Ambiguity in Mind and Nature is the result of cognitive multistability, the phenomenon in which an unchanging stimulus, usually visual, gives rise in the subject to an oscillating perceptual interpretation. The vase/face picture is one of the most famous examples.
In this book scientists from many disciplines including physics, biology, psychology, maths and computer science, present recent progress in this fascinating area of cognitive science. Using the phenomenon of multistability as a paradigm they seek to understand how meaning originates in the brain as a consequence of cognitive processes. New advances are achieved by applying concepts such as self-organization, chaos theory and complex systems to the latest results of psychological and neurophysical experiments.

Inhalt

I Basic Concepts.- The Function of Meaning in Cognitive Order Formation.- Some Basic Concepts of Synergetics with Respect to Mult ist ability in Perception, Phase Transitions and Formation of Meaning.- II Psychophysical and Phenomenological Approaches.- Multistability as a Research Tool in Experimental Phenomenology.- The Significance of Perceptual Multistability for Research on Cognitive Self-Organization.- Task, Intention, Context, Glofcality, Ambiguity: More of the Same.- Multistability - More than just a Freak Phenomenon.- Recognition of Dynamic Patterns by a Synergetic Computer.- III Attractors in Behavior.- Multistability and Metastability in Perceptual and Brain Dynamics.- Self-Organizational Processes in Animal Cognition.- Dynamic Models of Psychological Systems.- IV Semantic Ambiguity.- Ambiguity in Linguistic Meaning in Relation to Perceptual Multistability.- The Emergence of Meaning by Linguistic Problem Solving.- V Models of Multistability.- A Synergetic Model of Multistability in Perception.- Concepts for a Dynamic Theory of Perceptual Organization: An Example from Apparent Movement.- Artificial Neural Networks and Haken's Synergetic Computer: A Hybrid Approach for Solving Bistable Reversible Figures.- Multistability in Geometrical Imagination: A Network Study.- VI Brain Processes.- A Psychophysiological Interpretation of Theta and Delta Responses in Cognitive Event-Related Potential Paradigms.- Slow Positive Potentials in the EEG During Multistable Visual Perception.- Brain Electric Microstates, and Cognitive and Perceptual Modes.- The Creation of Perceptual Meanings in Cortex Through Chaotic Itinerancy and Sequential State Transitions Induced by Sensory Stimuli.- VII Symmetry Breaking in Nature.- Multistability in Molecules and Reactions.- Perception of Ambiguous Figures: A Qualitative Model Based on Synergetics and Quantum Mechanics.- Name Index.