Processes and Boundaries of the Mind: Extending the Limit Line (Contemporary Systems Thinking)

How is it that the world is conceived as exclusively populated by objects (e.g. books, cars, numbers, and people) while cognition is first and foremost a dynamic process? Inquiring into the `reified universe' Dr. Neuman explores questions of mind, reality, knowledge and signification in a provocative, stimulating and humorous way. Drawing on various domains such as systems research, semiotics, philosophy, and complexity sciences, Dr. Neuman is touching basic questions of our Being-in-the-World as cognate creatures, and presents a novel theory of the mind as a boundary phenomenon. Following the footsteps of Gregory Bateson and Valentine Volosinov, the book propagates a process-oriented theory of the mind, in a way that has never been presented before. In this context, new and creative solutions are presented for a variety of old philosophical problems such as: What is the Mind? Why do we use different signs for the same object across different cultures? and how is it possible to think on our thinking without getting into problems such as an infinite regression.

Yair Neuman is a professor in the Department of Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Professor Neuman was the chief algorithm developer at IARPA Metaphor Project, where novel algorithms have been developed for the identification of metaphorical language. His work has been published extensively in leading journals for various disciplines including psychology, psychoanalysis, theoretical biology, mathematical modelling, semiotics and information sciences. His last book Reviving the Living: Meaning Making in Living Systems was published in 2008.