Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained!

(Why, How, Where and What: A Radical Proposal)

Jerome Iglowitzjiglowitz@rcsis.com

Copyright October 23, 1995All Rights Reserved

(Revised December 13, 1998)

(Note: the first 3 chapters of the “Exotic” paper are actually a replacement/supplement for chapter two of this original book and should probably be read in its place. A more precise mathematical introduction to my ideas is in: “Is Exotic Mathematics Necessary for a Solution to the Mind-Brain Problem ” I think it is!”, which

latter is becoming the second edition of these ideas(PDF Version)

For those who might find it useful, I have posted a paper on the mathematical foundations of my ideas- actually they are quite necessary to an understanding of my thesis. “Is the Incorporation of Exotic Mathematics Necessary to the Solution of the Mind-Brain Problem?” (MS Word version). If you want to truly understand my ideas, you should probably start there.

Note: This volume contains two sections. The first is the original book which I feel should be read first in its entirety for linearity and a grasp of the overall whole of my conception. The second section consists of later papers which significantly extend the whole of my ideas, tying them to current brain research, and which attempt to answer some the epistemological problems still remaining in the original

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version. I think this is the first scientifically consistent answer to the problem ever offered.

I wish you luck and will answer any decently placed questions at the above email address. This is the hardest problem there is. Please be sure to reference my book by title the “subject” line of your email or it may be deleted, unread, as spam.

Jerry Iglowitz(February 9, 2008)

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Dedication *

For Chris and my Girlsi

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SECTION 1

Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained!

(Why, How, Where and What: A Radical Proposal)

Jerome Iglowitz

Table of Contents, (Section I -with hypertext links)Introduction............................................................................................................ 5Preface to Chapter 1, (on Realism and Mind as a Non-Representative Model).....12Chapter 1. Why? The Biological Problem: Part One.............................................18Preface to Chapter 2: The Logical Problem -and Realism Again.........................37Chapter 2. How? The Logical Problem of Consciousness....................................48Introduction to Chapters 3, 4 and 5 (towards a Resolution of the Paradox)..............................................................81Chapter 3. Biology_Part II: Towards the Where and the What?...........................84Preface to Chapter 4............................................................................................112Chapter 4: Cognition and Experience: Quine and Cassirer..................................113Preface to Chapter 5, (the Final Step)..................................................................150Chapter 5: What? The Substance of Mind..........................................................151Chapter 6: Conclusions and Opinions.................................................................157Chapter 7: Epilogue............................................................................................ 162Appendix A, (Information and Representation)...................................................166Appendix B, (Isomorphism and Representation).................................................172

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Appendix C, (Mind-Body and Artificial Intelligence: Hubert Dreyfus)..............175Appendix D: (Roger Penrose).............................................................................185Appendix E: Dogmatic Materialism and Reality.................................................189Appendix F: "Dennett and the Color Phi"...........................................................192Appendix G: An Outline of the Semantic Argument, (For Philosophers)............200Appendix H : Extended Abstract.........................................................................207Afterward: Lakoff, Edelman, and “Hierarchy”....................................................210Appendix I: a few Illustrations...........................................................................235Bibliography....................................................................................................... 245

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Introduction

"Popper [said that] ... hypotheses are interesting only if they are bold -that is, if they are improbable and thus likely to be falsified. For then, to withstand falsification by rigorous testing is a triumph, and such a hypothesis is significant. Safe (that is, probable) hypotheses are a dime a dozen, and the safest are logical truths. If what science is seeking is primarily a body of certain truths, it should stick to spinning out logical theorems. The trouble with such safety, however, is that it doesn't get us anywhere." (P.S. Churchland, 1988, P.260)

Is anyone really interested in an answer to the mind-body problem? And why should anyone be? If science is able one day to deal with all of the ravages of mental illness, and to explain the whole of human behavior as biological phenomena –as, (paradoxically), it surely will- then the problem would seem fit for the debates of philosophers with philosophers alone, and of interest to no one else.

But, as in science generally, there is also a problem of organization - how do we organize these biological phenomena? And more -how do we predict and integrate biological and behavioral function? It is one thing to catalogue prior experiment, and it is quite another to integrate it into a comprehensive and predictive framework useful to empiric practice. Ptolemaic vs. Copernican cosmology is the prototypical illustration of the distinction. Ptolemaic theory was quite capable of cataloging any celestial movement, but it could not lead to Kepler's laws. It was sterile for the progress of future deep science. Heisenberg and Schrödinger1 supply a more modern instance. Heisenberg’s matrix conception of quantum mechanics was comprehensive, but not predictive. Schrödinger’s alternative was.

There is a fundamental prejudice in the history of human thought: it is that the large-scale organization of reality is simple! The whole history of science seems to confirm this premise. From Euclid to Copernicus, from Galileo to Newton to Maxwell and Hertz to Einstein to Heisenberg and Schrödinger and Bohr, from Aristotle to Darwin and Pauling..., this is our central premise.

1 Cf , for instance, Cassidy, David. "Uncertainty: the Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg", 1992 for a lucid discussion of the problem.

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The problem of the organization of the brain, our central and self-referential problem, is then either the exception to this rule, (paradoxically it is also the center of our understanding, i.e. man’s organization, of all the other organizations), or it will itself be organized on such a principle. But is the Copernican center of that organization to be found in the fundamental principles -and organization- of biology and chemistry, or in principles unique to the brain itself? In short, is a "Newtonian physics" of the brain possible? If it is, then the problems of "mind", and "mind-brain" become crucial as they supply critical clues to that organization.

But there is another aspect to the general problem presented here. It is not only that no solution has yet been presented for the mind-brain problem, but rather that the consensus of contemporary scientific opinion seems to be that there is no solution possible consistent with our ordinary, (i.e. "folk"), understanding of mind and perception. The consensus, (in the community of “hard scientists”), is that only actions and mechanical processes are possible, that "understanding" and "perception" must necessarily be reduced to the mechanical vocalizations, (and the precursors of such vocalizations), of linguistic automatons. I do not claim that this is not a formally consistent solution, but its center of organization lies clearly in the principles of biology and physics, and not of the brain itself.

If another solution is submitted, it must be appraised in terms of the new possibilities it opens. To be worthy of serious consideration, it must promise -and specifically suggest- new and powerful empirical results: philosophy is not enough. Though it may offend basic dogma, though it may profoundly offend our sensibilities, if it also proffers deep and profound scientific advance, then it must be considered seriously. The solution I will present here, though highly esoteric, (in a mathematical i.e. “good” sense of the word), has definite and specific implications for the directions of empirical research. Though scientifically and philosophically radical, I believe it resolves the whole of the mind-brain problem for the first time. It is, moreover, eminently compatible with the very same sort of radicalness which grounds modern physical science.

Let me be very clear. My purpose is passionately empiric and my conclusion pointedly scientific, not merely philosophical. I postulate a deep reorientation of the foundations of neuroscience with an unswerving focus on productivity. But as Cassirer, for instance, has amply illustrated, it is the case for all the crucial turning points in the history of science that deep progress necessitated serious re-examination of what were, before, “philosophic certainties”. Those prior "certainties" had precluded the profound leaps of our greatest scientific

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theories. Philosophy has been the crucial business of the greatest of our scientists –at the very points where their most significant work was done. 1

Stylistic and Semantic Notes:

Because of the complexity of my conception and because it is so far removed from the accepted paradigms, I have had to solve severe artistic and semantic problems to give what I hope will be a lucid exposition. 1 My thesis is a synergistic (and multidisciplinary), combination of three very radical ideas. Each

1 ? Let me duplicate a footnote from Chapter 4 here that makes the point:

Cassirer sums up the case:

"A glance at the history of physics shows that precisely its most weighty and fundamental achievements stand in closest connection with considerations of a general epistemological nature. Galileo's 'Dialogues on the Two Systems of the World' are filled with such considerations and his Aristotelian opponents could urge against Gallilei that he had devoted more years to the study of philosophy than months to the study of physics. Kepler lays the foundation for his work on the motion of Mars and for his chief work on the harmony of the world in his 'Apology for Tycho', in which he gives a complete methodological account of hypotheses and their various fundamental forms; an account by which he really created the modern concept of physical theory and gave it a definite concrete content. Newton also, in the midst of his considerations on the structure of the world, comes back to the most general norms of physical knowledge, to the regulae philosophandi. In more recent times, Helmholtz introduces his work, 'Uber der Erhaltung der Kraft'... with a consideration of the causal principle... and Heinrich Hertz expressly asserts in the preface of his 'Prinzipien der Mechanik'.. that what is new in the work and what alone he values is 'the order and arrangement of the whole, thus the logical, or, if one will, the philosophical side of the subject.' But all these great historical examples of the real inner connection between epistemological problems and physical problems are almost outdone by the way in which this connection has been verified in the foundations of the theory of relativity.... Einstein...appeals primarily to an epistemological motive, to which he grants...a decisive significance." (Cassirer: "Einstein's Theory of Relativity",P.353-354)

This case can be made over and over again, and is particularly transparent in modern times concerning quantum mechanics. Cassidy’s “Uncertainty: The Life

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of these is, by itself, capable of a linear, (though not simple), exposition and argument, but each raises profound new difficulties in turn which must be answered. It is only in their combination that a plausible and, I think, a convincing rationale can be made. I therefore face a difficulty of much the same sort that Kant, (for instance), faced in the exposition of his ideas which faced a similar difficulty and which he illustrated with the problem of explaining the parts of the body. To understand the hand, (he argued), the arm and the heart and the brain must be understood, -and conversely. The parts are only truly intelligible in their integration into the whole. I had originally tried, (reasonably I thought), to present an overview and synopsis of my individual themes and their interconnection in an introductory chapter, giving at least a general answer to the problems they raised.

When I circulated early versions of my thesis for comment, I received numerous initial reactions of high interest from persons whom I considered bright and able, (not because they were interested!) But most of these contacts just "died away", with no further response. A few brave souls, (or those with more background in the field), managed to get past the initial statement and into the "meat" of my theory, and they have helped me enormously with their criticisms and suggestions. I do not think the others dropped out because of a lack of ability or willingness -or because of disbelief. It is my experience that most people are not shy about expressing disagreement, but that never happened. Those I contacted told me they simply "bogged down" in the Introduction and Synopsis, (the original Chapter 1), and got lost.

I think this was a fault of my presentation. I concluded that the sheer density, the innate complexity, and the necessary abstractness of such a synopsis, undertaken without prior familiarity, were enough to "boggle" almost any mind. If these were not my own ideas, I would probably stand likewise. They are simply too far from the standard paradigm to be presented in such a form.

and Science of Werner Heisenberg”, (Cassidy, 1991), lays out the epistemological dilemma of that time succinctly. The paradigm case, however, remains that of Copernicus which I feel is even now still underrated in this regard.

1 As an aside, let me remark that “hypertext” would have made some sense as a format for my book. It is frankly beyond me at this point, and I doubt, as well, that it is a proper medium for a serious treatise. To a very real extent, however, I have used footnotes and the multiple appendices to the same end. This was done in an attempt to give at least preliminary answers to the “obvious” objections that must occur almost everywhere.

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The alternative presentation raised difficulties of its own, but I concluded that it was the only way to make my ideas comprehensible in a lucid form. That alternative was to just "dive in", to give just a very general statement -which I give here- to the effect that I will present three radical themes, (1. a biological rationale for the brain, 2. a logical rationale for the mind, and 3. an epistemological rationale which reconciles the first two), that each is unsettling, and that it is only in combination that they become convincing. Or, rather, each is individually plausible, but the new difficulties each raises are resolved and plausible only in their synergistic combination. Each offers a specific and constructive counterproposal to accepted wisdom. My biological thesis, for instance, proposes that "cognition" and human reality, (viewed from a contemporary Naturalist perspective), is virtual. It is proposed that they are a schematic and internally organizational, (rather than a representational), artifact of evolutionary metacellular process. My argument is considerably more complicated than that, however, postulating original logical and epistemological dimensions to the problem.

I will therefore present each of the theses in order, each as a separate chapter,1 and ask for a suspension of judgement until all three are completed. This is asking for a lot, I know, but it will allow a linear comprehension, and should be within the scope of a diligent reader.

The very (logical) form of my argument, especially at certain key turning points, is quite complex and might be confusing however. This complexity is not of my doing but is a necessary reflection of the complexity of the problem itself. I have therefore provided a logical outline and synopsis of the argument as Appendix G. You may refer to it as needed, but I discourage it, (at least until after completing the first two chapters), for the reasons cited above.

The one reader who might properly be excepted from this injunction is the professional Philosopher who might want to turn to the outline before starting the body of the book. There are a number of apparent self-contradictions in my argument which might induce such a reader to dismiss my thesis out of hand. They are, however, only apparent as I will hope to make clear in the outline.

A Few Practical Matters:

Let me conclude this introduction with a couple of practical matters. “Who is my intended audience and what are the prerequisites?”, I have been asked.

1 ? the third thesis as three chapters

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I speak to an imaginary audience which includes the best of the Naturalist philosophers and scientists,1 but the ghosts of the "old ones" -Des Cartes, Hume, Kant, Newton, Darwin, Hilbert, Einstein, Bohr, Quine ... are there as well. At the deepest level, it is written for the most serious workers in the field, but even from them I do not expect an easy reception. The problem I anticipate derives from my multipli-radical as well as multidisciplinary approach –i.e. it proposes specific and radical solutions within all the disciplines it encompasses. It is my hope that these workers will see the plausibility of my ideas as regards their own specialties and that this will make them open to question conventionality in disciplines outside their own. Too often this is not the case –respectability is often bought at the price of conformity everywhere else. My thesis is not “multidisciplinary” just because it cites several disciplines; it is multidisciplinary because it is grounded across several disciplines. The subject requires it.

I assume that all serious workers in the field, no matter which aspect is their special interest, will have mastered at least all of the major popular works about it2 as well as those of the classical thinkers. The sheer size and variegation of the issues – i.e. the ground we must cover, (our subject is the human mind and human cognition itself after all), makes it necessary to assume a familiarity with that material.

There is another level on which this book may be read, however. It may be read “naively”. By this I mean that it may be read as a simple exposition of a thesis, rather than as the answer to the profound objections which have been raised against all previous attempts at explicating the mind-body problem.3 On such a first reading you may skip the footnotes, the references and even the appendices, though you must go back to them ultimately. For this kind of reading, the actual prerequisites are small. I require only, (as many a mathematical text begins), a "mathematical maturity". By this I mean that my ideas are to be taken literally and precisely. This is an argument from fundamentals, very much in the Kantian spirit, but informed by modern mathematics and biology. Even on such a reading it remains a difficult theory however because it is conceptually complex and novel, not because it is full of details to be mastered. It does not require prior knowledge so much as an openness of understanding.

1 I especially court mathematicians; I especially court biologists.2 E.g. Dennett, Churchland, Maturana, Edelman, etc. I believe the cases they

make are profound and compelling, and they should be familiar to any serious student of the subject. My task is to answer those cases and propose a viable alternative, not to restate them.

3 Which is the way experts must read it.

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It is, therefore, a thesis for the young -or the young at heart. If I am fortunate enough to capture their genuine attention, however, then they must broaden their reading to appreciate its full and far reaching implications. This is not an elementary text. The Bibliography is just a suggestion of where to start. As a minimal beginning I would recommend Maturana and Varela's "Tree of Knowledge", at least the first chapter of Cassirer's "Substance and Function", Cassirer's "Einstein's Theory of Relativity", Kant's "Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics", and Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind", (the latter mostly for its summation of modern physics and its criteria of theories). P.S. Churchland's "Neurophilosophy" would be a next logical step, Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" the following, probably Lakoff’s “Women, Fire…” and Edelman’s “Bright Air…” next,1 and from there the choice is yours. (Though I totally disagree with Dennett on the answer, for instance, it is a beautifully reasoned book and lays out the problem in uncompromising terms.)

This is a very large idea, the distillation of 40 years of independent thought.2 It is too large and too different to be digested at a single sitting. I would suggest that you master the first thesis by itself, then the second, and then consider them together as a unit, (i.e. evaluate "the concordance"). Finally I suggest you approach the third and conceptually most profound and difficult thesis from that secure ground.

"Mind-body" and "cognition" are really a complexity of problems wrapped in a loose ribbon of words. They are really the problem of everything! Though my solution is (necessarily) complex in presentation, once understood, it is very simple, linear and natural in concept.

1 Regretfully I had not read either Lakoff or Edelman till after the completion of the essential draft of my book. Because of time and life constraints, I have been unable to give both of these profound conceptions the service they are due. I have gone back and tried to tie their ideas with my own –particularly in the prefaces- and have added a last appendix, (“Afterword”), dealing specifically with their conceptions. To a large extent I agree with their conclusions, (though not necessarily with their mechanics) –though on different grounds. They do not achieve the necessary sophistication to resolve the mind-body problem however. Nor are they internally consistent –they fail in their treatment of a “God’s eye” view of the world. cf Afterword.

2 My particular problem in this book is to translate it into the conceptual language of the current dialogue. Yours is to comprehend a paradigm very different from anything you have seen before.

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Preface to Chapter 1, (on Realism and Mind as a Non-Representative Model)

Sometimes in the attempt to solve an exceedingly difficult or a seemingly impossible problem we tentatively adopt what is, on the face of it, an ostensibly absurd or even an outrageous1 hypothesis and see where it leads. Sometimes we discover that its consequences are not so outrageous after all.

I agree with Chalmers2 that the problem of consciousness is "the hard problem". But I think it is considerably harder than anyone else seems to think it is. I think its final scientific solution requires new heuristic principles as deep and as wrenching to our innate preconceptions as, (though different from), the "uncertainty", "complementarity" and (physical) "relativity" that were crucial to the successful advance of physics early in this century.3 I think its resolution involves a profound extension, (though not a refutation), of classical logic as well. A full consideration of those deep new cognitive principles: "cognitive closure", (Kant, Maturana, Edelman), "scientific epistemological relativity",4 (Cassirer and Quine), and of the necessary extension of logic, (Cassirer, Hilbert, Rosch, Lakoff, Edelman, Iglowitz), must await later chapters however. In a very real sense, moreover, it is a "chicken and egg" problem. I must ask for some latitude therefore. This is too big a problem to be focused in a single chapter.

In this chapter I will propose, instead, just the first and simplest part of a three pronged, (and multidisciplinary), hypothesis for a solution of the problem of consciousness. This first hypothesis proposes, ("outrageously"), that the evolutionary rationale for the brains of biological organisms was not

1 ? It is too bad that Crick used this word in the context of the mind-body problem. His is really a very ordinary answer when considered in the light of ordinary materialism.

2 ? Chalmers. 19953 ? For a vivid recreation of that time and the comparable intellectual

dilemmas presented by the empirical findings of quantum physics see "Uncertainty: the Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg". Cassidy, 1992, for instance.

4 ? This is not an ad hoc relativism, but a scientifically structured one –I will elaborate this point shortly and develop it at length as the subject of Chapter 4.

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representation1 -nor reactive parallelism -nor transcendent logic!2- as is generally asserted, but was, rather, an optimizing, (and non-representational), internal operational self-organization, (by metacellulars), of their own primitive, reactive biologic process instead –and for which I will propose a specific model. I will argue that this organization was vital for the adroit functioning of profoundly complex metacellular organisms in a hostile environment and antithetical to a representative role! Representation, I will argue, is in conflict with an optimization of biological response! This is an "outrageous" hypothesis in that it proposes a premise which presumes3 our ordinary physical and evolutionary world, (ordinary biology), while the consequences of that selfsame premise are that our ordinary worldview, (to include the aforementioned "ordinary physical and evolutionary world" in which it was framed), is neither probably, nor even likely, to be (metaphysically4) correct!5 We humans, after all, are metacellulars too and our conclusions must apply to ourselves as well.

How is this possible? Why is it not a logical absurdity? I will supply a cogent realist resolution of this seeming "reductio" in Chapters 3 and 4 drawing from Kant, Cassirer, Quine and Bohr. I will argue, with Cassirer, that our science is a relativistic6 organization of phenomena, ("experience"), and not

1 ? This is not so peculiar an idea as it may seem but is being advocated more and more frequently by eminent biologists of our day- e.g. Maturana and Varela, Freeman and Edelman.

2 ? i.e. an ultimate, objective logic dealing with the ultimate, objective, (ontic), world -the absolute world in which we exist. This is Kant's distinction between "transcendent" and "transcendental".

3 ? In its very statement4 ? "Metaphysics", as a word, refers not just to historically obsolete scientific

ideas such as "final causes", "purpose", et al, but also to ultimate being -i.e. "ontology". This aspect of metaphysics, (i.e. what is the world really?), still remains at the core of most conceptions of science and philosophy despite Kant's herculean efforts. Though unfashionable to give it a name, that which it names is ubiquitous. I will address the issue at length in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 as its clarification is crucial to the mind-body problem just as it was crucial to the successful advance of modern physics.

5 ? The same dilemma is shared, clearly, by Maturana and Varela, Freeman, Lakoff, Edelman, … Maturana calls it “the razor’s edge”.

6 ? I had probably best clarify mine, (and Cassirer's), meaning of the word "relativism" right here. It does not have the sense of "cultural relativism", "ethical relativism", or that "anything is as good, (or true!), as anything else". It does not

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metaphysically, (i.e. absolutely), referential.1 This proposal, like Bohr’s, will resolve the apparent self-contradiction of this first premise by placing it as a scientifically significant and useful relative2, (i.e. organizational), but not metaphysically referential assertion. It is proposed, (itself!), as a legitimate and scientifically productive automorphism within our ordinary world, not as a metaphysical (objective) mapping to an external, absolute domain.

My overall thesis is neither solipsistic nor idealistic, however, but scientific and realist. Ultimately I will propose that our ordinary world, (our "folk world"3), is a blind working algorithm, (in just Bohr's sense of quantum mechanics), on the Kantian "nuomena"4 but incorporating, like physics, a principle of fundamental epistemological uncertainty. It is, therefore, a realist5 hypothesis in the essential

signify an abandonment of truth or legitimacy. Rather, we understand the word in the mathematical and scientific sense -in the sense of Einstein's Special Relativity for instance. It denotes an exact and invariant rule of connection. One set of measurements in a particular frame of reference is not arbitrary as regards another set of measurements in another frame under Special Relativity, (for instance). It is related to it in a rigid and invariant relation -i.e. the specific equations of the special theory of relativity. This is the sense of "relativism" and "invariance" that Cassirer and I utilize, and it is diametrically opposed to "capriciousness".

1 ? I will argue that the business of science is the prediction of correlations of events, not about what those correlations ultimately correspond to in some ultimate ontic "nether world". I will argue, with Maturana and Varela, and with Gerald Edelman that brains, (and the product of those brains), are adaptive, (e.g. “ex post facto selective of preexisting internal variation" using Edelman’s terminology -cf Edelman, 1992, p.82), and not information processing. But "adaptation" does not imply isomorphism or objective mapping, it implies competence, which is quite different from implying a "God's eye" knowledge of the world, (information). I will pursue this discussion in Chapter 3. Edelman draws a similar conclusion, but then goes on, inexplicably, to propose exactly such a "God's eye" view himself! I attempt to resolve that difficulty in Chapter 4 in a modification of Cassirer's "Symbolic Forms".

2 ? see footnote above3 ? and ultimately, (as an extension of that world), our science as well4 ? ultimate reality5 ? Contrary to his own (grudging) acceptance of the label of "critical

idealist", Kant was very much a realist. His arguments in "Prolegomena" very clearly and pointedly distinguish him from classical idealism. A more modern classification, I propose, would be "ontic indeterminist". The "categories", I

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meaning of that phrase, but embodying a tenet of metaphysical indeterminacy. It is "Kantian" without the categories.

I will show in later chapters, (though not in this one), how this first hypothesis, (in concert with ancillary logical and epistemological hypotheses), opens the first real possibility for an actual and adequate solution of the problem of "consciousness" commensurate with the legitimacy of science. I will argue that it leads to an actual solution of the fundamental paradoxes of sentiency. That solution actually explicates those paradoxes rather than merely denying or reducing, (i.e. eviscerating), them -and "consciousness" in the process -as has been the case heretofore and is a crucial measure of a new theory. It foreshadows, moreover, the beginnings of a truly scientific psychiatry for the first time.

The Alternative Positions:

The nonrealist philosophies: dualism, idealism and solipsism appear to have a certain advantage in the problem of consciousness. Admittedly, they circumvent certain of the primal difficulties, but they do so at a price too costly for most scientists and other practical minds. Because they detach1 physical presentation, (i.e. sensory perception2), from our consciousness, (or discount it entirely), the problems of "the homunculus" and of how we know clearly disappear -at least in regard to external perceptions. We know because we know. We begin by knowing. There is, they claim therefore, no problem of knowing!

But it is only an illusory advantage for these philosophies do not solve an even deeper problem of "presentation" and another "homunculus" implicit in our very logic itself. How can this part of even a "mental stuff" know that part?3 How, in Leibniz's formulation of the problem, can "the many" be known to "the one"?4 Whence comes the integration of the parts? Whence, furthermore, comes the "abstraction" and "attention"5 at the theoretical foundations of the classical logical

believe, are a different issue, and open to question. See Introduction to Chapter 2 for an elaboration of essential realism.

1 ? or reinterpret2 ? to whatever extent it may exist for them3 ? other than that mind is "nonextensional" and "non-divisible" -i.e. "it just

does"!4 This is precisely the problem that my second thesis of “implicit definition” is

intended to resolve.5 ? cf Chapter 2

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"concept"/”category” –i.e. at the very basis of classical logic itself? What do we abstract from -and where, and what do we pay attention to -in our formal theory of concepts -and how? How can there be a logical homunculus? How can there be meaning?1

This is the problem of logical presentation. I call it the logical problem of consciousness, and it is the hardest problem. It is a problem that no philosophy has yet answered. It is the purpose of this chapter to present the first of three synergistic2 hypotheses intended, (at their end), to answer it fully, (and the core of the mind-body problem as well), in a manner consistent with science and realism.

Ordinary realism, (ordinary materialism), on the other hand, throws away the baby with the bath. It leads inexorably to the conclusion, as Dennett3 has so forcefully argued, that we can have no consciousness -we are all automatons -"zombies"! Simply put, within such a perspective there is no way that one part of

1 ? A large part of the problem of "mind" and of "consciousness" lies in our inability even to properly and adequately frame it. This ambiguity is pretty much admitted by all parties. I believe it is a consequence of the lack of an adequate underlying conceptual framework, and not because of a lack of substance to the problems themselves. It is only when an adequate substrate theory has been formulated, (or while it is being formulated), that the problems will take on clear and logical form, and solutions will be cogent. There are clear precedents in the history of science to illustrate the case. How, for instance, could the perspectives, (the questions and the answers), of Galilean or Newtonian physics be formulated in the causative framework of Aristotle or the cosmological framework of Ptolemy? The answer is that they could not. It was only in the evolution of a different context and a different science that they could be explicitly formulated at all.

The problems and the answers of "mind" and of "consciousness" are considerably clearer within my thesis -i.e. they can achieve a concise formulation, but not in a prelude to it.

2 ? and, thereby, individually somewhat perplexing3 ? Dennett, 1991. I will not reiterate these kinds of arguments within this

book -we have much larger and original ground to cover. They have been powerfully and beautifully made innumerable times before. (Cf, for instance, Dennett, P.S. Churchland, Paul Churchland, … -even Edelman!) Furthermore I accept their conclusions within the context within which they were made and expect my intended reader to have been strongly challenged by them. It is that context itself we must examine but we must do so without presupposing our conclusions, “heterophenomenologically”, as Dennett would say

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a spatially and temporally distributed process1 can know another part.2 There is no "place" that knowing can be; there can be no "Cartesian Theater"! We become therefore "multiple drafts" published on a mechanical "demon press". Emergence, supervenance and epiphenomenalism,3 on the other hand, are profoundly challenged by Occam's razor4 since by definition they can add nothing causative to physical explanations.

The real problem for those of us who believe we "have a life" therefore, is how to account for both consciousness and a reality external to that consciousness in a philosophy of realism and science. I will argue ultimately that it requires a reduction of the excessive and blatantly metaphysical5 demands made on realism while retaining the essential core we vitally require. This (essentially Kantian) realism6 will enable a viable solution to the logical problem in my second thesis, (and to the problem of meaning as well), and answers our innate demands for both science and consciousness. My third hypothesis7, (in conjunction with the first two), undertakes to supply the actual "substance" -the "matter of mind”- within the context of that same realism. Consciousness without realism and science is inconsequential. Science and realism without consciousness is pointless.

Sometimes it is necessary to walk around a mountain in order to climb the hill beyond. It is the particular mountain of "representation", and the cliff, (notion), of "presentation" itself, (to include logical presentation), embedded on its very face, I will argue, which blocks the way towards a solution of the problem of consciousness. This first chapter points out the path around the mountain so that we may approach the more manageable grades beyond. "Presentation", I hold, is not implicit in consciousness nor is it innate in realism.

Let me now present just the first of three synergistic hypotheses whose combination I will ultimately propose as a scientifically plausible solution for the problem of consciousness. This first hypothesis is not intended to stand on its own. Though it opens new and fruitful perspectives on the problem, it raises very large problems itself. The latter are the subject of the second, (Chapter 2), and third hypotheses, (chapters 3, 4, and 5). Their adequate resolution involves a

1 ? the process of the brain, for instance2 ? (though it can react to it!)3 ? and property dualism ...4 ? The principle that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity, i.e.

beyond explanatory sufficiency.5 ? i.e. ontological –see footnote above defining “ontology”6 ? see prior footnote concerning Kant’s realism7 ? Chapters 3, 4, and 5

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paradigm shift of monumental proportions and is dependent on the whole of the three hypotheses. It is the latter fact, I believe, which has made the problem so long intractable.

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Chapter 1. Why? The Biological Problem: Part One (Representative Models and the Mind)1

"The plastic splendor of the nervous system does not lie in its production of 'engrams' or representation of things in the world; rather, it lies in its continuous transformation in line with transformations of the environment as a result of how each interaction affects it. From the observer's standpoint this is seen as proportionate learning. What is occurring, however, is that the neurons, the organism they integrate, and the environment in which they interact operate reciprocally as selectors of their corresponding structural changes and are coupled with each other structurally: the functioning organism, including its nervous system, selects the structural changes that permit it to continue operating, or it disintegrates." 2 3

"… the nervous system ...is not solipsistic, because as part of [its] organism, it participates in the interactions [with] its environment. ... Nor is it representational ... [it] does not 'pick up information' from the environment, as we often hear... The popular metaphor of calling the

1 ? (NOTE: There are considerably more recent revisions, expansions and significant conceptual developments to both this chapter and the next on my webpage. The paper which is relevant for this chapter is “Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology” which elaborates and bases the argument in current brain research, and for Chapter 2, it is “Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the Mind-Brain Problem.” I had hoped to do revisions to the present book, but strokes and age have made that impossible to date. I have been able to correlate my ideas with the cortical research results of Walter J. Freeman in the first of these papers and they are a good fit.)

2 Consider also Edelman: “…recognition is not an instructive process. No direct information transfer occurs… Instead, recognition is selective.” (Edelman, 1992, p.81) This, ultimately, is a statement about self-organization!

3 See also Edelman, 1992, pps. 190-191, for a conception comparable to Maturana’s “structural coupling”

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brain an 'information-processing device' is not only ambiguous but patently wrong." (Maturana and Varela, 1987, pp.170-171, my emphasis)

Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela's "The Tree of Knowledge"1 is a detailed and compelling argument based in the necessary structure of physical explanations, against even the possibility of a biological organism's possession of a representative model of its environment. They and other eminent modern biologists, (Walter Freeman and Gerald Edelman for instance), argue even against "information" itself moreover! They maintain that information never passes between the environment and organisms; there is only the "triggering" of structurally determinate organic forms.2 I believe that theirs is the inescapable conclusion of current science and I will argue that case as the subject of Chapter 3.

It is not my intention to present that argument in this chapter however. Here, instead, I will present an explicit and constructive counterproposal for the existence of a different kind of model in the brain, "the schematic operative model". This model, I believe, (and contrary to the case of the representative model), does remain viable within the critical context of modern science. I believe that we, as human organisms, do in fact embody a model. I believe it is the stuff of mind! Let me now present an inductive argument –and a concrete counterproposal- that the brain embodies a scientifically viable, (and biologically efficacious), model of its own internal process rather than a representational model of its surroundings. Representative models are not the only possible kinds of models. Nor is representation a model's only conceivable or best use.

The First Hypothesis: A Non-Representational Model in the Brain

A. The Schematic Model: a New Paradigm for Models3

1 ? Maturana and Varela, 1987.2 ? Edelman makes an argument to the same conclusion based in embryology

and the actual size of the human genome for his theory of "Neural Darwinism”. He concludes that the brain is an "ex post facto" adaptive rather than an "informational" system. Freeman argues similarly "that perception does not consist of information reception, processing, storage, and recall.." -that the brain is not representational.

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A.1. The Simplest and Most General Case of the New Paradigm:

Our most simplistic models, the models of even our most mundane training seminars for instance, suggest the possibility of a usage very different than as representative schemas. They demonstrate the possibility of a wholly different paradigm whose primary function is organization instead.

Consider: " 'Motivation' plus 'technique' yields 'sales'.", we might hear at an Amway © sales meeting. Or, " 'Self-awareness of the masses' informed by 'Marxist-dialectic' produces 'revolution'! ", we might hear from our local

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revolutionary.1 Visual aids, (models), are ubiquitous. The lecturer stands at his chalkboard and asks us to accept drawings of a sundry set of shapes: triangles,

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squares, … even cookies, horseshoes1... as objects -with a "calculus"2 of relations between them. These shapes are stand-ins for concepts or processes like "motivation", "the nuclear threat", "sexuality", "productivity", "evolution", ... in the diagrams on his board. In these presentations, the "objects" often do not stand in place of entities in objective reality, however. What is "a productivity" or "a sexuality", after all? What real entities are these?

Another lecturer might invoke different symbols however, and a different "calculus" to explicate the same topic. In analyzing the French Revolution in a history classroom, let us say, (a classroom is a kind of training seminar after all!), a fascist, a royalist, a democrat might alternatively invoke "the Nietzschean superman", "the divine right of kings", "freedom", ... as "objects" on his board, (with appropriate symbols), redistributing certain of the explanatory aspects, (and properties), of the Marxist's entities, (figures) -or rejecting them as entities

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altogether.1 That which is unmistakably explanatory, (“wealth”, let us say), in the Marxist's entities, (and so which must be accounted for by all of them), might be embodied, instead, solely within the fascist's "calculus" or in an interaction between his "objects" and his "calculus". Thus and conversely the Marxist would, (and does), reinterpret the royalist's "God"-figure, (and his –the Marxist’s- admitted function of that "God" in social interaction), as "an invention of the ruling class" -i.e. as an expression solely of his "calculus" and not as a distinct symbol, (i.e.

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object). Their objects -as objects- need not be compatible!1 Usually they are not! What is important is that a viable "calculus"-plus-"objects", (a given model),

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explain or predict "history"1 -i.e. that it be compatible with the phenomena, (in this particular example the historical phenomena). In Chapter 4, I will argue, (with

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Hertz and Cassirer), that the same accounting may be given of competing scientific

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theories, philosophies, and, indeed, of any alternately viable explanations.1

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The very multiplicity of alternatively viable calculuses, (sic), and the

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allowable incommensurability of the "objects"1 of their models, however, suggests an interpretation of those "objects" contrary to representation or denotation. It suggests the converse possibility that the function and the motivation of those objects, specifically as entities/objects, (in what I will call these "schematic

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models"), is instead to illustrate, to enable, -to crystallize and simplify the very

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calculus of relation proposed between them!1

I propose that their boundaries -the demarcations and definitions of these “objects”, (their “contiguity” if you will)- are formed to meet the needs of the

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operations, -to serve structure- not the converse.1 I suggest that the objects of these “schematic models” –specifically as objects- serve to organize process, (i.e. analysis or response). They are not representations of actual objects or actual

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entities in reality.1 This, I propose, is why they are "things"! These objects functionally bridge reality in a way that physical objects do not. I propose that they are, in fact, metaphors of analysis or response. The rationale for using them, (as any good "seminarian" would tell you), is clarity, organization and efficiency.

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(But how is this even conceivable?1 How are “objects” even possible independent of some ultimate “reference”? I will argue shortly that a "calculus"-

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plus-"objects"1 can be freely formed, (ad hoc rather than contingently, referentially

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formed), as an interface –a “front end”- to efficiently organize1 a domain of

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correlation, (experience for instance, or a mathematical domain).1 This conclusion will impose consequential and severe constraints on the nature of the

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correspondence however. I will propose that it is redressed in the constitution,

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(correspondence), of the "objects" themselves!1)Though framed in plebian terms, the "training seminar", (taken in its most

abstract sense), defines the most general and abstract case of schematic non-representative models in that it presumes, (as presented), no particular agenda. It might as well be a classroom in nuclear physics or mathematics, the boardroom of a multinational corporation, -or a student organizing his leisure time on a scratchpad.

A.2. A Deeper Example: Instrumentation, (A Schematic Usage More Closely Related to the Problem of the Brain)

Instrumentation and control systems provide another, somewhat more respectable example of the possibilities of schematic, non-representational models and "entities". Consider the most general case of instrumentation for instance. Here "objects" need not mirror objective reality either. A gauge, a readout display, a control device, (the "objects" of such systems), need not mimic a single parameter -or an actual physical entity. Indeed, in the monitoring of an especially complex or critical process, it should not! Rather, "an object", (a readout device for instance), should represent an efficacious synthesis of just those aspects of the process which are relevant to response, and be crystallized around those relevant

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responses!1 A warning light or a status indicator, for instance, need not refer to just one parameter. It may refer to the composite of electrical overload and/or excessive pressure and/or... Or it may refer to an optimal relationship, (perhaps a complexly functional relationship!), between many parameters! It may refer to a relationship between temperature, volume, mass, etc. in a chemical process, for instance.

The exactly parallel case holds for its control devices. A single control "object" may orchestrate a multiplicity of (possibly disjoint) objective responses. The accelerator pedal in a modern automobile, as a simplistic example, may integrate fuel injection volumes, spark timing, transmission gearing...

"The calculus" of this joint system of readout and control is the relationship between the objects of the readout and the necessary actions upon the objects of control. It is the calculus of response and, for especially complex and critical, (or dangerous), processes, coherence and simplicity of that calculus is absolutely crucial.

Ideally -for maximal simplicity and speed- instrumentation and control might unify in the same "objects" in a single contextual frame. We would then manipulate "the objects" of the display, which would themselves be the control devices as well. (We might, in a simplest example for instance, grasp an errant pointer on a gauge –on a speedometer, let us say- and force it back into the “safe” range to effect a necessary correction. The pointer would be both the speedometer and the accelerator/brake in one.) Think about this possibility as applied to our ordinary "objects of perception" -in relation to the sensory-motor coordination of the brain and the problem of naive realism! Consider the fecund and profoundly

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simplifying possibility1 that our "naive objects", (our sensory objects), could be the unified "objects", (for readout-plus-response), of "the calculus" of biological instrumentation. The brain is a control system, after all. It is an organ of control! The process it controls is both profoundly complex and dangerously urgent, the extreme and biologically appropriate criteria specified above.

A.3. The Richest Example: The "GUI" he most sophisticated example of a schematic model and the most pertinent to the problem of the brain)

Consider finally the graphic user interface, (the "GUI"), of a computer. The use of "objects", (icons), in GUI's is perhaps the best example of a “schematic” usage presently available, and suggests its deepest potential. It is also the most pertinent to the problem of cognition.

In my simplistic manipulation of the virtual objects of my computer's GUI, I am, in fact, effecting and coordinating quite diverse and eclectic -and unbelievably complex- operations at the physical level of the computer, operations impossible, (in a practical sense), to accomplish directly. What those virtual objects represent and what my virtual and naive manipulation of them actually does, (at the physical level of the computer), need not even be known to me. The disparate voltages and

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physical locations, (or operations!),1 represented by a single "object", (icon), and the (possibly different) ones effected by manipulating it, correlate to "an object" only in this "schematic" sense. Its efficacy lies in the simplicity of the "calculus" it enables!

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The pragmatic criterion for a GUI is that the rules be simple or intuitive,1 consistent with proper function. Its value, (its goodness as an interface), is measured by the simplicity of the calculus it embodies.Current usage is primitive, admittedly. Contemporary software designers have a limiting preconception of the "entities" to be manipulated and of the operations to be accomplished in the physical computer by their icons and interface. But GUI's and their "objects", (icons), have a deeper potentiality of "free formation" -they have the potential to link to any selection across a substrate, i.e.

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they could "cross party lines". They can cross categories of "things in the world",

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("objectivist categories" in Lakoff’s term1), as I will argue shortly.2

How does one make a "GUI", after all? One constructs a system of objects, (icons), plus rules in such a way that the application of those rules on the objects will allow the accomplishment of some desired goal. It allows the operation of my computer, for instance, or the control of a machine, or the control of a process.

Ultimately, of course, the combination of "objects" and "calculus" must accomplish the purpose desired. Since it is the primary intent of a GUI that the "calculus" be simple however, then the "objects" must then be defined dependently in terms of it. It is the distribution of function in the objects themselves, I argue, which allows the simplicity of the calculus.

B. Schematism: The Formal and Abstract Problem and The Argument:

B.1. The Problem: Consider, finally, the formal and abstract problem. Consider the problem of designing instrumentation for the efficient control of both especially complex and especially dangerous processes. In the general case, what kind of information would you want to pass along and how would you best

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represent it? How would you control it? How would you design your display and

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control system? 1

B.2. The Argument for Schematism:

It would be impossible, obviously, to represent all information about the objective physical reality of a, (any), process or its physical components, (objects). Where would you stop? Is the color of the building in which it is housed, the specific materials of which it is fabricated, that it is effected with gears rather than levers, -or its location in the galaxy- necessarily relevant information? (Contrarily, even its designer's middle name might be relevant if it involved a computer

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program and you were considering the possibility of a hacker's "back door"!)1 It would be counterproductive even if you could as relevant data would be obscured and the consequent "calculus", (having to deliberate all that intricacy!), would

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become too complex and inefficient thereby for rapid and effective response.1 Even the use of realistic abstractions could produce enormous difficulties in that you might be interested in many differing, (and, typically, conflicting), significant

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abstractions and/or their interrelations.1 This would produce severe difficulties in generating an intuitive and efficient "calculus" geared towards maximal response.

For such a complex and dangerous process, the "entities", (instrumentation), you create must, (1) necessarily, of course, be viable in relation to both data and control -i.e. they must be comprehensive in their necessary function. But they would also, (2) need to be constructed with a primary intent towards efficiency of response, -towards a simplistic "calculus", (rather than realism), as well -the process is, by stipulation, dangerous! They would need to be fashioned to optimize the "calculus", (pattern of required response), while still fulfilling their (perhaps consequently distributed!) operative role.

Your "entities", (instrumentation), would need to be primarily fabricated in such a way as to intrinsically define a simple operative calculus of relationality between them -analogous to the situation in our training seminar or a computer’s GUI. Maximal efficiency, (and safety), I argue therefore, would demand

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crystallization into schematic virtual "entities" -a "GUI"1- which would resolve both demands at a single stroke. Your "objects" could then distribute function so as to concentrate and simplify control, (operation)! These virtual entities would be in no necessarily simple (or hierarchical -i.e. via abstraction) correlation with the

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objects of physical reality.1 But they would allow rapid and effective control of a process which, considered objectively, might not be simple at all. It is clearly the optimization of the process of response that is crucial here, not literal representation. We do not care that the operator knows what function(s) he is actually fulfilling, only that he does it (them) well!

B.3. An Immediate Corollary: The Specific Case of Biology

Biological survival is exactly such a problem -it is both (a) especially complex, (indeed biology is the paradigm case of complexity), and (b) especially dangerous. For the metacellular colossus, life is a moment by moment confrontation with disaster! The problem for the "evolutionary engineer" therefore was exactly that detailed in the formal and abstract problem of B.1! It is a schematic model in just the sense of B.2 that I conclude evolution constructed

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therefore,1 and I propose that it is the basis for both the "percept" and the "mind". I conclude that our "natural world", our naive world, is a "GUI" evolutionarily constituted for maximal operational efficiency.

But it is just the converse of the argument made above that I assert for evolution. It is not the distribution of function, but rather the centralization of disparate atomic biological function into efficacious schematic -and virtual- objects

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that I urge that evolution effected while compositing the complex metacellular

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organism.1 But let's talk about the "atomic" in the "atomic biological function" of the

last paragraph. There is another step in the argument to be taken at the level of biology. The "engineering" argument, as made above, deals specifically with the schematic manipulation of "data". At the level of primitive evolution, however, it

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is modular (reactive) process that is significant to an organism, not data functions.1

A given genetic accident corresponds to the addition or modification of a given (behavioral/reactive) process which, for a primitive organism, is clearly and simply

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merely beneficial or not. But that process is itself informationally indeterminate to

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the organism -i.e. it is a modular whole.1 No one can presume that a particular, genetically determined response is

informationally, (rather than reactively), significant to a Paramecium or an Escherichia coli, for example, (though we may consider it so). It is significant, rather, solely as a modular unit which either increases survivability or not. Let me therefore extend the prior argument to deal with the schematic organization of

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atomic, (modular), process, rather than of primitive, (i.e. absolute), data.1 It is my contention that the cognitive model, and cognition itself, is solely constituted as an organization of that atomic modular process, designed for computational and operational efficiency. The atomic processes themselves remain, and will forever remain, informationally indeterminate to the organism.

