Category Archives: Self

Overcoming Dualisms

CSP, Madness, Meaning, Memes, neuroscience, P-worlds, Self

Sometimes, we increase our understanding by introducing distinctions. If you look at a lump and can’t figure out its structure, you might make a distinction, and notice that the lump is a composite of two distinct things, and suddenly you understand its structure much better. We do this all the time, as when we identify two kinds of diabetes, with similar symptoms (the lump) but distinct etiologies (juvenile and acquired). Or when we learn the name of a new flower.

At other times, we learn by reconciling apparently distinct things. In this case, we see two entities turning out to be but different images of the same underlying structure. We do this often also, as when reading a story, the plot falls into place and you can reconcile previously incongruous sub-plots, or when we recognize the mother in the child.

Should we consider these to be distinct enterprises? Is the first Science and the second Religion? Hardly. Yet the knowledge offered by the contemplative traditions seems to be that obtained by following the second course exclusively, while the first is a caricature of purely reductionistic science.

But I think in bringing experience under the fold of collective inquiry, or in finding ways of discussing experience that, at least, do not offend scientists too much, we are making progress in the second way, and science, or our common stock of understanding, improves as a result. Here are some that merit our attention:

In talking about minds, we habitually use the terms “inner” and “outer”. This is a strange linguistic habit, and we should be taken somewhat aback if asked about the spatial referents of these terms. There are none, although convention locates the “inner” space within the head. However, if we look inside, we see only brains. Unifying these two is a huge hurdle, and possibly one of the resolutions of opposites that may be said to accompany enlightenment. The extended mind thesis testifies to the possibility of unifying the language in which we discuss these two, though it stops short of recognizing that they are not distinct realms, going for the cheap gag of making you imagine your mind somehow leaking out into the world.

Another pair that admit of unification is rather surprising: perception and action are not separate things. We have been thinking of them as input and output to something, and have identified with the middle bit, and called it mind. However, the cellular example (described elsewhere) perfectly illustrates the relation between perception and action, whereby we can see that they are co-determining, and not in a relation as cause and effect. This is true for a single cell, and it is true for humans. We can see the direct relationship only sometimes: the swaying room in which the optic flow at the retina allows the coupling of room and torso motion nicely illustrates the coupling between perception and action which is so tight that they become indistinguishable. Nervous systems mediate this relationship, making it harder for us to see, but the lawfulness of the relation still obtains. The mediation is what ultimately gives rise to phenomenal worlds. So if perception/action are unified, that places us in a bit of a bind. It presents with the puzzle of interpreting present experience, which now seems to be deterministic or at least sufficiently lawful that it will not support our notions of volition and agency. If the perception/action relation is invertible, present experience does not consist of cause and effect.

One way out of this bind is to recognize the P-world as distinct from the self. The P-world is present experience, and in recognizing it, we can learn to overcome several dualities. In present experience, the P-world, the subject/object divide is no more. There is no distinction between the perciever and the percept. Attention/Salience is another dualism that is hereby overcome. Salience is the “outer” form of attention. Attention the “inner” form of salience. Damasio does this nicely in his work when he distinguishes between emotion and feeling (if I am correct here, I need to check), one of which is the phenomenological concept, the other the observable counterpart.

Synchronous Speech

control, CSP, Dance, Future projects, Meaning, P-worlds, resonance, Self, Sex

I just retraced some rather faded handwriting on the white board. To do so, I had to entrain my movement (and all is movement, when we look at it), to a past series, as I thought those thoughts and wrote them on the board.

This is just like synchronous speech, where two people try to match their motor control. Remember, all we see is that brains move muscles. So when we ask about shared experience, that must mean shared movement. Is movement all muscle? Is it just shared dynamic?

Can you find a few people to do exercises in shared movement with? It’s not quite dance, but it is also. But its not about expression, but resonance. Neither alone nor together, but resonance.

