act or object
followed the same pattern, so too for memory, feeling,
and other aspects of cognition.
The Wiirzburg school of psychology was an important stimulant in the description of stages in the
actualization of a thought, especially the writings of
Marbe (1901) and Ach (1921). The early Freud of
topographic theory, and Hughlings Jackson and his
followers were validations of the depth-to-surface direction and the link to evolutionary growth, though
the specifics of transition had to be filled in. Freud's
trace relocation, and Jackson's rerepresentation from
which it was derived, were replaced by a qualitative
series in the actualization process. In this respect, my
debt to Arnold Pick (1931-1973), repaid in a transla-

Jason Brown
tion of his monograph Aphasie (1931-1973), cannot
be overestimated. This work was essential to the formulation of the theory as well as the brilliant papers
of Paul Schilder (1951) and David Rapaport (1951)
on thought development, the evolutionary psychiatry
of Henry Ey (1952), Henri Bergson's expressive theory of perception (1920, 1923), and the writings of
Ernst Cassirer (1955). Other influences were the writings by Elliot Smith (1924) on the evolutionary anatomy of the brain, Paul Weiss (1939) on plasticity, and
the specification of reflexes in maturation described
by George Ellett Coghill (1964).
It is one thing to formulate a dynamic or process
model of language and quite another to relate the dynamic to brain process. The problem, as mentioned,
was to reconceptualize localization so that neural process could be mapped to language and cognition. Areas in the brain had to be interpreted as phases in
distributed levels that were temporal segments in evolutionary growth planes, while the functions "localized" in those areas had to be interpreted as phases
in mental process mediated by the physiological areas.
Area and function were not demarcated in anatomy
and cognition but were moments in flow. This concept
of brain function as recurrent flux, or of language as
a wavelike continuum, was far removed-indeed, a
"paradigm shift"-from then-current machine models of language components (processors) that discharged into behavior.
The way to a solution came with an invitation to
participate with Eric Lenneberg and Marcel Kinsbourne at a conference on the biology of language
in New York. I vividly recall the night before the
conference, lying in bed half-asleep, thoughts racing
through my mind, wondering what I would talk about
the next day, trying to think-does trying to think help
thought?-of something original to say when suddenly
I visualized as a whole the entire system of progressive
lateralization and the gradual specification of the language areas. I saw the entire process in a flash as
a simultaneous image accompanied by a feeling of
absolute certainty: the change in aphasia type with age
over the lifespan; the relation of the adult aphasias to
different brain regions; the link between disorders in
children, adults, and late life; and most importantly,
the pattern of the unfolding of brain linked to growth
and process rather than to systems that were fixed and
prewired. This led to a small theoretical paper (1978)
on a model of dominance which to my knowledge has
never been cited. I believe it is the only account of
dominance in relation to these parameters-evolutionary anatomy, language development, and the patho-

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Microgenetic Theory
logical material-indeed, the only anatomofunctional
model of dominance, yet proposed. Why it has been
ignored is beyond my comprehension. This new idea
on the neurological substrate of language as a system
no less dynamic than its development and production
came as a "prepackaged whole" delivered into awareness. The outline for the theory was the basis of my
book, Mind, Brain and Consciousness (MBC), published in 1977.
The hypothesis that aphasia in children relates
to growth patterns of leftward specification over the
lifespan was described in a small theoretical paper that
to this day is perhaps the most widely cited of my
works (Brown and Jaffe, 1975). The observation that
a lesion in Wernicke's area produced a different type
of aphasia depending on the age of the subject, and
the implication of this association that age is a rough
correlate of language laterality, or rather that the correlation is with the specification of language cortex,
introduced a temporal dimension into localization theory that eventuated, years later, in a process theory of
the brain state.
Many people have told me that MBC is the most
readable account of early microgenetic theory, probably because it is an outline or agenda for a theory that
touched on many of its facets without working them
out in detail. The principal goal of the book, that is,
the goal that became clear when the book was finished,
was to extend the model of language to action and
perception and, because I was under the spell of topographic theory and symptom formation in hysteria and
trance states, to resolve the theory with early wor k in
psychoanalysis.
Evolutionary growth trends are linked to a process that elaborates the mental state. This process develops from ground to figure, from meaning to form,
from the intrapersonal to the extrapersonal, from self
to object, from mind to world. The progressive specification of language cortex was related to a shift from
diffuse to focal organization, from bilateral representation in the brain to one that was predominantly leftsided and asymmetric. The Broca and Wernicke areas
were conceived as emergents, within the association
cortex, of a segment for phonological realization. The
specification of anterior and posterior regions for phonology, not a sudden mutation for syntax as claimed
by the linguists, was the decisive step in the evolution
of language in the brain.
The many symptoms of brain damage were interpreted as disruptions at moments in the unfolding of
the mental state from the archaic to the recent in evolutionary structure. A symptom was a "normal" but