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The purpose of the model was computational efficiency! The calculational

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simplicity1 potentiated by a schematic and virtual object for dealing with a multifarious environment constitutes a clear and powerful evolutionary rationale. Such a model, (the "objects" and their "calculus"), allows rapid and efficient response to what cannot be assumed, a priori, to be a simplistic environment. From the viewpoint of the sixty trillion or so individual cells that constitute the human cooperative enterprise, that assumption, (environmental simplicity), is implausible in the extreme!

But theirs, (i.e. that perspective), is the most natural perspective from which to consider the problem. For five-sixths of evolutionary history, (three billion years), it was the one-celled organism which ruled alone. As Stephen Gould puts it, metacellular organisms represent only occasional and unstable spikes from the stable "left wall", (the unicellulars), of evolutionary history.

"Progress does not rule, (and is not even a primary thrust of) the evolutionary process. For reasons of chemistry and physics, life arises next to the 'left wall' of its simplest conceivable and preservable complexity. This style of life (bacterial) has remained most common and most successful. A few creatures occasionally move to the right... "

"Therefore, to understand the events and generalities of life's pathway, we must go beyond principles of evolutionary theory to a paleontological examination of the contingent pattern of life's history on our planet. ...Such a view of life's history is highly contrary both to conventional deterministic models of Western science and to the deepest social traditions and psychological hopes of Western culture for a history culminating in humans as life's highest expression and intended planetary steward."(Gould, 1994)

B.4. An Immediate Retrodictive Confirmation:

Do you not find it strange that the fundamental laws of the sciences, (or of logic), are so few? Or that our (purportedly) accidentally and evolutionarily acquired logic works so well to manipulate the objects of our environment? From the standpoint of contemporary science, this is a subject of wonder -or at least it

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should be. (c.f. contra: Minsky, 1985) It is, in fact, a miracle!1 From the standpoint of the “schematic model”, however, it is a trivial, (obvious), and

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necessary consequence. It is precisely the purpose of the model itself! This is a

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radical teleological simplification!1

C. Conclusion, (section):

Evolution, in constructing a profoundly complex metacellular organism such as ours, was confronted with the problem of coordinating the physical structure of its thousands of billions of individual cells. It also faced the problem of coordinating the response of this differentiated colossus, this "Aunt Hillary",

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(Hofstadter's "sentient" ant colony.1) It had to coordinate their functional interaction with their environment, raising an organizational problem of profound proportions.

Evolution was forced to deal with exactly the problem outlined above. The brain, moreover, is universally accepted as an evolutionary organ of response. I argue that a schematic entity, (and its corresponding schematic model), is by far the most credible here -to efficiently orchestrate the coordination of the ten million

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sensory neurons with the one million motor neurons,1 and with the profound milieu beneath. A realistic, (i.e. representational / informational), "entity" would demand

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a concomitant "calculus" itself necessarily embodying1 the very complexity of the

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objective reality in which the organism exists, and this, I argue, is overwhelmingly

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implausible.1 [See Appendix A: An elaboration of the argument]

Aside: The "schematic brain" is a "big hunk", admittedly! And there are still larger hunks of the puzzle not yet in place. Specifically there are the considerations of "cognitive closure", (Maturana), "logical closure", (Quine), and "scientific epistemological relativism", (Cassirer), that must be addressed to validate plausibility. I do not ask that you accept the truth nor even the plausibility of this admittedly radical first hypothesis at this juncture therefore. That must await the presentation of the rest of the argument in Chapters 2 through 5. What I do ask, however, is that you be willing to acknowledge its biological and evolutionary and operative strengths and be open to at least seriously consider it in the context of the larger problem of consciousness.)

Evolution faced an engineering problem of profound proportions, and I propose it solved it exceedingly well. I propose that it was evolution's progressive coordination of the reactive neural ensembles of primitive organisms that created the "objects" of those organisms. But I further propose something far stronger. I propose it created those objects -even the "perceptual objects" of those organisms-

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specifically as coordinative nexuses1 of disparate and distributed atomic response

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rather than as explicit referents to environment!1 I propose that those objects are internally and organizationally significant, not referentially so. They are virtual and schematic only. Representation is the "parallel postulate" of evolution!

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I conclude therefore, as an evolutionary consequence, that even the human

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brain's "objects"1—our objects, i.e. the objects of knowledge and perception- are specifically virtual and coordinative as well. I conclude that they are evolutionary optimizations -and artifacts- for the coordination of internal process. We, after all, are biological organisms too. I propose that even the human brain's objects, then, are schematic. I propose that even our ordinary objects of perception are

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schematic artifacts of process. They are in no simple correlation with objective

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reality!1

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This conclusion, though startling, (and at first even bizarre), drastically

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simplifies the profound logical problem of the "percept"1 however. Its origin2 and function is no longer enigmatic and epistemologically self-serving. It becomes instead a clear and foreseeable consequence of ordinary, (rather than extraordinary), evolutionary process. It is the simple, cumulative, and linear result of incremental organizing and optimizing refinements to structure. (In the next chapter I will demonstrate how it radically simplifies the logical paradoxes of sentiency as well.)

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I have argued that1 it is not important that the "operator"2 of such a (complicated) process knows what it is, (specifically), that he is doing, (only that he does it well). It is important that he does it diligently, however. It is important that he be locked into the loop of his virtual reality -that he "pay attention". This introduces the necessity of an inbuilt realistic imperative -i.e. a mechanical

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guarantee of his dedication.1 The universal and dogmatic belief in the (simple) reality of our natural world is thus itself a consequence of my thesis -and the greatest obstacle to its acceptance.

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This (first) thesis supplies an immediate and naturalistic biological rationale

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for "mind". "Mind",1 (the "objects" and their computational relationality), becomes a natural and, for the first time, (in contrast with the Naturalists' story), a necessary

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rather than an incidental1 consequence of evolution. It is the consummation of evolution's incremental extension and organizational optimization of primitive

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(reactive) neural arrays.1 Given my thesis however, its "objects" now clearly function as metaphors of process, and not as informational units of environment.

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The "large database" and the related problems of "information"1 encountered in the field of artificial intelligence, for instance, are thus not problems for the human

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brain at this level -save internal to the metaphor itself.1 This thesis greatly

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simplifies other crucial aspects of the mind-body problem as well,1 and, contrary to all current paradigms, suggests the beginnings of, (i.e. a legitimate context for), a

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definite "Galilean mechanics" appropriate to neuroscience.1 The "objects" of our perceptual world are no longer metaphysical "givens", but, rather, are operationally continuous with, and open to explicit and precise resolution in terms of the overall

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(operative) brain function of which they form a part.1 I propose, then, brain as an operational continuum! In the next chapter, we will find a close parallel -and a synergism- with the continuum which we will discover in mind and logic.

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Contra:

Conversely however, this (first) hypothesis significantly complicates our conceptions of objective reality! It violates, (or rather, stretches), almost every

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paradigm in our current intellectual universe as well.1 But why, given the level of "strangeness" in modern science, would we expect that our most fundamental problem of "measurement", i.e. that of human cognition itself, would fall to a simple "naturalistic", (and naive realistic), approach in the first place? Why would we expect that its solution would have only minor repercussions? My answer admittedly leaves us in a dilemma however, because the "events", the relationality of experience embodied in the Naturalistic picture -and its rendering of empirical science- are the very subject of our discussion - or any other discussion! It raises, as well, the question of the consistency of my own arguments. I have based them in Darwinian evolution and that presumes the legitimacy of our naive view. My third thesis will address this problem directly, building on arguments of Kant,

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Cassirer, Maturana,1 and Quine to justify my usage and suggest a convincing and plausible conclusion consistent with the perspective of modern science.

Briefly, the solution I will propose, (in my third thesis), is that, though we must preserve the invariant relationality, (the predictivity), of empirical science and of common experience, we needn't preserve their primitives, their "objects", nor

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even their hierarchical organization1 as ontic referents.2 I will suggest a very different correspondence between mind and "externality" than isomorphism, (and reference). I will propose that our human world is a blind working algorithm, implicit in the optimizing organization of process. Mathematics, biology, and epistemology suggest alternatives more plausible than simple parallelism.

The very complications of this (first) thesis, however, are commensurate with, they are of the same order and the same type as, the complications already necessitated by the conceptual dilemmas of modern physics, (and are subject to the

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same resolving strategies as well).1 They force us to look at the ground and even the very meaning of "a theory of reality", (as do their counterparts in physical science). They force us to a revised view of science itself. Science and theories of reality generally, are, ultimately I will propose, operative rather than descriptive, (i.e. referential), enterprises. This is hardly a new suggestion, but was the conclusion of many of the pioneers of modern physics. In the context of the "schematic object", however, it takes on a new clarity and force. Science, (with its "objects"), becomes an immediate corollary of my theorem for our perceptual world. It is just our ultimate, (and, ultimately, schematic), scheme for coordinating reactive process. It is our species' ultimate strategy, and ultimate metaphor, of biological response.

Naive-realism, (and Naturalism as well -at whatever level of sophistication), as a world-view, demands our belief because it makes our existence simple and our

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"objects" real -really!1 My hypothesis is disturbing, however, because it makes them unreal -really! I propose that our ordinary objects of perception are convincing, and the relations we find between them simple, precisely because the

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brain's calculus has been evolutionarily optimized1 for them!2 They are the

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utilitarian artifacts effective in our prior evolutionary history.1 But now this is changing. They no longer adequately serve their prior role. The calculus they optimized can no longer utilize them as proper "objects" in the larger experience -the experimental and theoretical context of current science, nor in the technology it enables. Ordinary objects will not serve quantum physics, (or the transistor television it generated), -nor do they allow the solution of the mind-body problem!

I wish to propose the schematic model, rather than the representative model, as a serious alternative for our perceptual world. Would evolution "equip its

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creatures" with a representational model of reality? Could it?1 I think the case for a schematic model is the stronger one. Primitive neural systems are, in point of fact, operational and reactive rather than representative. The incremental refinement of an operational, (schematic), model is, then, linearly consistent with the principles of evolution. It is a simple consequence of evolutionary process, a progressive organization and optimization of reactive response. The origin of a representative, (Naturalistic), model, however, involves significant logical discontinuities. No one credits representative models to evolutionary primitives. Who will posit such a model to the nervous system of a hydra or a planarian worm, for instance? Representationalism must maintain, therefore, that at some discrete point in evolutionary history an organism's internal process somehow came to

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parallel its environment1 rather than simply reacting to it -which is quite a different case. This is a very large assumption, -a very good "trick"- lacking any incremental or physical rationale other than "it must have" or "it would be beneficial if it had". But is this not simply petitio principii, (assuming what you have to prove)? How?

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The case for the reactive role of brain throughout evolution is overwhelming,

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but nowhere is there any case at all for a representative role.1 Indeed, there is not

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even a viable conception of such a role -it is the essence of the mind-body problem

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itself.1

My first hypothesis seems to fit very well with what we know so far. Do we perceive mathematical magnitudes, (wavelengths), of light waves or "colors"? Do we perceive molecular density or "hardness"? Do we perceive mean molecular energy or "heat"? We are dealing with a model. I propose that it is even more of a model than we suspect -to include our "objects" as well! My conception is a direct and linear extension of the historical progression of science away from naive realism. Our sensations are no longer "knocking at the surface of our brain", but, rather, affect it at the system level to yield schematic artifacts -the "objects of perception". The "perceptual object", I argue, is a schematic artifact of process!

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Preface to Chapter 2: The Logical Problem -and Realism Again

In a problem as complex as this one is and as complex as I propose its solution to be, it will be important to have signposts to look at periodically so that we can orient ourselves. These chapter prefaces are intended to serve as those signposts. So then, where have we gotten to at the end of Chapter 1?

In the first chapter I presented a concrete alternative to the representative model of cognition. It was not really intended to stand alone as an argument however, nor do I really expect anyone to be convinced at this point. (Those arguments are in chapter 3, 4, and 5 and in the Appendices.) Indeed, it goes against almost everything we know or believe and, at first blush, it is absurd. Chapter 1 was intended only to explain and to show a certain plausibility of the theme.

But discursive arguments would not serve in any case to change the minds of realists and practical scientists on the issues of our most fundamental paradigm –of our realistic worldview itself. Yet I speak to none other than those –realists and practical scientists! Realists question their most fundamental paradigm only when innovative perspectives illuminate vast new areas or simplify whole aspects of important problems leading to pragmatic results –and then only to the extent implicit in the gain. (The theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are profound recent examples of just such a modification of the realist paradigm.) What realists will never question however, -nor will I as I stand with them- is realism itself.

But what is “realism”? To be a realist, does it mean that we must assume all the baggage that comes with the name at this particular moment in history? Was it not identical, then, with the realism of the Ptolemean/Aristotelians who stood against the counter-intuitive theories of Copernicus? Had Dr. Johnson lived then, might he not have kicked the nearest rock, rejoining Copernicus: “Now it is

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moving!”1 But is it identical, now, with the realism of Pierce’s chalk, which he threatened to drop and break and thereby prove its reality? Does realism mean today that, besides an inviolate faith in the existence of an absolute ultimate reality, we must assume the possibility of absolute knowledge of that (ontic) reality as well –even at some coarse scale?

Physicists, (the penultimate realists), have been forced to embrace algorithmicity and epistemological uncertainty at the very small, the very large and the very fast scales. If our middle scale objects were taken as the objects of a

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biological algorithm –prototypes1 of biological logic2 as well, then continuity would be reestablished to epistemology across the board. But was not even fundamental epistemological uncertainty, (i.e. the general case), as well as physical uncertainty always a possibility within the basic confines of realism?

Gerald Edelman, (following Putnam and Lakoff), lists the three essential tenets of what he calls “scientific realism”, (Lakoff calls it “basic realism”, Putnam "internal realism"): “(1) a real world (including humans but not depending on them); (2) a linkage between concepts and that world; and (3) a stable knowledge

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that is gained through that link.”1 The combination of my three themes will

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confirm Edelman’s first and second postulates,1 but the “knowledge” in his (3) will

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be argued as mathematically and scientifically relativistic1 in its significance and pragmatic, (i.e. algorithmic), in its justification. In Chapters 3 and 4 I will argue on biological and Kantian grounds for just two fundamental “axioms” of realism however: (1) the “axiom of externality”, (Chapter 3), and (2) the “axiom of experience”, (Chapter 4), which roughly correspond to Edelman’s first two requirements. Together they define the absolute minimum and necessity of the realist position. In Chapter 4, I will argue for a rigorous scientific relativism of knowledge in general, a special kind of relativism however, based (in seeming contradiction) on an absolute! It is based on an invariant -the invariant of experience. Invariants, the mathematical conception of that which does not change under varying (relativistic) perspectives, (varying coordinate systems for instance), are the basis of Einstein’s Special Relativity, of course. The rigid, i.e. unvarying and concrete equations of that theory supply an explicit illustration of the kind of

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relativism and stability1 I wish to argue, (following but modifying Cassirer), for knowledge in general. It is diametrically opposed to “capricious relativism”, “specious relativism”, “Whorfian relativism”, “cultural relativism”, or the relativism of Solipsism, for instance. Nor is it “idealism”. Anything does not go! Knowledge must be commensurate with experience, (to include the experience of the results of scientific experiment), but its organization, its “co-ordinate system”, (of which I argue “objects” are a part), is not innately fixed thereby. It is

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experience itself, i.e. that which must be accounted for,1 and not any particular organization of that experience which is a necessary (second) metaphysical, (i.e. ontological), posit of realism.

Edelman, basing his arguments in Lakoff’s, (and, ultimately, Putnam’s), argues –as I will argue- against the further extension of the realist position into “metaphysical realism” –against its incorporation of “objectivism”. (I have used the name “Naturalism”):

“objectivism assumes, in addition to scientific realism, that the [actual] world has a definite structure made of entities, properties and their interrelationships….[that] the world is arranged in such a fashion that it can be completely modeled by what mathematicians and logicians would call set-theoretical models. … Symbols in these models are made meaningful (or given semantic significance) in a unique fashion by assuming that they correspond to entities and categories” [which themselves exist] “in the world. Ibid, p.231-2, my emphasis

Edelman, like Lakoff and Putnam, argues against this “objectivism” –against a privileged “God’s eye view of the world”. His arguments constitute a critique of logic –based in Lakoff's synthesis of extensive empirical studies of actual humans, actual cultures, and actual languages which challenge the classical theory of the category. Thereby they question classical logic, (of which it is the foundation), itself. Edelman’s motivation, however, derives from his theory of neuronal group selection, (TNGS), -“Neural Darwinism”- wherein he argues that

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the brain is not informational but “ex post facto selective”.1 Brains, Edelman argues, are not commensurate between individuals at the finest scale –even between genetically identical individuals. They are therefore not the sort of things that information or programs run on. He argues the human genome is too small to

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create such an “information machine”.1 Edelman’s arguments are made in support of his theory of “Neural Darwinism”. While it is a very plausible theory, (and the sort of thing my thesis would suggest), it has yet to be confirmed. In chapter 3, I will base my arguments to the same end in Maturana and Varela’s. Their arguments are made from the fundamental principles of biology, (and physical science in general), however and so carry a greater generality and force.

In this second chapter I will show that my first thesis, in concert with my extension of Cassirer’s logical hypothesis, does accomplish the kind of expansion and illumination –the explanatory power- that realists require to seriously re-examine their premises. For one, it allows a viable and natural theory of meaning

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for the first time.1 More significantly it also supplies a realistically tenable theory of what, (were the word not pre-empted), I would be tempted to simply label “cognition”. By this I would mean not “performance” or “problem solving”, (in

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the sense used in Cognitive Science), but knowing!1 How is it possible to know? How is it possible for one part of a physically and temporally separated process, (the process –or material- of the brain for instance), to know, (rather than merely

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interact with1), another part? How would it be possible for one part of even a mental space to know another part? This is the problem that Leibniz characterized as the problem of “the many and the one”. How can the many be known to the one? How can there be knowing without a homunculus? How can there be

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knowing without a mystery? How can there be a "Cartesian Theatre"?1 This is the target of Chapter 2.

Meaning

The adoption of my first thesis enables the utilization of perhaps the most profound proposal ever suggested for the problem of meaning: Hilbert’s “implicit definition”. (It is very important that this not be confused with mathematical

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“formalism” –a theory of proof- of which he was also the author.)1 Hilbert proposed that the “things” of mathematics –for mathematics- are solely a function of the laws, (axioms), in which they are framed and that their “meaning” is exactly

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their role (function) in those laws. Its “objects” are “implicitly defined” by its

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axioms. 1 They are logical objects!

My first hypothesis enables Hilbert’s “implicit definition” to function as a general theory of meaning however as opposed to its present limited usage as a theory of specifically mathematical meaning. If our (human) model is internal and algorithmic rather than referential, (the first hypothesis), if our “objects” are metaphors of process, if even our very logic is taken as a biological rule of function vis a vis environment, (as a “constitutive logic” in Kant’s terminology), rather than

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as transcendent1 revelation, (as I will argue in this chapter), then the meaning of its (now) “bio-logical” objects may reasonably be understood as their implicitly defined role in that process. (This is the "metaphor" I referred to previously.) This

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is very close to our ordinary, naïve sense of “meaning”1 and quite different from its proposed formalistic and counterintuitive definition as “reference” or truth functional mapping.

Knowing:

The first hypothesis, in combination with an extension of Cassirer’s logical hypothesis and Hilbert’s mathematical conception, also enables “knowing”. It allows a solution of the problem of the “many in the one” / the "Cartesian Theatre" without magic by extending the very logic within which we conceive it. This is a logical problem for which I will propose a concrete logical solution as the subject of this chapter.

Anthropological and Linguistic, and Logical Commensurability

I have mentioned the commensurability of my first hypothesis with existing empirical findings reported by Rosch, Lakoff, et al., and will go into the subject further in the “Afterward: Lakoff, Edelman and Hierarchy”, so I will not belabor the point. I submit that it is a pretty good fit with the whole of these extensive studies.

Realism Again:

But are the retrodictive solutions of these admittedly profound problems sufficient to cause a realist to accept such a distasteful diminution of his supposed powers? My answer, (as I would expect yours to be), is “no”! These kinds of

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answers –however good they may be1- are at best only hints to the progress of

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science.1 This is why I argue my answer only as a tentative one. It is the future of science which will answer this question. It is only in broad new consequences –

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pragmatic consequences- that a compelling case could be made. But to conceive

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consequences, we must first entertain the premise.1 As a realist then –talking to other realists-, I ask only that you truly practice

your own realism at its strongest. But realism is ruthless. It is concerned, ultimately, only with what works –no matter how painful that may be to our cherished prejudices. I ask that your realism be a ruthless –and honest- one therefore, both for and against my hypothesis!

This next chapter will be difficult and technical. For this, I apologize. It will be necessary to examine the technical foundations of logic itself because the implications of classical logic and its modern embodiment, (taken as a necessary and sufficient tool rather than as a special case), force us to abandon an important part of our realism, i.e., ourselves, (normally taken)! Formal logic also provides an important and specific clue to the nature of mind itself.

The foundations of logic are also especially relevant to the mind-brain problem because ultimately, (I will argue), logic is itself a biological and evolutionary phenomenon, and not, (following Kant’s usage), “transcendent”. Logic is not God-given! I will propose a reformulation of classical logic based in the proposals of Ernst Cassirer who questioned its adequacy and proposed an extension three quarters of a century ago. I will extend Cassirer’s thesis, and then marry it to my first, biological hypothesis to arrive at what I propose as an actual solution of the problems of the “homunculus” and the "Cartesian Theatre", (the problem of “knowing”), a solution absolutely consistent with the dictates of modern biology. My logical answer superficially resembles the conclusions of Edelman and Lakoff, but is of a greater generality and depth. That greater generality will be necessary for the resolution of the obvious epistemological

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contradictions1 in which those authors embroil themselves. It is necessary for the resolution of the logical paradoxes of sentiency.

Cassirer’s logical thesis was in many respects driven by the same forces as Lakoff’s, but it was a more rigorous, realistically plausible and cogent solution I

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believe. The problem with Lakoff’s proposed solution1 is that concepts/categories2 can be anything at all! They are arbitrary and dependent on history. How, then, can a logic, (or a worldview), based on categories be formed? Lakoff’s conception

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is considerably better than this,1 I admit, in that it is grounded in empirical considerations –in anthropological and linguistic findings. But at the base –wherein are we to ground and evaluate these findings? There is no possibility of a formalism. If anything is provable, then it is a triviality that nothing is provable! We stand on quicksand.

Cassirer’s extension of the classical concept/category however was grounded firmly in the history of the successful advance of mathematics and physical science but it was not arbitrary. He, like Wittgenstein, Lakoff and Edelman, challenged the set-theoretic foundation of logic. He argued that our concepts, (categories), in the most general case –and especially in the case of mathematics and science- are not grounded in a commonality, (an intersection), of properties of the members. The concept of “metal”, he argued for instance, does not ignore, (or exclude), the element of “color” even though there is no color common to all metals. Even though gold is yellow, and steel is silver and copper, well, “copper-colored”, the concept of “metal” does not exclude color thereby, (as set-theoretic abstraction

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would suggest), but retains it as a function.1 This function assumes the value yellow for gold, silver for steel, etc. X(gold) = yellow, X(steel) = silver. There is, of course, no “metal” without a color. The case is identical for conductivity, (Y), specific gravity,(Z), etc. The legitimate concept of “metal” is then the function, M(X,Y,Z,…). The actual logical and scientific concept, (category), in general is then, (Cassirer plausibly argues), a rule of rules, a function of functions which assume definite values and fully encompasses its extension. It is only in the special case, the limit case of the concept that the classical definition obtains. That is the case where the rule is specifically “identity”, e.g. the concept of all men

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whose hair is ( = ) blond,1 or the series, 3,3,3… rather than 2,4,8…. It is the simplest case of the functional rule: where all the elements of a series are the same.

But limit cases in mathematics have a privileged place and a strict rationale. In general, they are not ad hoc definitions or artificial impositions. In general, they are the result of taking a general case at the limit –but only in the special and particular instance where that action results in a plausible and fruitful continuity of concept. (A “circle”, for instance, can be taken as the natural limit case of the “ellipse” -wherein the foci are the same.) The study of limits provides an abundance of examples where that is not the case however.

Usually, (and preferentially), that process results in a quantum simplification of the discipline wherein it is adopted. The “zero” case in integer arithmetic, (how “many” is zero, after all?), allows the whole spectrum of the integers, (positive, negative and zero), and the possibility of free computation beyond the simple counting or aggregation of the positive integers. Cassirer’s is alike a natural and plausible extension of classical logic. It retains classical logic as its truly natural

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limit case1 in just this sense of the limit cases of mathematics. It is neither ad hoc nor arbitrary. Cassirer’s general concept/category, (“the functional concept of” [i.e. derived from] “mathematics”), is a function of functions, a rule. I will postulate a further but still natural extension of Cassirer’s logical hypothesis in this chapter: “the Concept, (category), of Implicit Definition”. It too is rule-based, but it is based in the unified rule of an axiom system, (i.e. the conjunction of the axioms). It too is a lawful conception.

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I will conclude this chapter with an assertion of “concordance” which I

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argue is the strongest present argument for my hypotheses. 1 The form of the solution attained by my biological argument for the brain, (chapter 1 and argued in chapter 3 and the appendices), and the form of the solution for mind, (attained independently on purely logical grounds in chapter 2), are perfectly commensurate!

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Mind, I will argue therefore, is the unified rule of behavior1 –but that rule, (as I will argue for my logical hypothesis in this chapter), knows its “objects” –they are implicitly defined! Leibniz’s problem is solved.

At this point, (at the conclusion of Chapter 2), I will have satisfied the logical and organizational requirements of mind-brain problem. I will not at that point have provided an answer to the “substance” of mind however. That requirement will be addressed in my third and final hypothesis, the subject of chapters 3, 4 and 5.

As realists, we require an assumption of externality roughly equivalent to Edelman’s first tenet of scientific realism, but as just the same sort of realists we require an assumption of self and knowing as well. If we kick a stone, (with Johnson), or drop a piece of chalk and expect it to shatter, (with Pierce), we expect to know these things. (We also fear the possibility of a broken toe or the inability to continue our lecture!) The specifically metaphysical, (ontic), existence of our experience is part of that selfsame realist demand. How else do we, (as realists), judge the viability of theories of that externality except by their compliance with experience?

As a realist, and if a choice were forced between the two, I suppose my tendencies would tend, (barely), toward “externality”. But this is precisely the kind of choice, forced by logic, which would make me, (also as a realist), question logic itself. It is probably the only situation, moreover, -wherein a crucial aspect of our realism is challenged –where such a suggestion would be entertained seriously at all. Discursive arguments, logical antinomies, mathematical

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anomalies, “cats on mats”1, anthropological and linguistic research, … –all these, (to the extent they are plausible or even compelling), would be, (and have been), walled off and isolated from our basic realism and the logic in which we conceive it. Who cares who shaves the hypothetical barber, after all?

The predominant Naturalist school of neuroscience feels that it has been forced to make the very choice I have described –and with very compelling

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(logical) arguments.1 It feels it must choose between “externality” and self. Best and most frankly framed by Dennett, it concludes that we are physical automatons,

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“zombies”.1 But the context –the comprehensive worldview- in which we, (you and I), are right here enmeshed in considering this problem does not exist according to Dennett! This “Cartesian theatre” is not a part of these zombies –you or I or Dennett himself. The only place it might exist –and Dennett makes explicit

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mention of the fact- is in logic itself, (in the robot Shakey’s program1). Dennett's worldview which contains his solution to the mind-brain problem does not, (for Dennett), exist in Dennett! It exists, (as a particular draft), in the logic of his book! This is linguistic idealism.

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Naturalists cannot admit even the possibility of a “mind”1, (Dennett calls it a “figment”), because they cannot solve the problems of the homunculus and the Cartesian Theatre. Specifically they cannot solve the logical problems inherent therein. For there to be a whole, (“a one”), there must be a “little man” inside who sees it as such. But for him to see it, there must be another little man inside… This infinite regression, and the framing of the problem which generates its necessity –as well as the logical difficulties of the “Cartesian Theatre” are the

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result of the limitations of the classical, set-theoretic (“container” 1) logic in which they are conceived. And yet, as I think Dennett conclusively shows, they are the necessary result of applying that logic to the mind-brain problem. If, as realists, we accept the adequacy of classical logic, and of the Aristotelian concept/category which is its foundation, then the “self”, and the “experience”, (normally and not behaviorally and mechanistically taken), which are profound parts of our selfsame realism must die!

I consider Dennett’s, Churchland’s, … arguments convincing. In fact, I consider them as conclusive when taken in conjunction with the classical logic within which they are framed. But this conclusion was always implicit within classical materialism –which I also take very seriously. Simply put, and to repeat myself, there is, (under the presuppositions), no way that part of a spatially and temporally separated process –or material- can “know” another part. If ordinary classical logic is definitive, then my form of realism, (ours?), is dead. I choose, however, to question the premise. I, as a realist, choose to question logic.

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Chapter 2. How? The Logical Problem of Consciousness(Cassirer- Hilbert- Maturana: an Archimedean Fulcrum)

"... Every attempt to transform logic must concentrate above all upon this one point: all criticism of formal logic is comprised in

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criticism of the general doctrine of the construction of concepts."1

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(Ernst Cassirer)1

The problem of "consciousness" and the profoundest paradoxes of the mind-body problem: the "Cartesian theater", the "mind's eye", and the "homunculus" are logical problems. They are problems of logical possibility. How could cognition, how could mind, ordinarily taken, even exist? It is not so much a problem of what it is that they actually are, but rather a problem of how is it even possible that they could be! How, as Leibniz framed it, could "the many be expressed in the one"? How could we know? In the context of realism, ordinary logic allows not even a possibility -other than an eliminative reduction, (a denial), of the problem -and of sentiency itself.

The "schematic model" of my first hypothesis cuts to the core of these problems. Coupled with Ernst Cassirer's extension of traditional logic, (his "Functional Concept of Mathematics"), itself extended again in light of the

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expansion of logical possibility innate in David Hilbert's "implicit definition"1 for the axiom systems of pure mathematics, it illuminates them and demonstrates a specific "how" for the first time. The answer turns on an extension of the formal

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logical Concept1 and with it, of logic itself. Surprisingly that answer will allow us to retain our normal, ("folk"), conception of mind as well.

Let’s Start from the Other End: First Hilbert's "Implicit Definition":

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(NOTE: THIS WHOLE ASPECT OF THE PROBLEM IS COVERED FAR BETTER AND FAR MORE PRECISELY IN MY RECENT PAPER: “Is the Incorporation of Exotic Mathematics Necessary for a Solution of the Mind-Brain Problem? I think it is!”) (Hyperlink)

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1. David Hilbert's book, "Foundations of Geometry"1, is a recognized milestone in the history of mathematics. In it, he proposed a new axiomatic foundation for His axioms, (as usual), referred to certain objects: "points", "lines" and "planes" and to relations between them: "to belong to", "between", and "congruent to". Hilbert's radical innovation, however, lay in the fact that he quite purposefully never specified, (and never had to specify), what "point", "line" and "plane" were to be or the meanings of the specified relations. He never required a specification of properties. He stipulated that the sole significance and exclusive consequence of his "objects", (undefined terms), was to be in their operationality as expressed in the axioms. They were to be "implicitly defined" by those axioms. The success and the fertility of the subsequent extension of his approach across the whole of modern mathematics illustrated thereby that mathematical axiom systems, insofar as they are mathematical, need define their terms and their elements, (their "objects"), only operationally and internally, not referentially. They do not define those terms in terms of set theoretic operations on primitive properties.

Consider the "integral domain" of Modern Algebra as a typical application of Hilbert's ideas. Axiomatization begins with the simple assumption, (conditionally) of a set of "elements", (objects), -its "domain"- which obey a set of rules, (axioms). These objects, (of its domain -and "existence" terms generally), are assumed only, (as Wilder points out) "presumptive(ly)" and "permissive(ly)" however. We are told nothing about them in an objective sense.

The only objects posited explicitly and definitionally are the identity elements '0' and '1', the additive and multiplicative identity objects respectively. But these identity objects are presumptive and permissive as well. They are wholly specified as just the identity elements under these operations and no more - they

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are not the real(?) 0 and 1 or any other real objects.1 No properties can be derived from the fact. Indeed, they are preferentially named otherwise -"e", for instance or placed in quotes by mathematicians to divorce them from real experience. The "addition" and "multiplication" operations, ('$' and '#', for instance), are conceived as totally blind operations as well.

What are we given about the "e" object, ("1", for instance, or "0")? What properties are assumed? Only that under the unspecified operations '#", ("multiplication"), or "$", ("addition"), the result of combining any other objects with them, (e.g. [ e # x, or "0" $ y], x,y any members of the domain), that the result is again x or y respectively.

x # e = x, y $ "0" = y

This is the whole of their definition and it is totally operational. What is conceptually significant about the Integral Domain is that there are two distinct operations, connected by the distributive law, not that they are some special operations.

In Modern Algebra, "equality", ("="), is unqualified and axiomatized as well. It is taken specifically as an "equivalence relation", (under the rules/axioms of reflexion, symmetry and transitivity), but it is the basic (and equally blind) equivalence term under which all other equivalence relations, (""), are defined. It is not necessary to assume, (a priori), for instance, that "4" and "3 + 1" are "names" for, (i.e. denote), the same object, only that they are equivalent under the basic equivalence relation of "equality", (i.e. that "4" = "3 + 1").

We are allowed to derive the other elements of the domain solely operationally as well - in terms only of these two givens, the '0' and the '1', (subjects of the only specific existence postulates). Thus '1' + '1' = '2', for instance,

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and '2' + '1' = '3', etc.1 We can derive another element '-1' as the additive inverse, (under the conditional "existence" axiom of the additive inverse), and 'negatives' of the others as well. Continuing this (conditional) process, solely in terms of the

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axiomatic laws, (operationally), we can build the whole of an integral domain and

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it relates1 to the real integers "up to isomorphism".“Relation”, definable within a mathematical system, (as an n-tuple, for

instance), is an operation of a different order and meaning than the operational, (relational), primitives of that system which are employed to define that “relation". The primitive operations of an axiom system, ("addition" and "multiplication", for instance), are the constitutive relations of axiomatics. When axiomatics defines a “relation” internally, however, it is a subsidiary relation and has a different import –it is defined relative to the primitives.

The point of all this is that the whole process of specification -i.e. the whole of the definitional content of the elements, (objects), of this integral domain is achieved solely in terms of the blind operations specified in the axioms acting on property-indiscernible, blind, objects, not by set theoretic refinements on primitive, (atomic), properties of these elements. Nowhere in this axiomatic system are the primitive operations identified with real integer operations, (or any other "real" operations), nor are they dependent upon them. The case is the same for the elements/objects of the system. Nowhere are they dependent upon any "real"

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objects, so no real properties may be legitimately identified with them.1 This is, as Schlick says, a genuine "Copernican revolution", (after Kant's usage), in the history of mathematics. More, it is a new kind of logic, distinct from the logic of Aristotle

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which is wholly dependent on set theoretic refinement of original properties of its

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objects.1

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Hilbert's conception results in a novel and very different kind of "object",1 one which is wholly constituted as an expression of the logical relations of the axioms. It is a logical object! Hilbert's brilliant reformulation of its foundations, almost trivial in appearance, has become the heart and soul of modern

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mathematics.1 Mathematics no longer looks to experience for its substance2 or its

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validity. It concerns itself, rather,1 solely with the fertility and the rigorous internal

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consequences of systems of explicit ideas. Ultimately, it is the science of the total

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possibility of order.1

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Schlick characterized Hilbert's innovation this way:1

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“The revolution lay in the stipulation that the basic or primitive concepts

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are to be defined1 just by the fact that they satisfy the axioms.

[They] "acquire meaning only by virtue of the axiom system, and possess only the content that it bestows upon them. They stand for entities whose

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whole being is to be bearers of the relations laid down by the system.", (my

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emphasis)1

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This is the description of a genuine and profound "Copernican Revolution"

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in logic itself. Here "relation"1 logically defines "entity", not the converse. This entity is a function of (logical) process. But "implicit definition" has another deep logical significance. It does not define its "objects" within the dualistic and oppositional context implicit in the foundations of classical Aristotelian logic. It

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does not define them within the classical schema of presentation1 / attention2

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abstraction1 of properties.2 It defines and resolves its objects, rather, by internal and logical resolution of its fundamental operations, and therein supplies the first

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clue to a logical possibility for sentiency -i.e. for the many-in-the-one.1 Cassirer's

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analysis, (and actual reformulation), of the formal logical Concept1 is crucial to an appreciation of the full implications however. Hilbert and Cassirer together, in company with the "schematic object" of Chapter 1, supply a new logical ground -the logical ground necessary for a resolution of the problems of sentiency, and, finally, for a resolution of the mind-body problem.

Cassirer and Classical Logic:

2. Cassirer argued that “the object” of modern mathematics, and “the object of mathematical physics” as well, (their "ideal" objects), are conceptual objects (only). He maintained that the Concept they actually embody in modern science is not the classical (Aristotelian) "generic Concept" however, but is rather a new "Functional Concept of Mathematics", (Cassirer’s Concept). He argued that

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modern mathematics and modern physics have already reconceived the formal

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logical "Concept" itself, albeit tacitly.1

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The Classical Concept:1

Cassirer summarized the genesis -and the still-continuing usage- of the classical generic Concept as the simple abstraction and the idealization, through "attention", of a commonality of "marks", (properties), in a series of presentations.

"But what was beyond all doubt, as if by tacit agreement of the conflicting parties, was just this: that the concept was to be conceived as a

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universal genus, as the common element in a series of similar or resembling

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particular things."1

A series of presentations with characteristics: (a,b,c,d), (a,c,d), (a,c,e), for instance, is held to bring forth the classical concept: {a,c}. From mere abstraction, (via attention), the whole of the doctrine of the classical Concept follows from these simplistic origins. "Every series of comparable objects has a supreme generic concept, which comprehends within itself all the determinations in which these objects agree, while on the other hand, within this supreme genus, the sub-

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species at various levels are defined by properties belonging only to a part of the

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elements."1 But the successive broadening of a concept necessarily correlates to a

progressive lessening of its content; "so that finally, the most general concepts we

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can reach no longer possess any definite content."1, [at all!]. The ultimate genus -"something"- is totally (and logically) devoid of specific content!

Contra the Aristotelian Concept:

The Concept in this form, however, is clearly not adequate or consistent with scientific, nor even with ordinary usage:

"When we form the concept of metal by connecting gold, silver, copper and lead, we cannot indeed ascribe to the abstract object that comes into being the particular color of gold, or the particular luster of silver, or the weight of copper, or the density of lead; however, it would be no less

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inadmissible if we simply attempted to deny all these particular

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determinations of it."1

It would not suffice to characterize "metal", for instance, "that it is neither red nor yellow, neither of this or that specific weight, neither of this or that hardness or resisting power"; but it is necessary to add that it "is colored in some way in every case, that it is of some degree of hardness, density and luster." Similarly, we would not retain the general concept of "animal", "if we abandoned in it all thought of the aspects of procreation, of movement and of respiration,

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because there is no form of procreation, of breathing, etc., which can be pointed

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out as common to all animals."1

Cassirer's Alternative: "The Functional Concept of Mathematics":

Cassirer proposed an alternative and considerably more plausible basis for a different technical logical Concept -borrowed from mathematics - "the Functional Concept of Mathematics":

"Lambert pointed out that it was the exclusive merit of mathematical 'general concepts' not to cancel the determinations of the special cases, but in all strictness fully to retain them. When a mathematician makes his formula

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more general, this means not only that he is to retain all the more special

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cases, but also be able to deduce them from the universal formula."1

But this possibility of deduction does not exist in the case of the scholastic, (Aristotelian), concepts, "since these, according to the traditional formula, are

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formed by neglecting the particular, and hence the reproduction of the particular

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moments of the concept seems excluded."1

"The ideal of a scientific concept here appears in opposition to the schematic general presentation which is expressed by a mere word. The genuine concept does not disregard the peculiarities and particularities, which it holds under it, but seeks to show the necessity of the occurrence and connection of just these particularities. What it gives is a universal rule for the connection of the particulars themselves.... Fixed properties are replaced

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by universal rules that permit us to survey a total series of possible

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determinations at a single glance."1

We do not go therefore from a series: a-alpha1-beta1, a-alpha2-beta2, a-alpha3-beta3... directly to their common element a, (Cassirer argues), but replace the alphas by a variable x, and the betas by a variable y. Therein we unify the totality in the expression "a-x-y", (actually w-x-y, where "w" is the constant function w(p) = a, (for all p), of the "generic concept"). This expression can be changed into the "concrete totality" of the members of the series by a continuous transformation,

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and therefore "perfectly represents the structure and logical divisions of the

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concept"!1

Cassirer's "series" may be ordered by radically variant principles however: "according to equality", (which is the special case of the "generic concept"), "or

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inequality, number and magnitude, spatial and temporal relations, or causal

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dependence"1 -so long as the principle is definite and consistent.Thus he fundamentally reconceives the formal Concept, this our ultimate

logical building block, as "the "Functional Concept of Mathematics". It is the functional rule, F(x,y,z,...), which organizes and embodies the totality of its extension.

Concept vs. Presentation:

Cassirer's new formal Concept is no longer logically derivable from its extension however:

"The meaning of the law that connects the individual members is not to be exhausted by the enumeration of any number of instances of the law; for

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such enumeration lacks the generating principle that enables us to connect

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the individual members into a functional whole."1

If we know the relation according to which a b c . . . are ordered, we can deduce them by reflection and isolate them as objects of thought. "It is impossible,

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on the other hand, to discover the special character of the connecting relation from

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the mere juxtaposition of a,b,c in presentation."1 2

"That which binds the elements of the series a,b,c,... together is not itself a new element, that was factually blended with them, but it is the rule of progression, which remains the same, no matter in which member it is represented. The function F(a,b), F(b,c),..., which determines the sort of dependence between the successive members, is obviously not to be pointed

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out as itself a member of the series, which exists and develops according to

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it."1

This is the definitive argument against “abstraction” as the general case and “presentation” as an ultimate foundation for logic. The association of the members of a series by the possession of a common "property" is only a special case of logically possible connections in general. But the connection of the members "is in

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every case produced by some general law of arrangement through which a

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thorough-going rule of succession is established."1

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Contra The Theory of Attention:

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The "theory of attention"1 therefore "loses all application in a deeper phenomenology of the pure thought processes", (i.e. cognition). The similarity of certain elements, (under the classical view), can only be (conceptually) meaningful

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when a certain point of view has already been established1 from which the elements can be distinguished as like or unlike. This identity of reference under

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which the comparison takes place is, however, "something distinctive and new as

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regards the compared contents themselves."1

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The distinction between the concept and its extension, therefore, is

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categorical1 and "belongs to the 'form of consciousness'".2 It is "a new expression

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of the characteristic contrast between the member of the series and the form of the

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series".1

Cassirer argued that it is the equivalent of his "Functional Concept of Mathematics", rather than the generic concept, that is the actual "Concept" which

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has been employed throughout the history of modern science.1 He offered a convincing co-thesis, furthermore, that the objects of mathematics and science are

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"implicitly defined", (in Hilbert's sense), specifically.1 The "functional concepts", (their primitive laws), implicitly define their conceptual "objects" -and these are the actual working objects of science.

Major Consequences:

Cassirer's "Functional Concept" marks a profound advance to understanding, (and our specific problem), in two respects:

(1) it redefines the formal Concept, fundamentally, as a "functional rule" and, (2), it isolates the concept as (logically) separate from, -as from a "different

world" than -the "objects" it "orders". The concept is no longer inherent in the elements it orders, (e.g. of “perception”), nor is it (logically) derived from them. It is:

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"a new 'object' ... whose total content is expressed in the relations

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established between the individual elements by the act of unification."1

Re Presentation:

The Concept is a purely intellectual -and original- entity, a "peculiar form of consciousness, such as cannot be reduced to the consciousness of sensation or

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perception."1 It is neither a copy of nor an abstraction from its extension. It is an independent and "mathematically" functional "ordering" –an act of unification! It

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is a rule not logically derivable1 from presentation. That rule, I will argue, is

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provided by biology, not by revelation.1

Cassirer has removed logic, (in his critique of the formal Concept), from the simple abstraction of perceptual objects, (i.e. presentation). It becomes instead an internal function of the mind, (and hence, I will argue, of biology) –i.e. a “new form of consciousness”.