Exercise: disconnecting

control, CSP, Memes, Self

Here’s a handy little exercise you can try at home.  Or near home, because I need you to go to your local supermarket.  The one you shop in most.  Go in, and act you are doing your shopping.  Walk among the familiar aisles.  Now disconnect.   Stop acting like you are shopping.  Become aware of the physical space around you.  Note the volume of the building.  Now look at all the people around you.  Notice how all their behavior is dictated by the supermarket: this communally designed engine.  It tells them where to look.  It plays them like fiddles.  It develops their expectations and weakly satisfies them.  That much is easy.  Now, you just disconnected from the matrix.  You stopped being pushed and pulled around by the memes.  It may surprise you to learn that security are almost on to you at this point.  You will stand out.  Your behavior will register as abnormal.  You are now among the mad.  Retain enough common sense to disconnect where it will not seem weird if you just stand there and look a bit mad.  Have fun, and tell me (stonepharisee@gmail.com) how you get on.

Resonance…….

CSP, Future projects, Memes, music, P-worlds, pink monkey farm, Self

Gibson thought the world of ‘resonance’, but he never cared to define it, nor could he have. It is intuitively appealing. A dynamic, resonant character to … experience. But it bears thinking of a little more literally. The graveyard of fools, I am well aware. A tune that resonates. Popcorn. Who owns it? I can objectify it, but it is still within this weird privileged world of subjective experience. Things in there typically ‘are’ me. They are not objectifiable.

But hold on. I can objectify that tune.  In fact, my difficulty in stopping it at will is proof (!) that I can objectifiy it.  It is not part of me.  But it is unquestionably an activity, a behavior, of my nervous system.  A resonance.  A real phenomenon, transmitted between P-worlds.  A part of subjective experience that is not really so personal, but has a shared quality.  A repeating echo, faltering from one repetition to the next, but always playing out in real unreal time.

Self-recognition

CSP, pink monkey farm, Self

I don’t know about elephants, but it is telling that we apes can recognize ourselves in mirrors, while many others can’t. Is this a sign that one is beginning to learn to relate subjective experience to what it is that one sees?  If this is on track, then it is probably related to empathy, when one learns to relate something very similar between vision and being.  It passes for Theory of Mind in some circles, but I think that is a bit misleading.  It is self-recognition, and may be mistaken for self-awareness.

Look at yourself in a mirror.  Now try to imagine being a less social animal (for only social animals can do this), for whom that thing you see as a reflection has no significance.  The viewer does not try to make sense of that blob of light.  My immediate feeling is that this animal is not socially connected, and for the animal, he himself is not part of any picture he sees.  Compared to the non-social animal, we are a level higher.  We dinged.  We are dinging again, I think, as we recognize, out there, how we are formed.

Multiple selves

CSP, Madness, pink monkey farm, Self

Multiple selves exist within a person, not because of schizophrenia, but because ideas compete.  The reality of ideas is of the essence here.  Memes are obvious in madness. Trapped within P-worlds, we have difficulty seeing them.   But they are causal in our agreed world.

‘I’ and ‘Now’ are deeply related

Art, CSP, Self

The twin troublesome concepts of the ‘I’ and the ‘now’ are deeply interlinked.  Both commit the same error of the infinitesimal.  They cannot be infinitesimal concepts.  As we understand one better, so too the other will change in meaning.  Physics and dynamics just shows us how deeply weird the ‘now’ is.  The weirdness of the ‘I’ is becoming apparent too.  Entertain guests at dinner parties by alternating between talking about the space-time continuum and the I-Now-Infinitesimal.

Reconciling our singular and collective selves

Art, CSP, Future projects, Self

It is hard for us to acknowledge the reality of our collective nature.  One big problem with this is that we have developed a morality based entirely on the individual.  This in turn gets some all too willing reinforcement from a subservient psychology.  How might we shift towards a more balanced sense of self?  Morality is not ready to be upturned yet.  Pictures of starving children waiting to be adopted (Hello, Sambo) are still crowd pleasers.  Learn to distance ourselves a little bit from vision.  Vision misleads.  It has a necessary center.  We don’t.