65

preliminary phase in a process ordinarily concealed

within the final product. For example, the meaning of
a word or object is prior to its individuation as a specific form. The meaning is generated in the process of
word or object selection. It persists like the fiery tail
of a comet trailing a corpse of matter in space. The
process behind the word is its active segment, the word
or object perishing as it enters the public domain. The
crux of the theory was that mental process is rapid and,
like growth, unidirectional; later it became evident that
mental process is a form of growth with iteration over
planes in brain evolution. The sequence is not openended and linear, but cyclical and recurrent. A relation
was postulated between phylogeny and microgeny but
the link to maturation or ontogeny had to wait 15 years
before I found it in the commonality of mental process
with parcellation; that is, morphogenesis is the link to
mental process. What counts is the pattern of process,
not the actualities-symptoms, behaviors-the process lays down (Brown, 1994).
In addition to a common pattern underlying phyletic, ontogenetic, and microgenetic process-all a
type of growth-the theory entails that perception is
directed toward the featural detail of the world not, as
argued by virtually all psychologists and neurologists,
beginning with features as the building blocks of objects. In recent years, physiological evidence has accrued in support of this theory, but at the time, the
resistance was overwhelming. Hubel and Wiesel
found cells in visual cortex responsive to lines and
angles, suggesting that objects were analyzed by "feature detectors" and constructed from the physical bits
of information that entered the visual cortex. The
commitment to their model was so intense that when
I asked David Hubel his opinion of the blind sight
studies that, I believe, expose the inadequacies of neocortical feature detection, he said, "Even if it's true I
don't believe it." What could he say? I won the Nobel
prize for the wrong theory?
The insight to the fractal-like nature of perception
followed naturally from observations of clinical symptoms. Even in my Aphasia book, disorders of auditory
and visual perception were interpreted as "dysarthrias," expressive problems, recalling Bergson's
treatment of perception as an active process of search.
At the same time, and independent of my clinical studies, Friedrich Sanides, a German anatomist, was elaborating a parallel account of neocortical evolution, in
which the primary perceptual zones were conceived
as developing out of the background "association"
areas. The evolution of neocortex from association
cortex to primary cortex was a reversal of the standard

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66
account, accepted since the work of Flechsig. The
writings of Sanides (1975) and later, Heiko Braak
(1980), whom I met in Bonn, were important confirmations that mental process leads from a stage of gestaltlike multimodal configurations in relation to
association cortex to unimodal features exteriorizing
through primary cortex.
With the framework that MBC provided, and
prodded by gentle criticisms from colleagues like Karl
Pribram and George Miller, and the encouragement of
anatomists like Deepak Pandya, a closet Sanidesean,
who urged me to stay on the track, I went on to explore
the clinical material and its implications in greater
detail. However, the more probing the analysis, the
more thoughtful the discussion, the more convincing
the argument, the more coherent and harmonious the
system, the fewer books were sold. The clinical documentation that I found essential as a test and proof of
the theory was an impediment to the reader, without
which the theory seemed ex cathedra. The symptoms
that were its support were abandoned after the theory
was articulated, like scaffolding removed once a building is complete. The extension of the theory seemed
lacking in clinical data, for the conclusions were not
a priori deductions, as in a philosophical treatise, but
rather, elaborations of insights from prior clinical observations.
Experiments in psychology were not pertinent to
my theory for several reasons. First, proofs were expected to conform to the scientific method and the
doctrine of quantity, reproducibility, and changeless
entities. Such a proof would not be relevant to findings
outside its doctrinal bias. This would be like trying to
illustrate the flow of a river with a set of bricks. Within
the doctrine, a failure to demonstrate an expected outcome is not taken as a refutation, but provides an
impetus for other experiments. In contrast, a positive
result was presumed to be a strong confirmation, not
an equivocal observation in need of further documentation. Yet the dilemma raised the question of whether
I would reject my theory were it to be disconfirmed.
D' Abro wrote that the ideal in science is to have the
"sincerity to accept the truth when this truth happens
to contradict all that we have previously professed."
Jack Eccles, under the spell of Karl Popper, said that
the negation of his scientific claims was the beginning
of his science. Fortunately, I have not yet had to confront this possibility. The trend now is to more dynamic concepts. There is every expectation that rapid
metabolic scanning will provide evidence for the
theory.