I will now proceed to argue a very natural extension (and, I think, a completion) of Cassirer’s thesis: “the Concept of Implicit Definition”. This Concept, part of that same “new form of consciousness” is also internal and logically independent from perceptual presentation as well. I will argue, in fact, that it creates its very “objects” – its “extension” -within the same free act of unification. Even our very “perceptual objects”, (as well as our “intellectual objects”), I will argue, are resolved within the same internal (biological) act. This will remove, (in agreement with Maturana, Walter Freeman, and Edelman), the need for “presentation”, (metaphysically taken), altogether. It is the (presented) “perceptual object”, I will argue, which has been hypostasized! A new formulation of the Concept and its subsequent logic will allow the resolution of the logical paradoxes of sentiency.

Cassirer’s Concept, (the Functional Concept of Mathematics), is unique in that its arguments show that the fundamental logical Concept is not derived from presentation or perception. It is a free and independent act (of unification). It is a “new form of consciousness” according to Cassirer and not dependent on them. But if his arguments are believed, (and I think they are very strong), then there is a very natural extension of Cassirer’s Concept wherein the rule, (which determines the concept), can be likened to the conjunction of the axioms in an axiom system and its objects, therefore, to the objects of implicit definition. That result opens a new possibility –it potentiates the possibility that objects as well, (and not just intellectual concepts), can be free creations, acts of unification of that same new consciousness and not dependent on presentation or perception either!

It is clearly in “presentation” itself that the paradoxes of the homunculus and the Cartesian Theatre arise, after all, and these are specifically paradoxes of

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presentation. If our perceptions were presented to us,1 -if mind, consciousness and perception were presentational and dualistic, (which is implicit in the presentation/attention abstraction of classical logic) -then the paradoxes of sentiency would be innate and unresolvable. But if those perceptions arose within us, and if consciousness arose as a whole, (as the unified rule of "ontogenic coupling", after Maturana, as I will argue), then sufficient grounds for a complete resolution of the problem would be established. This is not an answer from solipsism, dualism or idealism however, but from realism sans information and presentation.

The Concept of Implicit Definition: (a natural extension of Cassirer's "Functional Concept of Mathematics")

3. Cassirer's "Functional Concept of Mathematics" does not exhaust the possibilities however -not even for mathematics. The "implicit definition" of axiomatic mathematics has specific and converse consequences for the formal Concept. Since, (following Cassirer), an actual concept is now defined by any (definite and consistent) conceptual rule, I propose that a mathematical axiom system is itself a perfectly good Concept in Cassirer's sense. Axiom systems embody more profound rules than Cassirer considered however, and I propose that they define the ultimate concepts. Here it is a logically complex, (and typically non-serial), rule which defines the concept, (i.e. the conjunction of the axioms), and conversely, (and significantly), following Hilbert and modern mathematics, it is a definite, logically precise and consistent rule of generation of its “extension” -

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i.e., of its implicitly defined elements as well.1 But axiom systems are not logically

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"dimensional", (strictly implied in Cassirer's F(x,y,z...)), nor do they normally

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define a "series"; they define the raw (broadest) manifold itself.1

There is no a priori presumption of dimensionality in the domain of an abstract axiom system. Nor can the elements of the mathematical manifold be characterized a priori, (dimensionally), as functional values of the individual axioms. Their "objects" are not "objects" of the sort: (a1(x), a2(y), a3(z), ...). Axioms do not interact dimensionally, they interact operationally. The combination of axioms, and their rule of generation, (Cassirer's "continuous transformation"), is purely, profoundly and complexly logical. A mathematical

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axiom system need not characterize a "series" or a "series of series" moreover.1 Indeed, this is the exception rather than the rule. What it must and does embody,

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however, is the raw manifold itself, (its domain).1 It embodies the "logical continuum" generated by its axioms. It embodies an "order" of a higher degree of freedom.

The instances of Cassirer's "Functional Concept", (the objects of its extension), are the continuous generation of its rule. The instances of the implicit definition of mathematical axiom systems, the implicitly defined "elements" of their manifolds, are logically continuous as well -they are the continuous generation of a more profound rule which, by definition, exhausts, (and defines), its extension. The "elements" of the mathematical domain are precisely all and only those "values" implicitly defined by, (logically generated by), a particular system of axioms -in a sense precisely parallel to Cassirer's. They are the pure embodiment, (crystallization), of the "order" of its rule. Its elements are virtual elements expressing its innate order. The whole of their meaning and the whole of their being, (mathematically), is solely such. The manifold, (domain), represents the functional and conceptual "values" of its system of "generating relations". Its elements are logical elements.

The "elements", (mathematically conceived), of axiom systems are not "objects" upon which a system of "generating relations" acts, however, or to which it relates. They are products of it. There is no a priori presumption of their distinct and separate existence. Wilder, pertinently, characterizes the "existence" terms of

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axiom systems as "presumptive" and "permissive" only. 1 Axiomatic "existence" is an operative term only. The elements -the objects- of axiom systems are logical

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"invariants" of their generating relations and internal to the rule itself.1 Neither "presentation", (nor reference), is implicit in them. They are "entities whose whole being is to be bearers of the relations laid down by the system."

I urge that this -the Concept of Implicit Definition- is the ultimate logical rule, and the ultimate "ordering". It captures the ultimate functionality, (in Cassirer's sense), of a logical system and generates its extension, (its abstract "domain"), as a virtual embodiment of its own (logical) "ordering" -its rule. An

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axiom system, (conceived mathematically), is a rule which wholly specifies its

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"elements" -by definition.1 I propose, therefore, a new and largest formal "Concept": the Concept of

Implicit Definition. I propose it in strict analogy to the case of the mathematical axiom system and in strict extension of Cassirer's Concept. It is the natural extension of Cassirer's Functional Concept of Mathematics, and embodies, I propose, the ultimate rule, (in Cassirer’s sense), of order. But it is a generalization of Cassirer's formal concept, not an instance of it. Conceptual "dimensionality", (a "series of series"), implicit in Cassirer's linear function of functions: F(x,y,z..), is a special case of the "rule" -and of the formal Concept.

The concept of an axiom system, its "rule" of implicit definition, embodies something absolutely new and unique amongst concepts however. Its extension is

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precisely its own analycity. The "being", (and the "meaning"1), of its elements are, by definition, identical with the purely logical "singularities" of the (complex) rule

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-and the concept- itself. They "are ... defined just by the fact that they satisfy the

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axioms."1

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Implicit Definition vis a vis Presentation:

Like Cassirer's Concept, (its conceptual progenitor), the Concept of Implicit Definition is not oppositional: i.e. it does not (logically) presuppose "abstraction" or "attention" either. It too is a "peculiar form of consciousness", an "act of unification ... not reducible to the consciousness of sensation or perception". But this particular "act", (unlike Cassirer's), does not presuppose "presentation" either. It does not just logically specify its extension; it logically encompasses it! The rule of "implicit definition" itself then, following Cassirer, is logical exhaustion and its "objects" are purely logical objects. They are "crystallizations" - i.e. logical

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"invariants"1 of and internal to the rule itself.2 This Concept, I suggest, does not entail "extension" at all -it is a (complex) unity.

Cassirer’s Concept, (the Functional Concept of Mathematics), is unique in that its arguments show that the fundamental logical Concept is not derived from presentation or perception but is a free and independent act of unification. It is a “new form of consciousness” not dependent on them. The Concept of Implicit Definition, (an extension of Cassirer's thesis), opens a further possibility, however. It potentiates the possibility that objects as well can be free creations, acts of unification of that same new consciousness, (and biological organism I argue), and not derived from presentation or perception either. This is a radical idea admittedly. Though somewhat repugnant and somewhat astounding to our preconceptions, it is certainly consistent with the biological conclusions of Maturana, Edelman, and Freeman wherein perception and consciousness, (whatever those may or may not be for these authors –more generally, the internal biological function), of an organism do not derive information from the world. But that is just what perceptual presentation would imply. The positive and the

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immediate consequence of this new rendering of the Concept, (C.I.D.1), is that we now have the tools to understand –completely resolve in fact- the problems of the “homunculus” and the Cartesian theatre. The virtual objects of implicit definition are known to the system as a whole. For it is only as implicitly defined resolutions of the system as a whole that they exist at all! This is a major advance on the problem and enables the only realist solution of the problem yet proposed other than a denial of the problem itself. It was in “presentation” itself that the unresolvable paradoxes arose after all. To repeat myself however, the denial of (metaphysical) “presentation” does not result in solipsism, but in realism sans information and presentation.

Why is this relevant to mind?

4. Why is this significant to the problem at hand? It is because this Concept seems "tailor-made" to the logical problem of mind: It is capable of solving the homunculus problem and that of the Cartesian theatre. It can resolve objects without presentation, (without “the homunculus”), and supplies the “theatre”! It also supplies an autonomous theory of meaning.

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Cassirer has established the equivalence of "concept" and "rule". If, (1)

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following the arguments of chapter 1,1 we are no longer concerned with representation, (nor, with it, of "presentation"), and (2) if, tentatively, mind were

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taken as the unified rule, (the "act of unification"), of brain response,1 -if it were

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taken as the unified rule of the "structural coupling"1 of the brain -then (3), (following Cassirer), "mind" might reasonably be identified with the "concept", (in the larger constitutive sense), of the brain. If that particular concept were analogous to the "Concept of Implicit Definition" in mathematical axiom systems

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furthermore,1 then it would not just "take account" of the elements of its

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"extension", it would know them!1 Their "meaning" and their "being" would be logically manifest internal to that concept, (and rule), itself. They would be resolved as virtual expressions of that very rule. They would "acquire meaning ... and possess only the content that it bestow[ed] upon them." They would be logical entities "whose whole being [was] to be bearers of the relations laid down by the

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system." (I argue that the "logic" just mentioned is a constitutive logic1. I will argue presently that it is the schematic calculus of Chapter 1!)

But these particular entities -as cognitive and perceptual entities- no longer (metaphysically) presuppose attention or abstraction -nor do they presuppose presentation. Therefore, they do not presuppose that which it would be presented to -i.e. a "seer"! The logical problems of "the object" -the problem of the homunculus, the problem of "the mind's eye", the “Cartesian theatre”, (which are the principal enigmas of consciousness) -are thereby solved in principle. The fundamental duality, implicit in classical logic, between "seer" and "seen", "thinker" and "object of thought", "perceiver" and "perceived", or, more fundamentally, between cognition and presentation, is bridged. The unity, and the very possibility of cognition of "the object" -the global perspective of the many in the one- is explained in the unity of its existence as a virtual object of implicit definition. For it is only globally that such a virtual object even exists as an object. In our rational universe, then, the Concept of Implicit Definition seems the most

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appropriate,1 as a model, to the logical problem of "consciousness". There is no categorical disjunction between the "form of the series" -i.e. the "rule" of implicit definition- and its "elements". They are unified in the concept itself.

Contra Cassirer:

Cassirer "bent" the focus, however:

"there is no danger of hypostasizing the pure concept, of giving it an independent reality along with the particular things. ... Its 'being' consists exclusively in the logical determination by which it is clearly differentiated from other possible serial forms ... and this determination can only be

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expressed by a synthetic act of definition, and not by a simple sensuous

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intuition."1

There are two crucial flaws in his argument, however: (1): In the axiom systems of pure mathematics, the elements are also

expressed by an "act of definition", (albeit an analytical one) -i.e. that of "implicit definition". They are themselves manifestations of that "peculiar form of consciousness, such as cannot be reduced to the consciousness of sensation or perception."

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(2): While he states that the application of the Functional Concept is

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embodied in the concept itself,1 he argues that concepts are different in kind from their extension. These are "objects" of a different world from that of the "particular things" -the objects of "simple sensuous intuition". I argue, (in concert with my first thesis), that the "objects" of "simple sensuous intuition" are themselves ultimately objects of "implicit definition" and part of that same "peculiar form of consciousness". It follows, then, (given my hypothesis), that there is no simple sensuous intuition at all -it does not exist. It is the perceptual object which has been hypostasized! His dichotomy of the "being" of the pure concept and the "being" of the "particular things" need not stand on either leg.

Cassirer did not generalize the "Functional Concept of Mathematics" into "the Concept of Implicit Definition". The "new consciousness", furthermore, stopped short of "sensuous impressions" themselves. For him, the latter were absolute and unknowable. They were, in effect, the focal point upon which the

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various forms of knowledge, his "Symbolic Forms",1 were oriented, but could never reach. They were the rock upon which he erected, in Swabey's

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characterization, his "epistemological theory of relativity".1 His "object of knowledge" was a purely conceptual object, implicitly defined by the fundamental laws of the sciences, -their "generating relations". The "objects of perception", the "particular things", were of a different and untouchable world, the rock splitting the intellect in two.

The Crux of the Issue: Presentation

Cassirer did Promethean work, however. He demonstrated the fundamental inadequacies of the classical Concept, both in its scope and specifically as regards "perception". He illuminated the profound and expressly logical chasm between the Concept and the perceptual realm, (the "material" with which it purportedly deals!), and hence the pervasive duality which "perception", i.e. "sensuous impressions", necessitates for mind and logic. Even Cassirer's "Functional Concept of Mathematics" was insufficient to the fundamental problem, however, and he remained inside the "magic circle" of perception. The opposition of "Concept" and "percept", (e.g. "attention/abstraction" and "presentation" or still even the opposition of Cassirer's "Functional Concept" and presentation -"sensuous intuition"), and the dualism which is implicit in it, is the essence of the issue. It is a genuine antinomy and the actual genesis of the problem. Already contained in "abstraction", already implicit in "attention", already embodied in "presentation" is the dualistic homunculus: i.e. that to which "presentation" is offered. There was no way heretofore that we could even conceive of an answer to this problem because it was the formal Concept itself which generated it. This was the retort in which the "homunculus" was conjured!

"Implicit definition", however, belongs totally to the "new form of consciousness" -as do the "objects" which it "orders". But here, (beyond Cassirer), there is no longer the assumption of a presentation of "elements", (psychological impressions or otherwise), from one world to an intellectualizing, (cognitive), faculty in another. There remains, therefore, no implicit need for the dualistic homunculus in cognition. This explains why the two worlds are compatible. There are not two worlds, but one. This "peculiar form of consciousness", this "new consciousness" I maintain, is the only consciousness.

Mind-Brain: The Hypothesis:

"... every transformation of the genuinely 'formal' concept produces a new interpretation of the whole field that is characterized and ordered by it" (op.

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cit. p.26)

6. Let us suppose that "mind" is the "implicit definition" of the process, (rule), of brain response. Let us suppose that the relationality of brain process is like the

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system of "generating relations" of an axiom system,1 and that even the "objects of perception", the "sensuous impressions" themselves, are implicitly defined within

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that system,1 (alternatively that our "objects" embody the "calculus" of evolutionary design as per Chapter 1). The "objects of perception", then, are not imposed upon the brain, (or presented to it), but are logical invariants of brain

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process itself.1 The "objects" are products of the "categorical act" -the implicit definition of the brain.

"Implicit definition", as a thesis for mind, does not presuppose "presentation" to generate its "objects" nor is it antinomical. Its "objects" derive from the logical connection of process. "Sensuous impressions", therefore, are not presentations to a process, they arise internal to the process itself.

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If we take "the object of perception" as being a specific "object of

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conception", (taken in the new, larger sense of "Concept")1 -if it is not, in fact, a copy, a "mirror" of externality, but an internal functional construct -a schematic artifact of the process of brain response as I have argued in my first thesis, then we have arrived at a viable solution to the whole of the general problem of cognition. The unity of the object is the unity of its implicit definition as a virtual element in a

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system of fundamental constitutive relationality1. But the "relationality" purported here is not the relationality of Functionalism. It is not the classical conception, nor even a Cassirerian "functional" conception of the relationality of fine-grained brain

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structure, but rather the (logical) "generating relationality" of implicit definition -of

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the brain as process.1

A Possible Physical Paradigm:

7. What is desperately needed at this point, obviously, is a physical paradigm. How might this "axiom system" model -which seems to fit the fundamental logical problem of "mind" so well- be implemented as a biological model? An operational approach seems quite promising. Considering brain dynamically, -in terms of what it does, (its function), rather than in its fine-grained physical structure, certainly fits

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the necessary context of "structural coupling", (response).1 The perplexing simplicity of the division of the brain into definite gross anatomical substructures, for instance, is suggestive. (If it were "wired" randomly and incrementally on a "breadboard", as we would expect if it were developed in response to incrementally acquired evolutionary information, we would expect an amorphous clutter. Instead, we see very definite gross structure.)

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Might not the distinctive, purely and abstractly geometrical function of the

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cerebellum,1 -considered as a functional unit of response -provide a pointer in the

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right direction?1 Might not these, or some other structural sub-units, considered as

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modular units of process -of "ontogenic coupling" -be "axioms"?1 2

If the "objects of perception", the "sensuous impressions" themselves, are "objects of the intellect",- i.e. implicitly defined purely conceptual entities, ("conception" in the larger sense), then a Copernican revolution into a new logical world-view, centered in the "Concept of Implicit Definition", resolves the whole of the problem of cognition. The processes of judgement, intellect, even "perception" -are not profoundly distinct or separate from the "objects" judged, from the

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"objects" with which they deal. Perception, conception,1 logic, and "object" are all aspects of the same process -the implicit definition of the "generating relations" of brain.

But what of "meaning"? In short, let me repeat Schlick's comment with a different emphasis: "'point', 'straight line', 'plane', 'between', 'outside of', and the

like) ... to begin with, have no meaning or content. These terms acquire meaning only by virtue of the axiom system, and possess only the content that it bestows

upon them." Meaning itself can be explicated as a function of "implicit definition". It is an expression of logical "positionality", (order), in the context of relationality

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in which it is realized.1 (This is actually very close to the naive sense of "meaning".)

Consider, finally, Patricia Churchland's comment about theoretical systems:

"It emerged that the meaning", (my emphasis), "of the most respectable of theoretical terms was defined implicitly by the theory the terms figured in,

not by the empirical consequences of the theory. Terms such as 'force field', 'energy', and 'electromagnetic radiation' were prime examples where

meaning was a function of the embedding theory and where operational definitions were laughable."

"Whole theories have empirical consequences, and it is whole theories that are the basic units of meaning", (my emphasis), " -not terms, not sentences, and not subparts of the network. To be acceptable as an account of nature, a theoretical network must, as a whole, touch an observational base, but not

every acceptable sentence or term in the network must do so." (P.S. Churchland, 1986, pps. 265-266)

I am proposing that the human mind itself is a theoretical (and operative) network, and it is only as a whole that it touches its base -i.e. its environment. As a whole it determines the meaning of its terms and implicitly defines its "objects". I propose that not only our theories and the meanings of their terms, but that our

cognitive objects themselves are implicitly defined as well. It is only in the context of the system of response that they "touch" our environment, ("have empirical

consequences"). The "object" of cognition refers to its, (the system's), own operationality and not to an external object. I propose that it is not the objects of

the system that touch objective reality, externality; its "axioms" do!If the brain/mind relationship is like the relationship of the axiom system to

its implicit definition, then "we" do not deal with "presentations" to us, either for abstraction, conception or perception. Rather, "we" are the system of implicit

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definition in which the so-called "presentations" are created. This completes, I

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feel, a reasonable and appropriate preliminary definition1 of "mind".2

Convergence.

8. My (second) thesis furnishes the basis for a coherent biological explication for "mind" and "consciousness". If even the "percept" is just a special (and

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natural) aspect of the (extended) "concept", then mind is clearly a logical1 continuum, (what else is there?) But that logical continuum would clearly be complementary to the operational continuum proposed under the first thesis. This

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concordance suggests an identity: that our "objects" are logical as well as

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operational objects1 and vivifies my logical hypothesis of mind.The evolutionarily argued object of the first thesis is a virtual and schematic

object of process. It is a continuous manifestation of the field of process which underlies it. The independently argued object of the second thesis, (derived from considerations of formal logic), is a virtual and schematic object of logic. It, too, is a continuous manifestation of the (here logical) process which underlies it. This strongly suggests an isomorphic correspondence between the results of two very different and plausible approaches to the problem. It is the discovery of just such correspondences that are crucial to the advancement of science.

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But biology itself argues the correspondence. Taking a biological, (and

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reductive materialist), perspective,1 logic itself must be taken as a human, (and

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evolutionary), artifact. The alternative would be to assign transcendent1 properties to logic, a position clearly contrary to the very spirit and rationale of materialism itself. From the standpoint of biology, both "logic" and "concept" must themselves be considered reductively and evolutionarily.

The final biological rationale for human logic itself, (i.e. that aspect of human behavior which we call logic), is clearly evolutionary, -i.e. it is determined by natural selection. Logic is then necessarily a pragmatic rule of correspondence, (a procedural rule), between the brain and its environment. The (primitive) rule of "logic" itself is therefore operational, (rather than transcendent), and "concept", as part of that logic, must be considered likewise. This suggests a striking conclusion: the first two theses are equivalent! The "mind" is the "logical", (-i.e.

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"bio-logically" operational), "concept"1 of the brain.2 It is the "unified rule" of brain process. (Within this context, I assert that Hilbert's thesis serves as the clear foundation for a deep and autonomous theory of meaning.)

This, I propose, supplies the actual basis, grounded in a new formal Concept, for the "constitutive logic" which Kant postulated to lie beneath our perceptions. I propose that my first thesis provides its specific and precise biological rationale and my second thesis explicates its "objects". Our perceptual objects are not objects in reality; they are the implicitly defined logical objects, (alternatively, clearly now, operative objects), of this constitutive logic. They are objects of process.

A crucial turning point in my argument:

9. This, I maintain, constitutes the final physical answer to the mind-body problem. Naturalists can accept this answer as complete, (and the problem as solved), if they like and dismiss any further questions. But inherent in my thesis as well is the assertion that our objects are not representative and informational. To believe that they could still remain so becomes, (under my thesis), equivalent to a hypothesis of "divine harmony", (possible but implausible). This, (right here then), is a crucial turning point in my argument. I hereby reorient the whole of my

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argument up to this point and declare it1 as a reductio ad absurdum of ordinary

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Naturalism1. By this, I most definitely do not reject the relationality2 of Naturalism or of Naturalist science. But I do maintain that I have demonstrated the

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implausibility of absolute reference and absolute information.1 The next chapters will elaborate this point explicitly and invoke a variation of Cassirer's scientific epistemological relativism, which preserves Naturalist science in a deeper realism. The argument up to this point has been in the demonstration of a counterexample, -a significantly better counterexample I think- which fits the presumptions of Naturalism and the facts of the problem as seen from the Naturalist perspective.

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The unity of consciousness, the unity of mind is a logical, a conceptual and

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operational, rather than a spatial unity.1 The paradoxes of the Cartesian Theater do not derive from an innate flaw -or fantasy- in "mind"; they derive from a deficiency of ordinary logic.

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Hubert Dreyfus1 concluded that the brain cannot be simulated in a digitally

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based computer,1 but he explicitly allowed the possibility of an analog implementation. Cassirer produced, in fact, an analog, (i.e. a functional), concept -"the functional concept of mathematics". He suggested the requisite (analog) expansion of logic as well:

"..it must become evident that we stand here before a mere beginning that points beyond itself. The categorical acts which we characterize by the concepts of the whole and its parts, and of the thing and its attributes, are not isolated but belong to a system of logical categories, which moreover they by no means exhaust. After we have conceived the plan of this system in a general logical theory of relations", (my emphasis), "we can, from this standpoint, determine its details. On the other hand, it is not possible to gain a view of all possible forms of connection from the limited standpoint of certain relations emphasized in the naive view of the world. The category of the thing shows itself unsuited for this purpose in the very fact that we have in pure mathematics a field of knowledge, in which things and their

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properties are disregarded in principle, and in whose fundamental concepts

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therefore, no general property of things can be contained."1

The "general logical theory of relations" he predicts, though it involves an extension of his own "Concept" is, I propose, the "generating relationality" of implicit definition. The concept of the axiom system -the Concept of Implicit

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Definition- resolves the problem Dreyfus so correctly defined, but it resolves it,

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(contrary to Dreyfus' expectations), within the platonic tradition.1

My thesis resolves the fundamental problems of "mind" and "consciousness", i.e. "perception" and the primal logical problems of the "homunculus", the "Cartesian theatre", and meaning -and it is the only theory yet proposed that does. But these are the greatest enigmas of mind. (The other is that of providing a possible substance for mind which I have addressed in chapters 3, 4 and 5.) How can a part of a whole be comprehensible to a whole. How can a mind "see" its contents without an infinite regress? How can a spatially and temporally distributed process cognate a part of itself? Other than an eliminative reduction of mind itself -i.e. an actual negation of mind in our normal sense altogether, (which is the answer of most –realist- modern theorists), there seems no other possibility. Supervenience, unless taken magically, doesn't really make a lot of sense. "Grandmother cells" or "pontifical cells", (William James), do not work. Eliminative reduction, on the other hand, throws away the baby with the bath. Its

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answer is that there is no "mind" in our normal meaning of the term. We are

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linguistic automatons -i.e. "zombies".1

Plain talk:

10. Let's talk loosely for a bit. We do not start with absolutes anywhere in our logical and scientific endeavors. Somewhere we start with beliefs. I, for one, believe that I have a mind and a consciousness in the naive senses of those words. I think most of you believe that you do too. By this we do not just mean that our bodies mechanically and robotically produce words and actions which "cover the territory" -which merely simulate, (substitute for), sentiency in our naive sense of it, but that there is some universal and unified existence which is aware. But how?

Contemporary Naturalists, (Dennett, the Churchlands, Hofstadter, ...), universally and necessarily deny naive sentiency -the "mind's eye", the "matter", the "figment" of mind. They preserve only linguistic and neural process. They forthrightly, (to their credit), reduce mind to strict mechanism -to spatially and temporally distributed process. Mind, in a non-reductive, (i.e. a non-reinterpreted), sense, cannot exist for them. In this, I feel, they have completely lost credibility. They ask me to deny me in order to retain my beliefs about ordinary things.

Even idealism and dualism do not resolve the underlying logical problem however -the how of Leibniz's "expression of the many in the one", for even then how could this part of even a mental "substance" know that part? These are logical problems -the problem of the "homunculus" and the problem of the "Cartesian theatre". Where does there exist even the possibility of a solution?

Implicit definition, virtual existence -and logic as biology- this is the only example within our intellectual horizons that seems to hold even any promise for sentiency in this our ordinary sense of it. It suggests the only scientifically plausible solution to "the mind's eye" and the "Cartesian theatre" and the only non-eliminativist, (for "mind"), answer to the homunculus problem. These are answers which must exist if mind in our ordinary sense is, in fact, to be real. Implicit definition permits knowing, (as a whole), what are, in some real sense, our distinct and separate parts -precisely because those parts, (objects), are in fact non-localized and virtual (logical) expressions of the whole. It opens the first genuine possibility, therefore, for a resolution of this essential requirement of "naive" consciousness.

But that pathway, (implicit definition), does not make sense from the standpoint of representation! For implicit definition solves the problem logically -from the standpoint of constitutive logic -and speaks to nothing other than its own internal structure. "Objects", (under implicit definition), are known to a system,

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(i.e. universally/globally), only because they are specifically expressions of the system. It becomes a viable and natural solution to the problem of awareness, therefore, only when the objects of consciousness themselves are conceived

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operationally and schematically, (and specifically, logically1), rather than

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representatively.1 When our objects are taken as specifically schematic representations of process however, (as per my first thesis), the solution becomes

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both natural and plausible -the logical problem of sentiency is resolved. 1 I assert that no other actual solution, (other than a denial of the problem itself), has ever been suggested. This is the argument from the second to the first hypothesis -and different from the argument from the first to the second presented earlier.

But this conclusion is greatly strengthened by the arguments of the first chapter and of Appendix A –and by the conclusions of several eminent contemporary biologists. My biological thesis, considered biologically, (i.e. aside from its admittedly profound, but purely epistemological difficulties -which I will make good in chapter 4), is exceedingly strong. How could evolution organize -as it had to organize- the reactive function of this colossus of sixty trillion cells? Even this formulation of the question disregards the yet more profound complexity of the reactivity of the individual cells -also organisms- themselves! It was the overwhelmingly crucial issue in the evolution of complex metacellulars. My thesis of schematism is both viable and plausible in this context. But what does this evolutionary development and organization of the reactive process of complex metacellulars have to do with "information"?

That the progressive evolutionary reactivity of this megacollosus occurred under the bounds of real necessity is, of course, a given. It is the basic axiom of Darwinian "survival". But that it could match that possibility -i.e. that it could achieve a (reactive) parallelism to that bound -i.e. "information!" -is a hypothesis of quite another order and teleologically distinct. [See Illustration]

It is, I assert moreover, mathematically immature. Objective reality is a bound to the evolutionary possibility of organisms, but under that bound infinitely

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diverse possibilities remain.1 I may, as a crude illustration for instance, posit an infinity of functions under the arbitrary bound Y = 64,000,000. I may cite semi-circles, many of the trigonometric functions, planar figures, curves, lines ... ad infinitum. Only one of these matches the bound, and only a specific subset, (the horizontal lines Y = a, a 64,000,000), parallels it. It is a question of the distinction between a bound and a limit. The reactive evolutionary actuality of an organism certainly exists within, (and embodies), a lower bound of biologically possibility. But that some such, (any such), organism, (to include the human organism!), embodies a greatest lower bound -i.e. that it, (or its reactivity), matches and meets, (or parallels, i.e. knows!), the real world does not follow. That premise is incommensurate with the fundamental premise of “natural selection” and stands as the “parallel postulate” of evolutionary theory. Organisms do not know, organisms do! Organisms survive!

How much more plausible is it not that the primary and crucial thrust of evolution was coordination, and specifically a coordination of allowable or appropriate, (rather than "informed"), reactive response? I submit that, even solely biologically, the schematic object is far more plausible than the representative one. It involves no "magic", and is totally consistent with our ordinary conceptions of biology.

In the realm of beliefs, however, my alternative, like the Naturalists', is also bad. It also goes against gut beliefs when it says that we have no direct, (even a mediated/sophisticated), referential knowledge of metaphysical reality. But this is exactly the finding of contemporary physical science. It was the crucial enabling insight of quantum mechanics, for instance. Though my thesis goes against instinct, the whole course of modern physics stands by its side.

I submit that no other viable, (i.e. non-eliminative or non-dualistic), explanation, i.e., an actual explanation rather than a prevarication, has ever even been offered for mind and consciousness as understood in our ordinary sense. The argument, then, is one of demonstration. If no truly viable alternative can be offered, then this one must be considered seriously.

I argue that the operational process of brain, (and its evolutionarily determined structural optimization), implicitly defines its "objects", its "entities" in the same sense and in the same manner that the "process" of an axiom system implicitly defines its "objects". The "objects of perception", I argue, are "mental objects". They are constitutive conceptual objects. But they are schematic objects,

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(alternatively, "operational objects"), only, in no necessarily simple

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correspondence with objective reality. They are metaphors of response!1

Conclusion: (chapter)

11. Considered physically, I propose that mind is a rule. But it is a rule that internally and logically resolves objects. Following Cassirer it is, (because it is a rule), therefore a concept as well. But it is a new and larger form of Concept. This is the reason we were unable heretofore even to conceive of a solution to the problems of the homunculus, of the "mind's eye", and the "Cartesian Theatre". It was because our formal Concept itself, (and the rule in which we encompassed it), was too small!

In the next sections I will correlate my evolutionary and logical hypotheses with the standard paradigms of biology and physical science -and argue that they are a better "fit" than that of naive realism or contemporary Naturalism. Maturana and Varela's evolutionary perspective is absolutely pertinent here, -and their arguments are impeccably drawn. The brain, as brain, is a reactive system -functioning "with operational closure" -and not a (realistically) representational one.

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Introduction to Chapters 3, 4 and 5 (towards a Resolution of the Paradox)

In Chapter 2, I proposed a concise Naturalistic explanation of mind, i.e. that the mind is the (materially reduced) "concept", (alternatively, the rule), of the brain! I said that Naturalists could accept that explanation as the final and conclusive answer to the problem if they chose, but, if they did, they accepted a profound antinomy therein, as it still does not produce a "live" mind. Awareness

3 ? A series of examples and the question: What is "an object"? I mean to question our most fundamental conception of “object” itself.

1 ? The single quotes are meant to parse the "objects" as will become clear shortly.

1 ? Mathematicians love to be cute like this!2 ? Webster's defines "calculus", (math): "a method of calculation, any process

of reasoning by use of symbols". I am using it here in this most general sense in contradistinction to "the calculus", i.e. differential and integral calculus.

1 ? Is this not the usual case between conflicting theories and perspectives?1 ? Consider Edelman: "...certain symbols do not match categories in the

world. ... Individuals understand events and categories in more than one way and sometimes the ways are inconsistent." Edelman, 1992, pps. 236-237, his emphasis.

1 ? more generally it must be compatible with the phenomena1 ? Hertz, for instance, argues that science makes symbols whose one essential

quality lies in the generation of a parallelism with experiential consequence but that “we do not know and have no means of finding out whether our ideas of things accord with them in any other respect than in this one fundamental relation.” (my emphasis) cf Chapter 4: Hertz, Cassirer, Quine

1 ? together: the possible conceptual contexts1 ? cf the arguments of Chapters Two and Four for a detailed rationale1 ? cf Afterword: Lakoff/Edelman for a discussion of mathematical “ideals”

which bears on this discussion.1 ? this directly relates to the issues of “hierarchy” which I will discuss shortly,

and at greater length later1 ? This is specifically a logical question –i.e. it is a question of logical

possibility, and my detailed answer is the subject of Chapter 2.1 ? a model1 ? i.e. predict, analyze or control1 ? rather than being constrained by the contiguous, (object-contained),

properties of real, (or possible), metaphysical objects

was still not possible except as "awareness" was itself physically reduced. We would remain, therefore, linguistic automatons.

My third thesis, (chapter 5), will address this problem directly and, in the process of its development, (chapters 3 and 4), will resolve the severe epistemological difficulties raised by the first two theses. It will resolve them, moreover, in a manner consistent with the outlook of modern physical science. I will argue a final "Copernican revolution" away from the purely Naturalistic

1 ? That the combined model must so correlate, (to have any value), is, of course, a given. But must it correlate in its parts? Must the "objects" of the model correlate as objects to objective objects? Must the operations of the model, ("the calculus"), correlate to objective relations between them? Can we not conceive of a more abstract situation, suggested by higher mathematics, wherein the whole of the model correlates to its domain in a distributed sense? Transformations, after all, are not defined on the domain of "spaces", but of abstract sets -i.e. without an a priori presumption of order.

1 ? Precisely because it is complex and critical, (or dangerous) –e.g. it may explode with very little warning!

1 ? which I will argue in Chapter 21 ? In my computer, I have icons for "things", (text files or databases, for

instance), processes, (print the screen or run a program), script files, (which may execute any combination of things I choose: e.g.: wait 30 secs; run wordprocessor; calculate spreadsheet; search a database for someone who owes me money, search my wordprocessor documents for a misspelling of the word "thought", wait till 6:00 am; get email, turn on the coffee pot, ...), etc.

1 ? The name of the user interface on my old Amiga is actually called "intuition".

1 ? Cf Lakoff, 1987. Also see my “Afterword: Lakoff, Edelman…”2 ? See Appendix J for an elaboration.

1 ? Alternatively, how would you organize control?1 ? cf Dennett on the "frame problem"1 ? This is precisely Dreyfus' "large database" problem: “a problem on which

no significant progress has been made”. Dreyfus 1992 Also see footnote to Appendix A.

1 ? This is typically the case! A working project manager, for instance, must deal with all, (and often conflicting), aspects of his task -from actual operation to materials acquisition, to personnel problems to assuring that there are meals and functional bathrooms! Any one of these factors, (or some combination of them), -

perspective,1 retaining the results of Naturalistic science however, (and our ordinary world), under a thesis of scientific epistemological relativism, (a variation of Cassirer's "Symbolic Forms"). Building on Kant's fundamental insights, I will argue that the problem of the “substance” of the mind2 is really a problem of metaphysics, and that Naturalism's own metaphysics, (and it definitely has one), is faulty. Besides its seemingly irreducible incorporation of reference, it is its overstrong metaphysical assumptions which make impossible the existence of a "matter" of mind. In the words of Van Fraassen: "Scientism, [Naturalist metaphysics] is also essentially negative; it denies reality to what it does not

even the most trivial- could cause failure of his project. A more poignant example might involve a U.N. military commander in Bosnia. He would necessarily need to correlate many conflicting imperatives -from the geopolitical to the humanitarian to the military to the purely mundane! See also Lakoff on conflicting frames, (ICM’s).

1 ? the objects of which must be logically, but not necessarily visually resolved

1 ? But how does the schematic model present a better solution to the problem of conflicting abstractions? The answer is that it does not improve the conflicts per se, but it does better deal with the practical problem as it does not lose "data", (i.e. detail), as does a model built on abstraction. Think about an example based on a military chain of command. A general makes decisions based on many levels of abstraction presented progressively from sergeants, to lieutenants, captains, majors, colonels, etc. At each level detail is lost in abstractions, (in a hierarchical model). But those details, (or a combination of them), -or conflicting abstractions- may decide the course of a battle. This is typically the complaint of lower-level managers, (from sergeants to shop foremen) -that upper management does not live in the "real world".

The schematic model is theoretically capable of preserving all this complexity so that a best overall solution, (towards some goal), based on the actual situation may be reached on the highest level. Cassirer's functional concept shows that we need not lose detail in abstraction, (for synthesis), but may preserve it in a functional synthesis.

1 ? To prove a corollary, it is necessary only to demonstrate that the conditions of the theorem- in this case profound complexity and profound risk- are met which I have.

1 ? See third following footnote re: complementary perspectives1 ? cf Maturana or Edelman, for instance1 ? Compare this argument with Edelman’s on immunology or his own theory

of TNGS.

countenance. [my emphasis] Its world is as chock-full as an egg; it has room for nothing else."1

My thesis has questioned the very basis of cognition. But what are the truly necessary presumptions of science? I will examine those necessary assumptions from the standpoint of modern biology, (Maturana and Varela), and from the foundations laid by Kant to arrive at the "axiom of externality", and from the work of Quine and Cassirer to arrive at the "axiom of experience". These, I maintain, are the two actual primitives of realist reason.

1 ? These are clearly just the complementary perspectives on the same issue. My thesis is one of organization after all and the argument above was made on those specific grounds. The identical argument can be made step by step for an organization of primitive process as was made for an organization of data, based alike in efficacy. The conditions are the same: (1) profound complexity and (2) extreme and immediate risk. In the earlier case, we sought to consolidate enormous and conflicting data to maximize response. In this case, we seek to integrate multitudinous and conflicting "atomic processes" to the same end. The arguments and the conclusion are the same: a non-topological schematism. It is an issue of perspective and these are complementary perspectives on the same issue of organizational efficiency. In the context of the a priori human (organism's) cognitive perspective, for instance), it can be considered as distribution of topobiological "objects". From a more abstract, less preconceived perspective, however -from the mathematical standpoint of multivariate statistical analysis, for instance, (cf Lara, 1994), it can be considered centralization. Crudely put, it depends on which end of the "telescope" you are looking through. From the perspective of "the operator", (function), the system is distributive, whereas from the standpoint of "the engineer", (design), it is concentrative.

1 ? alternatively, the operational organization1 ? The "anthropic principle", sometimes cited, is clearly self-serving and

tautological: "if it were not so, it would not be so"! My thesis supplies a specific counterproposal.

1 ? Just one of many effected by my thesis.1 ? cf Hofstadter, 19791 ? Maturana and Varela, 19871 ? which again raises Dreyfus' "large database problem" -i.e. how could [a

brain/computer] deal with huge amounts of information in a reasonable amount of time? ..."a problem on which no significant progress has been made" (paraphrase, Dreyfus, 1992)

1 ? cf Appendix A. Appendix A was originally incorporated here, but I removed it to an appendix as I felt it interrupted the flow of the argument.

I will employ an extension of Cassirerian relativism, (a rigorous scientific and mathematical epistemological relativism), to deal with the problem of reference. On the issue of substance, I will argue, (in Chapter 5), that the only "really real", (i.e. ontic or metaphysical), supposition that anyone, (to include behaviorists, material reductionists...-even dualists!), is rationally allowed to make -yet which all must make- is that of the existence, (however taken), of our interface to externality itself. But the truly necessary, (i.e. apodictic), part of that interface must be conceived minimally and mathematically, i.e. as a limit, the synthesis of

Edelman argues to the same end, (as Appendix A), that the human genome is insufficient by many orders of magnitude to the purposes of "information".

1 ? i.e. intersections and coordinators1 ? I will distinguish this more clearly from Maturana and Varela's thesis in

Chapter 3. 1 ? See Chapter 4 to resolve the seeming obvious self-contradiction1 ? I will postpone raising the obvious objections that occur here, (i.e. non-

referentiality and a seeming self-contradiction), until I have developed the context to do so. A Copernican revolution in our very conception of "knowledge" is necessitated by this hypothesis, (as developed in my third hypothesis). It will turn out, however, to have very positive implications for science. Please bear with me for a little. This is a very large and complex thesis.

1 ? (and of “presentation”)2 ? This is a point in standard theories where, using Dennett's phrase, "then a

miracle occurs". For P.S. Churchland, it is “the good trick”.1 ? from the designer's standpoint2 ? I will exorcise this "homunculus" shortly by virtue of my second thesis. 1 ? Hume postulated such an imperative long ago, (cf P.S. Churchland, 1988,

p.247). But this "realistic imperative" will be seen, (by virtue of my second thesis), to be an inherent of operative function rather than being imposed upon it.

1 ? I am keeping the connection between "mind" and "brain" quite loose at this point. I feel it is admissible at this early stage of an attempt at explicating precisely this distinction. I will specify my definitions at the end of Chapter 2, and in Chapters 3, 4 and 5.

1 ? i.e. Naturalists say that an organism, at some stage, began not only to react to its environment, but to embody that environment in parallel! Cf P.S. Churchland, for example.

1 ? The "How?" of this is supplied in the second thesis, and the "Where?" and "What?" of it is supplied in the third.

1 ? (and reference) cf chapters 3, 4 & 51 ? cf Appendix B

the most abstract understandings of our necessary realist primitives: "experience" and "externality". As such, it is implicit in every realist stance in some form -"memes", "linguistic coupling", "reductionist process", "behaviorism", .... This is

Maturana's "structural coupling"1 reconceived in its most abstract form, i.e. relieved from its specifically Naturalistic setting.

This interface is therefore necessary and, I will argue, it is also sufficient to the problem as well. It is this minimal interface, itself taken as metaphysically

real, (as it must be1), that I will propose, (going beyond Kant), as a new metaphysical substance. It is, I will argue, the "substance" of the mind. If that interface is therefore actual, (i.e. ontic), and if it is, furthermore, structured as I have proposed in my first two theses, (which is my third and final hypothesis), then

mind exists. It is an actual mind. We are actually aware. We are actually

conscious.1

Chapter 3. Biology_Part II: Towards the Where and the What?Biology & Epistemology

(Maturana and Varela and Kant)

"If in a new science which is wholly isolated and unique in its kind, we started with the prejudice that we can judge of things by means of alleged knowledge previously acquired -though this is precisely what has first to be called in question -we should only fancy we saw everywhere what we had already known, because the expressions have a similar sound. But everything would appear utterly metamorphosed, senseless, and unintelligible, because we should have as a foundation our own thoughts, made by long habit a second nature, instead of the author's." (Kant, Prolegomena, p.10)

From our ordinary way of looking at things, my third and final thesis, (which will be formally stated in Chapter 5), will appear convoluted, esoteric and disturbing. When the inverting glasses of habit are removed and a proper

perspective is attained, however, it will become considerably simpler1, more plausible and profoundly more compatible with modern science than any proposed alternative. To reach that perspective and before I can even begin to properly state this thesis however, I must deal with several seemingly divergent, (but actually closely related), issues. This chapter will discuss the first of them. I must address the epistemological dilemma created by the conclusion of the first two theses.

Nobody writing meaningfully about the mind-body problem today appears to take Immanuel Kant as seriously and as literally as I do, and yet he seems to be the

thinker most pertinent to it.1 The problem of mind-body is, in one profound respect, the problem of knowing, (epistemology), itself. The questions of what we, as organisms, do know, or even can know -and how- reflect back on the very knowledge by which we judge the problem itself.

In an ancillary and important respect, moreover, the problem Kant faced in attempting to communicate his ideas is very similar to the one I face. (I referred to this in the introduction.) Both theses totally contravene the common wisdom, and (therefore) make sense only as a whole and not in their parts. Like his problem "of pure reason", (which is clearly a part of my own problem), my problem:

"is a sphere so separate and self-contained that we cannot touch a part without affecting all the rest. We can do nothing without first determining the position of each part and its relation to the rest; for, as our judgement within this sphere cannot be corrected by anything without, the validity and use of every part depends upon the relation in which it stands to all the rest within the domain [of reason]. As in the structure of an organized body, the end of each member can only be deduced from the full conception of the whole. It may, then, be said of such [a critique] that it is never trustworthy except it be perfectly complete, down to the minute elements [of pure reason]. In the sphere of this faculty you can determine and define either everything or nothing." ("Prolegomena", P. 11)

The combination of my first two theses provides radical and powerful simplifications to the mind-body problem. It raises a new and seemingly overwhelming difficulty however; if it is true, then what do we know, and what can we know of the reality in which we exist? Since my very arguments depend,

moreover, on accepted knowledge1 of that world, have I not reduced my own case to absurdity? The path to my third thesis will answer these questions and supply, (at its conclusion), the single remaining part of my promised complete solution to the mind-body problem. The latter is the answer to the problem of the "substance" of the mind. What is "mind" and where is it? How could it be?

