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Jason Brown has written a 699-page essay that extends his theory of cognitive microgenesis into process philosophy, focusing on moral concepts and the origins and experience of value. His project, broadly conceived, is “a process monism where subjective and objective realms of existence mirror a foundational world of process iterated in cycles and framed by object-categories” (p. 584). Feeling is viewed as the medium of process and the genesis of value, which differentiates along subjective and objective vectors meanwhile undergoing transformation into varied types and giving rise to drives, interest, desire, and worth. “Existence is the progressive elaboration of value” (p. 677).
Brown's (1972, 1977) earliest scientific interests were the development and pathologies of language. Such work anticipated microgenetic theory, hi which the process of whole-to-part specification that guides cognition is analogous to the process shaping ontophylogenesis. In tune, the theory encompassed all major neuropsychological syndromes and provided novel, historically informed perspectives on the clinical phenomenology of mental illness (1988a, 1988b, 1991/2002). The theory's application to philosophical topics later assumed focal importance (1996, 2000). He has also periodically addressed psychoanalytic theory (e.g., 2000, chaps. 4, 5).
Microgenetic theory focuses on the cognitive epoch, which mediates self-realization and the appearance of the phenomenal world. Related characterizations include “the mind/brain state,” “a cycle of change,” and “the momentary state” (Brown, 1991/2002, 1996). Set to the timing of brainstem “pacemaker” neurons, the epoch is iterative and unidirectional and has a temporal duration of -100-200 msec. Its physical passage embodies successive phase transitions aligned with neuroevolutionary growth planes that, in individuals, correspond with neural structure. The lingering trace of one completed epoch is an immediate memory embedded hi the next; the concurrent