Jason Brown
The theory was far outside the main lines of research. I was like the fellow in the poem by Wordsworth, lines written by a yew tree, the man prepared
for all enemies except neglect. There was no opportunity for constructive debate. That is not to say there
was no criticism, but the disputation did not center
on particulars, rather the incommensurability of core
assumptions with the standard model. A particular obstacle was the evolutionary grounding in a climate of
virulent antigradualism, and the reversal of the standard account of flow in perception. The more the divergence, the more microgenesis and cognitivism fell
into mutual neglect. Unlike art, science does not tolerate incompatible paradigms; the intruder is received
with indifference, or is usurped by a competitor that
enjoys a monopoly of adherents, a state of affairs that
limits the degree to which originality is permissible.
To take an example, if I say the mind is in the
brain, or that a portion of the mind, say language, is
on the left side of the brain, or that one or another
aspect or division of language is located in a specific
region of the left hemisphere, all of this can be debated, the where, the how much, the nature of the
"on" or the "in," for these are related concepts. But
if I say that the brain is located in the mind, there are
no ground rules for discussion. It is a statement empty
of meaning. In this case, there is no room for an idealist philosophy in materialist science. The debate is
over before it begins. This actually happened to the
neuroanatomist Hartwig Kuhlenbeck, who made such
a claim in two masterly but never cited books, Brain
and Consciousness (1957) and Mind and Matter
(1961).
The assumptions that underlie everyday thinking
should not be the justifications of theory but the battleground of controversy. Every assumption is a possible
error. Those that test the strength of a philosophy and
the will of the philosopher are the most difficult to
challenge for they carry the authority of common
sense. Science is a driving force of philosophical analysis but it burdens the philosophical enterprise by limiting analysis to what is conceivable within the
confines of the science. Science and common sense
are the boundaries of the given, they reinforce and
enlarge the given for the next wave of discovery. The
contrasting methods and concepts of scientific paradigms are closed systems of belief that exclude alternatives within a domain of thought. Why should belief
systems in science differ from those of everyday life?
The hegemony of one belief to the exclusion of others
is the equivalent, in an individual, of the difficulty in
entertaining two contradictory lines of thought at the

Microgenetic Theory
same time. A man can neither serve two masters nor
two theories.

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A Digression on Cognitivism
I want to say a bit more about cognitive science, for
the conflict in which microgenesis found itself was
pervasive for the life of the theory and defined, as if
by contrast, the shape the theory took on. Microgenesis did not develop as a critique of cognitivism but,
given the unique set of clinical and theoretical conditions with which it had to deal at each step in its
formulation, problems had to be resolved that were
inevitably framed, at least in part, by way of opposition. The selection of topics and the contrastive discourse could not help but be influenced by the palate
of current interest. Philosophy, it has been said, is propaganda dominated by strong individuals, not a disinterested search for truth. No one would argue that
disputation is unhealthy, but does it lead to original
concepts? Can any dialectic overcome an incompatibility of its foundational assumptions?
My frustration with the cognitivist agenda was
not motivated solely by the marginalization of my theory, rather, the rejection of all that I held valuable in
the clinical tradition. It is a long list. To begin with,
there was the machine model of the mind-brain and
the critiques of linguistic gradualism, including an attack on protolinguistic ability in chimpanzee. Herb
Terrace's over-the-top argument on covert conditioning shows how far a behaviorist acolyte of Chomsky
would go to discredit evolutionary models of language. In fact, it was unclear what demonstrations
would have satisfied the linguists. Generally, the critiques led to antievolutionary concepts of neural systems in cognition, specifically, that the sequence of
evolutionary growth was irrelevant to functional role.
For example, archaic structures such as amygdala were
postulated to engage in functions that were postperceptual. The computer analogy diminished the import
of studies of brain physiology, handy for psychologists
who knew nothing of the topic anyway.
A computer vocabulary was imposed on brain
organization. Memory bits were stored, filed, accessed, or looked up. There were buffers, capacities,
networks, reroutings, and so on. Flow diagrams replaced brain functions, chips replaced regions,
switchmen, decisional nodes, arrows, boxes, dual
routes, a variety of speculative components, all necessitated by the cognitive modeling rather than the clinical findings. Hierarchic brain systems for action and

67

perception became input and output devices to couple

them to artificial substrates. Even the terms are pejorative: Input announces a sense datum that is "put into' ,
the brain and further processed by other systems. Output signifies a terminal discharge. The software of the
mind is sandwiched between the hardware of the
world. An action, however, is a rhythmic or kinetic
structure that folds into a movement. A perception
develops over hierarchic systems from endogenous gestalts to externalized features. Input and output compel
a false distinction between the sensory and motor on
the one hand, which are conceived not as irreducible
meanings but as peripheral transducers, and the linguistic and conceptual on the other.
The most basic assumptions relate to the philosophical antecedents of computational theory and its
implications for philosophy of mind. If the brain is a
computing machine, or if a noncomputational theory
of the mind is inconceivable, organic process and the
phyletic history of brain and behavior can be replaced
by an assembly line for machines that instantiate software. In biological theories, the staging of evolutionary growth inheres in function, but in machine theory
the growth sequence is irrelevant. We do not think that
the sequence of steps in the manufacture of a computer, or the order in which a car is put together, say,
whether the brakes are installed before or after the
carburetor, explains how the machine will function.
One can dispense not only with the pattern of fabrication but also the internal description. Since the machine and its parts are conceived as solid
entities-inputs and outputs-their operation can bypass an account of their inner workings. Or, the inner
workings just consist of smaller machines. This distinction is central, for it pivots on the relative causal
significance of retrospective or formative process-the diachronics of past to present-as opposed
to a prospective or predictive taxonomy; the synchronic of the present and its effect on future (synchronic) states.