Before I can formally state my third thesis which will answer these questions, (in Chapter 5), however, we must look at the problem of knowing, (epistemology), and at the broader problem of cognition generally, to include perception. It demarcates the problem of "substance". It sets the bounds and

defines the very context within which we must consider it. The pivotal issue will

be "closure"!1

Closure:

A mathematical domain D is called "closed" under operations "*" and "#", (let us say), if for every x and y in D, "x*y" and "x#y" are necessarily in D as well. The result of all such operations on the domain is, no matter how far concatenated, always again within the domain. It never "escapes" itself! I will argue that our

human cognitive domain is itself likewise closed, (though bounded),1 under its operations. This was Kant's, (and Maturana's), conclusion as well. Surprisingly it will simplify the problem of "substance" and resolve the intolerable dilemma I (so innocently) raised as well. It is not that the problem of substance is itself so difficult; it is the demands that we make on the answer.

Kant was the most scientific, (I might equally say "mathematical"), thinker

on this problem, and he is confirmed more recently, from the logical side by

Quine,1 and, from the side of biology, by Maturana and Varela. Though Kant's arguments belong to another era, his overall conclusions and his rigorous identification of the basic and necessary assumptions remains intact. Sanity and plausibility depend on just two, (by definition "metaphysical"), postulates of absolute existence: "externality" and "experience", ("intuition"). Without them, there is no reason for reason! But those postulates operate solely within the closed

domain of reason: "our judgement within this sphere cannot be corrected by

anything without."1

While fully affirming the existence of our external world as a necessary prerequisite to reason, Kant concluded that we are inherently incapable of knowing any of its independent properties, (to include time, space, extension, tactility -impenetrability), independent of their revelation in, and in combination with, human cognitive forms. Kant argued, (in quite a modern vein), that it is impossible to separate our "instrument", (the peculiarities of biological human cognition), from what it "measures", i.e. the world it cognates. His genuinely relativistic conclusion gains modern physical credence from the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, and logical credence, (though it contravenes certain of his own, dated, arguments), from the axiomatic foundation of mathematics. He arrived

at a position which I will call "ontic indeterminism"1, (i.e. an indeterminism as to

properties, but not as to the existence of external reality). More recently, Quine1 has argued that our "system of knowledge and beliefs" is logically closed, and

Maturana and Varela1 have argued that biological organisms are operationally and cognitively closed -by definition!

I will argue that our knowledge and, even more broadly, cognition

generally1, (to include perception!), is a closed, (i.e. self-referential), domain

whose "boundary conditions"1 are: (1) the most general, (i.e. the weakest and most abstract), possible

assumption of "externality" itself, and (2) "experience" as an uninterpreted primitive, i.e. not the interpretation or

organization of that "experience" -not, for example, its interpretation as

"sense impressions"1. The connection between these two assumptions is not necessarily simplistic. This chapter elaborates the first of them.

In this chapter, I will examine Maturana and Varela's arguments as set forth in "The Tree of Knowledge". (Maturana and Varela, 1987) They consummate the viewpoint of modern biology on the issue of closure. This penetrating work, very much the biological complement of Kant's "Prolegomena" I feel, defines the secure biological context in which they develop a single heuristic principle, ("structural coupling"), crucial to the mind-body problem. I will differ strongly with the conclusions they draw from it, however, as they were unwilling to accept the devastating consequences of their own arguments. I do.

Maturana and Varela characterize their book as an argument against a representative model of environment in the brain, against the existence of a current "map" which we use to compute behavior appropriate for survival in our contemporaneous world. Their argument propounds, instead, a closed, (and evolutionarily determined), reactive parallelism to environment -i.e. "congruent structural coupling". They argue that organisms do not behave as they do because

of the nature of their current surroundings; they behave alongside of it!1 Organisms, as reactive physical systems, are "operationally closed". Their closed ontogenic state is only "triggered" by their environment. Environment is a "boundary condition" of survival, not a motivation for action. They conclude there is no current model because there is no flow of current "information".

They develop their fundamental thesis, "structural coupling", at the ground level of primitive evolution. It is a principle of purely mechanistic coexistence between "organism" and "environment" which preserves "autopoiesis", (reproduction). It is, I will argue however, weaker than the strict parallelism, ("congruence"), they demand of it. Their argument, examined more deeply, is against "information" between an organism and its environment at any stage -to

include that of natural selection! "Congruence"1, however, would clearly be

evolutionary information!1 "Structural coupling" and the "conservation of autopoiesis", (and Darwin's "natural selection" itself), are quintessentially

principles of raw appropriateness however.1 They are not informational. They say: "This works!"; they do not say: "This is what is!" (They do not exhaust or mirror the whole of possibility). Neither parallelism, ("congruence"), nor embodiment are legitimate consequences of these principles, I will argue, even at the evolutionary level. There are correlations between domains other than "isomorphism" or "congruence" which preserve pertinency. The mappings and transformations of abstract algebra are obvious counterexamples disproving the inference. It is only necessary that (some) feature(s) compatible with the milieu of the domain be preserved. I will argue that the presumed necessity of "evolutionary congruence" is a human precept and part of the closed and specifically human cognitive model.

I will now attempt to summarize Maturana and Varela's thesis. Please forgive the length of my citations, but I feel their arguments are profound, subtle, and more concise than any paraphrase. I believe they are, up to a certain point, conclusive.

Maturana and Varela:

Maturana and Varela,1 make a profound and phenomenologically pure2 argument proceeding from first principles. It leads to severe epistemological consequences. They begin by outlining minimal and necessary biological specifications for "living organisms". Those then become a sufficient rationale for

the whole of metacellular organisms and their (nervous) behavior.1 The argument

is wholly operational and constructive.1

"Our intention, therefore, is to proceed scientifically: if we cannot provide a list that characterizes a living being, why not propose a system that generates all the phenomena proper to a living being? The evidence that an autopoietic unity has exactly all these features becomes evident in the light

of what we know about the interdependence between metabolism and

cellular structure."1

Plausibly, they characterize a "living organism" as an "autopoietic unity", i.e. a replicating (cellular) physical entity. In so doing, they clarify the inherent nature of biological phenomenology itself, (i.e. its innate categories and operative principles).

"the potential diversification and plasticity in the family of organic molecules has made possible the formation of networks of molecular reactions that produce the same types of molecules that they embody, while at the same time they set the boundaries of the space in which they are

formed. These molecular networks and interactions that produce themselves

and specify their own limits are ... living beings."1

"Autopoietic unities specify biological phenomenology as the phenomenology proper of those unities", (my emphasis), "with features distinct from physical phenomenology... because the phenomena they generate in functioning as autopoietic unities depend on their organization

and the way this organization comes about, and not on the physical nature of

their components."1

The legitimate and minimal principles appropriate to biological process are operational closure and independence.

"Ontogeny is the history of structural changes in a particular living being. In this history each living being begins with an initial structure. This structure conditions the course of its interactions and restricts the structural changes that the interactions may trigger in it", (my emphasis). "At the same time, it is born in a particular place, in a medium that constitutes the ambience in which it emerges and in which it interacts. This ambience appears to have a structural dynamics of its own, operationally distinct from the living being. This is a crucial point. As observers, we have distinguished the living system as a unity from its background and have characterized it as a definite organization. We have thus distinguished two

structures that are going to be considered operationally independent of each

other, (my emphasis), "living being and environment."1

Physical science's primal principle of "mechanism", however, leads to a distinct point of view on the interactions of the "autopoietic unity" with its environment: "triggering", "perturbation", and "structural coupling". Organism and environment are coincident, not operationally dependent!

"Every ontogeny occurs within an environment; we, as observers, can describe both as having a particular structure such as diffusion, secretion, temperature. In describing autopoietic unity as having a particular structure, it will become clear to us that the interactions (as long as they are recurrent) between unity and environment will consist of reciprocal perturbations. In these interactions, the structure of the environment only triggers structural changes in the autopoietic unities (it does not specify or direct them)", (my emphasis), "and vice versa for the environment. The result will be a history of mutual congruent structural changes as long as the autopoietic unity and

its containing environment do not disintegrate: there will be a structural

coupling."1

(I argue that their phenomenology applies to genetic modification as well as ontogenic modification. A genetic change -randomly and not causally obtained- is retained simply if it is a benefit to the functioning of the organism -i.e. solely on the basis of appropriateness. It, and the summation of such genetic changes, therefore, do not actually imply "congruence", but some pertinent, (beneficial or at least non-destructive), correlation between domains. "Structural coupling" and "conservation of autopoiesis" are not determinate. They are not "specified or

directed" by the environment either; they are bounded by it. Structural coupling is

therefore a weaker and more abstract condition than they presume.)1

Between the living being and the environment there is a "necessary structural congruence", [but see my comment above], "(or the unity disappears)." But organisms must, (in the innate phenomenology of biology), be considered as independently reactive to, rather than determinately, (i.e. informationally), guided by their environment. The conclusion is grounded in the structure of science itself:

"In the interactions between the living being and the environment within this structural congruence, the perturbations of the environment do not determine what happens to the living being; rather, it is the structure of the living being that determines what change occurs in it. This interaction is not

instructive",1 (my emphasis), "for it does not determine what its effects are going to be. Therefore, we have used the expression 'to trigger' an effect. In this way we refer to the fact that the changes that result from the environment are brought about by the disturbing agent but determined by the

structure of the disturbed system. The same holds true for the environment:

the living being is a source of perturbations and not of instructions."1

"The key to understanding all this is indeed simple: as scientists, we can deal only with unities that are structurally determined. That is, we can deal only with systems in which all their changes are determined by their

structure, whatever it may be, and in which those structural changes are a

result of their own dynamics or triggered by their interactions."1

Organisms react! They react, moreover, in the operational closure of their current (physical) structure. The latter is determined by their "ontogeny", (i.e. on their summed history of structural change as individuals), which has modified the original phenotypic structure:

"This ongoing structural change occurs in the unity from moment to moment, either as a change triggered by interactions coming from the environment in which it exists or as a result of its internal dynamics. As regards its continuous interactions with the environment, the cell unity classifies them and sees them in accordance with its structure at every instant. That structure, in turn continuously changes because of its internal

dynamics. The overall result is that the ontogenic transformation of a unity

ceases only with its disintegration."1

Maturana goes on to define "second order" and "third order structural coupling" as the structural coupling of the multicellular organism with its environment, and the coupling of intraspecies' behavioral interaction, (e.g. linguistic behavior), with environment respectively. But these are always dependent upon the necessary conservation of the autopoiesis of the germ cell. The scope of the subsequent development, (the operational range), of the

metacellular organism1 is determinate from its unicellular stage, and subject to its phenomenology. "The life of a multicellular individual as a unity goes on through the operation of its components, but it is not determined by their properties. Each one of these pluricellular individuals...results from the division and segregation of a lineage of cells that originate ... (from) a single cell or zygote. ...It is as simple as this: the logic of the constitution of each metacellular organism demands that it be

part of a cycle in which there is a necessary unicellular stage"1. The conservation of the autopoiesis of that unicellular stage is the necessary boundary condition of the (independent and coincident) function of any organism, unicellular or multicellular.

"Living beings are not unique in their determination nor in their structural coupling. What is proper to them, however, is that structural determination and coupling in them take place within the framework of ongoing conservation of the autopoiesis that defines them, whether of the first or second order, and that everything in them is subordinate to that conservation. Thus, even the autopoiesis of the cells that make up a metacellular system is subordinate to its autopoiesis as a second-order autopoietic system. Therefore, every structural change occurs in a living being necessarily limited by the conservation of its autopoiesis; and those interactions that trigger in it structural changes compatible with that conservation are perturbations, whereas those that do not are destructive interactions. Ongoing structural change of living beings with conservation

of their autopoiesis is occurring at every moment, continuously, in many

ways at the same time. It is the throbbing of all life."1

Behavior, from the biochemical behavior of the amoeba to the nervous behavior of man, is simply an aspect of primary structural coupling. It is the correlation of sensory surfaces with motor surfaces: "...the sequence of movements of the amoeba is therefore produced through the maintenance of an internal correlation between the degree of change of its membrane and those protoplasmic changes we see as pseudopods. That is, a recurrent or invariable correlation is established between a perturbed or sensory surface of the organism and an area

capable of producing movement (motor surface), which maintains unchanged a set

of internal relations in the amoeba."1

"This basic architecture of the nervous system is universal and valid not only for the hydra, but also for higher vertebrates, including human beings. ... the basic organization of this immensely complicated human nervous system follows essentially the same logic as in the humble hydra ...the nervous tissue understood as a network of neurons has been separated like a compartment inside the animal, with nerves along which pass connections that come and go from the sensory surfaces and motor surfaces. The sole difference lies not in the fundamental organization of the network that generates sensorimotor correlations, but in the form in which this network is embodied through neurons and connections that vary from one animal species to the other. ... But we emphasize: ... this is the key mechanism whereby the nervous system expands the realm of interactions of an organism: it couples the sensory and motor surfaces through a network of neurons whose pattern can be quite varied. Once established, however, it permits many different realms of behavior in the phylogeny of metazoa. In

fact, the nervous systems of varied species essentially differ only in the

specific patterns of their interneuronal networks."1

Brain cells do not connect only to motor and receptor cells, however, most of them connect to other brain cells: "in humans, some 1011 (one hundred billion) interneurons interconnect some 106 (one million) motoneurons that activate a few

thousand muscles, with some 107 (ten million) sensory cells1 distributed as receptor surfaces throughout the body. Between motor and sensory neurons lies the brain,

like a gigantic mass of interneurons that interconnects them (at a ratio

10:100,000:1) in an everchanging dynamic."1

The sensory surface includes, however, not only those cells that we see externally as receptors capable of being perturbed by the environment, "but also those cells capable of being perturbed by the organism itself, including the neuronal network."

"Thus the nervous system participates in the operation of a metacellular as a mechanism that maintains within certain limits the structural changes of the organism. This occurs through multiple circuits of neuronal activity structurally coupled to the medium. In this sense, the nervous system can be characterized as having operational closure", (my emphasis). "In other words, the nervous system's organization is a network of active components in which every change of relations of activity leads to further changes of relations of activity. Some of these relationships remain invariant through continuous perturbation both due to the nervous system's own dynamics and due to the interactions of the organism it integrates. In other words, the

nervous system functions as a closed network of changes in relations of

activity between its components."1

External perturbations only modulate the constant interplay of internal balances of sensorimotor correlations. "It is enough to contemplate this structure of the nervous system... to be convinced that the effect of projecting an image on the retina is not like an incoming telephone line. Rather, it is like a voice (perturbation) added to many voices during a hectic family discussion (relations of activity among all incoming convergent connections) in which the consensus of

actions reached will not depend on what any particular member of the family

says."1

"a nervous system...as part of an organism, will have to function in it by contributing to its structural determination from moment to moment. This contribution will be due both to its very structure and to the fact that the result of its operation (e.g., language) forms part of the environment which, from instant to instant, will operate as a selector in the structural drift of the organism with conservation of adaptation. Living beings (with or without a nervous system), therefore, function always in their structural present. The past as a reference to interactions gone by and the future as a reference to interactions yet to come are valuable dimensions for us to communicate...however, they do not operate in the structural determinism of the organism at every moment. With or without a nervous system, all

organisms (ourselves included) function as they function and are where they

are at each instant, because of their structural coupling."1

Maturana presents a sufficient and scientifically necessary rationale for the whole of "living organisms" -to include their "behavior". It is convincing because of the purity and the correctness of his phenomenology as biology. At each step of evolution, on each fundamental aspect of the functioning of an "organism", on the reconciliation of the metacellular, (in all its functions), with the germ cell, these are the biologically definitive categories and principles proper to a "living being". Its "purity" lies in the fact that he never, (and never has to), step outside this phenomenology -this context- to complete his thesis. It is necessary and sufficient, -and legitimate, (in the legal sense),- to the whole of "living beings". It is, therefore, completely plausible.

Nowhere does his mechanics involve "representation", however! Indeed, "representation" is inconsistent with the mechanics itself. He concludes as a necessary consequence of scientific principle that neither organisms, nor their brains, operate with representations of their surroundings. "Representation" is inconsistent with the necessary phenomenology of organisms -and extrinsic, (and inessential), to the "mechanism" of science. The principle of parsimony, (i.e. least cause), dictates his conclusion. Organisms are structurally closed systems, only "perturbed" by their environment, never "in knowledge" of it.

"The most popular and current view of the nervous system considers it an instrument whereby the organism gets information from the environment which it then uses to build a representation of the world that it uses to compute behavior adequate for its survival in the world. This view requires that the environment imprint in the nervous system the characteristics proper to it and that the nervous system use them to generate behavior, much the same as we use a map to plot a route. We know, however, that the nervous system as part of an organism operates with structural determination. Therefore, the structure of the environment cannot specify its changes, but can only trigger them. ...Our first tendency to describe what happens .." (is in) "... some form of the metaphor of 'getting information' from the environment represented 'within'. Our course of reasoning, however, has

made it clear that to use this type of metaphor contradicts everything we

know about living beings."1

His argument is not specifically against models in general, however, but,

rather, against representative models, and in this I think it is conclusive.1 It leaves very little room for objection. It is consistent, convincing and in the mainstream of science. It leads, perplexingly, to a disastrous paradox: "We are faced with a formidable snag because it seems that the only alternative to a view of the nervous system as operating with representations is to deny the surrounding reality"!

"Indeed, if the nervous system does not operate -and cannot operate -with a representation of the surrounding world, what brings about the extraordinary functional effectiveness of man and animal and their enormous capacity to learn and manipulate the world? If we deny the objectivity of a knowable world, are we not in the chaos of total arbitrariness because everything is possible? This is like walking on the razor's edge. On one side there is a trap: the impossibility of understanding cognitive phenomena if we assume a world of objects that informs us because there is no mechanism that makes that 'information' possible", (my emphasis). On the other side,

there is another trap: the chaos and arbitrariness of nonobjectivity, where

everything seems possible."1

"In fact, on the one hand there is the trap of assuming that the nervous system operates with representations of the world. And it is a trap, because it blinds us to the possibility of realizing how the nervous system functions from moment to moment as a definite system with operational closure. ... On the other hand, there is the other trap: denying the surrounding environment on the assumption that the nervous system functions completely in a vacuum, where everything is valid and everything is possible. This is the other extreme: absolute cognitive solitude or solipsism. ... And it is a trap

because it does not allow us to explain how there is a due proportion or

commensurability between the operation of the organism and its world."1

Maturana and Varela have honed their "razor's edge" with the same care and meticulous skill with which, as biologists, they would undoubtedly hone a microtome. I suggest they are proposing that we stand, therefore, not on a razor's edge, but on a microtome's! That, as any biologist should surely know, is an

invitation to suicide.1 They have created a full-blown antinomy. The usual method of dealing with antinomies is to examine the presuppositions.

Wait though, you must surely be thinking! Couldn't we just deny "mind" in its ordinary sense, then? Isn't this the simplest solution to the difficulty? Why not just abandon (organic) "cognition" entirely, and "experience" and "externality", (in our normal meanings of them), right along with it- and go back solely to parallel and congruent behavior itself -i.e. to parallel reactivity, predetermined by evolution? Why not just deal with the reactivity and the (reductionist) process of

the brain as part of the world,1 accepting the arguments for the inadequacy and the inconsistency of organic cognition as a final reductio ad absurdum of "mental states" and deal only with organisms' (behavioral) function?

Maturana and Varela have, you might correctly continue, specified a phenomenology specific to organisms, but they have specified it within the context

of an actual physical world. Couldn't we, therefore, just deny the "figment"1 of the mind, (the "consciousness", the "awareness" of the brain -or organism), as "folk

psychology" and myth?1 Couldn't we consider "mind" as just a linguistic and behavioral phenomenon? Sure we could, and it is a necessary consequence of

ordinary Naturalism. But then we are right back, (necessarily), in Maturana's1 dilemma, but invoked at a deeper level! For how then does even the behavioral,

and especially the linguistic1 function, (our descriptive language), of (human) organisms, as behavior, come to be specifically, (i.e. informationally), relevant to

the world? Is this not linguistic idealism?1 Maturana's whole argument -and Darwin's as well - is one of simple appropriateness. It is "survival" and "structural coupling", not "information". This Naturalist argument presumes that organisms' reactivity -third order coupling, (language), and behavior- determined from the beginning by evolution for the phenotype and operationally closed thereafter, is

categorical1! 2 This, however, is the only plausible course left to ordinary3 Naturalism after Maturana, but it is a difficult one. It assumes that whatever evolution determines, (whatever "parallelism" or "congruency" or "adaptability" that evolution gets for an organism), is embodied in the genotype and subsequently in the phenotype. From that point on, the argument is necessarily entrapped in the operational closure of the organism. That closed system must determine its reactivity, (its supposed "parallel reactivity"), forever after throughout its subsequent ontogenic history.

But if even the weather is not determinate from a fixed set of principles and starting point, then how are we to believe that evolution has embodied the complexity of day to day, week to week, or year to year physical reality in such a fixed beginning? What model does evolution, (as embodied in the genotype), itself have that it is trying to parallel? If a butterfly in Australia can cause a hurricane in Florida then how are we to believe that evolution has a model at all, much less that it can embody such in closed (behavioral or linguistic) principles and laws of reactivity for the phenotype.

The argument assumes that evolution launched a closed operational system, (the phenotype), out into the world. But evolution could not know what that phenotype must be functional with -i.e. evolution has no model itself! Evolution cannot predict the world -especially in its human-scale features. It cannot predict the weather, the pattern of rocks, foliage, water and heat -i.e. "the facts"- in an ecosystem, and, if not them, then it surely cannot predict the more complex reactivity of the organism's fellow biological creatures -pinching claws, a stalking tiger, or an infection by vibrio comma, (cholera). "Chaos theory", (for instance), argues that while cyclical processes, (e.g. the large-scale motions of the planets and stars), produce regular and predictable results, non-linear processes do not.

But physical process, (the ongoing world), especially at the human scale, is dynamic and non-linear. Moreover it is, by and large, not cyclical. It is, therefore, not predictable in a determinate model. To assume that such a correspondence to the physical world can be implemented throughout the lifespan of an organism in a fixed and determinate, and specifically a parallel operative model, (an informational model), is a difficult premise. (See specifically the arguments of Appendix A or Lakoff's arguments in the Lakoff/Edelman appendix). For the specifically biological world, the biological ecosystem, it is more than difficult. More plausible is that evolution works by the creation of dynamic and operative local -and not informational -functions, that are intimately and locally connected to changing process.

The creation of a multitude of these atomic functions that track, (i.e. trigger from), incremental change in the physical world is a more plausible evolutionary scenario than the representationist one. But this is exactly my first hypothesis: that

evolution created local functions like this at the cellular level. The organization of these atomic processes then becomes the real problem for the "evolutionary engineer", and it is this organization which, I propose, was accomplished incrementally by the schematic model. Our (biological) "objects" are organizers, I argue, organizing loci of these atomic processes and not informational representations. The schematic object is an organization of atomic processes, which latter track we-know-not-what.

For how could even evolution know what that "what" might be? Evolution produces the operationally closed structural coupling of the phenotype, but that structural coupling must be specifically dynamic rather than informational. What evolution can deal with are such processes, not information. It can deal with processes that work on the local, tactical level.

The representationalist schema, (of ordinary Naturalism), is not plausible. No, that is not quite true, it is plausible inside of our own human cognitive model. It is plausible because it happens that way! My argument is that it happens that way because it is inside of our model!

To quote Dennett, (a surprising passage for me):

"it is not the point of our sensory systems that they should detect 'basic' or 'natural' properties of the environment, but just that they should serve our

'narcissistic' purposes in staying alive; nature doesn't build epistemic

engines." Dennett, 1991, P.382, my emphasis.1

This is an antinomy. No, more accurately, it is a specific and pointed

reductio ad absurdum of the (ordinary) Naturalist premise!1 What Bertrand Russel says of naive realism applies to ordinary Naturalism, its (natural) child:

"We all start from 'naive realism'. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false." "An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth", Bertrand Russell, Pp. 14-15

To paraphrase Russell, if we know, then we can't know. Therefore we do not know.

Maturana and Varela characterized the dilemma incorrectly, however. They specified a necessary choice between solipsism on the one hand, and representationalism/realism on the other, and this is not the case.

We needn't deny reality based on their arguments, just our specific knowledge of it! Nor need we deny "mind". It is the acceptance of an "Axiom of

Externality", in its most abstract form, taken axiomatically, that is demanded here,1

and that is not denied by their arguments. It is the improper extension of that demand, and its confusion with the particulars of our specifically human organic process, (to include cognition), that generates the difficulty.

As realists we must grant the presumption of "externality" -the simple posit of an ontic existence. It is fundamental to sanity and to plausibility. The posit of our world, men and baseballs and trees and planets as necessary ontic entities, however, is not! Even our perceptual world is a part of our closed cognitive process. I have argued, (in chapter 1), that it is an operative, (and dynamic), artifact.

But, you surely object once again, we cannot deny the "objects of our experience" and their apparent relationality! I agree, it is these objects which provide the stability of our life experience and ground the very essence of sanity, (my thesis is not solipsism). In the next chapter, I will show why we need not.

We all want our naive world to be real: trucks, men, planets and baseballs, and all our normal relations between them -i.e. all the things they do. It is a necessary component of "sanity", and distinguishes it from dreams, fantasies, and, baldly, insanity. If a rock hits me on the head, it will hurt!

But, contrarily, our best science says that our naive world is not real! What is real for science are atoms, forces, photons, quarks,... all embedded in some mathematically esoteric spatial context. For it, myself and the man in front of me are, in fact, biological pluralities, or, deeper still, atomic amalgams... down to the deepest levels of physical conception. Naturalism, (the scientifically extended1 form of our naive conception and the verity Maturana is loathe to lose), allows this heresy only because it says that our natural world is hierarchically,2 (and isomorphically), embedded in that primitive existence which science posits, and

1 ? It is a key element in the resolution of the problems of the "Cartesian theater", (see Chapter 2), and has profound implications for the fundamental epistemological problem as well, (Chapters 3,4 and 5).

1 ? And for the foundations of the first scientific psychiatry!1 ? My "object" might be likened to the second, purely internal and

procedural component of Hofstadter's "symbol" but discounting or at least drastically subordinating his primary, representative component. Hofstadter appreciates that his "symbol" has a large, purely internal and operational function besides its representational role.(Hofstadter 1979, P.570) I will address the issues of "representation" and "isomorphism" presently.

1 ? I will develop these aspects in Chapters 3, 4 and 51 ? and of Edelman1 ? Returning to the "Macintosh" analogy I used earlier, because "the letter is

in the trashcan" does not imply that that aspect of computer process which is "the letter" is physically or logically inside that aspect of computer process which is the "trashcan". It does not imply that they are hierarchically organized.

2 ? Just as a good Copernican was obliged to accept the data of the Ptolemean astronomer before him, (the angles and times recording the motion of Venus, for instance), so are we required to accept the relationality of experience -the data of naive cognition, i.e. apples, tigers and railroad trains and all the things they do. But we are not required , (no more than he), to accept the ontology in which it was understood! I propose, then, a real "heterophenomenology", (cf Dennett, 1991), i.e. a neutral ontic commitment!

1 ? I am most definitely not arguing a QM, (quantum mechanics), solution to the mind-body problem. Rather, I will argue that our perceptual world stands in the same relation to reality as does modern physics, (including QM). Both, I argue, are algorithms! The latter is an intellectual algorithm, the former an organic one. Both algorithms coordinate response. But the dynamic algorithm embodied in naive realism, (which is the computational calculus), -and perception, (the objects) - is the one that evolution supplied us with. (I will resolve the obvious difficulty in my third thesis.)

that those hierarchical entities, (our normal "objects"), act as units. It maintains that this reduction is specifically a hierarchical1 one which maintains all the spatial and material relationships down through each and all of the depths of scale -hence their reality! Modern science has not confirmed, but rather has seriously questioned, that assertion. What are we to embed them in? At the bottom level of physics, "matter", "space", even "existence", in the sense in which naive realism uses them, are anomalous terms. Even "cardinality" as such -the "how many of it"- is dubious!2

1 ? cf Fine 19861 ? This is not the self-contradiction it might seem. I accept the relationality,

(i.e. the predictivity), of evolution, but not necessarily its ontic primitives. I will develop this theme in Chapters 3 and 4.

2 ? Cf. Lakoff on Rosch’s “basic level categories”.1 ? Compare Lakoff’s discussion of “prototypes”.1 ? see the argument of Appendix A1 ? this is P.S. Churchland's "good trick"!1 ? other than the one which assumes its own conclusion. If our perceptual

world were, in fact, representative of reality, then the representation of the brain would, therefore, be efficacious! The argument confuses consistency with necessity.

1 ? See Chapter 2, "The Logical Problem".1 Johnson, of course, is famous for his demonstrative argument against idealism.

He is said to have kicked a rock saying: “I refute it thus!”1 Cf Rosch, Lakoff, Edelman2 (process)1 Edelman 1992, p.2301 I argue that the “linkage” in Edelman’s second postulate is real but blind

however. Cf Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5 and Appendices A & B.1 see below1 in agreement with Edelman’s third postulate of realism.1 In the sense of chapter 1 and which I will argue explicitly as the subject of

chapter 4. See especially the “King of Petrolia” fable.1 i.e. brains select from pre-existing internal variation on pragmatic rather than

informational grounds as the immune system does1 Edelman, 1992, P. 224. His argument is very similar in form and purpose to

my argument of Appendix. A.1 Putnam and Lakoff argue against even the logical consistency of the standard

solution –a truth-functional mapping from a formal system to a model.

Even ordinary Naturalism1 does not, therefore, maintain the integrity of our naive objects! But is its insistence on the maintenance of the hierarchical integrity of those objects a necessary, or even a plausible presupposition at this juncture in our intellectual history?

My hypothesis of the schematic object, contrarily, says that our naive world -to include its relationality, (its laws and happenings),-is more probably unhierarchically, (but rather transformationally), correspondent with absolute externality, whatever and however the latter may be. Ultimately it says that our

1 There is, of course, a definitional problem here. “Knowing”, “awareness”, “cognition" +are all often understood as referential, operational, et al. But the other sense: i.e. conscious knowing, conscious awareness, conscious cognition, is precisely the problem we are here to solve. It does not consist in showing how an automaton, a “zombie”, a Turing machine –or even a biological organism- can be constructed to be indistinguishable from a human respondent. Dennett, and almost every other realist writer on the subject, (even Edelman sidesteps the problem), thinks that our ordinary sense of these words is impossible. The “homonculus”, the “color phi”, etc. argue against a “Cartesian theatre”. It is the subject of this chapter to show how just such a “theatre” can be constructed, consistent with scientific logic.

1 “Interaction” is process/doing; it is not “knowing”. 1 After Dennett's usage1 This is not a superfluous caution considering, for instance, Lakoff’s treatment

of formal systems and meaning, (nor Edelman’s cavalier dismissal of axiom systems). It is in the assignment of a truth function from a formal system to a model wherein he challenges the logical validity of the objectivist theory of meaning based on Putnam’s argument. “Implicit definition” must be strongly distinguished from “formalism” which was conceived by Hilbert as a theory of proof. Implicit definition”, however, was conceived specifically as a theory of meaning. It derives instead, I think, from his background as the “king of invariants”. The “things” are the logical invariants of the axioms.

1 I.e. They are specified from primitive operations rather than from primitive properties.

1 In Kant’s sense of the word1 “Meaning”, normally understood, has to do with connectivity to other

meanings.1 And I think they are very good!1 Conversely, however, these are the kinds of things that we would like any

viable theory to explicate. They are strong and viable clues to any acceptable

naive world is in correspondence to "points" of atomic biological process,1 and not to "points" of ontology. It is a metaphor of response. It says that the further correspondence between those atomic processes themselves and ontology is completely indeterminate to us as biological and cognitive entities!

theory and no proposed realist theory before this has done other than to deny them.1 I will discuss this issue further in the “Lakoff/Edelman appendix. My thesis

has direct implications for neuroscience, but it also has implications for the foundations of mathematics and logic and thereby for the whole of hard science itself. It challenges the adequacy, (but not the validity), of even that lynchpin of modern thought –the mathematical set! In the “Dennett” appendix, I have also sketched what I believe could be the beginnings of a first scientific psychiatry.

1 They both emphatically disclaim the possibility of a “God’s eye view” of the world, and then both proceed to supply exactly that –a (sophisticated) “naïve realistic” , (i.e. “objectivist”), answer in a “naïve realistic” , (“objectivist”), world! Both embed their answers precisely inside the particular “container” schema! Maturana and Varela encounter the same difficulty.

1 Cf Afterword: Lakoff / Edelman2 I will use these interchangeably1 More accurately, it is based in ICM’s, (“idealized cognitive models”), derived

from bodily function. But all of these ICM's are defined precisely within the particular “container schema”, (the set-theoretic ICM), of the body in space! It supplies therefore the very “God’s eye view whose possibility he disclaims. Lakoff’s relativism does not satisfy the paradox he creates. cf “Lakoff/Edelman Appendix”

1 defined on a series1 [blond, blond, blond,…]1 Classical logic represents the special case of a rule of series wherein the rule

is identity.1 There are other strong grounds as well. In line with the “productivity

requirement” I referred to above, it yields new insights into the foundations of mathematics and logic. These are not trivial concerns in light of the acknowledged discordances in set theory and logic. Rosch’s and Lakoff’s empirical findings are a strong fit as well.

1 In a more general sense, (using the terminology of Maturana), of “ontogenic coupling”

The Axiom of Externality

The acceptance of the raw existence1 of such a correlation, however, constitutes a necessary requirement for any sane or plausible argument -to include my own.2 This is the assertion, the "Axiom of Externality" in its most abstract form, and constitutes the first of the two necessary, (apodictic), premises for realist reason.3 (The other is the "Axiom of Experience" which I will treat in the following chapter.)

1 see Lakoff re: Putnam1 Cf P.S. Churchland, or Dennett for instance1 My apologies to Dennett, but, as I reflect in a later footnote, his “unfair to

quote this out of context” prohibition does not refute the fact that after several hundred pages, he says just that.

1 Cf Dennett 1991, P.1301 normally taken1 In Lakoff’s terminology, it is a hierarchical “container schema”.1 ? Compare also Lakoff: 1987, p.353. “Most of the subject matter of

classical logic is categorization.”1 ? Cassirer 1923 pps.3-4 He continues: "The Aristotelian logic, in its general principles, is a true

expression and mirror of the Aristotelian metaphysics. Only in connection with the belief upon which the latter rests, can it be understood in its peculiar motives. The conception of the nature and divisions of being predetermines the conception of the fundamental forms of thought. In the further development of logic, however, its connections with the Aristotelian ontology in its special form begin to loosen; still its connection with the basic doctrine of the latter persists, and clearly reappears at definite turning points of historical evolution. Indeed, the basic significance, which is ascribed to the theory of the concept in the structure of logic, points to this connection. ..."

[But] "... The work of centuries in the formulation of fundamental doctrines seems more and more to crumble away; while on the other hand, great new groups of problems, resulting from the general mathematical theory of the manifold, now press to the foreground. This theory appears increasingly as the common goal toward which the various logical problems, that were formerly investigated separately, tend and through which they receive their ideal unity."

It is just this "general mathematical theory of the manifold" to which he refers at the end which, I will argue, forces an even further extension of Cassirer's own

The "realism" Maturana impeaches is, in fact, (ordinary) "Naturalism". Nor has he really made a case that solipsism is the only other alternative.1 While his case against representationalism does destroy the claims of ordinary Naturalism,2 a realistic case is still possible -but it must be a theoretically mature one. Einstein's realism3 is more plausible. That brand of realism involves simply that "theory be organized around a [some] conceptual model of an observer-independent realm".4 My thesis takes this "some" in its most abstract form, as the (pure) limit of reason. This "realism" is certainly more credible in light of today's physics. Realism is

arguments.1 ? as strongly distinguished from his "Formalism" which is quite a different

issue1 ? I will be employing a convention of capitalizing the word “concept”

when it denotes the formal, technical notion of the concept to avoid such verbiage as “the concept of the concept”, etc.

1 ? "Foundations of Geometry", Hilbert, 1910.1 These terms presume only existence, not any particular properties of that

existence. This, I suggest, is what it means for them to be "permissive".1 Under the assumption that '0' '1'1 given the addition of the Well-ordering principle, itself wholly operative as

well1 Compare Cassirer: "…we have in pure mathematics a field of knowledge, in

which things and their properties are disregarded in principle, and in whose fundamental concepts therefore, no general property of things can be contained." , "Substance & Function", p.18 Does this mean that we must follow Hilbert into "formalism" -i.e. the simple manipulation of "marks"? I don't think so, for there is nothing particular about any given choice of marks in an axiom system- e.g. the identity elements might be named by any other marks, so long as the usage is consistent. It is the relationality, the operationality of those marks in a connective system which is significant. What "implicit definition" furnishes, then, is a concept embodying the invariant relationality of the system under all consistent substitutions. What is important about it is that that invariant relationality is non-trivial -e.g. that an " integral domain", (taken abstractly), can correspond with the real (?) integers "up to isomorphism"! (Birkhoff & Mac Lane, 1953, p. 34)

1 ? Cf. The section immediately following this and the Afterword: Lakoff / Edelman for a further discussion of Aristotelean Logic.

1 ? Consider the "object" of Chapter 1 in this light.1 ? I make a very large distinction between "implicit definition" and

"formalism", both products of Hilbert's sweeping intellect. The latter deals with a formal and mechanical methodology of proof while the former deals with actual

more robust than Maturana assumes, and is capable of greater sophistication than a mere linear extension of the naive world-view. In Fine's words, it is an "attitude". In disagreement with Fine however, I believe it is a robust attitude.

Maturana came very close to the answer I propose. His "object" of cognition1 is an object of process: "cognition does not concern" [external] "objects, for cognition is effective action." He relapses, however, into the "objects" of the Naturalistic context in which he framed the problem:

and internal logical implication -which is not the same as its formal expression. Most working mathematicians are not particularly committed to "formalism", but they are very definitely committed to "implicit definition". Every time a mathematician goes to definitions, (which is all the time), he goes to the undefined terms of the system he is dealing with -and no further!

Hilbert was a "catholic" mathematician in the small "c" sense -he had enormous scope. It is the "king of invariants" who sired "implicit definition", I believe, and not his twin –i.e. the father of "formalism".

2 ? As Cassirer commented, this does not mean that it does not look to experience as the origin, the suggestion for its ideas, but rather that it does not accept experience as the arbiter of its substance.

1 ? as is clearly visible in the evolution and reassessment of modern geometry -in the grounds for the resolution of the "parallel postulate" problem and Non-Euclidean geometries, for instance, and in the whole of Abstract Algebra.

1 ? This is the lesson of Abstract Algebra. I will make this case later in this chapter as part of the argument for the Concept of Implicit Definition.

1 ? See also Einstein (1954), P.234, and Wilder (1967), Pps.3-8 1 ? It is crucial to understand that "defined" is used in a very different sense

in mathematics than in the sense of ordinary "dictionary definition". It specifies the actual, the whole and exclusive existence -for mathematics- of the entity defined. Mathematics students are ingrained in this as the very first step towards "mathematical maturity".

1 ? Please note the close parallel to the argument I made in the "training seminar" of Chapter 1

1 ? i.e. the constitutive relations specified in the axioms1 ? cognition of objects/sets of atomic properties2 ? attention to specific properties of the former1 ? abstraction = set theoretic intersection of those properties2 ? The problem of the "homunculus", I will argue shortly, is already implicit

in this (classical) framing of the concept.

"Thus, human cognition as effective action pertains to the biological domain, but it is always lived in a cultural tradition. The explanation of cognitive phenomena that we have presented in this book is based on the tradition of science and is valid insofar as it satisfies scientific criteria. It is singular within that tradition, however, in that it brings forth a basic conceptual change: cognition does not concern objects, for cognition is effective action..."

1 ? –i.e. that our objects are not perceived or referential objects, but created ones!.

1 ? Cassirer, 1923, Pps.3-233, especially Pps. 3-261 ? ibid. Also see his "Einstein's Theory of Relativity"1 ? See also “Afterword: Lakoff, Edelman…” for another discussion of the

classical concept.1 ? "Substance and Function", p.91 ? ibid p.5 This passage, (delineating, incidentally, the mathematical "power

set"), suggests also the absolute hierarchy of concepts, (and theories), implicit in the classical conception. Cassirer's alternative, (which I will discuss shortly), reveals a new possibility, developing into his theory of "symbolic forms" which I will elaborate in Chapter 4.

1 ? op. cit p.61 ? ibid P.221 ? ibid P.221 ? ibid P.20-231 ? ibid P.20-23, my emphasis1 ? ibid P.20-231 ? ibid, P.23 As one of Kant's commentators urged about one of the latter's

arguments, I find this argument as "mirabile dictu". It is the clear and true expression of what we mean by a "Concept". It is the functional assemblage of a set of rules. Rosch and Lakoff have argued in more recent times, (based in hard empirical data), that the categories of actual human beings, actual human cultures, actual human languages are not, in fact, grounded in the classical Aristotelian "Concept" but are based, instead, in prototype, metaphor, metonymy, association, radial categories, etc. But what are these, (in their anthropological totality), but the free posit of rules of category formation? Cassirer has provided a more classical and rigorous conceptualization. It incorporates the possibility of all (consistent) rules in a classical formulation.

Clearly this does better correspond with ordinary and scientific usage than does the classical concept. It is the functionality of our definitions which specifies

"At the same time, as a phenomenon of languaging in the network of social and linguistic coupling, the mind is not something that is within my brain. Consciousness and mind belong to the realm of social coupling. That is the locus of their dynamics....Language was never invented by anyone only to take in an outside world. Therefore, it cannot be used as a tool to reveal that world. Rather, it is by languaging that the act of knowing, in the behavioral coordination which is language, brings forth a world. ...We find ourselves in this co-ontogenic coupling, not as a preexisting reference nor in

the concept. The mathematical "subset" is the limiting, rather than the typical, case therefore.

1 ? ibid P.161 ? ibid P.261 ? ibid P.26, my emphasis2 ? cf. Stewart, 1995, "Fibonacci Forgeries". Stewart's article illustrates the

case. The "insufficiency of small numbers" leads to an indeterminability of any finite series.

1 ? ibid P.171 ? ibid P.17, my emphasis1 ? It is "presentation" vs. "attention" which is at the basis of the oppositional

orientation of classical logic, and which is ultimately, I will argue, the origin of the problem of the homonculus.

1 ? Compare Lakoff: “Category cue validity defined for such psychological (or interactional) attributes might correlate“, (his emphasis), “with basic-level categorization, but it would not pick out basic-level categories; they would already have to have been picked out in order to apply the definition of category of category cue validity so that there was such a correlation.” (Lakoff: P.54, my emphasis) See Afterword: Lakoff / Edelman. This is surely directly relevant to the context problem as well, (i.e. "the frame problem), in Artificial Intelligence research. (cf. Dreyfus, 1992)

1 ? ibid p.251 ? But see my discussion later.2 ? op. cit P.251 ? ibid p.261 ? "...the concept of function constitutes the general schema and model

according to which the modern concept of nature has been molded in its progressive historical development." (ibid, P.21) See also especially: Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Cassirer 1923

1 ? Discussing Hilbert, Cassirer says: "The procedure of mathematics here", (implicit definition), "points to the analogous procedure of theoretical natural

reference to an origin, but as an ongoing transformation in the becoming of the linguistic world that we build with other human beings", (metacellular organisms).1

But "language ... cannot be used as a tool to reveal [the] world." Hence, (accepting his own conclusion), all his primitives at the final telling are "entities" solely of linguistic (and ontogenic) coupling, and, as such, have no absolute

science, for which it contains the key and justification." ibid p.941 ? ibid P.241 ? ibid p.25, my emphasis1 ? i.e. under classical logic1 ? i.e. it is not transcendent –nor does it provide a “God’s eye view”!1 ? as is assumed under the classical view1 ? I am concerned here with the object of implicit definition only insofar as it

is a logical object, only insofar as it is a mathematical object. This is the actual object of implicit definition. I am not concerned with the (different) objects of models with which it may be made to correspond, i.e. with the objects of its possible realizations. This is quite a different case and quite a different object. It is the logical object per se, I will argue, that solves the homonculus.

1 ? I.e. the abstract set taken in its broadest, most general mathematical sense1 ? Cassirer, like Kant before him, considered the "series", (or a series of

series), as the ultimate possible mode of logical and conceptual organization. He saw it as the ultimate expression, and only possible principle, (rule), for a logical function, (i.e. a logical principle which specifies its extension), other than identity. He based his new formal concept, ("the Functional Concept of Mathematics"), upon that belief.

