Brains that make revolutions

Estrada, Fernando and Salazar, Boris (2010): Brains that make revolutions.

Abstract

This paper work assesses the key aspects of a framework for research on revolutions. Our approach includes a heuristic based on an idea suggested by Marx in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living”. From this maxim of Marx advance on conventional interpretations by postulating that the language and metaphors are a challenge in several respects: (1) The brain is a physical basis for understanding key political revolutions, (2) advances in neuroscience and language (Lakoff/Johnson/Narayanan) have allowed the reconstruction of conceptual frameworks in various fields, including philosophy, mathematics and politics (3) The language expressed in songs, text, flags, emblems, illustrations, slogans, speeches and rumors is key to represent and demonstrate loyalty to the idea of revolution and, more crucially, to “make” the revolution, (4) Metaphors are a powerful rational action in revolutionary processes. One interpretation of these can contribute to decipher, for example, how the brain are activated in neural systems that link past and present, how to operate the symbolic frameworks of language to influence political opinion, how metaphors interact with processes artificial simulation or how metaphors evolve in a revolution from simple metaphors.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Revolutions, French Revolution, Iran Revolution, Russian Revolutions, Language, Neural Theory
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B0 - General; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B1 - History of Economic Thought through 1925; A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B1 - History of Economic Thought through 1925 > B14 - Socialist ; Marxist; B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B0 - General > B00 - General; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D74 - Conflict ; Conflict Resolution ; Alliances ; Revolutions; A - General Economics and Teaching > A1 - General Economics > A19 - Other; P - Economic Systems > P3 - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D87 - Neuroeconomics

References

David Andress. 2005. O Terror. Guerra Civil e a Revoluçao Francesa. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record.

Christopher J. Berry, David R. Shanks and Richard N.A. Henson. “A unitary signal-detection model of implicit and explicit memory”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.xxx No.x, pp. 1-7.

Ernst Cassirer. 1998. Filosofía de las formas simbólicas. México, DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Antonio Damasio. 2005. En busca de Spinoza: neurobiología de la emoción y de los sentimientos. Madrid: Crítica. Orlando Figes. 1996. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924. New York: Viking Penguin.

François Furet. 1981. Interpreting the French Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Vittorio Gallese and George Lakoff. 2005. The Brain's Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-Motor System in Conceptual Structure, Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22: 455-79.

Ervin Goffman. 2009. Estigma, la identidad deteriorada. Buenos Aires: Amorrortou.

Alistair Horne. 1965. The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71. New York: Penguin.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. 1982. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kojin Karatani. 2006. Transcritique: On Marx and Kant. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Charles Kurzman. 2005. The Network Metaphor and the Mosque Network in Iran, 1978-1979. In: Miriam Cooke and Bruce B. Lawrence (eds.), Muslim Networks, from Hajj to Hip Hop. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Charles Kurzman. 1996. Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979, American Sociological Review 61: 153-170.

Charles Kurzman. 1993. A Dynamic View of Resources: Evidence from the Iranian Revolution, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 17: 53-84

George Lakoff. 2008. The Political Mind: Why You Can´t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain. New York, NY: Viking.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh, the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. 1980/2003. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press; 2nd ed.

Abninder Litt, Chris Eliasmith, Paul Thagard, “Neural affective decision theory: Choices, brains, and emotions”, Cognitive Systems Research 9, 2008.

Karl Marx. 1852/2008. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publihers.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. 1845. The Holy Family, Marxist Internet Archive (MIA, http://www.marxists.org/).

Arno J. Mayer. 2000. The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Arno J. Mayer. 1981. The persistence of the Old Regime – Europe to the Great War. New York: Pantheon Books, Random House.

Srini Narayanan. 1999. Moving Right Along: A Computational Model of Metaphorical Reasoning About Events, Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence: 121-128.

Simon Schama. 1989. Citizens. A Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Vintage.

Michael Sonenscher. 2009. “Ideology, social science and general facts in late eighteenth-century French political thought”, History of European Ideas 35.

Vincent Robert. 1996. Les Chemins de la manifestation. 1848-1914. Lyon: Presses Universitaries de Lyon.

Marc Wittmann and Martin P. Paulus. 2010. “Decision making, impulsivity and time perception”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.12 No.1. Salganik, M. J., P. S. Dodds, and D. J. Watts. 2006: “Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market”. Science, 311, 854-856.

Estrada, Fernando. 2008. “Redes y mecanismos de opinión pública”, Cuadernos del Cipe, Bogotá, Universidad Externado de Colombia.

Grace Dalrymple Elliott, [1859, Journal of My Life during the French Revolution], Diario de mi vida durante la Revolución Francesa, Madrid, Valdemar, 2001.

Antología, Leningrado, 1997, 41, Citado por Orlando Figes y Boris Konitskii en: Interpreting the Russian Revolution, Yale University Press, 2001.

Michael Axworthy, Iran: Empire of the Mind, Penguin Books, 2007, 317.

Marcus du Sautoy: Symmetry A Journey into the Patterns of Nature, New York, Harper, 2008, pp. 237 – 283.

Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848-1850); Edición española: Memorias de ultratumba, 4 vol., Acantilado, Barcelona, 2753 páginas.