Rules
Even the function of neurons, like silicon chips, was
assumed to consist in the manipulation of symbols by
formal rules. While it is possible to do computational
modeling of neurons as of cognitive functions, this
does not imply that the activity of neurons or behavioral modules is the output of a computation. The difference is between a regularity that is derived from
the iteration of patterns that are similar, and the inter-

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pretation of this regularity as a rule that governs the

generation of the patterns. The regularity is due to the
similarity in the constraints that influence a process
over multiple activations and a generalization of the
pattern over novel instances in some category of activation.
A regularity can take on the appearance of a rule
by its inflexibility or invariance over many realizations, but rules are local phenomena, domain-specific
and subject to violation, while regularities, at least
those posited by microgenetic theory, apply to all cognitive transformations. What is the difference between
a widespread habit and a rule-governed behavior? I
would say it consists in the extraction, in the latter, of
a statement-the rule-that predicts an outcome such
as, given x, then y. Habits, compulsions, routines,
skills, are complex behaviors, perhaps as complex as
a grammar, which is a finite set of rules, but why
are syntactic rules not linguistic habits? If so, their
explanation entails a theory of patterns in memory
comparable to the procedural memory involved in a
skill. Producing the sounds of a language would be
like playing the notes of a piece of music. How does
one know if a rule conditions a behavior that recurs
in a certain context or if the rule was extracted as a
description of the regularity of the recurrence? If rules
are encoded in the genes, the genome would have to
contain the specification for every rule in all extinct,
existing, and possible languages (and cognitions). The
relative invariance of the rule misses the point of evolution, namely, the adaptation and differentiation of
actualities out of the abundance of potential, which
entails trial, error, and progressive refinement, not the
fine-tuning of a genetic script.
Rules are the regularities of intrinsic patterns extracted as guiding agencies. Rules are the reified descriptions of regularities, thus, they are abstract
entities without histories, like Platonic ideas. The history or the prior cause is circumvented by postulating
a direct link to the genome. This avoids gradualism in
phylogenesis and fetal development (morphogenesis).
In a one-to-one correspondence of gene to rule, the
intervening process of growth and its subsequent application, that is, the sustained effects of the growth
process, are sacrificed for the efficacy of the rule. The
product-a word, idea, or area in the brain-is an independent entity that does not incorporate its own prehistory. That is, a word or mental content is conceived
as a product divorced from its formative process. Antecedent phases in the mind, like those in phylo-ontogeny, comprise an interesting line of study but, for the
cognitivist, do not contribute greatly to an interpreta-

Jason Brown
tion of their products. There is a similar argument in
aesthetics, in which the artwork is held to be a naked
object independent of the artist's feelings or intentions,
which the observer must provide. In cognitivist theory,
as in art or genetics, the plan for an entity and its
growth or realization out of that plan are its nonexistent past and do not participate in the nature or activity
of the entity that is deposited. In the design of a building, an architectural plan lays down the rules of construction and operation, but does not itself participate
in the function of the finished structure. Indeed, the
plan can be discarded once the construction is complete. This is not, however, a viable model for brain
function, in which growth (morphogenesis) and cognition (microgenesis) exhibit common adaptive patterns.
Innateness is an explanation in which the details
are finessed, like a philosophical debate that focuses
on logical errors but leaves the decisive issues to later
argumentation or future neuroscience. This is not to
criticize the concept of innateness-microgenesis is a
subjectivist, thus innatist, theory-but where cognitivism postulates a causal chain from gene to rule, in
which rules dictate process as genes orchestrate
growth and structure, process theory attempts to account for the intervening stages. The transition from
gene to phenotype is like that from the inception of a
cognition to the final object, in which rules are derivations, not directives. Patterns of change in development or mental process can be described by algorithms
that configure form from one phase to the next. If
genes are not rules but the potential for their specification, or if rules individuate from this potential, one
has to concede a primacy to the intervening process.
If the rule individuates, it is generated by process, and
may not even be an endpoint of the individuation. If
the rule is an outcome, the process through which it
individuates is more fundamental.
In contrast to the indifference to brain and evolutionary growth, the acquisition or ontogeny of language was studied with care. The reason for the
interest was the expectation that a study of language
acquisition would confirm the thesis that syntax was
not learned by experience with language speakers but,
rather, that an innate capacity for universal grammar
was elicited, dedicated to some subset, and refined by
exposure. In language acquisition, the fact that so
much "output" seemed to come from so little "input"
justified the postulate of an innate stock of atomic
elements, that is, grammatical rules, from which the
child selects the one that is appropriate. The child
hears the language of its parents, and inspects a class
of innate grammars (hypotheses) for their compatibil-