But that conception is inadequate and inaccurate for the case of modern mathematics. Axiom systems exactly describe, (specify), elements, (their extension), that are not generally, (i.e. not a priori), organizable on a series principle. Axiom systems embody a larger and broader logical principle, (a rule which specifies its instances), and a broader logical concept, (as demonstrated, I suspect, by Goedel). The elements of a mathematical domain are fully prescribed, ("functionally" in Cassirer's sense), by their axioms, (their rule), but this rule is not "series". It is a complex logical rule -not referring to, but internally generating its extension as a virtual expression of its own innate ordering. It is the rule of implicit definition. This rule, following Cassirer, (I will argue), defines a new concept, the "Concept of Implicit Definition".

1 ? which is not, a priori, implicitly dimensional.

referent! He maintains that we are wrong in characterizing the actual world "in reference to an origin". Yet he does exactly that himself. He frames his primitives: structural coupling, metacellular coupling, intraspecies' coupling, ("third order coupling"), and linguistic coupling as interactions of "autopoietic [biological] unities"!

What "autopoietic unities"? And where? Where do these linguistic domains exist -and between what and whom? Where does his book exist? Does it, and, if so, how is it relevant to anything at all? What "history of evolution"? These linguistic terms supposedly do not "reveal the world"!

1 ? Wilder, 1967, P.181 ? Contrary to this view, Resnik,(Resnik, 1992), criticized an example of

such a "structuralist" conception of mathematics in terms of the theory of reference. Under my hypothesis, however, the theory of reference itself becomes highly problematic. (cf Quine, 1953, pps.139-159, "Reference and Modality") Also see Chapter 4.

1 ? See prior "Elaboration" discussion1 ? see above --Schlick1 ? Wilder quotes Nagel: "Indeed, if geometry is to be deductive ... only the

relations specified in the propositions and definitions employed may legitimately be taken into account." (Wilder, 1967, p.7)

1 ? cf Cassirer, 1923 pps.36-412 ? Implicit definition is important when something significant is actually

defined. The "objects" of abstract mathematics, (integers, for instance), are, (in opposition to Mill),"concrete", viable and fruitful. Its element specifies a particular kind of object, and that object is specifically a "crystallization" of a peculiar kind of "ordering"! It embodies the logical and relational essence of that ordering -and that's all! Its "objects" are "crystallizations" of its rule -just like the objects of the training seminar. The rules here, (and there), I argue, define the object, not the converse. But here the actual mechanism of that "crystallization" is transparent. The "calculus" defines the object, and the definitional mechanism is implicit definition.

1 ? my “Concept of Implicit Definition”1 ? and of Chapter 3, and of Maturana and Varela, Edelman and Freeman1 ? I.E. As an organizational rather than a representative model as I argued in

chapter 11 ? See Chapter 3: Maturana and Varela1 ? This is consistent, certainly, with the "schematic object" presented earlier.

How could evolution crystallize its (schematic) objects? The implicit definition of process -of "rule"- provides an explicit mechanism and rationale!

He is, in fact, committed to a Naturalist ground, and it contains real organisms, i.e. "objects". His "object" is ambiguous however. On the one hand it is solely a product of linguistic coupling, (the object of language), but, on the other hand, (in his presupposition of objects/biological unities which are coupled), it is also the basis of his ontology. This is an explicit and fatal self-contradiction. Either the object, i.e. the organism, exists -providing the ground of this linguistic coupling, -or does not -in which case "linguistic coupling" is vacuous!

1 ? If there is a tendency to characterize my thesis as a variation of functionalism, then it should be noted that it involves a totally different notion of "function", (and "relation").

1 ? after Kant's usage1 ? the only appropriate yet suggested!1 ? Cassirer, 1923, P.261 ? "if I know the relation according to which a b c ... are ordered, I can

deduce them by reflection and isolate them as objects of thought" ibid p.261 ? cf Cassirer 1953 and Chapter 41 ? op. cit P.v. I will have much more to say about "Symbolic Forms" in

Chapter 4.1 ? I will suggest a physical paradigm shortly.1 ? i.e., that "perturbation", "triggering" modifies process! cf Maturana and

Varela (1987), pps. 166-171, on brain plasticity.1 ? If "mind" is the "concept of brain process", then its rule -implicit

definition- is primal logic itself. Conversely, if "logic", at its root, is the embodiment of that rule, then the relevancy of logic, as the expression of the ontogenic coupling of the brain, requires no teleological presumptions!

1 ? I.e. within the context of a constitutive logic1 ? i.e., in Maturana’s terminology, of “ontogenic coupling”1 ? Note: 2-4-08 I have developed significantly better brain models in my

online paper: “Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology”grounded in Walter J. Freeman’s cortical research results. It demonstrates a concrete physical model of my conclusions.

1 ? see Chapter 31 ? i.e. doing tensor transformations. See Churchland, 1986, pps. 412-4581 ? The training seminar may still have things to teach us.1 ? Or, as another possibility, think about the multiplicity of specific types of

neurotransmitters in the brain. If the brain is monolithically structural –with the axons and dendrites as “wires” of a sort and the synaptic neurotransmitters as a sort of variable “solder”, then why did evolution go to the trouble of making so many

Does my thesis make our objects not real, then?1 Does it mean that there is no connection between them and the "externality" we must assume? The answer is an emphatic "No!" The connection is in the interface itself, ("structural coupling") and "experience". But the latter must be understood in terms of the former. We are not justified in assigning a particular ontic interpretation to "experience".2

In my next chapter I will "slice" this problem from another side, (citing Quine and Cassirer), and argue that "experience", as an ontic posit -and a cognitive primitive -while absolutely justified as such, can be legitimately described only as

kinds?The fact of their multiplicity of type suggests another interpretation: that of

multiple, superimposed structures, (modules?), sharing neurons and distinguished by their response to specific neurotransmitters. This raw speculation would be another possible conception of “axioms”, i.e. functional blocks in the brain.

2 ? This suggests a very definite line of research, i.e., the detailed investigation of gross substructures in primitive nervous systems. It suggests a line of interpretation in terms of modules of response, i.e. "axioms", whose interaction would define the "objects" of their perceptual worlds! What is it like to be a planarian worm? This may not be a ludicrous idea after all!

1 ? The "elements" of the manifold are "implicitly defined" by their generating relations, but so is "between", "line", ... Could not the "purely intellectual" object, (concept), -as distinguished from the perceptual object- be conceived as the product of co-definition from embedded axiom systems. It would then be an implicitly defined "object" of a different precision, a different "resolution". The element of a group, for instance, is less "resolved", in this sense, than the element of an integral domain or a field.

1 ? See Dreyfus 1992 for the context/"frame" problem1 ? cf Chapter 52 ? Incidentally," implicit definition" suggests another, more mature

perspective than those presented in the earlier discussion on "models". Under this perspective even the schematic models and their artifacts are not (evolutionarily) "constructed" for (efficient) "use". The "objects" arise incidentally -they are implicitly defined as a result of the evolutionary optimization of brain organization around process and response. They are the "undefined terms" of a categorical "axiom system". Under this perspective we do not use our model, we live in it.

1 ? in the sense of Kant's constitutive logic1 ? This correspondence has the potential of supplying a vital and

fundamental biological heuristic principle to psychology itself which, if realized, could be as important to psychology as evolution has been to biology. It could

that which remains invariant under all possible (viable) interpretations, (and I will argue there is always more than one interpretation). But "invariants" are in themselves a very concrete form: they stand, for instance, as the foundation of the Theory of Relativity. Our human cognitive world, and specifically our perceptual world: people and baseballs and the things they do, are real, but they are real in the most general interpretation of their relationality, (them and the things they do). This is not so strange a conception -it is implicit in the reductions of science already. But the latter's requirements of hierarchy and isomorphism are not

supply a fundamental operative rationale and tool for the investigation of mind and consciousness based in biology.

1 ? whose use I will justify in Chapter 41 ? rather than "transcendental" -after Kant's usage.1 ? "concept" and "logic" both conceived reductively as biologic processes.2 ? This, as I noted before, removes another "miracle", i.e. the startling

simplicity and sparsity of the rules of logic and science. From the standpoint of my theses, the appropriateness of our "objects" and the simplicity of their mutual relationality are precisely the point of their existence!

1 ? I have not been "cute" nor, I think, deceptive. It was necessary to establish the language of discussion and a context. The audience I seek is that of working scientists, and I have addressed myself to them. I seek to extend the field in much the same direction -and to the same purpose - as modern physics extended itself. I will resolve the obvious difficulties in the next three chapters.

1 ? As distinguished from "relativized Naturalism" -see Chapter 42 ? i.e. the web of implication and predictivity1 ? cf Chapters 1, 3 and Appendix A1 ? Just "Where" and How this unity exists, (i.e. What), will be addressed in

the third thesis, (Chapter 5). Incidentally Dennett also concluded that "mind" is a logical entity! See Appendix F: "Dennett".

1 ? See Appendix C: "Dreyfus"1 ? His arguments are strong but I do not necessarily agree with his

conclusion.1 ? Cassirer op cit P.181 ? cf Dreyfus Appendix1 ? cf Appendix F: Dennett1 ? and “bio-logically”1 ? That the objects of this constitutive logic would further represent,

however, would be a genuine assumption of the miraculous -possible but difficult.1 ? though not the substance problem. That is a separate metaphysical issue

addressed by my third thesis.

inherent; they constitute the crux of the problem. It is those requirements which lead to the disastrous end of Maturana's noble and profound enterprise. Beneficial connection, pertinent connection between domains, (i.e. "structural coupling"), does not require "parallelism", it does not imply "congruence", it does not require "hierarchy".1 Virtual embodiment demonstrates another, non-hierarchical yet exhaustive possibility of compatibility, and it is this that I have argued in my first thesis.

1 As an illustration, (as I quoted Edelman in the "Afterword"), there are numerous different ways that an antibody, for instance, can cope with an antigen -see Afterword.

1 Cf Chapter 11 ? or, using the terminology of Putnam, Lakoff and Edelman, away from the

“objectivist perspective”. It is actually my third Copernican revolution as each of the theses could be characterized as such. Each reorients the prior terms and arguments as is the usual nature of Copernican revolutions.

2 ? Dennett's "figment"1 ? "Quantum Mechanics" P. 171 ? cf Chapter 31 ? If it does not exist, then there is no link between externality and

experience, and the whole, (any), realist intellectual enterprise collapses. It is therefore itself ontic and apodictic.

1 ? [An aside: If I were to substantially revise this book, I would have been tempted to base Chapter 3 in Edelman’s “Bright Air, …” , 1992 as it might have provided a simpler basis for the exposition of those ideas. He argues to the same end as do Maturana and Varela that the brain is not informational but “ex post facto selective”. His arguments are based in his theory of neuronal group selection, (TNGS), grounded in embryology and immunology. While I think it is a very plausible theory, it is specific and unproven. Maturana and Varela make the more general case however, based in first principles. It is a more abstract and conceptually difficult approach, but I think it is worth the work. We must endure the arid complexities of the law to finalize the divorce of realism, (and “externality”), from representation.]

1 ? in a mathematical sense of the term1 ? "This is an advantage no other science", [than epistemology/metaphysics],

"has or can have, because there is none so fully isolated and independent of others and so exclusively concerned with the faculty of cognition pure and simple". Kant, "Prolegomena", Lewis Beck translation, Bobs-Merill, 1950, p.131, my emphasis

1 ? e.g. Darwinian evolution

Maturana's thesis of "structural coupling" is of profound importance. It is an epistemological principle of the highest significance.1 It is a necessary consequence of his Naturalist beginnings -and impeaches them! It precedes and supercedes even its biological origin in its relation to the fundamental problem of knowledge. Biology, therefore, must integrate into a new and larger frame, a new orientation of the whole context of our world and our reality. But the Copernican

1 ? This is, as an emotional issue, the most difficult of my theses and I must expect to lose my credibility with many of you here. It is a strange and esoteric idea, but, I believe, true. It must, on my part, be presented with the utmost delicacy. On your part, I must ask for a very careful reading as it may not be as it seems at first.

1 ? A simple mathematical example of a closed and bounded domain would be the domain of the open interval -1 < x,y < 1 under the operation of multiplication. Another would be the open domain bounded by unit circle: for all (x,y): -1 < x,y < 1 with the operation #: (x,y)#(u,v) = (x*u,y*v). The integers are, of course, closed under addition and multiplication, the rationals under addition, multiplication, and division, ...

1 ? cf Chapter 41 ? ibid1 ? Kant himself was never satisfied with "critical idealism" but was forced to

retain it for historical reasons. "This being the state of the case, I could wish, in order to avoid all misunderstanding, to have named this conception of mine otherwise, but to alter it altogether is probably impossible. It may be permitted me however, in future, as has been above intimated, to term it 'formal' or, better still, 'critical' idealism, to distinguish it from the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley and from the skeptical idealism of Descartes." -"Prolegomena", Pps.124-125

1 ? W.V.O. Quine, 1960. I will elaborate Quine's position in Chapter 4.1 ? Maturana and Varela, 19871 ? Cognition has two aspects. Repeating the definition cited earlier,

(Websters. "cognition: the act or process of knowing, including both awareness and judgement". Also, "Perception: (4a) direct or intuitive cognition.")

1 ? See Chapter 4, re: Quine1 ? But if our perceptual objects are cognitions, then how can they be a

boundary condition of cognition as well? How can our perceptual objects and the things they do be "experience" themselves? I will argue that they are not! "Experience" is their invariant relationality across all orientations including even those which might distribute the "objects" themselves! Does perceptual cognition

center of that frame must be structural coupling itself. It is "structural coupling" which must ground biology; not biology which must ground "structural coupling"!1

I propose to accept absolutely the consequences of "structural coupling": that the "object" of biological cognition is a function of brain process itself, and not an embodiment of its environment.2 But this must necessarily translate into a Copernican revolution in our very world-view: if we are biological organisms, then the objects of our human world-view are objects of process, of response as well. They are "objects" of "effective action"!

equate with "experience"? No, it is a particular (evolutionarily derived and "pictorial") orientation of that relationality! See Chap.4 and the "King of Petrolia".

1 ? Their argument is considerably subtler than this as I will detail below.1 ? as in "congruent structural coupling"1 ? cf Edelman, 1992. He argues that the human genome is simply too small

for the purposes of information1 ? i.e. they are boundary conditions, not limits!1 ? afterwards "Maturana"2 ? i.e. they do not mix their contexts or the origins of their presumptions1 ? "And how can we tell when we have reached a satisfactory explanation of

the phenomenon of knowing? ...when we have set forth a conceptual system that can generate the cognitive phenomenon as a result of the action of a living being, and when we have shown that this process can produce living beings like ourselves, able to generate descriptions and reflect on them as a result of their fulfillment as living beings operating effectively in their fields of existence." (op.cit P.30)

1 ? Please come back and review Maturana's preamble when you have gotten through Chapter 4, particularly Hertz's reflections on the nature of science. I think the connection is important.

1 ? ibid P.48, my emphasis1 ? ibid Pps. 39-401 ? ibid P.511 ? ibid P.631 ? ibid Pps. 74-751 ? Cognition as a coordination of atomic primitives, (as argued in chapter 1),

makes a great deal of sense in this context. The organization is not itself correlative to externality, but is an operative device working on ultimately indeterminate primitives.

1 ? i.e. informational1 ? ibid Pps. 63-641 ? ibid P.96

Maturana and Varela's profound heuristic principle reduces their premise to absurdity -i.e. the metaphysical certitude of the ordinary Naturalist world-view from which they started. The naive-realistic world, (the represented "naturalist" world), can have no internal relevance to the organism, as organism. But this does not impeach the science, (evolution and biology), which is their ground -no more than did Einstein's Relativity impeach the physics which was his ground! The viable relationality, (the viable system of predictivity), of biology and evolution, (and of science generally), can be, (must be!), preserved, (as was the observed

1 ? ibid P.741 ? i.e. the phenotype1 ? ibid Pps. 80-811 ? ibid Pps. 95-102, (my emphasis)1 ? ibid Pps.147-1481 ? ibid Pps.157-1591 ? cf Appendix A1 ? ibid p.1591 ? ibid Pps.163,1641 ? ibid Pps. 161-163. Also consider Edelman’s comment on this same issue:

“… To make matters even more complicated, neurons generally send branches of their axons out in diverging arbors that overlap with those of other neurons, and the same is true of processes called dendrites on recipient neurons …. To put it figuratively, if we ‘asked’ a neuron which input came from which other neuron contributing to the overlapping set of its dendritic connections, it could not ‘know’.” Edelman, 1992, p.27

1 ? ibid P.124, my emphasis1 ? ibid Pps.129-133, my emphasis

1 ? I have proposed a very different, and plausible, alternative model in chapter 1. I proposed that organisms do use models, but that those models are schematic; their "objects" schematic objects only, aspects of operationally closed process. The "objects" of that model are not "entities" in reality; they are optimizing loci of process itself.

I propose that models do, in fact, exist in the human brain, but they are schematic models. Their virtual "objects", (in no necessarily simple correlation with externality), are evolutionarily derived schematic artifacts of process like the "objects" of the training seminar of chapter 1. They effectively coordinate the sensory and motor faculties of the brain!

1 ? op.cit p.1331 ? ibid Pps. 133-134

relationality of Ptolemean astronomy -times and angles and relative positions- in the Copernican system which replaced it), but it must be "reduced"!1

Are we to throw away the whole of our human enterprise then -to include its science? Of course not -that would be preposterous! But the most profound and most radical advances in human thought, its "Copernican revolutions" and "SUPERB2 theories", have always, (by necessity), subsumed the viable parts of pre-existing knowledge. In the present case, the subsumption of the preponderance of naive realism and the preponderance of naturalist science stand

1 ? It is likely to result, depending on the angle of fall, in decapitation or, as seems to have happened here, in a severing of the corpus callosum. :-)

1 ? as most current Naturalists, in fact, actually do1 ? cf Dennett, 19911 ? cf P.S. Churchland, 1986, Dennett, 19911 ? and Quine's and Kant's which are themselves the children of an ancient

line of legitimate skepticism.1 ? for behavioral "knowledge"1 ? As I suggested earlier was also the case with Dennett’s thesis1 ? any two models are isomorphic2 ? This is an astounding conclusion and more than the principles, (and

Occam's razor), will bear! At best it is petitio principii, (assuming what you have to prove), at worst it is magic!

3 ? cf Chapter 4 for my distinction of "ordinary Naturalism" from "relativized Naturalism".

1 ? I find this a very curious statement –coming from Dennett.1 ? but not of relativized Naturalism! cf Chapter 41 ? both here and in the foundations of physics1 ? to whatever level of sophistication!2 ? See Afterword: Lakoff and Edelman for a detailed discussion of hierarchy1 ? The reduction of scientific theories, (and theoretic reduction in general), is

subject to a fundamental logical limitation under the classical, (pre-Cassirerian), concept. In the last chapter, (chapter 2), I exhibited Cassirer's arguments that the whole root of the classical formal concept is set-theoretical. Concepts, or concepts of "things", (to include, for instance, our ordinary objects), were reducible only in a set-theoretic sense, i.e. by abstraction, (intersection), of common properties. They are, therefore, subject to Russell's "theory of types". At the bottom level, and there must be a bottom level according to the theory of types, there are atomic primitives. Each of the levels above that must be hierarchically oriented, each containing the one above it, (i.e. the "things" of the next higher level are abstractions -intersections- of the ones below). This theory of types was the

as necessities. They work, after all, with a power and effectiveness which is awesome. My proposal does not suggest or imply that they be considered any less important. It subsumes the whole of those vistas, but it subsumes them in their viable relationality,1 and not in their specific ontic (metaphysical) reference! Their connection to externality is operational, and not referential. In their whole, they constitute a profoundly effective and complex algorithm of unparalleled significance whose link to externality is "structural coupling". The latter, however, is referentially indeterminate, (i.e. metaphysically so).

logically necessary result of the antinomies discovered in the roots of set theory. The most famous is, of course, Russell's paradox.

Cassirer's fundamental advance on the classical formal concept, "the mathematical concept of function" however, provides an escape. There is no "Cassirer's paradox" in the universal formation of concepts. There is no "concept of all concepts", because concepts are now constituted as an assemblage of (consistent) generative rules, not as a (set-theoretic) abstraction (intersection) of properties -which currently stands for the process of scientific reduction. There is clearly no "rule of all rules" as some rules obviously contravene others. At the level of my "concept of implicit definition", concepts are assemblages of "axioms", (i.e. fundamental and consistent generative rules), and the same situation obtains. But, just as is the well demonstrated case for mathematical axiom systems, it is possible to exchange an appropriate subset of theorems for the pre-existing axioms, (while still absolutely preserving the integrity -the interior relationality- of the mathematical subject), so is it possible to "cross-reduce" theories. We do not have one single preferred perspective.

This is the relativism of Cassirer's "symbolic forms". What remains is the "web" of relationality, the "invariants" of experience that must be preserved under all comprehensive perspectives. But that web, those invariants must be viewed, in Van Fraassen's term, in a "coordinate-free" sense, i.e. they must be viewed in their abstract relationality, not from any particular orientation. cf. Chapter 4 and Afterword: Lakoff / Edelman.

2 ? Cf Penrose on the twin-slit experiment, for instance1 ? i.e. scientific naturalism = "scientific realism"1 ? It is an optimizing organization of primitive, organic process -i.e. of

primitive operational process.1 ? which assumes, therefore, both the axiom of existence and the reality of

experience2 ? See Appendix B

Science turns recursively back on itself in biology and finds that there is a limitation to knowledge itself. Structural coupling is the antinomy which forces the absolute relativization of all knowing -to include "biology" and "evolution" -and even "perception" - themselves. These are "creatures" of human knowledge, of cognition. They are organizers, not primitives.1 Our true primitive is "experience", (under the necessary premise of "externality"), not any particular interpretation -or organization- of it. My hypothesis implies, then, a relativization

3 ? Is the "axiom of externality" the same as the "realistic imperative" of Hume? Is it an emotional imperative? It orients world-views.

1 ? Theirs is a structured isolation. It does not support the implication that "everything is valid and everything is possible"!

2 ? Since it assumes the premise of naturalism and ends in a contradiction, it is, in fact, a reductio ad absurdum.

3 ? "It is existence and reality that one wishes to comprehend. ... When we strip the (this) statement of its mystical elements we mean that we are seeking for the simplest possible system of thought which will bind together the observed facts." (Einstein 1934, Pps. 112-113)

4 ? cf Fine, 1986. p.971 ? In fact, they do not actually allow an "object" of cognition, as the

following citation shows. I am referring here to that aspect of brain process -the effective action- which corresponds to their object of linguistic coupling -which latter is the only "object" they will explicitly allow.

1 ? op.cit Pps.234-244, my emphasis1 ? I will make this case in greater detail in the next chapter.2 ? Naturalism's mistake is in trying to assign an ontic reference to our whole

cognitive domain. As I have argued, we are justified in making only two primitive ontic, (metaphysical), assertions: "externality" and "experience". These are the minimal and the maximal legitimate ontic posits. See Chapter 4.

1 ? Could there be a congruent correspondence, (though admittedly not apodictic), however? Sure, but would be "magic" of a high order- "and then a miracle occurs"! Dennett, 1991

1 ? It is, in fact, a biological and epistemological principle of relativity. This does not imply that it is a frivolous relativity, (i.e. solopsism), however, no more than did Einstein's Relativity imply a lawlessness in physics!

1 ? It is not an unusual, (nor inconsistent), practice in mathematics to begin by constructing a new mathematical discipline from one set of premises, and then to start all over with what were originally derivative consequences as the new, (and more appropriate), primitives.

of epistemology precisely equivalent to Einstein's relativization of physics. This is what Cassirer concluded as well.1

An Answer to the New Dilemma:

At last I can give a preliminary answer, (which I will complete in the next chapter), to the disturbing question raised at the beginning of the chapter. How can I presume the naturalistic world -with its "evolution"- to prove a hypothesis which severely questions them?2 How can I use a (Darwinian) biological argument, (which presumes a simple correspondence between our cognitions and the real physical world), against that very simplicity -and embodiment- itself? If my thesis is true, then our ultimate external reality, (ontology), is not necessarily, (nor even probably), like the reality of our cognitive model!

The answer is that "evolution" is as much an organizing principle as is "causation". It, (and the objects it treats), is part of the (closed) model itself. It is not a necessary, (or proper!), metaphysical presumption, but is, in Kant's words, a “synthetic a priori” proposition. It is not a necessary part of reality; it is a necessary (plausible), part of our cognition of reality. As such, I can use it with perfect legitimacy within that closed domain. But I use it, (modifying but keeping the sense of Dennett's word), "heterophenomenologically", i.e. with a neutral ontic reference!

My epistemological and metaphysical position, therefore, corresponds very much to Kant's, and ultimately, to Cassirer's. It is neither idealism nor solipsism, but a genuine, (and realistic), ontic indeterminism.3 The term "indeterminism"

2 ? Though this might still seem self-contradictory, please bear with me for a few more paragraphs. I will explain myself fully in the next chapter.

1 ? Though my reasons for using this word are obvious, it is clearly inappropriate to my conception. "Property-preserving or distributive re-interpretation with conservation of relationality" would be more appropriate.

2 ? cf Penrose1 ? i.e. their predictivity! I will clarify this point in my next chapter.1 ? It is explicit in Maturana's argument, (as we have seen), that "structural

coupling" and "the conservation of autopoesis", (and "congruence" itself), are specifically part of the closed, human (biological) cognitive process.

1 ? cf chapter 42 ? This is also, obviously, a reiteration of Maturana's "razor's edge".3 ? "Idealism consists in the assertion that there are none but thinking beings,

all other things which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them in fact

refers to the impossibility of knowing the nature of that ontic reality independent of our cognition. It does not, however, assert a doubt as to, but rather affirms, its existence.

"Matter is substantia phaenomenon. Whatever is intrinsic to it I seek in all parts of the space that it occupies and in all effects that it exerts, which, after all, can never be anything but phenomena of the outer sense. Thus I have nothing absolute but merely something comparatively internal which, in its turn consists only of external relationships. But what appears to the mere understanding as the absolute essence of matter is again simply a fancy, for matter is never an object of pure understanding; but the transcendental object that may be the ground of this appearance called matter is a bare Something, whose nature we should never be able to

corresponds. I, on the contrary, say that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are", (my emphasis), "given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, that is, the representations which they cause in us by affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which their influence on our sensibility procures us. These representations we call 'bodies', a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. Can this be termed idealism?

Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has generally assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of external things that many of their predicates may be said to belong, not to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no proper existence outside of our representation. Heat, color and taste, for instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther and, for weighty reasons, rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary -such as extension, place, and, in general, space... with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality, shape, etc.)", , (my emphasis), "-no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my thesis be named idealistic merely because I find that more, nay, all the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong merely to its appearance ,[his emphasis].

The existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself." Kant, "Prolegomena" pps. 36-37

understand even though someone could tell us about it. ... The observation and analysis of phenomena press toward a knowledge of the secrets of nature and there is no knowing how far they may penetrate in time. But for all that we shall never succeed in answering those transcendental questions that reach out beyond nature, though all nature were to be revealed to our gaze."1

I will, (in chapter 5), however, make the limiting step that Kant did not. I will posit our cognitive interface, (whatever that may ontically be!), as itself a metaphysical entity. It is a part of the minimal (realistic) ontic posit. It is the synthesis of "externality" and "experience".2

Knowledge is cognitively closed. It is an organizational system that works. It is Quine's "body of statements and beliefs", (see Chapter 4), constrained only by its "boundary conditions", ("experience"). But it exists always within the human (biological) cognitive frame. It can never achieve a "God's eye view"!

"It is by languaging that the act of knowing, in the behavioral coordination which is language, brings forth a world. ...We find ourselves in this co-ontogenic coupling, not as a preexisting reference nor in reference to an origin, but as an ongoing transformation in the becoming of the linguistic world that we build with other human beings."3

In the next chapter I will explore the other axiom of reason, the Axiom of Experience, and conclude my answer to the epistemological problem I have raised. Quine and Cassirer show the way. This will then allow a brief and succinct statement of my third and final thesis in Chapter 5.

1 ? Kant, "Critique of Pure Reason", 2nd edition, 333, translated by Woglom and Hendel, and cited in Cassirer: "The Problem of Knowledge", 1950, Pps. 101-102 I prefer this to Smith's rendering.

2 ? cf Chapter 53 ? op*.cit Pps.234-244, my emphasis

Preface to Chapter 4

Because we have reached a crucial point, and before going further, I would like to recap our current status -i.e. to go back and "touch home". I have presented a plausible and, I believe, a compelling resolution of the mind-body problem, but I have presented it within a context of ordinary Naturalism. But Naturalism, I have argued, is thereby itself, (by virtue of my answer), problematic.

How, once again, can I maintain the legitimacy of my thesis when it seemingly questions its very premises? Cassirer, in his "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms", supplies the grounds for a solution: his thesis of scientific epistemological relativism. He argued that we retain our knowledge, our science, not as reference to an ultimate metaphysical reality, but as relativistic organizations of phenomena. Under this interpretation, the (Naturalistic) primitives of my thesis do not then require what would otherwise be a further, (and self-contradictory), metaphysical presumption of reference -i.e. they are taken as organizational but not as metaphysical primitives. Cassirer argues, moreover, that there are alternative and equipotent organizations possible even within "nature", (i.e. science), itself. Just as in the field of mathematics there are generally differing subsets of axioms which can generate the relationality of a given subject, similarly Cassirer maintains that there is a plurality of alternative and equipotent "Symbolic Forms" which can generate the relationality of experience. Naturalism,1 (to include my scientific thesis of mind-brain which is framed within it), is just one such relative, (but legitimate), form. What is truly absolute, however, are the "invariants" of experience! Underlying the whole problem is the issue of "experience" itself. Let me therefore begin with the latter.

1 ? as embodied in mathematical physics

Chapter 4: Cognition and Experience: Quine and Cassirer(The Epistemological Problem: What do we know?)

"The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Reevaluation of some statements entails reevaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections- the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having reevaluated one statement we must reevaluate some others, which may be statements logically connected with the first or may be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so underdetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole....... Furthermore it becomes folly to see a boundary between synthetic statements.. and analytic statements...Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system... Conversely.. no statement is immune to revision.. even the logical law of the excluded middle... and what difference is there in principle between such a shift and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin Aristotle?"1

"Experience"! I have argued it as an axiom of sanity, and a minimal realist assumption. But what is it and what does it mean? Is it the same as "sensuous impressions"? Does the posit of absolute experience demand an immediate further commitment to reference? In this chapter I will examine these questions in the light of Quine's and Cassirer's ideas and conclude that the answer to each is "no". I will propose an answer of rigorous and scientific epistemological relativism, (an

1 ? Quine, 1953, pps.42-43

extension of Cassirer's), which preserves both the phenomena and the validity of the whole dialogue of Naturalism, (including, therefore, that of my first two theses), as organization. It will preserve them without a commitment to metaphysical reference however. "Experience", I will argue, is exactly that which remains (relativistically) invariant under all consistent and comprehensive worldviews. Experience is the phenomena we must preserve and account for, but it is not the specific organization by which we do so. The primitives of a given organization are not legitimized, therefore, on the basis of reference, but on a (relativistic) basis of empirical adequacy.

In the previous chapter, I began a discussion of cognitive closure and asserted an "Axiom of Externality". In this chapter I will continue with the issue of closure and confirm the other necessary, (apodictic), prerequisite of cognition, i.e. the "Axiom of Experience". Quine's epigram illuminates both. It validates an absolute and ineradicable multiplicity of interpretations for experiment and experience.

To start, let me propose a fantasy, which I think, clarifies the relationship between knowledge, cognition generally, and "experience". It will suggest a viable working definition of the latter.

A fantasy:

The remote and newly discovered atoll of Petrolia, deep in the south pacific islands and never before touched by modern civilization, was visited by a geological survey party. It was found to lie above enormous undersea oil reserves. Its king and high priest, a primitive but highly intelligent man, asked to see our "magic".1 Seeking to humor him, (and, I am ashamed to tell, selfishly induce him to assign drilling rights to an American company at a ridiculously low price), he was given a "red carpet" tour of the Supercollider Accelerator, our greatest scientific marvel.2 The king was mightily impressed. He saw "magical worms", (traces on oscilloscopes), "dancing arrows", (pointers on analog gauges), and tiny "animal tracks", (particle tracks under a microscope), in this "cavern of the gods". He was convinced that the whim of our gods provided the "magic", (the "physical laws"), of his experience there, as it, (they), seemed quite different from his own! He subsequently engaged in a long and heated debate with one of the technicians over the significance of it all, ending, sad to say, with his casting a set of boar's

1 ? He was awed when watching reruns of "Gilligan's Island" on the exploratory party's television.

2 ? cf heading above!

knuckles and a shrunken head, (hidden in a bag under his robe), onto the cable-strewn floor with disastrous consequences!

Though whimsical, this fable helps to clarify the purest, (weakest), and the minimum, (necessary), assumption of "experience". There are clearly aspects of the situation that the king may have considered significant, (i.e. explanatory), that the scientist did not, (and conversely). The color or shape of an instrument, or the way the technician cleaned his glasses before initiating the experiment, for instance, are things that the king might have considered as ritual, (or physical), necessities, essential to the result. Even the number of floors of the facility, the time of day, or the route by which he entered might be relevant. The technician, of course, considered the king's multicolored ritual headdress, and his pouch of magic bones, (he was doing his best to be of help), totally irrelevant. What I will call the "abstract frame" of the experiment he witnessed, however, was the same for him as for the scientist conducting it. The abstract frame, (the total data and the "boundary condition"), for both the scientist and for the King of Petrolia was identical with the abstract, (from interpretation),1 of the whole of the actual experiment itself, (i.e. the whole of the experimental situation).2

The "abstract frame" must include the "background situation" however, i.e. all the details -to include the observers! We do not know, a priori, which of these or what of these is relevant. This is one reason why, (other than the issues of personal integrity or error), experiments must the reproducible. It is to eliminate unique factors deriving from the particular experimental context3 and to isolate the essentials through a multiplicitous duplication, hopefully random regarding what is (unknowably) extraneous. We are never on certain ground in that process however. We are never sure that our historically dictated -and contextually limited- design of an experiment does not implicitly incorporate such factors, or that there are not broader, (or different), frames, isolating, (or incorporating), other factors as incidental and irrelevant, (or pertinent and important), in which it could be implemented.4 Following Quine, we are in a process of dynamic reorientation only bounded by the abstract frame! Any theoretical description really compatible

1 ? alternatively, the experiential invariant2 ? "Experiment" is clearly an extension, albeit a refined and defined one, of

"experience" itself.3 ? e.g. a magnetic field from the coffee-maker, a power surge from the

factory down the block, the crumb from an assistant's lunch contaminating a culture

4 ? The lack of free ferrous iron in ordinary differential bacteriology plates when looking for Legionnaire's Disease was an example of a too limited context and was the reason for its long mystery.

with the overall experimental situation1, however, is clearly a legitimate, (i.e. logical), interpretation in Quine's sense!

Consider: was the King of Petrolia's interpretation of the data of the experiment into his theoretical scheme, (worldview), patently false? Not necessarily, according to Quine. Was the scientist's translation into "laws of physics", "particles of matter" -or as an expression of the "primitive building blocks of reality" inherently, (i.e. logically), better? Also not necessarily!

Each could use the data to integrate, reinforce or modify his theoretical basis -his world-view.2

The fable, (in concert with Quine I maintain), helps us to see that "experience" as such is not, (a priori or a posteriori), identifiable with any of its organizations or orientations. Rather, it must be identified with the invariant relationality -i.e. with that which remains fixed- under all global, comprehensive and consistent orientations. "Experience", (TENTATIVE WORKING DEFINITION), is that for which both the king and the technician must account in

1 ? including one which might dissolve -i.e. redistribute- but exhaustively account for- the apparent relationality of our primitives. Virtual systems clearly suggest a new logical possibility.

2 ? Even the cumulative body of scientific experiment can be accounted for by the King. Given an unending stream of counterexamples, he can, via Quine, incrementally account for each. The presumption that this cumulative body rules out any other consistent world-view, that eventually he will be backed into a contradiction is not justified.

This is not to say that any consistent theory is just as good as any other consistent theory. The king's theory, spirits and witchcraft, let us say, while it may very well be consistent and capable of accounting for any given fact, clearly falls far short in many aspects, perhaps the most important of which is predictability. The scientist will make strong

and definite projections into the future which, by and large, will be clearly and precisely confirmed. He will be able to predict wide ranges of phenomena correctly and efficiently. There are other criteria of good theories as well. Roger Penrose, in his "Emperor's New Mind" has outlined a reasonable standard very concisely. (See Appendix D)

The issue, which I will postpone for a little, is whether there cannot be, under the thesis of epistemological relativism which I will assert, multiple, equipotent and comprehensive "SUPERB", (using Penrose's classification), theories of reality. The proven equivalence, for example, between Heisenberg's and Schroedinger's (widely divergent) theories of quantum mechanics seems to imply that this may be the case.

some manner!1 It is not itself an orientation, however. It is, rather, that ("thing") which must remain fixed, and I argue that it is a primitive of reason. Scientific experiment extends, (generates), experience and thereby bounds (and shapes) the scope of such consistent theories. It adds new invariant relationality to the abstract frame, (and the history of abstract frames). Following Quine however, it never determines them.

The Epistemological Problem:

At the conclusion of Chapter 2, I asserted the definition: The mind is the "bio-logical", (i.e. materially reduced), "concept" of the brain. (Alternatively, mind is the rule of the brain.) This scientific conclusion, (and the schematic model), of my first two chapters, however, raises profound philosophical and epistemological difficulties, seemingly contradicting itself. It raises questions, moreover, which offend the very foundations of our rational sensibilities. This, however, is not so unusual a circumstance but has always been the case, historically, at the major turning points of science. Deep progress has always necessitated radical, (and often distasteful), reorientations, (rather than mere polishings), of our fundamental worldview -often with the loss of cherished convictions. Most recently, this is seen very clearly at the invocations of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics in modern physics which, incidentally, raise much the same sorts of questions as does my thesis, i.e. "realism vs. empiricism/algorithmic" questions. I urge that the problems raised by my thesis are not inherently more difficult -or of a radically new and different type- than have been raised, (and answered), before in the cause of science.2 The real issue is productivity -to whose ultimate judgement I hereby

1 ? This identifies, I propose, a viable and legitimate -and theory independent- working definition of experience.

2 Though admittedly painful, how are the epistemological implications of my thesis so much more difficult than those of modern physics, for instance? At the scale of the very small and at the scale of the very large, physics says that our physical world is profoundly strange and, at the small scale at least, that the picture of science is essentially algorithmic. My thesis proposes that our human scale world is very much the same -but that it is itself a biological and organic algorithm. It is a "tactile" algorithm wherein the "data" we receive and the instrument we manipulate to control it are one and the same. (See Chapter 1). Its elements, however, are purely and abstractly logical, (alternatively "operational"), elements! This is a very different and radical way to look at our "objects", (to include perceptual objects), to be sure. It is, I believe, however, far more compatible with the outlook of modern physics than is ordinary Naturalism. I maintain that our

submit my thesis. It is to legitimize and justify my conclusion, however, that I am forced to philosophy and a study of the metaphysical and epistemological presumptions of science -and there are such.

There are really two problems involved with the mind-brain problem. There is a scientific and empirical one, and there is a philosophical and metaphysical one. The combination of my first two theses solves the scientific problem, and my third thesis will explicate the metaphysical problem. This chapter will resolve the apparent paradox created by the first two hypotheses, i.e. the epistemological problem.

I shall now propose a specific answer to the problems which I have raised. This is not the only answer possible. I might as easily have adopted the empiricist, "anti-realist" stance common amongst physicists, for instance. My philosophic answer has something in common with that stance, but I think it is a positive advance on it, as it leads, (in Chapter 5), to a plausible and pointed answer to the question of the substance of mind. Let me emphasize, however, that my real and central claim remains the scientific one, i.e. the result of the combination of my first two theses; my philosophic answer is solely its rationale.

If my scientific conclusion is true, (and I believe the concordance of my first two theses, amongst numerous other reasons, strongly suggests it is), then there seems to be an inherent paradox in knowledge itself, -and my (Naturalist) premises! If both our perceptual and intellectual objects are solely artifacts of biological coordination, then on what ground can knowledge, (and my own argument), stand? If the very language, (to include the very "biological coordination" and "evolution" of my argument), in which I describe the problem, (being part of that self-same human reality), is only internally organizational and not referential, then what is it that am I describing. How can I even discuss the problem itself? Doesn't my theory actually eat itself? How, then, could there be science at all? Notwithstanding the apparent paradox, (which is not unique to my thesis1 and to which I will here propose a solution), I maintain that mine is a very

"tactile", "spatial", "extensive" et al. objects are logical, (alternatively "operational"), rather than representative. (cf. conclusion to Chapter 2) But the "logical" here is a (Kantian) "constitutive logic" rather than an "ordinary logic".

I will argue a necessary detachment of knowledge from reference -a necessary relinquishment of our ordinary assumption of the independence of our (cognitive) "instrument" from what it measures. This does not require a denial of reality, however, but of our absolute knowledge of reality. But physical science has already reached this conclusion, hasn't it?

strong and a very pure Naturalist argument and that its conclusion, as such, is valid.

Chapters 1 & 2 might be considered as a constructive reductio ad absurdum of the Naturalist premise. (Chapter 3 is a direct argument to the same effect, building on Kant and Maturana.) Less kindly, they might be considered as constituting a "straw man". Combined, however, they are much more powerful than that as they actually do resolve the whole of the Naturalist dilemma, (other than the epistemological one I just raised), and explicate the actual mind-brain problem in absolutely legitimate, (and empirically promising), Naturalist terms. Clearly, there might be something wrong with the Naturalist program, but need it be fatal?

My argument turns now then, not to argue against the whole sense of Naturalism, but against the part of it I believe is flawed. I base those arguments in an extension of Kant's,1 and, ultimately, of Cassirer's Neo-Kantian position, i.e. his "Theory of Symbolic Forms". The thrust is to split Naturalism from its over-strong metaphysical presumptions.

Cassirer Revisited:

My prior arguments do not, however, reduce the system of Naturalist organization, (i.e. its predictive schema), to absurdity, (nor, therefore, the corresponding organizational, i.e. Naturalist, validity of my own first two theses which are framed within it), but only its claim of absolute, (i.e. metaphysical), reference.2 Nor do they question the profound effectiveness of Naturalist science.3

1 This problem is inherent in pretty much the same terms in the whole of Kantian and Neo-Kantian philosophy of science, and in the philosophical dilemmas of modern physics as well. I urge that my solution, in a form very close to that offered by Cassirer, fits with the whole of modern science in a way that none other does.

1 Kant's work was concerned primarily with the problem of cognition and therefore has a special relevance here.

"This is an advantage no other science", [than epistemology], "has or can have, because there is none so fully isolated and independent of others and so exclusively concerned with the faculty of cognition pure and simple." Prolegomena, P.131

2 again, at whatever level of sophistication the latter is postulated3 The Naturalist organization can be taken within contemporary anti-realism,

(i.e. anti "scientific-realism" -the position that scientific theories do not directly

Cassirer suggests a way to preserve that overwhelmingly successful relationality, (i.e. the predictive efficacy), of Naturalism in a relativized sense, not as reference, but as organization, i.e. his thesis of rigorous and scientific epistemological relativism.1 He proposes Naturalism, (and materialism),2 as just one (among several) of the possible -and equipotent- "Symbolic Forms" comprehensively organizing experience. It is only experience itself,3 (the phenomena), that is preserved as a known metaphysical absolute and to which (relativized) reference can be made. "Experience", (Naturalist connotations notwithstanding), must not be confused and identified with its characterization under any particular one of the possible symbolic forms however.

It is the confusion of a particular "frame of reference", i.e. form, (and the assumption that there is only one comprehensive frame possible4), with the invariant relationality of experience in the abstract, (i.e. under all consistent frames), that is the heart of the issue. It results in a confusion of a specific organization (of experience) with the experience itself,5 which is organized. It results in an (improper) assignment of (unique) metaphysical reference rather than a (legitimate) judgement of empirical, (i.e. experiential), adequacy for the primitives of the theory. Cassirer's reformulation of the formal logical concept allows a new logical possibility and an escape from the dilemma.

Just as Einstein relativized measurement and disembodied the ether, so did Cassirer argue for a relativization of knowledge, and a disembodiment of direct

describe ultimate, metaphysical reality). I am making a distinction between naturalist organization and naturalist metaphysics. Cassirer I believe, like Van Fraassen, is essentially an antirealist. This is not so surprising, given the fact that they both have Kantian roots, (cf., for instance, Van Fraassen's "Laws and Symmetry".) I will most definitely not argue in favor of Naturalism, (i.e. metaphysical naturalism ==scientific realism), but will argue for the (relative and equipotent) naturalist organization. I will argue, therefore, for the structure, but not the reference of that organization.

1 Cassirer's is clearly a mathematical perspective, with its roots in modern algebra.

2 as embodied in mathematical physics3 Experience is not necessarily, therefore, the same as its Naturalist

interpretation, (organization), as "sense impressions". Nor, under my thesis, does experience refer to externality. It is an expression of process.

