Microgenesis and the Mind / Brain State

This publication is composed of three interviews conducted with Jason W. Brown a few years ago. The first is concerned with early influences that shaped his development of a theory of “microgenesis”. The second focuses on evolutionary principles apparent in brain development and mental processes. In the third interview, Brown discusses the internal processual structure of the “mind/brain state”. The concept of microgenesis stands in the center of Brown’s work over the decades. It refers to the development of a mind/brain state within a brief present-time scale, be it a percept, a thought, an intuition, or an emotion. The occurrence of a consciously experienced state is understood as a dynamic unfolding and differentiation of a “germ” state which is already embodied in the early stages of microgenetic development. There are a number of points of contact between microgenesis and Alfred Whitehead’s process philosophy. Brown’s most recent book at the time of the interviews was Process and the Authentic Life (2005). Since then he has published Neuropsychological Foundations of Consciousness (2010), Gourmet’s Guide to the Mind (2012), Love and Other Emotions (2012), and the forthcoming Microgenetic Theory and Process Thought. His classic work Self-Embodying Mind was reissued in 2010 with a new prologue. A festschrift in his honor, Neuropsychology and Philosophy of Mind, was published in 2008.