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Microgenetic Theory
ity with what is heard. The multiplicity of rules out
of which, say, English is selected, is conceived as a
storehouse of discrete elements rather than a potential
for their actualization.
It is easy to see why a principal casualty of the
cognitivist program was the centrality of growth in the
attainment of form. Growth, regression, decay, plasticity, are concepts that do not lend themselves to a
computational vocabulary. Computers "learn" but do
not grow. For the computer metaphor to take root,
growth had to be collapsed into a fixed structure. This
was accomplished by the gene:rule correspondence.
The allegiance to computation missed the critical point
that growth trends recur in the cyclical regularities
underlying cognition or, put differently, that process
gives form as morphology early in life, and form as
mental process or behavior later in life, a single Ur
process throughout the life span.

Time
Another deeply embedded assumption was the instantaneous or discrete theory of time. The components of
cognitivism were opaque, nontemporal structures for
recipience and discharge by way of surface contacts.
With processing units inserted into circuits as prepackaged modules, areas of the brain and the functions they
were hypothesized to subsume could be conceived as
autonomous units. The atomism for spatial units was
accompanied by an atomism of temporal facts. The
reduction of time to a dimension of space was partly
an inheritance from modern physics, the spatialization
of time, as Bergson put it. If wholes are not sums, and
parts are not mere constituents, their relations must
take into consideration the shift from whole to part,
which takes or creates time.
Basically, events in time were distinguished from
the time over which the events occurred. Since an
object stripped of time is essentially changeless, thus
nonexistent, change had to be introduced into the interstices of the entities to explain their interaction. However, time cannot be added to an object after its
temporal relations are mutilated, since the object results from a process that is time-creating. That is, the
process of perceiving an object also creates the time
order into which the object falls. Objects do not exist
in a container time by which their change is measured.
Whitehead (1919) derided the discrete theory as "a
distribution of material throughout all space at a durationless instant of time (whereas the ultimate facts of
nature) ... are events connected by their spatiotempo-

69
ral relations." This is a profound problem. If everything is in change, nothing can be described, whereas
if we freeze an object in order to describe it, what we
grasp are not objects but artifacts of the time elimination necessary for their detection. I think the question,
is change fundamental or, as cognitivists assume, can
it be added to mental solids after their delineation, is
decisive not only for time theory but for the legitimacy
of all contemporary work in cognitive psychology.
Time elimination in Western philosophy traces
back to Parmenides, the protagonist of substance, who
said, with Plato: "the word 'instant' appears to mean
something such that from it a thing passes to one or
other of two conditions (motion, rest)." In India, the
debates of the Brahmans and the Buddha were similar
to those of Heraclitus and Parmenides. In the Upanishads we read, "What is one's thought that one becomes; This is the eternal mystery." In the Gita,
Krishna says, "Know I am Time, that makes the
worlds to perish." The Buddhists went inward, embraced impermanence and became irrelevant. The
Greeks turned outward, to objects, invigorated science, and dominated subsequent history.
Perhaps I am so entrenched in the Western tradition that the triumph of substance seems of greater
import than were I living in another time or place. The
intuition that change is not what befalls an entity, not
an external relation between entities, but the source
of the entity, is a peculiar aberration, one for the mind,
not the heart, for there we are all substantialists. The
perceptual illusion of a continuous and vulnerable self
is too strong to discard for mere theory. This world is
the same for all of us, a world filled with objects and
empty spaces, even the thoughts and words brought
to bear on this perception have the force of objects.
Thoughts deceive, words can kill, they have causal
powers like other objects. I too am an object, aging,
changing, dying every moment, while the "I," this
precious self, this abstract, categorical entity that feels
so real, persists out of time, a God immortal, presides
over pillars of flesh that are everywhere in dumb circadian decay.

The Disappearance of the Self

The machine theory of mind and its static modularism
permeated contemporary psychology with an antisubjectivism in which the interior or first-person perspective was not a respectable starting point for scientific
study. There is irony in the fact that many of the techniques and assumptions of linguistic theory, such as