4 i.e. Naturalism5 to include scientific experiment as an extension of ordinary

experience

reference. But Cassirer's is not a frivolous, laissez-faire relativism, (nor is it solipsism); it is an explicit and technical epistemological relativity rigorously grounded in the phenomenology of science.1

What, exactly, is the length of a rod to a physicist? It depends on the measurements, the frames of reference and the (absolute) equations of the theory of relativity relating them. What is the relevance of a theory, (including a scientific one)? It depends on the experience, the "form", (e.g. physics/Naturalist science), and the (absolute/invariant) relations, ("equations" -i.e. the web of implication), which must be preserved in it. What is constant, under all frames, are the invariants, (in a mathematical sense), which must be preserved in them, i.e. "experience". I have argued a working (and non-referential) definition of "experience" as that which must be maintained under all comprehensive worldviews.2

But what exactly could a relativized substance be then? What could Naturalism's material be under such a conception? It would be an implicitly defined term, (alternatively "symbol"), under a particular interpretation -i.e. it would itself be an "object" implicitly defined by the "generating relations" of the science which specifies it. Even materialism need not, therefore, necessarily carry a metaphysical commitment. It is an organization of experience using the (implicitly defined) terms of "substance".

Cassirer's Theory of Symbolic Forms:

Cassirer suggests a new way to look at the relation between theory and experience. He proposes a rigorous epistemological relativism innate in the phenomenology of modern science.

1 Why is Einstein not saying that any measurements, (at all!), are valid? Why is Einstein's itself not a laissez-faire physical relativism? It is because there is a rigid structure at the core of his assertion -i.e. the specific, (and precise), invariant equations of relativity. It is the rigid and invariant "equations", (alternatively "the topology"), of experience that structure valid theories. These "equations", this "topology", must be retained as invariant(s) under all viable theories. This is why neither mine, nor Cassirer's, is an irenic relativism.

2 Though this is clearly somewhat circular, it is perfectly consistent with my assertion that "experience" is, in fact, an epistemic primitive.

"Mathematicians and physicists were first to gain a clear awareness of this [the] symbolic character of their basic implements. The new ideal of knowledge, to which this whole development points, was brilliantly formulated by Heinrich Hertz in the introduction to his 'Principles of Mechanics'. He declares that the most pressing and important function of our natural science is [simply] to enable us to foresee future experience"1

It is the method by which it derives the future from the past which is significant, however. We make "inner fictions or symbols" of outward objects, and these symbols are "so constituted that the necessary logical consequences, [my emphasis], of the images are always images of the necessary natural consequences of the imaged objects".2 But this analysis -and "image"- must be interpreted carefully:

"...[though] still couched in the language of the copy theory of knowledge -... the concept of the 'image' [itself] had undergone an inner change. In place of the vague demand for a similarity of content between image and thing, we now find expressed a highly complex logical relation, [my emphasis], a general intellectual condition, which the basic concepts of physical knowledge must satisfy."3

Its value lies "not in the reflection of a given existence, but in what it accomplishes as an instrument of knowledge,"4 [my emphasis], "in a unity of phenomena, which the phenomena must produce out of themselves." Hertz formulated the distinction very succinctly:

"The images of which we are speaking are our ideas of things; they have with things the one essential agreement which lies in the fulfillment of the stated requirement, [of successful consequences], but further agreement with things is not necessary to their purpose. Actually we do not know and have

1 Cassirer, 1953, p. 75

2 ibid, p.753 ibid4 ibid

no means of finding out whether our ideas of things accord with them in any other respect than in this one fundamental relation."1

A system of physical concepts must reflect the relations between objective things and their mutual dependency, but, Cassirer argues, this is only possible "in so far as these concepts pertain from the very outset to a definite, homogeneous intellectual orientation",2 [my emphasis]. It is only within a distinct logical framework that these "images" are significant at all.3 The object cannot be regarded as a "naked thing in itself", independent of the essential categories, (and framework), of natural science: "for only within these categories which are required to constitute its form can it be described at all."

This change of perspective, (a genuine "Copernican Revolution" in Kant's sense), necessitates and validates Cassirer's conclusion of the innate symmetry and a relativity of interpretations for phenomena. "With this critical insight ... science renounces its aspiration and its claim to an 'immediate' grasp and communication of reality."4

It realizes that the only objectivization of which it is capable is, and must remain, mediation, [my emphasis]. And in this insight, another highly significant [critical]5 idealistic consequence is implicit. If the object of knowledge can be defined only through the medium of a particular logical and conceptual structure, we are forced to conclude that a variety of media, [my emphasis], will correspond to various structures of the object, to various meanings for 'objective' relations.6

1 H. Hertz, "Die Prinzipien der Mechanik", p.1 ff, my emphasis2 Cassirer, op cit p.763 Please note the similarity of this situation, as formulated by Hertz and

Cassirer, with that I laid out in Chapter one for the training seminar. The objects, ("images"), in a very real sense, are a function of the calculus. Insofar as they are justified, it is on the conjoint basis of utility.

4 ibid5 Everywhere, where Cassirer uses "idealism", it must be understood as "critical

idealism" in the sense that Kant used it. This is very different from ordinary idealism, and, as I discussed in Chapter 3, is a real misnomer. I have suggested "ontic indeterminism" as a more modern alternative, and one I think both Kant and Cassirer would have been happy with. Also compare the "mere X", (below), with my discussion in Chapter 3.

6 Cassirer, 1954, p.76

This is the assertion of symmetry and the foundation for his thesis of "Symbolic Forms".

Even in 'nature',1 [my emphasis], the physical object will not coincide absolutely with the chemical object, nor the chemical with the biological -because physical, chemical, biological knowledge frame their questions each from its own particular standpoint and, in accordance with this standpoint, subject the phenomena to a special interpretation and formation.2 It might also seem that this consequence in the development of [critical] idealistic thought had conclusively frustrated the expectation in which it began. The end of this development seems to negate its beginning -the unity of being, for which it strove, threatens once more to disintegrate into a mere diversity of existing things. The One Being, to which thought holds fast and which it seems unable to relinquish without destroying its own form, eludes cognition.3

It is the phenomena, (experience), not reference, however, that is the fulcrum of, (and reunifies), this relativity of perspectives. The forms do not refer to (metaphysical) reality, (their objects are not images of reality), they organize experience. Metaphysical reality becomes "a mere X"!4 "The more its metaphysical unity as a 'thing in itself' is asserted, the more it evades all possibility of knowledge, until at last it is relegated entirely to the sphere of the unknowable and becomes a5 mere 'X'", [my emphasis].6 It is the realm of phenomena, "the true sphere of the knowable with its enduring multiplicity, finiteness and relativity", on which we stand. It is the (multiplicitous and relativized) organization of

1 i.e., "science" as opposed to the "cultural forms" -see discussion later.

2 But even within Cassirer's primary "natural forms" -in physics, for instance, I argue -beyond Cassirer- that the exact parallel obtains. There are arguably alternative Hertzian formulations of the problem. Alternative objects and alternative calculi are possible. Fine suggests that Relativity and Quantum Mechanics may represent such alternatives, and certainly Schroedinger's and Heisenberg's conceptions of quantum theory illustrate the plausibility.

3 ibid4 compare this with the discussion of Chapter 35 (Kantian)6 ibid

phenomena, not reference to a metaphysical origin, which lies at the basis of knowledge.

"And to this rigid metaphysical absolute is juxtaposed the realm of phenomena, the true sphere of the knowable1 with its enduring multiplicity, finiteness and relativity.2

But this reorientation does not destroy the either the unity or the coherence of knowledge.

"But upon closer scrutiny the fundamental postulate of unity is not discredited by this irreducible diversity, [my emphasis], of the methods and objects of knowledge; it merely assumes a new form. True, the unity of knowledge can no longer be made certain and secure by referring knowledge in all its forms to a 'simple' common object which is related to all these forms as the transcendent prototype to the empirical copies." [my emphasis]3

(This latter demand is, of course, the rationale of the Naturalist claim of reference.)

"But instead, a new task arises: to gather the various branches of science with their diverse methodologies - with all their recognized specificity and independence - into one system, whose separate parts precisely through their necessary diversity will complement and further one another. This postulate of a purely functional unity replaces the postulate of a unity of substance and origin, which lay at the core of the ancient concept of being."4

Cassirer conceives his "symbolic forms" functionally, (and serially), i.e. in terms of the "mathematical concept of function".

"And this creates a new task for the philosophical critique of knowledge. It must follow the special sciences and survey them as a whole. It must ask

1 see Chapter 32 ibid

3 ibid4 ibid

whether the intellectual symbols by means of which the specialized disciplines reflect on and describe reality exist merely side by side or whether they are not diverse manifestations of the same basic human function. And if the latter hypothesis should be confirmed, a philosophical critique must formulate the universal conditions of this function and define the principle underlying it.1

Instead of dogmatic metaphysics, "which seeks absolute unity in a substance to which all the particulars of existence are reducible", he seeks after "a rule governing the concrete diversity of the functions of cognition, a rule which, without negating and destroying them, will gather them into a unity of deed, the unity of a self-contained human endeavor."2 [my emphasis]3

Perhaps the most succinct overall statement of Cassirer's thesis is found in his "Einstein's Theory of Relativity".4 Each of the perspectives of scientific knowledge: physics, chemistry, biology, ... (the "cognitive forms"), - and ultimately myth, religion and art, ... (the "cultural forms"),5 are taken as alternative and equipotent (organizational) perspectives on the phenomena.

"Each of the original directions of knowledge, each interpretation, which it makes of phenomena to combine them into the unity of a theoretical connection or into a definite unity of meaning, involves a special understanding and formulation of the concept of reality."6

Ordinary Naturalism confuses a particular organization, (mathematical physics), with the phenomena which are organized. That is the basis of its assertion of reference -and "scientific realism"7. "The "objects", (the organizational

1 ibid p.77, my emphasis

2 ibid3 Cassirer extends his theory of symbolic forms beyond "nature", (i.e. beyond

the sciences), into the "cultural forms": art, myth, religion, etc. -i.e. beyond cognition itself. I will deal with this aspect of his thesis presently, taking a neutral perspective, but first I would like to extend and modify this, his core and scientifically grounded position somewhat.

4 Cassirer 19535 I will question the eventual scope of his vision presently6 ibid, P.446, my emphasis7 another misnomer

primitives -i.e. "images"), of one particular form are assumed, (incorrectly), to reference ontology -to relate to "an ultimate metaphysical unity".

"Where there exist such diversities in fundamental direction of consideration, the results of consideration cannot be directly compared and measured with each other. The naive realism of the ordinary view of the world, like the realism of dogmatic metaphysics, falls into this error, ever again. It separates out of the totality of possible concepts of reality a single one and sets it up as a norm and pattern for all the others. Thus certain necessary formal points of view, from which we seek to judge and understand the world of phenomena, are made into things, into absolute beings.[my emphasis]"1 2

What these "formal points of view" do, instead, is organize phenomena. What is consistent under all forms, however, are the phenomena themselves. Naturalism confuses a particular "frame of reference", i.e. form, (and assumes that there is only one comprehensive frame possible3), with the invariant relationality of experience in the abstract, (i.e. under all consistent frames)4 It confuses a specific organization, (and a specific characterization), of experience with the experience itself5 which is organized. It results, (and I repeat myself), in an (improper) assignment of (unique) metaphysical reference rather than a (legitimate) judgement of empirical, (i.e. experiential), adequacy for the primitives of its theories.

"Only when we resist the temptation to compress the totality of forms, which here result, into an ultimate metaphysical unity, into the unity and simplicity of an absolute 'world ground' and to deduce it from the latter, do we grasp its true concrete import and fullness. No individual form can indeed claim to grasp absolute 'reality' as such and to give it complete and adequate expression.[my emphasis]"6

1 ibid, p.4472 Naturalism, at whatever level of sophistication, clearly falls under this

injunction.3 i.e. Naturalism4 compare Van Fraassen's "co-ordinate-free descriptions". "Quantum

Mechanics: an Empiricist's View"5 to include scientific experiment as an extension of ordinary experience6 ibid, p.446

Cassirer's denial of "completeness" and "adequacy", however, is not the same as denying that any individual form can grasp the whole of the phenomena comprehensively! Nor does it speak definitively on the issue of reduction! I will address both of these issues shortly.1

"It is the task of systematic philosophy, which extends far beyond the theory of knowledge, to free the idea of the world from this one-sidedness. It has to grasp the whole system of symbolic forms, the application of which produces for us the concept of an ordered reality, and by virtue of which subject and object, ego and world are separated and opposed to each other in definite form, and it must refer each individual in this totality to its fixed place. If we assume this problem solved, then the rights would be assured, and the limits fixed, of each of the particular forms of the concept and of knowledge as well of the general forms of the theoretical, ethical, aesthetic and religious understanding of the world. Each particular form would be 'relativized' with regard to the others, but since this 'relativization' is throughout reciprocal and since no single form but only the systematic totality can serve as the expression of 'truth' and 'reality', [my emphasis], the limit that results appears as a thoroughly immanent limit, as one that is removed as soon as we again relate the individual to the system of the whole." 2

Cassirer's is not a capricious relativism; it is a relativism as rigorous in concept as is Einstein's. Just as Einstein characterized his theory as having removed "the last remainder of physical objectivity from space and time", Cassirer's conclusion removes the last remainder of metaphysical, (i.e. absolute), reference from knowledge. It is based in the essential methodology of science: in its (Hertzian) theorizing function! It is the nature of science to construct a form, complete and interdependent between symbols, ("images"), and calculus which acts as a whole.3

Under all the forms, (of "nature", at least), Cassirer maintains that what must be maintained are the "invariants" -i.e. that which must be preserved under any

1 If a given form were, in fact, capable of reducing all other theories, and no other could, it would obviously cut against equipotency and "relativization" -i.e. against the whole sense of his thesis! This is the current rationale for dogmatic Naturalism as grounded, (problematically, I believe), in mathematical physics.)

2 ibid, p.4473 cf. the "training seminar" of Chapter 1

consistent form. These are not "things" or "images", but rather, (mathematically), that which remains constant under all legitimate forms. In the sense which I will expand the notion, I argue that it corresponds to my prior (relativized) definition of "experience".

"But above all it is the general form of natural law which we have to recognize as the real invariant and thus as the real logical framework of nature in general......No sort of things are truly invariant, but always only certain fundamental relations and functional dependencies retained in the symbolic language of our mathematics and physics, in certain equations." 1

I will postpone my critique of Cassirer's thesis for a little. Though I think there are problems and questions which need to be resolved, I would like to make the connection to my own thesis before going into those. In its essence, i.e. the essential relativism of knowledge, and his case against reference, I think the argument is very strong and very fundamental. There are very strong questions and delimitations that I will raise when I return to Cassirer's broader thesis later. They will not, however, question this, his core position.

The solution to the dilemma:

Nowhere does Cassirer question the profound effectiveness of modern science, however. His orientation is wholly and profoundly scientific. Rather, he preserves the various sciences as perspectives, as organizations of phenomena. He has, moreover, provided the tools necessary to resolve the epistemological dilemma created by the combination of my first and second theses.

I therefore propose a fundamental, (and final), "Copernican Revolution" -a profound change in perspective- contrary to that, (i.e. the Naturalist perspective), which I conditionally adopted2 at the end of Chapter 2, (and to the stance I now ultimately proclaim), which "reduces" the materialist position itself to organization and not to reference. I argue against ordinary Naturalism, and for a more sophisticated realism, (essentially a Kantian -and Cassirerian- one),3 consistent with

1 Cassirer, 1923, pps. 374-379, my emphasis2 but with perfect legitimacy, I now maintain -as a relative stance3 Kant's thesis is profoundly difficult to accept admittedly, both intellectually

and intuitively -but so was Einstein's. Where Einstein relativized the physical world, Kant sought to relativize the epistemological one. His lapses can be assigned to his deprivation of the examples of modern mathematics and modern science -which subjects were always his primary focus -and which could have

the results of the first two theses. By this, (once again), I do not mean to say that the relationality of Naturalism, (or Naturalist science), is faulty, but that its metaphysical reference as reference is faulty. My thesis, though built with Naturalist "bricks", does not therefore entail the (further and unnecessary) Naturalist "foundation" of reference. Though it assumes the validity of the Naturalist organization, (at least on the human scale), it does not assume the metaphysical reality of Naturalism's primitives. In questioning our actual, (referential), cognition of metaphysical reality, it is not, therefore, innately self-contradictory! Though stated in Naturalist terms, my thesis can legitimately question the actual (metaphysical) existence, (or even the possibility of knowledge), of the referents of those terms.

Ordinary Naturalism, though it will not say so, is through and through grounded in a specifically metaphysical dogma, i.e. absolute reference, (however sophisticated), to absolute, (rather than relativized), "material" == "substance". This is the "material" in "materialism",1 and was the specific target of Kant's and Cassirer's profound arguments.

As realists, contrariwise, (and I speak to no one else), we must posit the existence of an absolute, external reality. It is, I have argued, an axiom of realist reason. But, I further argue based on Kant, on Cassirer, on the advances of modern physics, on Maturana's penetrating analysis and on the results, (and natural concordance), of my first two theses, that human cognition does not know, and can not know that absolute reality. I argue we cannot know that metaphysical world in itself, even in "sophisticated" reference! I propose that we stand, even at the human scale,2 in the same relation to ontology that current physics does, (at least as I understand, let's say, Bohr's or Heisenberg's position to be.) I propose that our human scale cognitive world is as much -and as solely- a pure algorithm as is the worldview of quantum physics. It is utilitarian and not referential. But it is an organic, "tactile" algorithm, (a "GUI"), that evolution constructed.3 This sentence,

corrected him. That he was two hundred years before his time is surely not an argument against his credibility.

1 as usually conceived -i.e. not in a Cassirerian sense2 more properly "domain" than "scale", as I do not think this is a size issue. I

will expand this momentarily.3 This is the implication of my footnote early in Chapter 1. Let me repeat it

here: Ideally instrumentation and control would unify in the same "object". We would manipulate "the object" of the display itself and it would be the control device. Think about this in relation to our ordinary "objects of perception" -in relation to the sensory-motor coordination of the brain and the problem of naive

however, is no longer paradoxical. It must itself now be understood in my larger context, as the very "evolution" in it is itself relativized, (i.e. it is a relative assertion within the (particular) Naturalist form).

The results of my first two theses are therefore consistent under this epistemological rationale. The resolution lies in the scientifically and mathematically, (but most certainly not arbitrarily), conceived relativization of knowledge itself. Relational implications, predictive systems, (to include scientific theories), are not, (with Quine), epistemologically determinate. Rather, their essence, (which is their predictivity), can be isolated, (following Cassirer), as relational invariants, (in a mathematical sense), over the field of consistent hypotheses in a sense parallel to that in which Einstein's equations of special relativity were isolated as invariants from the "ether" in which they were originally grounded by Lorentz. Or, rather, relational implications are invariant, but predictive organizations, (i.e. theories), even comprehensive ones, are not! They are the (better or worse), "SUPERB" or "MISGUIDED"1 "forms" which organize those implications.

Whence Cassirer's Thesis:

There is, interestingly, a very real similarity of intent at least, (if not in scope or rationale), between Bas Van Fraassen's "co-ordinate free" and "semantic" approach to modern physics and Cassirer's "symbolic forms".

"To formulate a view on the aim of science, I gave a partial answer to the question of what a scientific theory is. ... It does not follow that a theory is something essentially linguistic. That we cannot convey information, or say what a theory entails, without using language does not imply that -after all, we cannot say what anything is without using language. We are here at another parting of the ways in philosophy of science. Again I shall advocate one particular view, the semantic view of theories. Despite its name, it is the view which de-emphasizes language."2

"Words are like coordinates. If I present a theory in English, there is a transformation which produces an equivalent description in German. There

realism! We do not use our biological algorithm, we live in it!

1 cf Penrose "The Emperor's New Mind" (his CAPS!). cf Appendix D2 Van Fraassen, 1991, pps.4-5

are also transformations which produce distinct but equivalent English descriptions. This would be easiest to see if I were so conscientious as to present the theory in axiomatic form; for then it could be rewritten so that the body of theorems remains the same, but a different subset of those theorems is designated as the axioms, from which all the rest follow. Translation is thus analogous to coordinate transformation -is there a coordinate-free", [invariant?] "format as well?' [my emphasis] The answer is yes (though the banal point that I can describe it only in words obviously remains)."1

Though Van Fraassen ultimately rejects axiomatics, and confines himself to the domain of physical science, his position has a very definite resemblance to that of Cassirer, at least insofar as the latter is confined to "nature". Each is epis-temologically relativistic,2 and each is grounded in invariants. Van Fraassen rejects axiomatics, (which I believe is the most cogent formulation of the problem), however, on the basis of a need for meaning and interpretation, i.e. reference. He goes on:

"To show this, we should look back a little for contrast. Around the turn of the century, foundations of mathematics progressed by increased formalization. Hilbert found many gaps in Euclid's axiomatization of geometry because he rewrote the proofs in a way that did not rely at all on the meaning of the terms (point, line, plane,...). This presented philosophers with the ideal: a pure theory is written in a language devoid of meaning (a pure syntax) plus something that imparts meaning and so connects it with our real concerns."3

1 ibid2 "There are a number of reasons why I advocate an alternative to scientific

realism ... One concerns the difference between acceptance and belief; reasons for acceptance include many which ceteris paribus, detract from the likelihood of truth. This point was made very graphically by William James; it is part of the legacy of pragmatism. The reason is that, in constructing and evaluating theories, we follow our desires for information as well as our desire for truth. We want theories with great powers of empirical prediction. For belief itself, however, all but the desire for truth must be 'ulterior motives'." (ibid p.3) Please note the connection to the essential Hertzian perspective. "Information" is concerned with predicting future events; "truth" is something else altogether.

3 ibid

My thesis of the "schematic object", however is directed precisely to that point. It is precisely my point that "meaning" be taken in its mathematical sense for such a system. A mathematician understands the meaning of a term to be precisely that which is implied by the syntax, i.e. it is a virtual term "ordering" the system in which it is defined. If the mind and perception specifically, (the phenomena), is taken in this sense, ordering process- if it is taken as an organization, and its terms as metaphors of process then there is no longer the metaphysical question of meaning or of reference. The terms mean precisely what the syntax implies -i.e. they are virtual terms only! I maintain these are our real concerns! The real problem is the one that Cassirer defined: that of "experience" itself and how theoretical science relates to it,1 -and that involves a total reevaluation of the problem of reference.

Cassirer's epistemology, of course, is firmly grounded in axiomatics. Discussing Hilbert, Cassirer says:

"The procedure of mathematics here", (implicit definition), "points to the analogous procedure of theoretical natural science, for which it contains the key and justification."2

Contra Cassirer: (What are the real parameters?)

Though I accept, (and argue), Cassirer's core position of epistemological relativism, (I believe it is absolutely warranted on the very pure and very strong

1 Theory, (seen as a Hertzian, free construct -as developed in this chapter), must match, (in some sense), the "topology" of temporal and spatial consequence in experience. As stated thus far, this idea is, of course, Kantian. Russell however, (in his "Foundations of Geometry"), argued to extend the Kantian frame to projective geometry. I feel it must be broadened again past that -past even topology and into the mathematics of abstract transformations. What is required is that the predicted results of the theoretical system (through some transformation!) must match the results of naive (?) experience, -and conversely! I.e. that the results of naive experience -through some (mathematical) transformation - should match the retrodictive predictions of the theory. But this transformation, (since it is past topology), need not preserve objects, and therefore, not reference! What it must preserve is the web of relationality in its most abstract sense.

2 ibid p.94

phenomenological grounds wherein he evolved it), I will now question its scope and its applicability. What are the legitimate forms?

Cassirer's thesis goes beyond "cognition" and science, ("nature") into a symmetry of cultural forms, (to include science as a special case), as well. Van Fraassen does not, nor did Kant, (who remained entirely within "nature"), but this is a question of scope. There is also a question of the identification of the legitimate (primitive) forms -even within "nature" itself.

Before addressing these questions, however, let me first complete my examination of the broadest formulation of Cassirer's thesis. Going beyond the "natural forms", (physics, biology, chemistry, etc), he extends his thesis into ground which I must at least question. He proposes that the forms of "nature", of "cognition", are only part of the innate symmetry of perspectives across the phenomena. They, (the natural forms), represent those forms which relate phenomena directly to a metaphysical, (cognitive), framework. Phenomena can however, (he asserts), be organized on other grounds: art, myth, religion, etc., but they achieve this universal validity by methods entirely different from the logical concept and logical law.

But again our perspectives widen, [i.e. beyond "nature" and into the purely cultural forms], if we consider that cognition, [itself], however universally and comprehensively we may define it, is only one of the many forms in which the mind can apprehend and interpret being. In giving form to multiplicity it is governed by a specific, hence sharply delimited principle. All cognition, much as it may vary in method and orientation, aims ultimately to subject the multiplicity of phenomena to the unity of a 'fundamental proposition.' The particular must not be left to stand alone, but must be made to take its place in a context, where it appears as part of a logical structure, whether of a teleological, logical, or causal character. Essentially cognition is always oriented toward this essential aim, the articulation of the particular into a universal law and order.1

(I disagree with his distinction -so too do the "cultural forms" embody law. The difference, I believe, is in the orientation -i.e. to cognition -to "externality" as world-ground. Any form, even the "cultural forms", will have, (by definition), its own sense of law and logical structure. It is a question of the meaning of "logical structure".)

1 Cassirer, 1953, p.77

"But beside this intellectual synthesis, which operates and expresses itself within a system of scientific concepts, the life of the human spirit as a whole knows other forms. They too can be designated as modes of 'objectivization': i.e., as means of raising the particular to the level of the universally valid; but they achieve this universal validity by methods entirely different from the logical concept and logical law. Every authentic function of the human spirit has this decisive characteristic in common with cognition: it does not merely copy but rather embodies an original, formative power. It does not express passively the mere fact that something is present but contains an independent energy of the human spirit through which the simple presence of the phenomenon assumes a definite 'meaning', a particular ideational content."1

But please note carefully that all of Cassirer's "functions of the human spirit" -even his "cultural forms" specifically articulate phenomena -i.e. they are not free, "idealistic" constructs! ("...an independent energy of the human spirit through which the simple presence of the phenomenon assumes a definite 'meaning', a particular ideational content.")

"This is as true of art as it is of cognition; it is as true of myth as of religion. All live in particular image-worlds, which do not merely reflect the empirically given, but which rather produce it in accordance with an independent principle. Each of these functions creates its own symbolic forms which, if not similar to the intellectual symbols, enjoy equal rank as products of the human spirit. None of these forms can simply be reduced to, or derived from, the others; each of them designates a particular approach, in which and through which it constitutes its own aspect of 'reality'. They are not different modes in which an independent reality manifests itself to the human spirit, but roads by which the spirit proceeds towards its objectivization, i.e. its self-revelation."2

(That "none of these forms can simply be reduced to, or derived from, the others" seems to provide an essential argument to dogmatic Naturalism. Conversely, I will argue that it suggests and delimits a more correct extension of Cassirer's solution to the overall problem. I will address these very large problems shortly. His meaning must be examined very closely.)

1 ibid. pps. 77-78, my emphasis2 ibid, my emphasis

"If we consider art and language, myth and cognition in this light, they present a common problem which opens up new access to a universal philosophy of the cultural sciences.1

"The 'revolution in method' which Kant brought to theoretical philosophy rests on the fundamental idea that the relation between cognition and its object, generally accepted until then, must be radically modified. Instead of starting from the object", [my emphasis]," as the known and given, we must begin with the law of cognition, which alone is truly accessible and certain in a primary sense; instead of defining the universal qualities of being, like ontological metaphysics, we must, by an analysis of reason, ascertain the fundamental form of judgement and define it in all its numerous ramifications; only if this is done, can objectivity become conceivable. According to Kant, only such an analysis can disclose the conditions on which all knowledge of being and the pure concept of being depend. But the object which transcendental analytics thus places before us is the correlate of the synthetic unity of the understanding, an object determined by purely logical attributes.2 Hence it does not characterize all objectivity as such, but only that form of objective necessity which can be apprehended by the basic concepts of science, particularly the concepts and principles of mathematical physics. ..."2

Cassirer asserts an absolute "spiritual" relativism, (but always articulating the phenomena), -i.e. an absolute symmetry across the whole of the "cultural forms", (the "spirit"), of man.

"There result here not only the characteristic differences of meaning in the objects of science, the distinction of the 'mathematical' object from the 'physical' object, the 'physical' from the 'chemical', the 'chemical' from the 'biological', but there occur also, over against the whole of theoretical scientific knowledge, other forms and meanings of independent type and laws, such as the ethical, the aesthetic 'form'. It appears as the task of a truly universal criticism of knowledge not to level this manifold, this wealth and variety of forms of knowledge and understanding of the world and compress them into a purely abstract unity, but to leave them standing as such."3

1 ibid2 ibid3 Cassirer, 1923, p.446

Though starting from very stable ground, I think that Cassirer ended up in a somewhat ambiguous position. He, like Kant, used words with great precision,1 so he must be read very carefully -even technically. "Nature", and "the forms of nature", for Cassirer, are technical words.

He defines the "forms of nature" for us -e.g. physics, biology, chemistry. These are some of the "values" of his specific function, (his "purely functional unity"), of the human spirit, (here specifically the cognitive forms). A philosophical critique "must formulate the universal conditions of this function and define the principle underlying it."

We must place this passage in the context of Cassirer's redefinition of the formal concept however. We must see it in the context of "the mathematical concept of function" to understand it. The various forms are functional "values" -in a technical mathematical sense -of a definite, and, for Cassirer, serial ordering, (and principle). They are the alternative orderings of the phenomena, (defined by a serial function), -and constitute a series of series. The phenomena, however, remain always the orientation -the focus -of all the forms, (even the "cultural forms"). There is in this no assertion of comprehensiveness, (and even a seeming denial of it), for any given form however. He seems to argue against reduction,2 (and therefore comprehensiveness), as well -but against "reduction" and "comprehensiveness" in what senses?

Compare: (1) "none of these forms can simply be reduced to, or derived from, the others",3 (2) "no individual form can indeed claim to grasp absolute 'reality' as such and to give it complete and adequate expression."4, and (3) "each particular form would be 'relativized' with regard to the others, but since this 'relativization' is throughout reciprocal and since no single form but only the systematic totality can serve as the expression of 'truth' and 'reality', the limit that results appears as a thoroughly immanent limit, as one that is removed as soon as we again relate the individual to the system of the whole."5

What is the sense of Cassirer's "cannot be simply reduced to or derived from"? That no individual form can give "complete and adequate expression to reality" and that no form can be "simply reduced" does not necessarily imply that reduction, (i.e. translation), in a non-simple sense, or that comprehensiveness, (as a

1 I think it is a necessary concomitant of the very abstract nature of their ideas2 "None of these forms can simply be reduced to, or derived from, the others"3 ibid, my emphasis4 ibid, p.4465 ibid, p.447

complete accounting for phenomena), is impossible. (3), moreover, seems to contradict (1) and (2).

Consider, moreover, his "invariants of nature": though "no sort of things [his emphasis] are truly invariant, but [it is the]..fundamental relations and functional dependencies retained ... in certain equations..[which are truly invariant]" He proposes these, (the functional invariants), as "the real logical framework of nature in general" [my emphasis]. But "nature" is a pluralistic word for Cassirer -the "natural forms" are all the forms of science!

We have, therefore, an assertion of invariance1 across all the forms of science -and cross-reduction across the invariants. Indeed, this is the only sense in which "invariance" makes any sense at all, (it is a "coordinate-free" perspective). "Invariance", therefore, means invariance across different, (all the different), perspectives of nature -and epistemologic relativity. For what other interpretation of the "relativization" of (3) is there except as alternative orientations of the same phenomena?

Consider also his seeming denial of comprehensiveness. "The 'relativization' [of forms] is throughout reciprocal". "No single form but only the systematic totality can serve as the expression of 'truth' and 'reality'." What he is actually asserting, I argue, is that although multiple forms are legitimate, no single one of them can describe the structure as abstracted from an orientation! What Cassirer is portraying here is exactly a "coordinate free" perspective! It is not, therefore, a denial of comprehensiveness2 that he is arguing, but a denial of the (metaphysical)

1 of functional dependency but not of "things"2 Comprehensiveness is, of course, a highly pertinent issue because of the very

definite, (and very powerful), claim by ordinary Naturalism for just such an (ultimate) comprehensiveness for mathematical physics . (I will address this issue presently). This is a very strong claim, and one I think we all actually do accept -at least in principle. However, if one particular form, (e.g. Naturalism), is actually capable of such comprehensiveness, (even in principle), and no other is, then this would constitute a very definite objection to his thesis.

Cassirer believed that the only salvation for the symmetry and relativism he envisaged lay in his extension across the cultural forms:

"As long as philosophical thought limits itself to analysis of pure cognition, [his emphasis], the naive-realistic view of the world cannot be wholly discredited, [I will disagree with this],. The object of cognition is no doubt determined and formed in some way by cognition and through its original law -but it must nevertheless, so it would seem, also be present and given as something independent outside of this relation to the fundamental categories of knowledge.**

adequacy of any particular orientation. It is only in their multiplicity that he believes that they express "'truth' and 'reality'". "The limit that results appears as a thoroughly immanent limit, as one that is removed as soon as we again relate the individual to the system of the whole."1

If these are "the real logical framework of nature", and they are invariant across all the forms of nature, then all the forms of nature are, by implication, cross reductive and comprehensive! That these forms cannot be "simply...reduced to, or derived from the others", does not mean, therefore, that they cannot be reduced or derived at all!

It is cross-reduction and relativistic invariance which tie the forms together and it is only in their totality that they express reality -and experience. The mathematical axiom system will serve to illustrate the case again. That any (adequate) axiom system for a given discipline will be comprehensive is, of course, clear by definition. But to confuse the discipline itself with one particular, (of many possible), adequate axiom systems, is incorrect. Peano's system is not the same as the positive integers. (A more specific and perhaps a more elegant tool for illustrating this conception lies the mathematical notion of “ideals” in abstract algebra. I have discussed this in detail in the Lakoff/Edelman appendix. cf: Afterward: Lakoff – Edelman)

Cassirer is asserting alternative functional orientations across the phenomena in his thesis of "Symbolic Forms". Each draws different functional, (and serial), perspectives, "diverse

manifestations of the same basic human function".2 This is an explicit invocation of his "mathematical concept of function". I suggest, instead, an

If, however, we take as our starting point not the general concept of the world, but rather the general concept of culture, the question assumes a different form. For the content of the concept of culture cannot be detached from the fundamental forms and directions of human activity: here 'being can be apprehended only in 'action'."

I believe the actual salvation of his thesis and the guide to its extension lies in the idea of converse -i.e. mutual reduction. If his basic conception is right, and I think it is, (on phenomenological grounds), then multiple cross-reductions and a true relativism will be possible. The possibility is founded in the conception of alternative axiom systems, (and orientations), in formal mathematics and in my extension of Cassirer's reformulation of the formal logical concept.

1 ibid, p.447

2 Also: "A philosophical critique must formulate the universal conditions of this function and define the principle underlying it."

extension of it: that the objects of knowledge are constituted in different, (and alternative), "axiom systems"1 which "crystallize" the phenomena, (under the "concept of implicit definition"). (This is certainly consistent with the Hertzian perspective, more so, I believe, than even Cassirer's interpretation.) I suggest that it is the phenomena themselves which are the actual invariants!2 It is a solution based, not in the mathematics of functions but, as Cassirer suggested often as the true focus of modern thought, -in that of the manifold itself. What results is a true epistemological relativity, (in a mathematical sense), and the possibility of multiple, each-truly-comprehensive and cross-reductive independent perspectives.3

I will leave the problem of the definition of the actual (valid) forms without reaching a definite conclusion. Cassirer's solution is seductive, to be sure -and may very well be correct, but it is outside of the needs for my thesis. What is unquestionable, I think, is his "coordinate-free" orientation to phenomena. Such a perspective on physics alone would stand sufficient to my requirements and my interests here, and Cassirer's Hertzian stance, narrowed to Van Fraassen's smaller physical perspective, will adequately serve my case. I do, nonetheless, think that the case for the "forms of nature" has definite merit as well,4 but, as Cassirer himself explicitly states, beyond that we leave the arena of "cognition" altogether. But cognition is precisely our area of interest here. Our context here is precisely that of cognition and metaphysics!

If my area of interest were to change -if I chose to look at "the phenomena" artistically, let's say, then this would no longer be my orientation, and his broader case might be argued. But then, conversely, I would no longer be able to express it in a cognitive context!5

1 ? Alternatively, “generators of an Ideal” –cf Afterword2 ? Are the phenomena themselves, then, invariant equations? No, they are what the equations embody.3 ? See the discussion of mathematical “ideals” in the “Afterword: Lakoff, Edelman,…” for a further elaboration of these ideas.4 ? Note 6-20-1999: In reflection, I have altered my conception of this. I have concluded that an extension to biology is a necessary component of my thesis. See the footnote to the Afterward: Lakoff - Edelman discussing "embodied logic" and biology as a pure "form". (Hyperlink to Lakoff appendix, relevant section)***

5 An interesting and important point comes up here, however. If his broader thesis is correct, and my extension of it as well -i.e. mutual cross-reductions and comprehensiveness - then the "invariants", (if there should be such), of those other forms will be (reductively) retained as invariants even in the sciences! Thus, if there be absolutes, (invariants), in art, in music, in religion, then they will be retained as invariants even in the sciences, (in psychology, for instance). I

Cassirer's is a profoundly beautiful and elegant conception, to be sure. I am not sure that I can accept the broadest symmetry that Cassirer asserts however, a symmetry, (and a still further Copernican Revolution), that extends beyond cognition and science itself into the cultural forms: language, religion, myth.2 But I believe the symmetry within cognition and science itself is wholly justified.

The Power of Naturalism

Naturalism, however, is a profoundly comprehensive theory! Not only mathematical physics, but its reductive incorporation of the other disciplines, from biology and chemistry through (proposedly) psychology, philosophy, ethics, religion,1 presents a purportedly complete (comprehensive) theory of all the phenomena. Quine demonstrates, however, that there are always other interpretations of the phenomena, no matter the level of detail. Can there be other comprehensive forms then? I think the answer is necessarily yes! Need they be physical forms? The possibility of alternative, and comprehensive, physical forms, certainly seems quite believable. Heisenberg vs. Schroedinger illustrates the plausibility. Whether Cassirer's other "natural forms": biology, chemistry, etc. are capable of such a legitimate extension to comprehensiveness2 is another issue, however.

Cassirer wrote in another era,3 but this does not, in itself, invalidate his conclusions or their possible extension to a broader relativism. On the subject of biology, for instance, he dealt with the issues of vitalism. In modern times, however, there is a very strong case made on much more rigorous grounds which supports the same, independent case for biology. It is that of Maturana and Varela.1 To appreciate it, it is necessary, of course, to effect the same "Copernican Revolution" which Cassirer suggested. Maturana and Varela's case is made on very pure phenomenological grounds. The biology they propound is not grounded upon mathematical physics. Its primitives are not those of the latter, but rather, physics, (and human knowledge) is derived as a function of linguistic coupling,

consider this a very significant scientific conclusion, and running contrary to current social relativism. There may be an ultimate scientific decision possible between, let's say, John Cage and Beethoven! -Or between Zoroaster and Jesus!

1 The primitives of some of these forms are distributed and derivative under the reduction, however.

2 with equivalent distributions and derivativeness of primitives3 though not that long ago!

(third order structural coupling) -i.e. it is contained as a (non-centralized) theoretical derivative of biology's own primitives:

"It is by languaging that the act of knowing, in the behavioral coordination which is language, brings forth a world. ...We find ourselves in this co-ontogenic coupling, not as a preexisting reference nor in reference to an origin, [my emphasis], but as an ongoing transformation in the becoming of the linguistic world that we build with other human beings."1

Maturana and Varela's thesis does not find its epistemological roots in substance, but drives past its materialist beginnings to find its new epistemological center in "autopoietic unities" and "structural coupling". It ends up questioning the very physical ground from which it began. In many ways it represents the "Heisenberg" case of biology. It represents an alternative theoretical perspective on experience and on science. It works because of the purity of its phenomenology. Can other "natural forms" be asserted in this same sense?2 Could chemistry, for instance, be stated with the phenomenological purity with which Maturana and Varela stated biology? That is the only real issue. This is Hertz' problem, after all, pure and simple. It is also the case I made for the training seminar in Chapter 1.

I will not profess an absolute conclusion on these questions other than in the case of physics, where I conclude, (on Quinean grounds), that there must be, indeed, multiple possible comprehensive forms. The case for biology seems more than plausible and leads to me to accept the broader case for the "natural forms", though I will not insist on it.

But my conclusion in its essence, and beyond Cassirer's, is a fully relativistic one. The truly fundamental forms are (necessarily) comprehensive forms -i.e. they

1 op.cit Pps.234-244, my emphasis2 Maturana and Varela reveal such an alternative orientation in "structural

coupling" and "autopoetic unities". That these other "symbolic forms" must encompass the whole of experience, (i.e. the whole of past and future experience -to include scientific experiment), I think is incontrovertible. But they need not encompass it in the same way as does physics, for example. They need not encompass it as the primitive and hierarchical ground of their science, but may weave and distribute its relationality into a much less central, (i.e. removed from "axiomatic" status), much less concentrated position in its theoretical structure. They need not adopt the primitives of another orientation as their own primitives -those may become "theorems"!

are fully functional "axiom systems"1 capable of exhausting the phenomena. (Alternatively, "the phenomena" is that which remains constant -i.e. invariant- under all such exhaustive perspectives.) They "slice" the phenomena, (all the phenomena), from different perspectives. To be fully relativistic, each form must be complete. Though Cassirer seemed to drive towards this complete relativism, he didn't ever complete it.2

But must not a comprehensive organization be categorical, i.e. must there not be only one? (If we could achieve the Laplacean ideal, would it not be unique?)3 Or, rather, might there not be alternative yet still comprehensive

1 Cf Afterword: Lakoff and Edelman on mathematical "ideals"2 I believe because of the limitation in his formal concept3 The Laplacean ideal is not realist by definition.

"In the introduction to his "Theorie analytique des probabilites" Laplace envisages an all-embracing spirit possessing complete knowledge of the state of the universe at a given moment, for whom the whole universe in every detail of its existence and development would thus be completely determined. Such a spirit, knowing all forces operative in nature and exact positions of all the particles that make up the universe, would only have to subject these data to mathematical analysis in order to arrive at a cosmic formula that would incorporate the movements both of the largest bodies and of the lightest atoms. Nothing would be uncertain for it; future and past would lie before its gaze with the same clarity. ...Du Bois-Reymond elevated scientific knowledge far above all accidental, merely empirical bounds...If it were possible for human understanding to raise itself to the ideal of the Laplacean spirit, the universe in every single detail past and future would be completely transparent. 'For such a spirit the hairs on our head would be numbered and no sparrow would fall to the ground without his knowledge. He would be a prophet facing forward and backward for whom the universe would be a single fact, one great truth'." Cassirer, "Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics", pps.3-4

Under a functional logic, (i.e. one not based in the generic concept), there is the possibility of alternative "axiom systems", (organizational perspectives), exposing alternative utilities, (e.g. biology, psychology, etc. -or alternative physical theories). The Laplacean ideal does not, therefore, presuppose a unique theory, (Newtonian, for instance), and reference.

predictive organizations with different perspectives and different utilities? Under the Aristotelian logic, and assuming comprehensiveness, (i.e. assuming the possibility of a single and complete accounting of all phenomena), there is a linear reduction of all true theories to a single substratum of primitives.1

Hierarchy, (set-theoretic, type ordered inclusion), is an essential component of the existing Naturalist perspective: i.e. that there is a necessary hierarchy of spatial scale. It argues that that hierarchy is mirrored in the process of the reduction of scientific theories: e.g. biology is a subset of chemistry, and chemistry of physics. (Thus psychology and all the phenomena of experience, of knowledge, and of the "spirit" as well, are embedded in that hierarchical ordering -as biological subsets.) It presumes that our naive world, (or at least most of it), is hierarchically mirrored in the primitives of any true theory, (i.e. that the objects of naive realism are objects of that true theory as well). It presumes that they can be represented as legitimate and necessary groupings of those primitives. Thus our ordinary objects and the ordinary things they do are, in fact, real and necessary metaphysical objects and happenings. This argument is crucial to the strength of Naturalism and its metaphysical claim!

But scale is not a priori inherent or the only way to preserve the phenomena, i.e. it need not necessarily "cut reality at the joints". 1 If other organizations, more effective, (i.e. other schematic organizations), are found, then they are legitimate as well. Our naive objects, as objects, are not necessarily metaphysical objects.

Science, until very recently has supported such a spatial, (and theoretical), hierarchy -from the macro to the human scale to the micro to the atomic, (which, of course, theoretical reduction generally supports -i.e. biology -> chemistry -> physics), -or from cosmology right down through the human scale to the atomic.