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70
the reliance on a listener's intuitive judgments of
grammaticality, or the concept of potentiality inherent
in the claim of syntactic knowledge or competence,
were the bases for a theory that was incommensurate
with its own materialistic bias. Introspection provided
the data that would undermine its own methods of
data collection. Moreover, and still more ironic, the
critique of Skinnerian behaviorism that was the royal
road to modularity gave rise, with the replacement of
the mind by a computer, and the introjection of the
little boxes of the cognitivists for the big black box of
behaviorism, to a surrogate behaviorism that, because
it dispensed with the brain altogether, was more virulent than the condition it strove to cure.
Those embers of psychology built on intrapsychic
content-subjectivity, genetic concepts and introspective reports, including evolutionary, psychoanalytic,
and interpretive psychology-were excluded from serious attention. This was also the case for studies in
the psychology of time, which, as mentioned, became
irrelevant to a theory in which time itself had no
"place." My friend, J. T. Fraser, was an eccentric
loner, his Society for the Study of Time, a cult of
harmless outcasts. The same was true for Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, David Griffin, and others at the
Claremont Center for Process Studies. Except for the
purely descriptive accounts of popular neurology, clinical observation was also out the window, except for
the errors of omission, failures in performance, or the
subtraction method in imaging research, that were
measurable from an external or objectivist standpoint.
These deeply flawed techniques became the principal
source of psychological data. As a result, the study of
the brain-damaged lapsed into a kind of theoretical
torpor, thirsting for a program of endogenous research
yet a magnet for emissaries and a borrowed agenda
to settle, by proxy, controversies raging far outside
its borders.
Descriptive neurology was relegated to anecdotes, the romantic science of Luria, with the errors
(symptoms) of brain damage construed as the noise of
a computer in malfunction. Clinical phenomena are
fleeting. They do not recur in exactly the same form,
as if anything did, exactly. Since a symptom is neither
reproducible nor quantifiable, it is inaccessible to science, essentially it is a subjective datum. But, the fluctuation in relation to the momentary state that is the
scientific shortcoming of the symptom is precisely its
value from a contextual standpoint. The significance
of the error is lost when it is severed from this content.
On the other hand, the omission is an artificial entity
invented from nothing; that is, the absence of a behav-

Jason Brown
ior. In its qualitative aspect, the error partakes of the
subjective; in its quantitative aspect, the omission is
an object for science. Yet what is lost in the error is not
regained in the omission. The error exhibits cognition
directly, it is a fragment of mental process. The deficit
or omission conceals-one might say obscures-the
wealth of cognition buried in the defective performance.
The neglect of the symptom was itself symptomatic of a more profound divide in philosophy. For the
objectivist, the mind can be studied like any object,
as a specimen. There are no ineluctable private states.
This attitude is, arguably, as John Searle (1984), one
of the more forceful critics of the computational
agenda has written, a foundational principle of modern
materialism. While it is possible to be a first-person
materialist, the whole point of cognitive science was
that other minds could be studied as if they were objective entities. If Searle's critique was largely polemical,
the complaint of Thomas Nagel (1979) that subjective
states are unknowable from "outside," or not captured by a complete specification of their composition,
was an anemic protestation of something unaccounted
for by objectivist criteria. What was needed was an
aggressive attack on third-person descriptions and a
vigorous defense of the primacy of the subjective.
Thus, the "qualia" of perception, interior states of
pain, for example, became a fashionable testing
ground for the warring camps. For me, the defense of
qualia seemed already a retreat. The world itself was
the field of battle.

Finding the Self

With all of this by way of background and context,
my next book, Self and Process, published in 1991,
took shape. The book was a dialectic of process and
substance, change and stability, that was foundational
to the issues I have discussed. Somehow, a categorical
or repeatable self emerges out of brain process. Of
course, the self is changeable, and there is a dissociation of the sense of one's core self from self-realization that engenders doubt as to its authenticity. We
know more than we can say, we are constantly disappointed in our behaviors, rarely do we achieve our
goals or realize our estimations of self-worth. What
does a judgment of sincerity, a statement, a political
opinion reveal of the self? The woman I love is honest
and loyal, no, she is wicked and untrustworthy. One
moment I am insouciant and sullen, the next, witty or
compassionate. Does a sour mood blunt the wit, does

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Microgenetic Theory
wit punctuate melancholy? Are detachment and compassion the swings of a pendulum on the fulcrum of
a more constant attitude of fairness? Am I reflective
or indecisive; strong or selfish, the set of my selfinterpretations? To what self do my acts refer? A self
that is the sum of its acts would be the ghost of my
resume.
Is the self-concept a set of beliefs? A belief is the
potential for an action, an action, an objectified belief,
the self, a potential for the manifold of its realizations,
each a facet of the personality, some more genuine,
that is, drive-based, others arbitrary, that is, optional.
A self is conditioned by the occasion to realize the
beliefs, desires, and values that happen to dominate
at that moment given the set of conditions that prevail.
What is thematic are those beliefs that all actions have
in common. When belief and action dissociate, this
points to beliefs in conflict, not beliefs in conflict with
actions. The objectification of one belief leaves another in judgment. If I mislead someone, the belief
that guides the pretense (e.g., that my behavior will
lead to an advantage) is opposed by one or more beliefs of wider scope that guide my overall conduct.
Opposing beliefs that have a comparable claim on
truth (e.g., she loves me, she loves me not, time is
real, unreal) are interpretations of a stem belief that
prefigures the two in opposition. For example, the concept of a loved object presupposes an object that is or
is not loved, that of passage and subjectivity presupposes the attribution of time to the material or psychic
order. Is one such belief closer to truth than another,
is the truth generic to both, must we choose between
them, look elsewhere for their explanation, find a middle path?
If I should meet someone about whom I knew
nothing, how would I determine if his acts were genuine? What does genuine mean in this context? A dishonest person is genuinely dishonest. Is an honest
person equally genuine? The actions of our friends
give an impression of coherence over time. But even
in the most favorable conditions, say, someone of such
dull consistency that an unpredictable act is unimaginible, can I ever be certain of my conclusions? Dostoevsky, thought there was a child rapist and murderer in
each of us. But, suppose an immoral person undergoes
a religious conversion. Does he escape due punishment by a sudden conversion? Does the devoutness of
his current self cancel his past behavior? If he is truly
devout, he is not (like) his former self. Does character
differ from karma in that it is cumulative? If we are
the sum of our acts, there is no hope for salvation, no
incentive to change. If we are the outcome of our acts,

71
we are all candidates for grace. Are we what we have
been or what we have become? If coherence over time
is a tenuous basis of character, what of coherence in
the relations among concurrent beliefs? What would
we say of a vegetarian who supports animal experimentation, a conscientious objector who believes in
capital punishment, a libertarian opposed to abortion,
a Nazi who loves Schubert? A lack of cross-sectional
coherence fortifies the inference that such beliefs are
irrational, or motivated by personal interest, or are the
expressions of a passing mood; that is, they are shallow and in a more superficial relation to the personality. Yet, is there depth or essence beyond this, does
the soul have its boundaries or is the impression of
depth a greater coherence and forcefulness of expression?
A theory of subjective time was central to Self
and Process, and a concept of the self was crucial
to such a theory. The problem was the nature of the
present-the specious present of William James
(1890). It had been argued by Ernst PoppeI (1988)
that the duration of the specious present was about 2
seconds from a variety of disparate phenomena, such
as phrase length in speech and poetry, perspective
shifts in perceptual illusions like the Necker cube, and
the timing of music in Noh dramas. My reservations
had less to do with the estimate of the duration of
consciousness than with the paradox that the duration
into which consciousness was claimed to fall, whether
1 or 2 seconds or, as William James thought, up to
12, was not a linear segment of passage that was measurable in relation to physical time, for example, in
the persistence of the underlying brain state, but was a
virtual duration created by the process through which
consciousness is derived. In other words, the duration
of a conscious moment is not an objective segment of
a conscious period but is an illusory span with fuzzy
boundaries derived from the succession of events in
the unfolding of a single brain state.
Moreover, as odd as it may sound, the succession
that lays down the present is nontemporal. There is a
succession of events before and after but there is no
precedence for these events, nor is there a past or future, which require a now as a reference point. There
is the' 'uncoupling" of duration from physical succession; that is, a duration is not an accumulation of constituent time-slices but transcends the succession of
physical instants. As to the paradox of nontemporality,
the time over which the duration occurs does not exist
until the transition is completed, The duration is extracted from this transition, some would say, falsely,
as a sum of its constituent instants, more likely, as a

72
mental image, still more deeply, as a truth about categories in nature. My view of subjective time is close
to the definition of time by Plotinus (ca. 260 A.D.), as
"the life of the soul in movement as it passes from
one stage of act or experience to another." And I
would agree with him that, if "the soul withdrew,
sinking itself again into its primal unity, time would
disappear (so that) the origin of time, clearly, is to be
traced to the first stir of the soul's tendency towards
the production of the sensible universe ... "

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A Process Metapsychology
MBC announced a theory that my next book would
attempt to justify. That book, The Life of the Mind
(LM), published in 1988, documented the theory with
an account of symptoms in a wide variety of clinical
disorders. The argument was that the symptom, as a
piece of preliminary or unconscious mentation suddenly thrust to the fore, was the key to a reconstruction
of normal cognition from its pathological disturbances. As LM was a kind of clinical summing-up of
the theory to that point, Self and Process announced
the extension of the clinical theory into related topics
in the philosophy of mind. Again, the smaller wor k
provided a readable outline for yet another book that
would fill in the details.
That book was Time, Will and Mental Process,
published in 1996, the central themes of which were
time, agency, and freedom. To understand the relation
of time to agency, consider the example of cause and
effect. When a cause is in the present its effects are
nothing more than predictions. When effects are in the
present, known directly, their causes, identified in the
past, are nothing more than memories. The present is a
Magrittean bridge from memory to anticipation. Every
causal pair, physical or mental, is a comparison over
a segment of subjective time. Since causation depends
on mind, the mind is not explained by the invocation
of causal mechanisms. The past is not a link in a chain
of causation but implicit in every occurrence, engaged
in the choices one makes, not because it constitutes
one's ancestry but for the active part it plays in every
momentary decision.
The past that once existed is more real for having
been a cause of the present than the future, which is
the expectation, really, the hope, of an effect. The
present is most real as what exists at that moment but
the objects of the present are past before we see them.
There is always a temporal lag. Hume said one cannot
catch a perception. Yet we abide in the present and