At the smallest level of scale, of course, (and at the largest scale as well -EPR), the case for hierarchy has broken down in this century. As an example, let me cite Penrose's "most optimistic" view of quantum mechanics, (most optimistic for scientific realism, that is):

If we were, in fact, to achieve a science, (theory), such that "the hairs on our head would be numbered and no sparrow would fall to the ground without his [our] knowledge", i.e., comprehensiveness, I maintain that it still not need be unique. The Laplacean ideal is not tied necessarily to Newtonian or any other particular theory, but constitutes the basis of determinism and could apply to raw empiricism as well. (ibid)

1 See Afterword: Lakoff and Edelman for a further discussion of classical logic and science

"I shall follow the more positive line which attributes objective physical reality to the quantum description: the quantum state. .

"I have been taking the view that the 'objectively real' state of an individual particle is indeed described by its wavefunction psi. It seems that many people find this a difficult position to adhere to in a serious way. One reason for this appears to be that it involves our regarding individual particles being spread out spatially, rather than always being concentrated at single points. For a momentum state, this spread is at its most extreme, since psi is distributed equally all over the whole of space, (my emphasis),...It would seem that we must indeed come to terms with this picture of a particle which can be spread out over large regions of space, and which is likely to remain spread out until the next position measurement is carried out...."

The particle -this smallest part of our "object"- is not included, (spatially, reductively), within the spatiality of the atom or within the molecule -or even within the human scale object of which it is the theoretical (and supposed material) foundation. Naturalism can no longer support, therefore, a consistent hierarchy of scale! At the human level, of course, it is a very useful tool, and that is just what I propose it is -constructed by evolution! Schematism, (and "Symbolic Forms" as well), suggests other, non-scaled and non-hierarchical organizations -i.e. they support any other efficacious organization. It is a simple matter of utility.

Naturalism's primitive substratum, (the primitives of mathematical physics), is deemed unique and "true of" == "refers (isomorphically) to" ontology. It is Naturalism's epistemological basis for a claim of reference.1 But under a functional logic, (i.e. a logic not based in the generic concept), there is the possibility of alternative "axiom systems", (different functional logical concepts/theories, -not as class abstractions from phenomena or as hierarchical spatial perspectives into the phenomena, but as lines drawn across phenomena -as connective functional rules), and a different sort of "reduction", (i.e. translation), exposing alternative utilities, (e.g. biology, psychology, etc. -or alternative purely physical conceptions). So may we consider the new possibility that the relationality of experience, (and experiment), can be entirely preserved under varying (comprehensive) functional perspectives, no one of which stands as the canonical revelation of ontology/experience. The assertion of comprehensiveness for a given reducing theory would not then imply that it would necessarily, therefore, be the sole and unique organizational primitive -i.e. that would be the only one.

1 cf. Appendix E

This is the sense of my extension of Cassirer's "symbolic forms". I argue, with Cassirer, for a relativism of forms which organize the phenomena, but against reference. I do not argue for his particular specification, (choices), of these forms, nor do I assert my own alternatives to these forms, but I do argue for his general conclusion.

It is in Cassirer's sense of the organizational, rather than the referential relevance of theories that I propose that the relations of ordinary Naturalism -and my own thesis as well- can be, (must be), retained in a deeper realism. "Experience", our true primitive, (and, I have argued, the other axiom of reason), is not the same as any particular organization of it. It is not identical with its (legitimate but particular) characterization as "sense impressions" under the Naturalist form, for instance. I have argued a (broadest -and truly relativistic) definition of "experience" as that which remains invariant under all consistent and comprehensive worldviews.1

What must be preserved is the web of implication of experience in our world, but hierarchy as such need not be maintained. A comprehensive theory, ("form"), e.g. Naturalism, stands as an "axiom system" to generate the field of experience. But if other theories, (forms), and other "axiom systems" are found, (and Quine definitely implies their existence), also comprehensive, then the preference is no longer epistemological but utilitarian. Each, however, must fully preserve "experience" -to include the whole body of past (and future) scientific experiment.2

1 But does "experience" itself absolutely, (i.e. metaphysically), refer to something else? My thesis proposes that it does not. I propose, rather, that it is an organization of atomic, (and indeterminate), process. It is, therefore, real and ontic, but irreducible and non-referential.

2 This is the point on which I question, (but do not necessarily deny), Cassirer's suggestions of the particular comprehensive "symbolic forms" -i.e. in that I believe that they must each embody the whole as past and future scientific experiment. In defense of his choice, however, that relationality of experiment need not necessarily be maintained as "central" to the organization of a particular form. That is, it need not lie close to its "axiomatic" base, but need only be maintained somewhere and somehow within the form as a whole. Thus biology could stand as such a "form" in Maturana's conception, for instance, wherein the experimental results of science would be maintained within third order structural coupling, for example. But how would science be retained in a mythical form, for instance? Or language? And yet he has touched something very powerful in both of these. That I am, as yet, unable to see the specific relevance of these suggestions does not convince me that they are, therefore, wrong! In the specific

I have proposed that our ordinary perceptual world -our innate and functional organic naive realism- is such an organization itself, constructed by evolution, (as stated in relative -but legitimate- Naturalist terms), for efficient viability. At the human scale, Naturalism is an extension of that existing organization -i.e. of that which evolution has given us. But there is clearly no paradox remaining in these statements in light of the prior discussion. My thesis is, therefore, self-consistent and the epistemological dilemma is resolved.

My thesis is, I believe however, more than consistent. Even from a purely Naturalistic perspective, I maintain that it is the only complete and consistent explanation yet offered of what it is we have set out to understand -i.e. the whole of cognition! The problem of the "Cartesian theatre", (sentiency), for instance, has heretofore either been trivialized and eliminated by ordinary Naturalism, (leading to a sort of linguistic or materialistic "idealism"), or it has been referred, for instance, to epiphenomenalism or emergence. But the latter are little more than an invocation of magic, (they do not vivify the ghosts they summon).

On its own grounds, I believe my scientific thesis stands well vis a vis its competition -it is biologically, psychologically, logically and teleologically cogent. It is, moreover, far more compatible with the epistemology of modern physics than is any other alternative -it speaks the same language. It "covers the territory", (of mind and mind-brain), for the first time and assumes no "magic", (also for the first time).

But our "ordinary objects", (the objects of naive realism), need not be, (and in fact, are not), preserved as metaphysical primitives -i.e. as necessary unities. Quine acknowledged the possibility:

"One could even end up, though we ourselves shall not, by finding that the smoothest and most adequate overall account of the world does not after all accord existence to ordinary physical things.....Such eventual departures from Johnsonian usage1 could

case of religion, for instance, however, I believe that Cassirer has misconstrued the problem. Let me make a countersuggestion: that religion, identified not with its ordinary practice, but with its incarnations in the religious mystics - exhibits an alternative biological form corresponding to the rational form suggested by Quine, i.e., one in which "ordinary objects" are no longer the organizing rationale. (cf. William James "Varieties of Religious Experience").

1 Johnson demonstrated the reality of a stone by kicking it!

partake of the spirit of science and even of the evolutionary spirit of ordinary language itself."1

This is exactly the case I have made. I argue that the "smoothest and most adequate overall account of the world" does not, indeed, accord existence to ordinary physical things. My departure from Johnsonian usage does "partake of the spirit of science and the evolutionary spirit of ordinary language itself".

This concludes the epistemological argument. In the next chapter, I will complete my solution of the mind-body problem with a statement of my third thesis which will supply the "what", the "matter of mind". All the hard work has already been done, however, so the chapter will be brief. The problem is not so hard; it was our presuppositions which made it seem so.

1 ? W. V.O. Quine 1960, pps. 3-4

Preface to Chapter 5, (the Final Step)

So where have we got to with our realism? Realism must accept or propose two basic postulates as metaphysical, ontological postulates: the actual metaphysical/ontological existence of externality and also the real metaphysical/ontological existence of experience. But for these two postulates to have any meaning, there is a presupposition: the existence in that same sense –i.e. the real metaphysical/ontological existence of some connection between the two. This is the existence that Kant did not mention, but which is implicit in his writings. That interconnection, that relationship between the two, is what I will call “interface”. That that particular existence, (of the interface), must be described in context-free1 terms -that we cannot describe it from a particular perspective -is the lesson of chapter 4. It is that abstract, that invariant concept of interface whose existence we must also metaphysically posit as realists. Assuming, moreover, that it were structured in the way that I have proposed under the concept of implicit definition, (and this is my third hypothesis), then it supplies the actual reality and the metaphysical/ontological existence of mind.

This is an abstract thesis, but it is necessarily abstract. It is the conclusion that I believe realism must come to.

1 cf Van Fraasen

Chapter 5: What? The Substance of Mind

"We can still distinguish science from scientism, a view in which science, which allows us so admirably to find our way around in the world, is elevated (?) to the status of metaphysics. By metaphysics I mean here a position, reaching far beyond the ken of even possible experience, on what there is, or on what the world is really like. Scientism is also essentially negative; it denies reality to what it does not countenance. Its world is as chock-full as an egg; it has room for nothing else. Commitment to the scientific enterprise does not require this. If anyone adopts such a belief, he or she does it as a leap of faith. To make such a leap does not make us ipso facto irrational; but we should be able to live in the light of day, where our decisions are acknowledged and avowed as our own, and not disguised as the compulsion of reason."1

Though I have argued against the "material" and the "substance" of Naturalism as metaphysical existences, there is a deeper -and truly metaphysical- sense of substance that I do wish to maintain. It is embodied in our, (and Kant's), minimal realist assumptions -in the axioms of externality and of experience.

Though Cassirer argues for a broad range of symbolic forms, there is another form implicit in his thesis, (roughly equivalent to the whole of the natural forms), -and innate in Kant's as well. It is the metaphysical form, i.e. the whole of the metaphysical context of the problem itself. (It was as a "Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics" that Kant himself characterized his work, after all.) This metaphysical form is the proper context for any conception of cognition, (and realism), but, precisely because of Kant, it is necessarily severely restricted and analytic.

Inside of the form of metaphysics, (wherein we are now framing the problem), we are constrained by Kantian parameters -i.e. the fundamental, (rather than the historically limited), parameters discussed in chapter 3. These abstract limits, the axioms of externality, and of experience, and the relativity of perception to the (human) instrument whereby it is effected, dictate a general, relativized and abstract solution to the problem.

1 Bas Van Fraassen, Quantum Mechanics, p.17

Always implicit in Kant, however, was the assumption of some connection between our cognition, and the reality which is perceived, (metaphysical reality), -and that connection was assumed to be reflected in experience, ("intuition"). Always implicit in Kant is the relationship between the absolute external existence which he affirms and the modifying, coupling relationship of cognition itself. Kant's is very much a modern mathematical conception. He argues that we cannot separate the facts of our "instrument", (our cognition), from that which it "measures", (cognates). The relationship between that cognating entity and its object, however, is understood in a very profound and sophisticated sense -very much in the sense of modern algebra. His concept of intuition, (experience), is a relativistic one. The connection is seen as a limit concept -as the most abstract possibility- conceived relativistically to "the X" of metaphysical reality. Alternatively, we might today characterize this connection as the most abstract reinterpretation of Maturana and Varela's "structural coupling", but removed from its strict Naturalistic (metaphysical) formulation. I think the most natural characterization of it is, simply and abstractly, "interface"! This interface, this connectivity, between cognator and that which is cognated, is assumed in any realist conception of reality, (most definitely to include Kant's itself). It is implicit in ma

terialism, in dualism ...; it is implicit in behaviorism, and identicism ..., in "memes" and in neural process. I mean it to be the minimum intersection, (the limit), of all of these realist, (i.e. non-idealist), possibilities. This minimum conception of interface is then, (by definition), necessary and apodictic to any realist position. Realistically, it does, therefore, metaphysically exist! This is the metaphysical reality that Kant does not name, but which is implicit in his, and any other realist position. As a realist, I claim it therefore to truly metaphysically exist, and I call it "substance". This is not, however, the "substance" of materialism, but an analytic conception -i.e. it is the metaphysically minimal necessity of realist cognition.1

1 There is an understandable demand here for a more precise definition, a more concrete characterization of this "interface". But I think the demand, truly considered, is really for a metaphysical characterization of precisely the kind that Kant and Cassirer obviated. It is the essential and invariant -i.e. the relativistic and "context-free" component of all realist philosophies that I wish to isolate, and that is approached, legitimately and solely, as a limit concept. Mathematicians will best understand my meaning. It is the analytic and limiting essence, (i.e. invariant), of the connectivity of cognition in general that I define as "interface" and that I propose as apodictic to all realist philosophies and as itself metaphysically real.

That there is something more, some other "substance", some externality other than the interface,1 is also apodictic to realism -it is presumed in the axiom of externality -and I confirm it as well. Kant has stripped the latter of all knowable determinate form, (but not of existence),2 but it is the former with which I wish to concern myself here.

1 Though real, matter, (external substance), itself is, for Kant, "substantia phaenomenon".

2 Cassirer's "Symbolic Forms" is an extension of the Kantian position, and relativizes experience. Or rather, it relativizes the interpretation of experience. Experience itself is a primitive. We can describe it in various ways under the differing "forms", (e.g. sensuous impressions" under Naturalism), but ultimately it is a limit concept. (See Kant "limits" vs. "bounds"), -it is what remains invariant under all consistent interpretations, (forms). "Objects" are implicitly defined within the variant forms. Are there ontic objects, then, (i.e. ontic localizations)? We will never know!

Consider Kant:

"Now, if I go farther and, for weighty reason, rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also, which are called primary (such as extension, place, and, in general, space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or materiality), shape, etc.) -no one in the least can adduce the reason of its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little can my thesis be named idealistic merely because I find that more, nay, all the properties which constitute the intuition of a body [object] belong merely to its appearance." Kant, Prolegomena, P.37, his emphasis.

He goes on: "The existence of the thing”, (my emphasis), “that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown that we cannot possibly know it”, (my emphasis), “by the senses as it is in itself."

I would modify Kant's last sentence to delete "of the thing". [To: "The existence that appears is thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself."] If extension, place, space, impenetrability, materiality, shape are brought into

The Last Hurdle

There remains one last difficulty with my (Naturalist) hypothesis of Chapter 2. From the standpoint of my original claim of a complete solution to the mind-body problem, "mind", (at the stage of chapter 2 -and even at the stage of Chapter 4), remains conceivable only in a reductively materialist, (alternatively: an organizational), sense. It remains only process and without "awareness" except as the latter is itself considered reductively.

What is "mind" and where is it? How could it be? The answer is that it is! It must "be". For it is the (apodictic and metaphysical) "substance" of the interface itself that I propose is the substance of mind. The reality, the metaphysical presence of this interface is the immediate and necessary consequence of the synthesis of our two realist fundamentals: externality and experience. It is the relativistic equation between a cognitive entity and externality. This necessary presumption of connective "substance" supplies the last remaining element for the complete solution of the mind-body problem.

The Third Hypothesis: a formal statement:

Given that the interface, (as just defined), metaphysically exists1 and given further that it is structured as postulated in my first and second hypotheses, (and this is my third hypothesis), then it internally and necessarily defines our objects and what they do -and they too exist! And, as demonstrated by my arguments in Chapter 2, it knows them! All the problems of structure, all the problems of logic have been dealt with in the previous hypotheses, and a plausible Naturalist rationale is in place. All that remained was existence. It is the metaphysical existence of the interface itself which supplies the reality, (the existence), of sentiency! Mind is the unified concept,2 (the rule), of this interface. Under the combination of my three hypotheses, then, mind becomes quickened, becomes aware, becomes "live". We do know, we are aware, we are real.3 What we are

question, (even cardinality in QM), then objects, as objects are also questioned. What remains are my two axioms: the Axiom of Externality and the Axiom of Experience. But these are limit concepts in a strict mathematical, (and Kantian), sense.

1 which I have demonstrated that we must, as realists, assume2 ? i.e. the unified constitutive concept

3 There is a wonderful, (and I think very relevant), passage in Cassirer's "Spirit and Life" that I ran across many years ago:

sentient and aware about however, is not metaphysical externality. Rather, it is the metaphorical organization of primitive process with which we deal.

The problem was that the "egg" of Naturalist metaphysics, (as characterized by Van Fraassen), was just too full and left no room for anything else. Or, rather, we were ignoring the shell!

The difficulty of the substance of mind was the result of an illegitimate metaphysical dogmatism, (presumed, incorrectly, as innate to Naturalism) -by its asserting more than we can ever know. It asserted relative organizations -i.e. its "material objects" as absolute referents to absolute material reality and thereby claimed completeness, (and exhaustion), of reference. Nowhere in that domain, however, could specifically sentient mind exist. It excluded the very possibility of "mind" in our ordinary sense of it.

The problem is resolved, however, by reducing our metaphysical presumptions to the minimal -and legitimate- basis possible. That basis is the minimal and universal assumption of ontic interface, (conceived in its most abstract mathematical sense), which proves to supply the "matter" of mind sufficient in itself.1

"For man it follows that he must traverse his appointed orbit, in order at the end of his road to find his way back again to its beginning. That is the fate imposed by our 'circular world'. 'Paradise is bolted fast, and the cherub far behind us; we must travel around the world and see whether perchance an entrance can be found somewhere from the rear.'" "Spirit and Life", P.858 in "The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer", Tudor, 1958

Let me paraphrase it: Man has been expelled from the eastern gate of Eden, (from simplistic connection to his naive world), by his acquisition of knowledge, (and its innate skepticism). The gate is now guarded by an angel with a flaming sword, (the consequence of reason), preventing his return. Forced to face the harsh and bitter world outside, he has embarked to walk clear round the world, (in his acquisition of knowledge), and hopes to find a gate unguarded on the other side so that he may re-enter paradise!" Man was shut off from simple contact with reality when he first questioned that contact. Cassirer asserts that the whole of the human project of knowledge was to return to the simplicity, (in the good sense of the word), from whence we came! I feel we are very close to that gate. Rationality and perception, mind and reality are no longer antithetical. (Cassirer's quotation is from Kleist's "The Marionette Theatre".)

Philosophical Implications

I think my thesis opens a new perspective on the classical dilemma of idealism versus materialism, i.e., the question of the primacy of the mind versus the primacy of the physical world. My metaphysical answer comes down, therefore, on the side of the mind, relativizing Naturalism. In that sense my answer is "idealistic". But, (big "but"), "mind", as I redefine and reduce it, (in a very real sense of the word "reduction"), is specifically a metaphysical interface. This interface is real, that is to say, "substantive" (=="physical"). I do not say, (nor do I believe), that it is all that is real but rather that it is innately impossible to know the unmediated nature of that something more. This latter, of course, is just a restatement of Kant's essential conclusion.

That interface, as I propose it, is not the ephemeral and capricious "mind" of classical speculation. It is not "spirit" as opposed to "material". It is specifically and scientifically interface. Mind is purely "physical" in that sense -i.e., it is a metaphysical thing and no more. It is part of the world -it is real, but it is not separate or "purely personal". This is what we know exists. That more exists, we must also accept as realists. But, once again, specifically as realists we must accept the interface as well. The interface is the only assumption needed for mind, and that is all, I propose, that mind is.

Given the reality of a system of axiomatic relationality in the sense of my first two theses, then "mind" becomes "live" in all the senses we normally demand of it. The mind-body problem is solved in all its aspects. I think I have "cracked the code" of mind and brain.1 It is a strange and disturbing one, I admit, but I believe it is, overall, the most plausible alternative on the table.

This concludes the presentation of the core of my overall thesis. The next chapter is a brief statement of conclusions and consequences, and the last chapter serves as an epilogue. Appendix F will deal briefly with Dennett's "color phi" and briefly foreshadow a future extension of my model. Dennett supplies the clue. (The "Afterward: Lakoff / Edelman" is a restatement and further clarification of the logical problem.)

1 ? It is curious to me that materialists always seem to be deriding metaphysics. They are its strongest proponents.

Chapter 6: Conclusions and Opinions

Scientific Conclusions:

I consider my most important result, (though you may think this strange), the Naturalist one: i.e. that "mind" is the (reduced) "concept" of the brain!1 I hold that it is both legitimate and important within the (reinterpreted) Naturalist framework and leads to definite and practical empiric lines of research. That Naturalism is itself thereby relativized detracts neither from its utility nor from its importance -no more than did the introduction of relativity or indeterminacy into modern physics lessen its viability or importance. Rather, it produced profound and immediate practical results. Naive realism is a biological and behavioral algorithm superb for normal life, and Naturalism, its natural extrapolation, is valuable beyond measure -as well it should be under my hypotheses. It is to the ultimate empirical results, (or not), of my thesis, however and finally, that I will equate its ultimate value.

Devil's Advocate:

Though I have argued against our knowledge of externality, and for a schematic organization of process, could not our external, metaphysical world still be like the objects of our cognition. Of course it could! The possibility is suggested in my conception of interface. Since it implicitly defines our objects within, conceivably it might, as well, define the "objects" of external reality without! But this is a profession of extreme faith, and not of science.2

"If anyone adopts such a belief, he or she does it as a leap of faith. To make such a leap does not make us ipso facto irrational; but we should be

1 ? Alternatively, it is the brain's rule of ontogenic coupling2 ? It is a question of bounds and limits again. Or, more simply, of the

distinction between an upper bound and a least upper bound. Reality clearly sets definite upper bounds to (evolutionary) developement, but does it convey to the organism a least upper bound, (which would be defining)? The former encompasses (raw) "structural coupling", but the latter would be necessary for "congruent structural coupling". It is an assumption equivalent to the "parallel postulate", you see!

able to live in the light of day, where our decisions are acknowledged and avowed as our own, and not disguised as the compulsion of reason."1

I, however, do not choose to, (nor do I have to), make such a leap of faith. I propose that what we have is a viable, (and truly real!), working model that simply "does the job", i.e. it is at least compatible, and probably beneficial2 vis a vis absolute externality.

Come, isn't it the height of arrogance to presume, (under the Naturalist presumption), that this race of apes, barely able to scribble for a mere few thousand years, has been able to divine the nature of absolute reality? How much more probable is it not, (changing the metaphor), that we are merely constructing "a hive"?3

1 Bas Van Fraassen, Quantum Mechanics, p.172 "beneficial" is itself a synthetic a priori perspective3 Why do we think we know even the boundaries of all the possible solutions to

all of the problems of reality? Whence comes our arrogance that we feel we have solved the ultimate problems of the universe and of our existence in it?

Is it not more believable, (under the very Naturalist assumption), that we have merely expressed our own particular mode of existence, -that human civilization, like a swarm of bees, has simply built a hive? What is this logic we are so sure of? Ultimately, biologically, it is an expression of the "structural coupling" of the race with its environment. But the invariants of that coupling are derived from the structure of the uniquely human brain. Other brains, other modes of coupling almost certainly would embody another protologic. Ordinary logic, (i.e. "associationist" logic -after Dreyfus' term), denies its biological roots. It believes it has touched eternity and verity. How? Why? What teleological mystery does it hide? When we thought that man was created by God in his image and that God gave us this open channel to truth, then there was a meaningful rationale for such a view. But when man became, purely and simply, a material animal, derived mechanistically and randomly by material combination, then this mechanistic process lost all justification as correlating with anything other than its own mechanical necessities. But it works! How and why? Perhaps that is itself the answer. It is an operative process that works in the world in which it lives! This provides no guarantee of its ontological posits at all however -it is an operative process that works -and that's all!

So Why Bother?

But if this is the ultimate answer, if this "ontic indeterminism" is the conclusion we must reach, what is the point of it all? Near the conclusion of Chapter 2, I admitted the (intuitive) difficulties of my thesis. But modern physics has much the same difficulty -its picture of reality, though intensely beautiful and exotic, offends those same normal sensibilities. The (why bother) answer for physics is that that very picture produces desirable, powerful, and practical results right at the human, (naive), scale, and which we cannot deny. The transistor, nuclear power, working telephones and radios, ... are necessary and practical consequences of that very theory -and they would be impossible without it. I propose that this will be very much the case for my conception. Though admittedly offensive to our (naive) realist sensibilities, if it is correct1 it will lay the theoretical ground necessary for the quantum advances in neuroscience, for instance, which will finally and specifically, (rather than generally and destructively), cure the terrible aberrations of mental illness. But the mind-brain puzzle has far larger implications than that. It deals with the problem of man in all its aspects. It deals with all his social, ethical and artistic parts.2 The final implications must not be underestimated.

This is the "why bother". Even offensive theories can yield useful and powerful results, necessary to man! The final test, the final judgement therefore, must be made on results. But, before results can be obtained, it is necessary, first, to entertain the possibility.

My reconception of fundamentals, though radical, is absolutely consistent with the historical progress of science -of physics, biology, mathematics and logic. It solves the biological and the philosophical problems inherent in the mind-body problem, and exorcises the "homunculus" once and for all. It provides an Archimedean fulcrum to overturn our naive realistic presuppositions, (inherited by "scientific realism"), and let us get on to the serious business of creating a science of mind and brain. It provides a viable context in which I believe workable theories are now, finally, possible.

No substantial progress will ever be made in dealing with "mind", or in the treatment of its terrible, destructive aberrations, (both individual and societal), -until the mind-body problem itself is solved and workable tools are developed. To

1 and I do not dogmatically assert that it is. The future of science must answer this question.

2 I think it would be a real mistake to discount the possibility of real, purely physical implications from my thesis. In the transition beyond "objects", wholly new degrees of freedom may be possible for physics itself.

deal with the mind, we must deal with its "objects" and the relations between them. To deal with the brain, we must deal with its process. To constructively and specifically1 affect the processes of mind2 via the brain, the relationship between the two must be understood!

The simplistic orientations of naive realism, ("though grown up and sporting a beard" -to steal a phrase), just will not stand any longer. Great issues, to include the most profound social, ethical and spiritual aspirations of the race, depend upon the resolution of this problem -and upon its consequent, the establishment of a mature and viable neuroscience. There is too much pain in our world, and too much need, -dependant upon real solutions to these problems, to cling to the playgrounds of our intellectual youth.

How do we live?

So, (given my thesis), what is the point? Do we exist, therefore merely contemplating our navels, lost in the "ontic indeterminism" of metaphysics? No. I, for one, rarely even think about metaphysics, but love and feel pain, pay attention to passing cars, and generally live my life as you, (or any dogmatic Naturalist), would. I practice Descartes' interim life strategy of normalcy, (by necessity), and pretty much live my life as I always have.1 I speak the language of Naturalism because it is good language and because it is, well ..."natural"!

When I choose to consider the connection however, I know that by following my inbuilt model, (and extending it), I am in harmony with that nameless externality. I do not use my model, you see, I live in it!

My "Act of Faith":

But what do I, personally and as my act of faith, believe? (I, after all, get to have beliefs as well!) Though I do not believe in the necessity of spatially and temporally separate metaphysical objects, (consistent, certainly, with the views of modern physics), nor in the metaphysical "aether" in which they are still conceived(!), I, (personally), believe in the metaphysical existence of other minds!3

(That there is still more, -an absolute externality, "phaenomena substantia"- I also 1 i.e. at the "fine-grained" level of mind2 or to gain reflective insights on them3 I also believe in a continuity of sentiency, at least with the higher

animals -for reasons which should be perfectly obvious by now. Just where the "cutoff point" may be, I would not be presumptuous enough to speculate.

believe.) But those other minds, specifically as minds, (as per my second thesis), are all precisely products of implicit definition, variations on, (values of), a single universal function. They are, I believe therefore, continuous variations of me. We are all, I believe consequently, more than brothers, but "states" of the same being. "You" are "me" in a different "place", (state) -there is no necessary spatial or temporal separation between us, i.e. there is no necessary metaphysical "aether" between us!

But somebody already said all that, didn't they?

"'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. ... whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'" (Mat. 25:40-45)

Chapter 7: Epilogue

How do you convince a bird, living in a dying tree, to leave its accustomed perch, its familiar nest, and go to inhabit another. You may praise the new view, and describe fantastic horizons invisible to the old. You may catalogue the prospects of juicy worms, temperate climes, and soaring flights through inestimable thermals. But the bird, clutching stubbornly to its worn branch, may only envision the loss of its well-defined routines. The path to an easy patch of straw for its nest or a worm-rich meadow might become convoluted or even impossible because of distance or predators! It cannot even envision the possibilities of the new place unless it is willing to chance an exploratory flight. Its world is simple and uncomplicated -or at least the complications are well known. This has been my problem here. I believe the mind-body problem is the most difficult in the history of the human intellect. It hinges on the problem of cognition -and that is the problem of everything! Its solution, I feel, involves a brand new "roost" -a new intellectual perspective with horizons different but incomparably broader than before.

Admittedly however, though it proffers "sunsets of unmatched vividness", and "new and fertile meadows", it involves a definite risk as well. It may turn out, after all, that the "nest" I propose lies over fallow fields and iron-hard soil where no "worms" might survive! You are right, therefore, to be conservative and cautious in the selection of your ultimate habitat, but you are wrong if you are timid in your survey -your future may depend on it. I invite you to conquer your fear of vertigo and try your wings in an exploratory flight to this very different tree of knowledge.

"Safe (that is, probable) hypotheses are a dime a dozen, and the safest are logical truths. If what science is seeking is primarily a body of certain truths, it should stick to spinning out logical theorems. The trouble with such safety, however, is that it doesn't get us anywhere."1

There are really just two schools of thought on the mind-body problem. One holds that the relationship between the mind and the brain is inherently unsolvable. It holds that the natures of mind and brain are (1) either absolutely incommensurate, (are of different kinds), or (2) the problem is beyond intrinsic limitations on human understanding. The other school holds that the relationship is perfectly direct and unproblematic, albeit totally one-sided and exceedingly

1 P.S. Churchland, 1988, P.260

complex. The first offers no practical hope whatsoever for the dysfunctions of the human mind, but the latter destroys the reason for caring in the first place. It's solution is that we are all automatons, "zombies"! Mind, in its ordinary sense, is a fantasy, a "figment" of the imagination! What, then, does it matter whether another automaton makes "pain" noises rather than "happy" noises? Less delicately, what possible objection could there be to the Dachau "fetus series" or to the atrocities in Bosnia? The solutions offered by both schools, moreover, are counterintuitive, limit the scope of empirical investigation and involve significant logical difficulties. I have offered a new alternative capable of resolving the whole of the problem and commensurate with the whole of the human spirit.

My thesis opens the further and distinct possibility of an actual "physics", i.e. a mathematical and scientific mechanics of mind and brain, as it defines, for the first time, an appropriate context in which it could be formulated. Just as the SUPERB1 2 theories of Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein were literally unthinkable in the cosmological context of Ptolemy or in the physical (and gravitational) context of Aristotle, neither can the SUPERB theories which must eventually encompass the mind and the brain arise without the context -and the continuum -which will make them possible.

I believe the mind-body problem is the most important problem in the history of our (human) species. Subsuming both science and ethics, it will ultimately determine our future as a civilization. Though this sounds overly dramatic and even downright pompous, reflection shows that it is not. Answers to what we are, and why we are will determine what we can do and what we will do.3 Profound belief determines actual practice! The bounds of future civilization will be set by our ultimate understanding of our own being. This problem demands, therefore, the greatest latitude and the greatest tolerance to radical ideas. It is too important to be treated otherwise.

It has been said of scientists, (and it certainly applies to philosophers of mind as well), that they live, alternately, in two disjoint worlds. They do not take their reality home with them. The reality they believe as professionals is not the reality they believe when they dodge cars on the freeway or make love. None will put out a saucer of milk for Schroedinger's cat.

Is Dennett prepared during his self-stimulating monologue, (whilst sitting in his rocker and listening to Vivaldi), to accept himself solely as a "center of narrative gravity", solely as the cumulative product of temporally and spatially separate and discrete processes, (the "Final Edition" published on his "Demonic

1 cf Appendix D2 cf Appendix D, Penrose

3 ? Consider Nazism, as just one recent example.

Press"), lacking "figment" or "qualia"? I, personally, am perhaps willing to accept him as such, but I am certainly not willing to accept me as such.

Like Dennett, I have been wrestling with this problem for over 35 years. I came to it not from philosophical curiosity or "epistemic hunger", but as a result of personal tragedy -the loss of a loved one, (my mother), to the maw of mental illness. Frustration -and anger- at the inability of science to help her and a survey of the dismal "mythological",1 (Freudian and quasi-Freudian), state of then-current thinking on the subject2 caused me to begin a personal and private search, of necessity based in logical and abstract theoretical criteria -but aimed at an empiric goal.3

Emerging from my "cave", (of contemplation), just a few years ago, I was surprised and fascinated by the illuminating and brilliant bonfires which had been lit on the plains of biology and philosophy. Since then, with more than a little trepidation, I have been scouting each of the major encampments so lit. I have concluded that I have something still new and novel to say. I think that my torch, crafted as much by art as by science, carries a unique Promethean flame. I think I have solved the essence of the problem of mind-brain. Now I, like Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau's "backwoods philosopher", stand before the sophisticates of Paris in my bearskin cap.4

Though my thesis admittedly opens new and fundamental problems -more, perhaps, even than it solves, that very fact unlocks whole new worlds of possibility for scientific advance and in itself constitutes an argument for serious consideration. If, in fact, we have already "arrived", if you are satisfied that we do, in fact, already possess in rough form a valid picture of the whole of our reality, then the very poverty of that reality as regards the human condition must make you very sad -and kindle the hope that something more is possible. I think it is!

1 echoing Einstein's characterization of Freudianism2 and their damnable and blatant arrogance about it!3 Since then, my perspectives have widened. I have come to believe that the

tragedies of mental illness are echoed in the tragedies of the human social condition -the wars, the hatred, the arrogance, the exploitation of man by his fellow man, these are other aspects of the same basic problem. Under the perspective of dogmatic Naturalism, these are normal, and therefore necessary. I do not believe they are.

4 Van Doren, 1938

Appendix A, (Information and Representation)

(The Odds Against Representation)

(This appendix is an integral part of the discussion of Chapter 1, but I felt it was too long for a footnote, and would otherwise have interrupted the flow.)

"Information", (and "representation" in whatever form), as a rationale for the evolution of the brain, just isn't a viable hypothesis. The brain, I argue, is an organ of (ontogenic) process -of response, not of "information".

A Little Combinatorial Argument:

A measure of the complexity of the reality with which an organism must deal is the organism's context of information about it. But information is grounded in context. Consider an individual (informational) sensor. It is not enough for a genetic accident simply to provide that sensor. Somehow it must furnish evolutionary advantage and differentially link that sensor to response through its functioning. To be useful as "information", (and retained under the evolutionary process), it must usable over the range of its possibilities. It must provide differential response over that range.

Each sensor, (as an "informational" sensor), must be minimally binary by definition. To be useful as information, (and retained on evolutionary grounds), it must have been utilized or at least connected in both of its possible states. Two sensors -as information, it seems- would have to have been utilized in all four of their possible combined states. But is this true? No, perhaps they might have been used or connected individually, (and retained). But then they would not yield combined information-i.e. they would not be mutually relevant. Even so, each individual sensor is an evolutionary mutation and each had to be connected to two paths. The evolutionary "work" performed for the two would be 4 units!

Alternatively, suppose evolution simply proliferated sensors hugely and then sampled the combined array under a "Monte Carlo" strategy. Would this work? I think it might, but it would not be "information". It would be response instead! Information necessarily embodies context. When we sample a voting population, for instance, we know what it is we are dealing with, (i.e. the context of the sample). It is a predictable population. Organisms, or at least primitive organisms, contrarily cannot know the context of their sample beforehand. To be just a little bit cute, organisms are not capable of a "Monte Carlo" strategy. The only

comparable strategy of which they are capable would be a "Russian Roulette" strategy1 -not a particularly good tactic.

The only context, (the possible sensory array states),2 in which reality could have meaning as information for human organisms is of the magnitude: 2 to the power of 107, the latter being Maturana's estimate of total human sensory receptors. 3 Taking each of the 10,000,000 human sensory cells as a minimally binary input device, their informational potential -the context within which information would be received- would be 210,000,000 . Converting the base, this is:

=103,010,290

This is a staggering number! The number of all the subatomic particles in the entire known universe,4 multiplied by the number of seconds in the 4 billion years of evolutionary history is, by comparison, far less than 10102. But the latter number, contrarily, may be considered as a gross upper bound to evolutionary possibility!

A Simple Limiting Argument:

Maximal, (limiting), assumptions:

a. From the beginning of evolutionary history there were always less organisms than subatomic particles in the known universe5 (i.e. less than 1084)6

1 e.g. sticking pseudopods into flames -"Monte-Carlo-ing" its way through life!2 the set of all combinations of value input from the receptors3 Maturana, 1987, estimates that there are 107 human sensory cells.4 T-7 , (1084) is far greater "than there are subatomic particles in the entire

known universe"! Asimov, 1977, P.585 Instead of trying to approximate the possible organisms at any given time, (I

started with a Fibonacci series, but abandoned it to a simpler procedure), it suffices to substitute a number greater than the total number of subatomic particles in the universe -surely greater than the required number- for every term. This generates a (gross) upper limit for the series.

6 Asimov, 1977

b. Every organism mutated once every second for this four billion years1 ( 4 billion times 365 times 24 times 60 times 60 = 4 x 109 x 3.1536000 x 107 < 1.3 x 1016 < 1017

c. Every single mutation was beneficial

d. Not even a single (beneficial) mutation was lost

e. All mutations were ultimately (somehow) summed into one organism

Computation: 1084 x 1017 = 10101

Conclusion: the number of total (beneficial) mutations for the organism named in "e" is less than

10102 2

The Argument:

Assuming a standard bitwise, (i.e. digital), theory of information, this simple argument demonstrates a discrepancy of more than "just a few" (!) orders-of-magnitude between informational possibility and evolution's ability to incrementally embody any significant portion of it in an internal representative model. Even if every single mutation were model defining, it is a 3 millions order-of-magnitude discrepancy!

10102 / 103,010,290 > disparity > 1 / 103,000,000 !!

1 If you won't accept this assumption of the mutations per second, multiply it by a few thousands, -or millions, -or even trillions; you are only adding to the final exponent -at most a few tens. You could actually raise it to 1010,188 times per second without affecting even the literal statement of my conclusions. I suspect that long before you got to this huge number, however, that you would be stopped by the ghosts of Planck and Heisenberg! Surely complementarity suggests that there is a lower limit to the relationship between causality, mass, space and time which can have measurable effects -i.e. "information"!

2 or, alternately, to 1010,290

To get an idea of the scale involved here, listen to Asimov on the disparity in size between a proton and the whole universe: "We find that the number of protons it takes to fill the observable universe is 4.6 X 10124. " 1 That is, the ratio of the volume of a proton to the volume of the whole universe is 1 / 4.6 X 10124 ! (disparity > 1 / 10124 ) But this is a lesser disparity, (much lesser), than evolution's capacity to flesh out humanity's supposed informational capacity. The huge difference in Asimov's striking example isn't even sufficient to so much as dent the three millions exponent.2

Why so great a gap between theory and pragmatic potential? How could "representation" be effected?

Think about simple digital models. Consider just the three "idiot lights" on the dashboard of my decrepit old truck as a primitive instance. All eight of its possible states are relevant to response and, considered as an "information model", it must account for each of them. OFF-OFF-OFF is significant -and allows me carefree driving- only in a context of possibility. In fact one of them, (the oil light), is non-functional and not "information" at all. This simple system, in consequence, does not qualify as a representative model. That part of it that does qualify as information, (insofar as it is "information"), requires an accounting for its context of possibility.

The hypothesis of an internal representative model as the rationale for the sensory system presumes an incremental evolutionary correlation to its context of possibility. Evolution would have had the problem of progressively correlating a model with each, (or some significant portion), of the possibilities of the sensory array -and with potential response as well.

But evolution had less than 10102 3 chances to achieve this correlation. The most optimistic correlation is 10102 instances,4 and the ratio of model correlation to possible sensory states is

10102 / 103,010,298 < 1 / 103,000,000 !

1 Asimov, 1977 p.2262 Envision a celestial turreted microscope. The lowest power is only capable of

resolving objects as big as the whole universe. Progressively, the next objective lens is capable of resolving objects as small as a proton. On this "God's-eye" microscope, there would have to be 24,276 objective lenses on the turret, each with an increase in resolution comparable to that between the first two!

3 alternatively, 1010,290

4 alternatively, 1010,290

Even if the model itself were taken as an edifice of (107) actual internal binary bits, (paralleling the sensory array), this would only regress the problem. Evolution still would have the problem of incrementally correlating alternative model states with potential response and the numbers would still stand. The odds of a "designed", or even a connected response would still be less than 1 / 103,000,000 -which is as close to zero as I care to consider!1 It is less, (much less), than the ratio of the size of a proton to the size of the entire universe. Its utilization as "information" would still require an accounting for -and an incremental evolutionary correlation to- its context of possibility. Contrarily, taking my two proposed, (and grossly exaggerated), upper bounds for mutational possibility, 10102 and 1010290 respectively, the same informational possibility could be embodied in just 339 or 34,162 binary receptors respectively!2 Why so many sensory possibilities?

The argument applies equally to the possibility of even an isomorphic parallelism of response, ("congruent structural coupling"), as Maturana and Varela have proposed moreover, (as distinguished from the case of an internal, representative model). That assumption still requires a correlation to sensory input! (This is the only "trigger" that anyone has postulated.) The (maximum) ratio of "designed" response, (and parallelism), to possible sensory input is less than 1 / 103,000,000!

In short, we simply have too many sensors to support the "information" scenario -way too many! There are "10" -with three million zeros after it(!) -times-too-many sensory possibilities for evolution to have done anything with in the entire history of the universe! Conversely it is quite clear that the entire future of the universe, (assuming a finite model), would be insufficient to dent it either. Shall we talk "parsimony"? Objective reality is a bound to the evolution of organisms, it is not a limit which can be matched or paralleled.

Paul Churchland has argued that if each synapse is capable of just 10 distinct states, then the brain is capable of 10 to the power of one hundred trillion, (=10100,000,000,000,000), distinct states. This number is impressive and considerably larger than the one I am considering, it is true, but it does not refer to the possibility of acquisition of information, (specifically as information), from the environment nor to the possibility of evolutionary correlation to beneficial action -

1 Alternatively, we would have to assume that individual evolutionary mutations could each (accidentally) correlate information to model at a scale of ten to the power of three millions!

2 2339 = 10102 and 234,162 = 1010,290

i.e. utilization. Churchland's number, therefore, only amplifies the discrepancy and the argument I have made!

It is evolutionarily plausible, certainly, to consider 10,000,000 sensory inputs as triggers of process. But it is not evolutionarily plausible to think of them as environmentally determinate -i.e. as inputs of information- as this immediately escalates the evolutionary problem exponentially -i.e. to 210,000,000, (minimally)! Exponents are awesome things.

"Information" and "representation" in whatever form just isn't a viable rationale for the evolution of the brain. I argue that the brain is an organ of ontogenic process. It is an organ of response, not of "information". The function of that organ is to organize primitive biologic process; it is not to represent its surroundings. Its job is adequate response, not knowingful information. Between knowing and adequacy is a wide gulf. Evolution demands that an organisms' performance be adequate. Nowhere in the physical or evolutionary rationale is there a place for "knowing" save by "miracle".

Objective reality is a bound to the evolution of organisms; it is not a limit which can be matched or paralleled.1 [View a simple graphic] [Return to Chapter 1]

1 An objection was made to this argument, (Appendix A), by a mathematician, (an anonymous referee), who invoked a "monte carlo" perspective. An extremely limited random sampling, he argued, is sufficient to sample a huge field of data. The problem I see with his argument is that it presumes a pre-existing context within which to orient and evaluate such a sampling. It is the preexistence of that context which allows such a sampling to be meaningful. But how did evolution acquire such a context -the context of information? It is the definition of the context itself which is exponential and to which my argument is entirely relevant.

We, as organisms, do not begin with a given, a priori context within which to plan and take advantage of such a "monte carlo" strategy at the level of my argument. It is the assumption of that context itself which, I argue, is petitio principii.

Appendix B, (Isomorphism and Representation)(An amplification of the discussion of Chapter 3) 1

Early on in their book, Maturana and Varela2 emphasize a seemingly trite but profoundly pertinent point: "everything said is said by someone".3 There is an important and deeper corollary: any discussion will always take place inside of a model, i.e. a context. For the mind-body problem that model may be "physical", "mental", "behavioral", "linguistic" or some new alternative, but there will always be some model. We are locked, i.e. closed, inside a "magic circle", to use Cassirer's term.

When we demand a correlation between objective reality and the brain, what we are really asking for is a correlation between "the brain", as an entity within our human model, and our "objects" and their system of law as further entities of that same model!4 Within this context however, "isomorphism" is a legitimate demand -founded on needs of internal consistency of the model. There must, therefore, be some isomorphism, (i.e. an automorphism), between the brain and the rest of our (human) model of reality. "Isomorphism", however, is a broader concept than Naturalists' use of it.

Technically, two domains are "isomorphic" to each other if a one-to-one correspondence can be specified between them which preserves some (possibly different) operation or operations internal to each of them.5 But the mathematical concept is more general than the isomorphism between integral domains, (e.g. the whole numbers), or between ordered fields, (e.g. the rational numbers), for example. This kind of isomorphism supplies the model for the Naturalist conception, relating "points" to "points", "betweens" to "betweens" or "things" to

1 This discussion really belongs in the body of the discussion from which you were referred. Its necessary length, however, would have disturbed the flow of argument, and a four page footnote would have been unconscionable, so I have placed it here.