Jason Brown
weave stories on the other side of its boundaries, fairy
tales of timeless realms beyond the kingdom of life.
The present is a dream of wakefulness suspended between two narratives, a dream of reality so real we do
not question it. Each present is born and dies in the
afterworld of the immediate future that exists in the
imagination to receive the oncoming moment. In the
perishing of what is actual for the next cycle of becoming, we perceive the kernel of our own death and,
even, the possibility of rebirth.
The growth of the present is like the growth of
an organism contracted in scale. Each moment an organism replaces itself though differing slightly in
form. I am in gradual change but am the "same"
person I was a moment ago, a day, a year ago. Growth
is the residue of the vicissitudes of change, in the organism and in its present; it is a deviation in the exact
replacement of the present, not a motion along a lifeline from past to future. Death is a death of the final
present. We apprehend, dimly, the finality of death but
scarcely notice the concrete finality of every present
of our life. We suppose that the spirit will abide in the
future or, if a realm outside of time, a timeless realm
that is waiting for a future death. This belief is derived
from the sense that the present moves into a future
that is awaiting the arrival of our spirit, or a future
that has already transpired but, like the ending of a
movie, is unknown to us. But if there is no waiting
future for the present to move into, there is no future
life, no afterlife that beckons to the living of a life
after death.
The theory of change and duration in the mental
state led over the ensuing years to more fundamental
levels of description. The problem that drove these
speculations was the nature of phenomenal experience
and the locus of change in the mind and world. The
basic unit is the mental state or, as William James put
it, a pulse of experience. James thought the transition
from one mental state or pulse to another could be
directly experienced. The philosopher, Timothy
Sprigge, doubted this, for good reasons, and claimed
that only the transition within the pulse could be experienced. In my view, no transition can be experienced.
There is no stable observer who apprehends a transition, for the observer is also transitional, and the relationality of transition is nonexperiential. What we
experience, then, is not the transition but the content
it deposits, the stability of which depends on the degree to which recurrent pulses approximate preceding ones.
We perceive motion and change in the world, but
the perception of motion is not a perception of change,

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Microgenetic Theory
it is a perception that changes each moment, as does
the perceiver. The change is filled in across perceptions, like the phi phenomenon, in which rapidly alternating lights are perceived as continuous. The
continuities in the world result from the imperceptibility of the transition between pulses. The solidities result from the imperceptibility of the transitions within
a pulse and the recurrence of pulses that are similar.
Each pulse has a temporal thickness, is epochal and
discrete. Change is not the perception of continuous
motion but the inability to perceive discontinuities
across epochs. What is the nature of the self in this
(process) metapsychology? In a theory of change,
there can be no essential or substantial self, yet the
continuity of the self, its persistence and identity,
which are established by the relative similarity of its
replications, imply that the self is a categorical entity
that, like other categories, remains stable in spite of
fluctuations in its content. Are categories real entities?
In a world of appearances, they may be the only realities that exist, even if they are nested and essentially
bottomless.
The stability of the self, like that of other objects,
is a relation of the replications to their antecedents,
which serve as models for the next set of transitions.
The replication theory is midway between the iron fist
of determinism and the blind reckoning of chance.
Novelty is the deviation from exact reproduction,
while the constraints on the replicative process by sensation and the immediately prior state prevent mere
randomness. The self of the immediately prior moment
is eclipsed as the present state develops over its residue. Only the conceptual segments of past selves buried in the present are revived, never to a pictural
clarity. Transition is forgetting.
After the publication of Time, Will and Mental
Process, my interests turned to the wider applications
of the theory, including Freud's metapsychology, process metaphysics, and topics in Buddhist philosophy.
These papers were published as Mind and Nature:
Essays on Time and Subjectivity (2000). In retrospect,
they were preparations for a deeper exploration of the
moral consequences of process thought, and reflections on my own life in relation to the theory to which
it has been devoted. 1

References
Ach, N. (1921), Dber die Begriffsbildung. Bamberg:
Bergson, H. (1920), Creative Evolution, tr. A. Mitchell.
London: Macmillan.
ICommentaries from readers on this article are encouraged and will
appear, together with invited commentaries, in a forthcoming issue.

73

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Jason Brown
Whitehead, A. N. (1919), An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Jason W. Brown
66 East 79th Street
New York, NY 10021
e-mail: drjbrown@hotmail.com