2 Maturana and Varela, 19873 This is an assertion of closure.4 I will discuss an ontic correlation presently.5 By definition, if, given a set of "objects" "O", (o1,o2,o3...), with an operation

"*" between them, and a set of "objects" "Z", (z1,z2,z3...), with an operation "#" between them, there exists a one-to-one correspondence "&" between the "o's" and the "z's" which preserves their operationality, (i.e. such that &[oi * oj] = &[oi] # &[oj] ), then they are said to be isomorphic under & as regards * and #.

"things". It provides the rationale of hierarchical reduction as well. The mathematical concept has more profound possibilities, however, residing in its group-theoretic usage. This "isomorphism" can relate entirely different contexts!

Consider the isomorphism between J3, the additive group of integers modulo 3, and the group of rigid rotations1 of an equilateral triangle onto itself as a simple example. This is a correlation between the "objects", ['0', '1', '2'], and a group of transformations, each of the latter mapping an infinite domain onto itself. It relates, in strict isomorphism, a domain of "things" to a domain of continuous mathematical functions!2 It illustrates a very different and, I propose, a more appropriate model for the kind of correspondence between "the brain" and "objective reality".

Consider further, and beyond this primitive example, correspondences between "things" of this sort and projective transformations, or topological ones. Finally, consider correspondences between "things" and transformations that go beyond topology and onto abstract sets -i.e. consider transformations in their most abstract sense:

"Generally speaking, those one-one transformations of any set of elements which preserve any given property or properties", [phenomenal invariants?], "of these elements form a group. Felix Klein (Erlanger program, 1872) has eloquently described how the different branches of geometry can be regarded as the study of those properties of suitable spaces which are preserved under appropriate groups of transformations. Thus Euclidean geometry deals with those properties of space preserved under all isometries, and topology with those which are preserved under all homeomorphisms. Similarly, 'projective' and affine' geometry deals with the properties which are preserved under the 'projective' and affine' groups..." (Birkhoff and Mac Lane, "Modern Algebra", p. 125)

But the case of transformations is larger than "spaces":

"The algebra of symmetry can be extended to one-one transformations of any set of elements whatever. Although it is often suggestive to think of the

1 the rotational symmetries2 This is not strictly true. In this example, the latter have, of course, three points

of discontinuity.

set as a 'space' ... and of its elements as 'points', this picture does not affect the formal algebra." (ibid P.119, my emphasis).

Certainly the brain is a transformation when considered either on the level of behavioral response, (input-output), or on the level of fine-grained neural process. I suggest that the "objects" of the brain, (mind), are transformations coordinating distributed response. I suggest that these are the "objects of effective action"1 named by Maturana and Varela and that they are (group-theoretic) isomorphic to the other, (i.e. "objective") "objects" of our self-same human model! I suggest that it is in this sense of "isomorphism" that they map to the "objective world", (of our model).

The specifically metaphysical question, (as opposed to the question of the internal relationality of the model itself), is another issue. "Structural coupling", (Maturana, 1987) -appropriate relationality- provides the key. It requires that the relationship of an organism to its environment is one of (beneficial) process and not of information. Though that correlation is certainly opportunistic and necessary, it is a long "logical leap" from this to being sufficient, -to capture. It does not, therefore, imply a functional parallelism, (i.e. an isomorphism), but a causal indeterminacy. Though this conclusion enormously complicates our conceptions of "physical" or, more correctly, of ontic- reality, I will argue that it provides the last link in the actual explication of the mind-body problem.

There is a categorical difference between metaphysical reference and the internal, model/model automorphisms of our logically closed human cognitive world. It is the latter which constitute the problem of science. Here I have suggested a particular kind of automorphism between the brain and its world.

1 i.e. the only "objects" they will allow for the brain

Appendix C, (Mind-Body and Artificial Intelligence: Hubert Dreyfus)

The subject -and the problem- of artificial intelligence, (AI), has an obvious relevance to my discussion. Here pragmatic demands of technology have forced a clarification of fundamental issues -issues common to both the mind-machine and the mind-body problems.

Hubert Dreyfus carried on a running war with the adherents of artificial intelligence for many years. While I differ with many of his conclusions, he has clarified several fundamental problems and has exerted a meaningful influence on its subsequent development. In his book: "What Computers Still Can't Do",1 he maintains that the continuing optimism by AI researchers, (despite what he describes as their forty years pattern “of early successes and consistent long-term failures”2), for the possibility of machine intelligence is based on their deep-seated conviction that the human brain functions like a "general-purpose symbol-manipulating device", (a digital computer). If this is true then, they presume, their ultimate success is assured.3 Dreyfus maintains, however, that their conviction is based on four very questionable assumptions which he asserts they have improperly accepted as axioms. These assumptions are relevant to the mind-body problem as well. They limit the scope of imagination.

(1) the biological assumption:

"A biological assumption that on some level of operation -usually supposed to be that of neurons -the brain processes information in discrete operations by way of some biological equivalent of on/off switches"4

(2) the psychological assumption:

"A psychological assumption that the mind can be viewed as a device operating on bits of information according to formal rules. Thus, in

1 Dreyfus 19922 He makes a very strong case in the third edition.3 If a biological machine can do it, so, presumably, can a silicon one!4 op cit P.156

psychology, the computer serves as a model of the mind as conceived of by empiricists such as Hume (with the bits as atomic impressions) and idealists such as Kant (with the program providing the rules). Both empiricists and idealists have prepared the ground for this model of thinking as data processing -a third-person process in which the involvement of the 'processor' plays no essential role."1

(3) the epistemological assumption:

"An epistemological assumption that all knowledge can be formalized, that is, that whatever can be understood can be expressed in terms of logical relations, more exactly in terms of Boolean functions, the logical calculus which governs the way the bits are related according to rules."2

and,

(4) the ontological assumption:

"Finally, since all information fed into digital computers must be in bits, the computer model of the mind presupposes that all relevant information about the world, everything essential to the production of intelligent behavior, must in principle be analyzable as a set of situation-free determinate elements. This is the ontological assumption that what there is, is a set of facts each logically independent of all the others.3”

Dreyfus raises serious doubts about the first assumption, based on the results of current neurophysiology -neurons are no longer understood as simple binary switches, for instance. He concludes a broader inquiry more strongly: "In fact, the difference between the 'strongly interactive' nature of brain organization and the noninteractive character of machine organization suggests that insofar as arguments from biology are relevant, the (biological) evidence is against, (my emphasis), the possibility of using digital computers to produce intelligence".4

He makes substantial arguments against the second assumption based on a survey of research in Psychology and Cognitive Simulation and comes to the same

1 ibid2 ibid3 ibid4 ibid P.162

conclusion I reached in chapter 1: "the assumption of an information-processing level is by no means so self-evident as the cognitive simulators seem to think; ... there are good reasons to doubt that there is any information processing going on"!1

The third and fourth assumptions involve more fundamental issues:

"But this still leaves open another ground for optimism: although human performance might not be explainable by supposing that people are actually following heuristic rules in a sequence of unconscious operations, intelligent behavior may still be formalizable in terms of such rules and thus reproduced by a machine. This is the epistemological assumption."2

He argues that human behavior, (understood as the input and output of physical signals), though presumably completely lawful in the sense that "formalists" require, does not support the epistemological assumption as made by Turing and Minsky. They do not simply claim that man is a physical system describable by natural law, (as are boats and planes), they claim that man is a Turing machine.

"...When Minsky or Turing claims that man can be understood as a Turing machine, they must mean that a digital computer can reproduce human behavior ... by processing data representing facts about the world using logical operations that can be reduced to matching, classifying, and Boolean operations ... All AI research is dedicated to using logical operations to manipulate data representing the world, not to solving physical equations describing physical objects ... (however) considerations from physics show only that inputs of energy, and the neurological activity involved in transforming them, can in principle be described and manipulated in digital form".3

But even the weaker form of the assumption -the use of the laws of physics to calculate in detail the function of human bodies, (and brains)- may be physically impossible. There are theoretical limits to processing density! Therefore "the

1 ibid P.163, my emphasis2 ibid P.189

3 ibid p. 196

enormous calculations necessary may be precluded by the very laws of physics and information theory such calculations presuppose."1

Nor, Dreyfus argues, does research in language translation and semantics support Turing's or Minsky's interpretation. It raises, instead, insurmountable problems of context and heuristics. This empirical objection is not sufficient to dismiss the assumption, however. Its supporters can "offer the platonic retort ... that we have not fully understood this behavior, we have not yet found the rules.. "2

He bases his central argument on Wittgenstein's. Wittgenstein provisionally assumed "that all nonarbitrary behavior must be rulelike, and then reduce[d] this assumption to absurdity by asking for the rules which we use in applying the rules, and so forth."3

"For the computer people the regress ... stops with an interpretation which is self-evident, but this interpretation has nothing to do with the demands of the situation. It cannot, for the computer... generates no local context. The computer theorist's solution is to build a machine to respond to ultimate bits of context-free, completely determinate data", (my emphasis), "which require no further interpretation in order to be understood. Once the data are in the machine, all processing must be rulelike, but in reading in the data there is a direct response to determinate features of the machine's environment... so on this ultimate level the machine does not need rules for applying its rules. ...So human behavior, if it is to completely understood and computerized, must be understood as if triggered by specific features of the environment."4

The third assumption is thus logically dependent upon the fourth:

1 ibid p. 1972 ibid p.202-2033 ibid P.203 He elaborates: "It is a question of whether there can be rules even

describing what speakers in fact do. ... one must ..have further rules which would enable a person or a machine to recognize the context in which the rules must be applied. Thus there must be rules for recognizing the situation, the intentions of the speakers, and so forth. But if the theory then requires further rules in order to explain how these rules are applied, as the pure intellectualist viewpoint would suggest, we are in an infinite regress." (ibid P. 203). Wittgenstein resolved the problem in terms of the "practical demands of the situation". For the computer, however, this is not possible. "The computer is not in a situation." (my emphasis)!

4 ibid P. 204

"A full refutation of the epistemological assumption would require an argument that the world cannot be analyzed in terms of context-free data. Then, since the assumption that there are basic unambiguous elements is the only way to save the epistemological assumption from the regress of rules, the formalist, caught between the impossibility of always having rules for the application of rules and the impossibility of finding ultimate unambiguous data, would have to abandon the epistemological assumption altogether. This assumption that the world can be exhaustively analyzed in terms of context-free data or atomic facts", (my emphasis), "is the deepest assumption underlying work in AI and the whole philosophical tradition. we shall call it the ontological assumption..."1

The ontological assumption is the profoundest presupposition of AI researchers. It is a fundamental assumption of western philosophical and scientific thought in general:

"As in the case of the epistemological assumption, we shall see that this conviction concerning the indubitability of what in fact is only an hypothesis reflects two thousand years of philosophical tradition reinforced by a misinterpretation of the success of the physical sciences."2

Computers are characterized, (even by the proponents of AI), as accepting a "task environment" defined in terms of discrete objects which are organized into the data structure "which makes up the computer's representation of the world." "Every program for a digital computer must receive its data in this discrete form. ... When one asks what this knowledge of the world is, the answer comes back that it must be a great mass of discrete facts."3

"the data with which the computer must operate if it is to perceive, speak, and in general behave intelligently, must be discrete, explicit, and determinate; otherwise it will not be the sort of information which can be given to the computer so as to be processed by rule. Yet there is no reason to suppose that such data about the human world are available to the

1 ibid P.2052 ibid P. 207

3 ibid P. 208

computer and several reasons to suggest that no such data exist"1, (my emphasis).

He cites Minsky's attempt to specify the magnitude of the mass of knowledge necessary for humanoid intelligence. Minsky estimates the number of facts required as on the order of one hundred thousand for reasonable behavior in ordinary situations, a million for a very great intelligence. If this doesn't satisfy us, we are to multiply this figure by ten!2 But this immediately leads to the "large database problem" -how could one find the information required in a reasonable amount of time?

"When one assumes that our knowledge of the world is knowledge of millions of discrete facts, the problem of artificial intelligence becomes the problem of storing and accessing a large data base ...and ... little progress has been made toward solving the large data base problem."3

The same problem arises when he considers the problem of disambiguation, (and "context"), in linguistics:

"... finally, human activity itself is only a subclass of some even broader situation -call it the human life-world- which it would have to include even those situations where no human beings were directly involved. But what facts would be relevant to recognizing this broadest situation? ... Well then, why not make explicit the significant features of the human form of life from within it? Indeed, this deus ex machina solution has been the implicit goal of philosophers for two thousand years, and it should be no surprise that nothing short of a formalization of the human form of life could give us artificial intelligence. But how are we to proceed? ... Without some particular interest, without some particular inquiry to help us select and interpret, we are back confronting the infinity of meaningless facts we were trying to avoid."4

He comes to the conclusion that the only way out of the dilemma is to conceive of "facts" as "a product of the situation".

1 ibid P. 2062 Dreyfus argues that the "facts" required may well be infinite!3 ibid P. 209

4 ibid P. 221-222

"There must be some (other) way of avoiding the self-contradictory regress of contexts, or the incomprehensible notion of recognizing an ultimate context, as the only way of giving significance to independent, neutral facts....then the only alternative way of denying the separation of fact and situation is to give up the independence of the facts and understand them as a product of the situation."1

His final judgement is severe. Artificial Intelligence research has revealed fundamental flaws in the assumptions we make about mind, brain, and, I propose in consequence, -about our access to the world itself:

"Recent work in artificial intelligence (is) a crucial experiment disconfirming the traditional assumption that human reason can be analyzed into rule-governed operations on situation-free discrete elements -the most important disconfirmation of this metaphysical demand that has ever been produced."2

Dreyfus' is quite convincing in many respects. I specifically disagree with the scope of his objection to the third (epistemological) assumption, however. In the particular form in which he stated it, though, it is unobjectionable:

"that all knowledge can be formalized, that is, that whatever can be understood can be expressed in terms of ... Boolean functions, the logical calculus which governs the way the bits are related according to rules."

Neither Boolean functions nor "atomic bits", (context-free "facts"), will suffice -as his arguments ably demonstrate. But Dreyfus extends his legitimate objections to this form of the assumption to an argument against the general platonic case "that whatever can be understood can be expressed in terms of logical relations". But Boolean functions and atomic facts do not exhaust the possibilities either for "understanding" or for "logical relations"! In Chapter 2, (The Problem of Logic), I argued an alternative formal concept, Cassirer's "functional concept of mathematics" and the alternative logic which is its consequence. Aristotelian (and Boolean) logic is the harvest of the Aristotelian (generic) concept! Classical logic -and its modern extensions- consist in the abstraction and manipulation of ultimate, context-free "atomic bits"! They are the calculus-of-abstraction of "marks". They

1 ibid P.2242 op cit Pps. 303-304

are themselves purely digital, (i.e. discrete), processes, and therefore valid heirs to all the arguments Dreyfus makes against mind, (and thought), in a digital computer. They are not the logic of mind, nor, I argue, of the brain!

Dreyfus' arguments have nothing to do with silicone or copper.1 His arguments are arguments against discrete logic itself, and applicable to any instantiation of the mind-body relationship grounded in it, even a physiological one! The large database problem, the heuristics problem, the context problem, (and the digital computer itself), are all, as problems, products of classical digital, (i.e. discrete), logic, and, ultimately I argue, of its formal concept.

Dreyfus characterized the fourth (ontological) assumption as presupposing that : "all relevant information about the world, everything essential to the production of intelligent behavior, must in principle be analyzable as a set of situation-free determinate elements ... -that what there is, is a set of facts each logically independent of all the others." I would extend his characterization, however. The fundamental presupposition is that "the world" itself consists of such situation-free determinate elements! Dreyfus argues against analysis, I argue against reference.

Finally, I strongly disagree with Dreyfus' "finesse" of perceptual and physical phenomenology into distinct and mutually disjoint domains:

"(This) is not to deny that physical energy bombards our physical organism and that the result is our experience of the world. It is simply to assert that the physical processing of the physical energy is not a psychological process, and does not take place in terms of sorting and storing human-sized facts about tables and chairs. Rather, the human world is the result of this energy processing and the human world does not need another mechanical repetition of the same process in order to be perceived and understood."2

He quotes Neisser:

"There is certainly a real world of trees and people and cars and even books. ... However, we have no direct, immediate access to the world, nor to any of its properties."3

1 He never even mentions them in any significant way!

2 ibid P. 268, my emphasis3 ibid

but argues contrarily:

"Here... the damage is already done. There is indeed a world to which we have no immediate access. We do not directly perceive the world of atoms and electromagnetic waves (if it even makes sense to speak of perceiving them) -but the world of cars and books is just the world we do directly experience. ... 'the human world is the brain's response to the physical world.' Thus there is no point in saying it is 'in the mind,' and no point in inventing a third world -between the physical and the human world -which is an arbitrarily impoverished version of the world in which we live, out of which the human world has to be built up again."1

His evisceration of the problem, (the exact parallel of the eliminative materialist's, for instance), fails to answer important questions: "How perception?", "How mind?" "How is the human world 'the brain's response to the physical world?'" The answer, (on both sides), is that both the problem and the question are the result of semantic confusions. I don't think they are. I believe the platonic ideal can be achieved. The explication of both the mind and the physical world can be encompassed in a comprehensive set of rules, but not by the sort of rules, (or logic), currently envisaged. The dream of one comprehensive knowledge is attainable, but it need not be simple -this book supplies my answer.

"If there could be an autonomous theory of performance, it would have to be an entirely new kind of theory, a theory for a local context which described this context entirely in universal yet nonphysical terms. Neither physics nor linguistics offers any precedent for such a theory, nor any comforting assurance that such a theory can be found."2

My hypothesis of "implicit definition, (Chapter 2), coupled with the "schematic object" , (Chapter 1), supplies the formal beginnings of such a theory. It is an autonomous theory of performance, "a theory for a local context (describing) this context entirely in universal yet nonphysical terms."!

1 ibid Pps. 269-270

2 ibid P.202

Appendix D: (Roger Penrose)

Roger Penrose categorized scientific theories based on a number of criteria. To the extent that they satisfy these criteria, he classified them all the way from, (his caps), SUPERB down to MISGUIDED, (SUPERB, USEFUL, TENATIVE, MISGUIDED):

1. Scope: -range and variety of phenomena explained, and hitherto unexplained. The scope of the theories Penrose classifies as "SUPERB" is, of course, well known. They explain the whole range of facts of our scientific view of reality: “the actions of the mold on a piece of bread, the dynamics of a violin, the workings of a transistor, and the explosions of supernovas.”

Newton's theory, Maxwell's, the special and general relativities, and quantum mechanics explained vast ranges of phenomena. Their fecundity was startling.

2. Consistency: "Always constrained by logical argument and known facts." (P.422) This is, of course, fundamental. An inconsistent logical system proves, (trivially), both everything and nothing. A theory incompatible with known facts, of course, has no relevancy as a theory of reality.

3. Accuracy: Need not be perfect, but extremely accurate over many orders of magnitude! (Degree of accuracy is a value criterion, however, and is a decision factor in deciding between theories.) The degree of accuracy of the "SUPERB" theories is astounding:

A. Euclidean geometry: "Over a meter's range, deviations from Euclidean flatness are tiny indeed, errors in treating the geometry as Euclidean amounting to less than the diameter of an atom of hydrogen!" (P. 152)

B. Galilean and Newtonian dynamics: "As applied to the motions of planets and moons, the observed accuracy of this theory is phenomenal -better than one part in ten million. "The same Newtonian scheme applies here on earth -and out among the stars and galaxies -to some comparable accuracy". (P.152)

C. Maxwell's theory: "Maxwells theory, likewise is accurately valid over an extraordinary range, reaching inwards to the tiny scale of atoms and subatomic particles, and outwards, also, to that of galaxies, some million million million million million million times larger!" (P.152)

D. Special relativity: "Gives a wonderfully accurate description of phenomena in which the speeds of objects are allowed to come close

to that of light -speeds at which Newton's descriptions at last begin to falter." (P.153)

E. General relativity: "Einstein's supremely beautiful and original theory ...generalizes Newton's dynamical theory (of gravity) and improves upon its accuracy, inheriting all the remarkable precision of that theory...In addition, it explains various detailed observational facts which are incompatible with the older Newtonian scheme. One of these (the 'binary pulsar'..) shows Einstein's theory to be accurate to about one part in 10 to the 14th power." (P.153)

F. Quantum mechanics: Explains "hitherto inexplicable phenomena...The laws of chemistry, the stability of atoms, the sharpness of spectral lines...the curious phenomenon of superconductivity.. and the behavior of lasers are just a few amongst these." (P.153) "No observational discrepancies" (at all) "with that theory are known."

4. Mathematical elegance:"Both relativity theories -the second of which subsumes the first -

must indeed be classified as SUPERB (for reasons of their mathematical elegance almost as much as of their accuracy)." (Page 153) (This relates both to easy utility and to aesthetics!) Again: "It is remarkable that all the SUPERB theories of nature have proved to be extraordinarily fertile as sources of mathematical ideas. There is a deep and beautiful mystery in this fact: that these superbly accurate theories are also extraordinarily fruitful simply as mathematics." (P. 174)

5. Experimental support: -to establish the unique relevance of a theory to reality -to establish correlation to experience.

6. Substantial advance to understanding: -- i.e., it must be a "conceptual organizer". This criterion relates to the mathematical elegance of criterion 4, to future applicability, -and to overall world-view.

7. Simplicity:"Ptomemaic theory of planetary motion became more and over-

complicated as greater accuracy was needed" (P.155). Copernican theory simplified the data of astronomy. "'Tidyness' -quark and lepton theories "are, for various reasons, rather more untidy than one would wish". (P.154) (This criterion is cross-related, clearly, to #'s 9, 8, and probably to #6.)

8. Provides a predictive scheme:

"Kepler's and Mendeleev's theories, while accurate, did not provide a predictive scheme and later were subsumed into Newtonian dynamics and quantum theory respectively!" (P.155) It is a criterion of usefulness.

9. Aesthetics:"A beautiful idea has a much greater chance of being a correct idea

than an ugly one"..."...The importance of aesthetic criteria applies ...to the much more frequent judgments that we make all the time in mathematical (or scientific) work." ("Always constrained by logical argument and known facts.") (P.421) Also, see his comment on the Relativities. This criterion is transparently a purely artistic one. #'s 1, 4, 6, and 8, (at least), clearly have artistic components as well

Any physical theory satisfying these definitive criteria qualifies as "SUPERB". I believe that the satisfaction of these criteria constitutes a necessary and sufficient definition of a viable "theory of reality" in the general sense as well -i.e for world-views! The adequacy of their fulfillment, taken as a balanced whole, constitutes the actual basis of choice between theories of reality, and, ultimately, between world-views.

Nowhere are these criteria themselves based in a particular conceptual scheme of reality or in specific metaphysical assumptions, however! Any conceptual system of whatever nature actually meeting these criteria, (to include correlation = #3, redundantly), qualifies that system as "SUPERB"! But all these criteria involve solely "relational" aspects of a theory -its internal structural relationality and its relationality to the perceptual model, (and the phenomena). The ranking of a particular theory, -and its believability-, derives from the extent of their fulfillment alone.

Though I dearly love the book, I do not value the "Emperor's New Mind" as a theory of mind-brain. I value it as a wonderful and succinct synopsis of the state of modern physics and as what I believe is a meaningful formulation of the actual criteria by which we evaluate theories -all theories. To paraphrase one of his reviewers: even if Penrose's ideas are correct, they don't explain consciousness, only how the brain works!1 Penrose's is a theory of physics -and specifically a theory of the physics of brain function. The problem of self-reference, (sometimes referred to as "the mind's I”), which both he and Hofstadter, for instance, treat in terms of Goedel's Theorem is not the most important part of the problem of mind. Though they may well be correct in their resolution of the difficulty, my opinion is

1 This, in my opinion, succinctly sums up the case for Edelman’s hypothesis as well.

that the problem itself, and their proposed solution is an internal one only, i.e. it is an internal, model-model complication of the calculus. I believe it is a problem of ordinary logic, ("associationist logic" in Dreyfus' terminology –or “objectivist logic” in Lakoff’s), rather than of the constitutive logic of implicit definition. That ordinary logic, I believe, stands to our constitutive logic in the same role that diophantine, (integer), arithmetic stands to continuous arithmetic. I believe it is a limited and partial, (though valid), calculus; it is not the continuous and universal logic of mind. Its very concepts are built on the special, limiting case of abstraction, not on (Cassirer's) functional rule of connection, for instance, nor would they countenance my own Concept of Implicit Definition. (Cf. Chapter 2) -i.e. they represent the limit case of a general function and inherit the difficulties of that genealogy.

Appendix E: Dogmatic Materialism and Reality

At the basis of ordinary Naturalism are two fundamental assumptions: that perception (somehow) embodies externality, and that rational thought can utilize the "facts" of perception to discover the actual nature and ground of that externality. It is seriously committed to only one possibility for that ground, moreover, and it is "substance".

I argued the error of the first assumption in my first two chapters. I argued that perception does not embody externality; that its objects are schematic artifacts, embodying the relationality of brain response only. But the brain does not embody metaphysical externality either! It is, following Maturana and Varela, only in "structural coupling" with it. Lacking a metaphysically simple referent for our perceptions, however, (metaphysical) "substance" is no longer an obvious or immediate hypothesis.1 And yet no one can seriously question either the validity or the utility of science!

Why do we believe the things we do? Why, specifically, do we believe in "matter", or "objects" -as absolutes? What else could science, (and physics specifically), concern?

Naturalism, in its modern essence, assumes that the reduction of the whole of reality into biology, chemistry, and physics will be successful. It further presumes that biology and chemistry themselves will reduce, finally, to just physics. History in general supports these conclusions, and this is taken as a conclusive substantiation of the materialist hypothesis.

There are two profound weaknesses in this argument, however. The first is its assumption that physics itself is capable of a further reduction to "substance" -which is certainly not confirmed in recent science but rather contravened.2 The second weakness is its tacit incorporation of a limited logical possibility -i.e. that reduction/replacement is inherently an asymmetrical process! This limited conception of relational possibility, implicit in Naturalism's reductionist argument and leading to the "material" conclusion, is, from a mathematical standpoint, profoundly naive! From the standpoint of abstract algebra, for instance, it is simplistic. Mathematical disciplines are constantly, (and almost at the whim of the author), regrounded, reoriented, and recast. Theorems become axioms and axioms theorems. And yet the discipline retains its integrity!

That one system of relationality, (theory), is capable of embodiment in another is not therefore a convincing argument that converse, -or other

1 Its actual enticement was always sensory anyway: the world had to be "solid"!2 In the twin-slit experiment, for instance.

transformations, equally viable- are not possible or significant.1 It would be considered mathematically naive to presume that, because of the existence of one orientation, that other "reductions", (transformations), are consequently, (or even probably), impossible, less important or irrelevant!2

But materialism makes exactly that assumption. It assumes that, since the whole of our cultural world is reducing, historically, to biology, chemistry, and physics, that this is a necessarily asymmetric reduction, and that the essence of reality is therefore physical,- and presumably material. From the broadened perspective of the "schematic artifact", however, it is an unnatural and unjustified assumption. The structural coupling of the brain is the embodiment of response -it is the whole of the relationality between "perturbation" and action. Its very "objects" are not metaphysical, (nor "substantial"), but procedural3 -nor are they referential! What is important is not a particular organization, a particular perspective on that structure, but its relationality as a whole!

Theories, as orientations of "data", (and pictorial perceptual "theories" as well), are organizational structures. They are, I believe, transformations mapping the "perceptual space", (the schematic perceptual model), back onto itself.4 As such, following Quine, they are always amenable to profound translation and reorientation -no matter the precision of experimental correlation! What is unique and permanent are the invariants of the system of possible transformations, (including even those which might redistribute the objects themselves) -which embody its relationality as a whole. (See the discussion of hierarchy and mathematical ideals in the “Afterward: Lakoff, Edelman and Hierarchy.

Materialism is profoundly committed to a physical theory of reality.5 It is thereby committed to the best picture that actual physical theory, (not its experimental data), can present - to a succession of theoretical approximations6

1 Quine's argument is absolutely conclusive here.2 If we assume that Maturana and Varela's arguments for ontogenic coupling

and structural drift are viable, for instance, then the whole of the physical world co-reduces to biology -and to its ontogenic hypothesis specifically! Behaviorism then becomes a "Quinean ladder".

3 Nor is a simple correspondence with externality implicit in them.4 They map historical experience/experiment onto future experience/experiment.5 -and to the conclusive evidence of its technology as well! This is

materialism's strongest coherent argument.

refining closer and closer to a picture of its presumed actual objective physical -and material- reality.

"We have only to look about us to witness the extraordinary power that our understandings of nature have helped us to obtain. The technology of the modern world has derived, in good measure, from a great wealth of empirical experience. However, it is physical theory that underlies our technology in a much more fundamental way..." (Penrose, 1989, P.150)

But what sense do materialism's metaphysical assumptions of "object" or

"substance" make to modern physical theory? What sense do they make in the relativistic universe, or in the quantum theoretical one? What is "the object" to modern science? What does "matter", conceived non-reductively as "substance", have to do with modern physics? Physics, as a discipline, has always been ready to question its presuppositions!

Appendix F: "Dennett and the Color Phi"

(Towards a Working Model of Real Minds: Dennett, Helmholtz and Cassirer)

I really like Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained"1. It is not because I can agree with his conclusions, (except in a certain sense), that I like it, but because it is a brutally candid and forthright exposition of the Naturalist position, proceeding with compelling logic, and without hedging. It is, moreover, a phenomenologically pure position. I think it is, (agreeing with his own parenthetical question), really "Consciousness Explained Away" however, rather than "Consciousness Explained" because, at the end, "we are all zombies".2 There is one crucial argument he makes against the existence of mental states, (i.e. "figment"), however, in which I think he has correctly identified a profound antinomy -and, I believe, a necessary and major modification to our ordinary conception of mind. He has argued it from "the color phi".

"The color phi" names an actual experiment, suggested by Nelson Goodman, wherein two spots of light are projected in succession, (at different locations), on a darkened screen for 150 msec intervals with a 50 msec interval between them. The first spot, however, is of a different color, (red, say), than the second, (green). Just as in the case of motion pictures, (the "phi phenomenon"), subjects report seeing the continuous motion of a single spot, but interestingly, they report that it changes color, (from red to green), midway between the two termini!3 Dennett bases a very interesting, (and, I feel a very important), argument against the very possibility of a

1 Dennett, 19912 I know, I know! I must, in threat of disingenuousness, quote his footnote to

this comment: "it would be an act of the utmost intellectual dishonesty to quote this statement out of context."

But the context he demands is 470 pages of careful redefinition and argument against all the normal senses of mental function and existence -qualia, figment, the "substance of mind". The upshot is that it is O.K., (i.e. socially correct), to be a zombie! But the sense in which his statement would normally be understood out of context is essentially what it still means. He attempts to make any objection, (or any comment on its own prima facie unintuitiveness), unraisable. There is another cult, (besides the Feenomanists!), in the jungle, you see! :-)

3 and not, for instance, that it is red all the way till its terminus, with a final and sudden change-to-green.

"Cartesian Theatre", against a unity, (and "figment" = substance), of consciousness on this well documented and reproducible experiment. Dennett's argument, in brief, is this:

Mental states, the "Cartesian Theatre", if they exist, are subject to the laws of causality, of time precedence. For one event to affect another, it must occur before it. Let me, for discussion's sake, label the events described. Let E1 be the ("heterophenomenological"1), perception, (hereinafter to be called by me "h-perception"), of the first, (red), spot. Let E2 be the h-perception of the red-changing-to-green, and let E3 be the h-perception of the final green spot.

Dennett argues, based on the principle of causality, that E2 cannot occur until after E3. Since there were only two actual, (physical), events, (the first and second projected spots), he argues that the h-perceived midpoint, (the "mental event", i.e. red-changing-to-green), cannot occur until after the reception of the second actual event, (green projection), as it was that which provided the very sensory data necessary to the h-perception of change. Other than a (mystical) hypothesis of "projection backward in time", there remain for Dennett just two possibilities for an internal, "Cartesian Theatre" consistent with the experiment: the "Stalinesque" and the "Orwellian" hypotheses.

The first involves the creation of a "show trial" staged by a subterranean "central committee", (after the fact of both real events, of course, and involving a "delay loop"), wherein the complete, (and partially fabricated), sequence, (red ->red-changing-to-green -> green), is "projected", (i.e achieves sentiency). Under this hypothesis, the whole of our sentiency, our consciousness, occurs "after the fact". The second possibility, the "Orwellian" hypothesis, is that the actual events are received by our sentient faculty as is, but that our memory then rewrites history, (just as the thought police of Orwell's "1984" did), so that we remember not two disjoint and separate events, but the connected, and pragmatically more probable sequence red -> red-changing-to-green -> green.

Dennett argues that ultimately neither theory is decidable -that either is consistent with whatever level and kind of experimental detail science may ultimately supply, and that, therefore, the only pragmatic distinction between them is purely linguistic, and therefore trivial. He argues that there is no "great divide", no actual moment, (nor existence), of sentiency, but only the underlying brain process, (which all theories must countenance), itself. Based on the "spatial and

1 Dennett introduces the criterion "heterophenomenological" to describe "mental events", which he does not believe in, to describe whatever-it-is that is named by them, i.e. to talk about them as they are (linguistically) used by real bodies and brains, (which he does believe in), but with a neutral metaphysical commitment.

temporal smearing of the observer's point of view", he expounds his thesis of "multiple drafts" wherein there is no "theatre", only brain process -and its various "speakings", (drafts).

And yet the observer himself has absolutely no problem with these events! His perspective is very clear: E1 -> E2 -> E3. It is our interpretation, (and rationale), for this sequence that causes the problem.

I think Dennett has a very strong argument, but I want to refocus it. Nondecidability is all very well and good, but it is a much weaker line than the one he started out with- on the possibility of synchronization! In a very real sense, I feel it is very similar in intent and consequence to Einstein's "train" argument against simultaneity.

Consider, (with Einstein), an imaginary train moving (very fast)1 down a track, with an observer standing midway on top of the moving train and observing two (hypothetically instantaneous) flashbulbs going off at either end of the train. The train goes by another (stationary) observer standing (hypothetically infinitely) close by the track as the bulbs go off. Suppose that the moving observer, (OT), reports both flashes as simultaneous. He argues that since both photon pulses reach him simultaneously, (granted for all frames on the local, infinitesimal scale, and thus agreed on (?) by both observers who are assumed infinitely close -i.e. side by side), that therefore the pulse from the rear of the train, having to "catch" him, must have left its source sooner than the pulse from the front which added his velocity to its own and so must have left later. Relative to OS, (stationary observer), however, the two sources travel the same distance to a stationary target, (himself). Since OT and OS are momentarily adjacent to each other, (i.e. within a local frame), they should be able to agree that the two pulses arrive there simultaneously. What they cannot agree on, however, (in that instance), is whether the events, (the flashes), occurred simultaneously -nor that the other could have thought, (i.e. could have observed), them so! Time, in Dennett's words, is "smeared"!2 We could, of course and significantly3, vary the parameters to make either event "earlier" and the other "later".

The argument is that from the standpoint of one observer, he must maintain that the other cannot see them as simultaneous, and vice versa! Thus from OS's standpoint, if he sees them as simultaneous, then, since he is stationary, they occurred simultaneously. But if they occurred simultaneously, and since OT is moving, then OT cannot, (OS argues), see them as simultaneous, (and conversely).

1 nearing the speed of light2 Are the observers, (and the experimental apparatus), then

"heterophenomenological"?3 ? i.e. -relative to Dennett's problem

And yet both observers pass through an infinitesimal local frame of reference, (side-by-side). Time is "smeared"!

Just as Einstein's two observers, near the limits of physical possibility, cannot agree whether the two lights were simultaneously flashed at the ends of the train or not, (i.e. cannot establish a common temporal frame of reference), nor that the other could observe them locally as such, neither, given Dennett's pointed argument, can we establish a common temporal frame of reference for "the world" and "the mind" at the limits of cognition.1

I agree with Dennett that "the color phi" identifies a legitimate and critical aspect of the mind-body problem. The spatial and temporal "smearing" of the percept and the non-explicit reference of qualia that he demonstrates forces a profound extension to our traditional conception of the "theatre". But his dimensional "smearing" actually fits very well2 with the model I am proposing. I submit that it is more plausible in terms of the "focus" and "function" of an operational object than in terms of his "multiple drafts", "demons" and "memes" in the "real world". His objections to the ordinary "Cartesian theatre" are admittedly valid, but so were those of Cassirer and Helmholtz before him:

"For example, if we conceive the different perceptual images, which we receive from one and the same 'object' according to our distance from it and according to changing illumination, as comprehended in a series of perceptual images, then from the standpoint of immediate psychological experience, no property can be indicated at first by which any of these varying images should have preeminence over any other. Only the totality of these data of perception constitutes what we call empirical knowledge of the object; and in this totality no single element is absolutely superfluous. No one of the successive perspective aspects can claim to be the only valid, absolute expression of the 'object itself;' rather all the cognitive value of any particular perception belongs to it only in connection with other contents, with which it combines into an empirical whole.

1 For macroscopic science, these limits are at the scale of the speed of light. For atomic physics, they are at the scale of Planck's constant. And for the brain, I suggest, they are at the scale of minimal biological response times, i.e. in the 100 msec. range.

2 when taken "heterophenomenologically" -i.e. with a neutral ontic commitment. Heterophenomenology works both ways!

...In this sense, the presentation of the stereometric form plays 'the role of a concept'", (my emphasis), "'compounded from a great series of sense perceptions, which, however, could not necessarily be construed in verbally expressible definitions, such as the geometrician uses, but only through the living presentation of the law, according to which the perspective images follow each other.' This ordering by a concept means, however, that the various elements do not lie alongside of each other like the parts of an aggregate, but that we estimate each of them according to its systematic significance...." (Cassirer, 1923, pp. 288-289, citing Helmholtz)

But Cassirer's reformulation of the formal concept itself must be considered for an understanding of his meaning here. The concept, for Cassirer, is a function. It is "the form of a series", independent and distinct from what it orders. This is the "systematic significance" which he purports. I urge, extending Cassirer's insight and in the sense of my conclusions of Chapter 2, that the stereometric form itself, the percept,1 then plays the role of, (is), a function.

From the standpoint of (relativized) Naturalism,2 if we take the mind to be schematic, but specifically a "predictive" and "intentional" schematic model, (which extension I will suggest shortly), rather than a static and "representative" one3, then the temporal and spatial "smearing" of the percept do not have the implications against the "theatre" per se that Dennett attributes to them. I have argued that the percept itself is conceptual, (albeit specialized, invariant and constitutive), and therefore, following Cassirer, functional. It is an entity of order and process -and it is "smeared". That is the normal nature of functions -they are smeared! What Dennett explains by "multiple drafts", (and the "demonic" process he envisions beneath them), I explain by "focus". We focus the percept, (via implicit definition) according to operational need.

An Extension of the Schematic Model: A Brief Sketch

Let me frame the following in the language of ordinary Naturalism, (this will be a short appendix). I want to sketch a very large canvas very quickly.4 In "the

1 This, the percept as concept, is clearly at odds with, but, (I have argued), a legitimate extension of, Cassirer's ideas. He did not have the perspective of the schematic object.

2 cf. Chapter 43 i.e. vis-à-vis current process4 I could, of course, try to footnote every misconception and every possible

claim of inconsistency, but we have already done that, haven't we? I think I have

color phi", I think that Dennett has identified a very important difficulty in our ordinary conception of mind. It suggests an enlargement and a more sophisticated perspective on the schematism I have argued heretofore. Though I think I have successfully laid the solid foundation, let me now sketch the design of the cathedral itself, i.e. the design of real minds!

I have dealt, previously, with the schematic object. I argued that the object of perception is a schematic artifact of reactive brain process, specifically "designed" to optimize a simple and efficient "calculus" of response. But the converse side to that argument is that an actual calculus was enabled! What are the (Naturalistic) implications of that calculus, and of the schematic model?

Follow me in a thought experiment! Keeping your eyes fixed to the front, you perceive, (in your perceptual model), this paper in front of you, the wall behind it, and, perhaps, the pictures of your family. There may be pens and pencils, books. You may hear music from the stereo next to you, (and perhaps still in peripheral vision). There may be a window, and the lights of the neighbor's house beyond it. But there is no wall behind you! There is no car in the driveway outside of your house -indeed, there is no "house" at all. There is no city, no taxes, no friends. The sun does not exist in this model. There is no government, no "universe", -no tomorrow! The (purely) perceptual model is incomplete as a model of "reality" and it is, (Naturally!), inadequate even to keep you alive! There is something else necessary for completeness of the model detailed in this book, i.e. a new perspective on it. It is an intentional aspect. It is necessary to supply the object behind your back and the reality "over the hill"! It supplies the connection to "tomorrow" and "yesterday". It supplies "causality". It is necessary for the completeness of a model of "the world". It is necessary, (specifically following Dennett!), even for the individual "objects" of perception itself, (E1 and E3 for instance). This model, I suggest, is where E2, (the object of Dennett's perplexity), lives. It cohabits there very comfortably with E1 and E3 which, I argue, are also predictive and schematic objects. There is a seamless integration, (above the scale of 100 ms, let us say), of what we normally think of as our pure percepts and the

paid my dues. "Predictivity", "intentionality", et al are, under my thesis, perfectly valid conceptions within the Naturalist "form" - and I may consistently use them as such without self-contradiction! Within the context of my larger perspective, they are model-model correlations, synthetic a priori "slices" across the phenomena.

intentional fabric within which they are woven.1 This model, I believe, is the actual "home" of mind, and the legitimate purview of a truly scientific psychiatry.2

"Now what is a phenomenal space? Is it a physical space inside the brain? Is it the onstage space in a theater of consciousness located in the brain? Not literally. But metaphorically? In the previous chapter we saw a way of making sense of such metaphorical spaces, in the example of the 'mental images' that Shakey, [a robot], manipulated. In a strict but metaphorical sense, Shakey drew shapes in space, paid attention to particular points in that space, based conclusions on what he found at those points in space. But the space was only a logical space. It was like the space of Sherlock Holmes's London, a space of a fictional world, but a fictional world systematically anchored to actual physical events going on in the ordinary space in Shakey's 'brain'. If we took Shakey's utterances as expressions of his 'beliefs', then we could say that it was a space Shakey believed in, but that did not make it real, any more than someone's belief in Feenoman would make Feenoman real. Both are merely intentional objects.... So we do have a way of making sense of the ideas of phenomenal space -as a logical space." Dennett, 1991, pps.130-131, my emphasis.

1 But let us turn Dennett's argument around. Dennett argues strongly and convincingly that "figment", (mental states), are logically inconsistent with our, (his), ordinary (naïve) views of cognition and reality. If, instead of accepting his conclusion however, we choose to accept the reality of that figment -E1, E3, and E2, -if we believe that E2 is actually perceived, (whatever it may be), then his argument takes on a different import and works against the very ground in which it was framed: i.e. his ordinary view of cognition and the Naturalism, ("objectivism"), in which he embedded it. The "color phi", he says himself, embodies a precise and reproducible experiment -you and I would both expect to "see" it!

I consider the "phi phenomenon" itself more interesting than the "color phi", however. The credibility and intentional depth of a series of oversized, rapidly sequenced still pictures, (a movie), is quite suggestive. Its potential for an uncanny parallelism with our ordinary experience suggests that the latter, (i.e. ordinary experience), is itself a predictive and integrative phenomenon grounded in a schematic, intentional model in precisely the same manner as I propose the "color phi" to be.

2 Consider the world-views implicit in paranoia or schizophrenia, for instance, or in bipolar orientations

But this is my exact conclusion of Chapter 2. Dennett and I are not so very far apart after all -save in our metaphysics, (wherein we are very different). Mind is a logical entity -i.e. its "space" is a logical space. But Dennett's "mind" is based in associationist logic (after Dreyfus' usage1), and dead, and mine is based in a functional logic, (the constitutive logic of Kant), and live. We are not zombies!

On the issue of metaphysics, on the other hand, Dennett specifically argues that "nature does not build epistemic engines."2 Why, then, does he think that he, either as a physical engine of process, (and the "demons" of process), or as a linguistic engine of "memes", -is epistemic, (i.e. metaphysically so)?3 I don't think that he, or I, are. This was my exact conclusion of Chapter 4.

1 Or "objectivist" logic after Lakoff's2 Dennett, 1991, P.3823 Or that his book is so?

Appendix G: An Outline of the Semantic Argument, (For Philosophers)

This appendix is the logical outline and synopsis of my argument I promised in the Introduction. Though the line it traces is complex, I think it reflects the actual complexity of the mind-brain problem itself and defines a plausible solution for the first time.

Outline of Argument:

1. Chapter 1, (the presentation of my first hypothesis), is not, in itself, primarily argumentative in form. It is, rather, the constructive exhibition of what I believe is a more plausible evolutionary alternative, (and a specific counterproposal), to the representative model of cognition. This, the schematic operative model, is my hypothesis about the origins and the organization of the brain. I propose that "cognition" and human reality, (viewed from a contemporary Naturalist perspective), is a purely schematic, (i.e. internally organizational rather than representational), artifact of (reactive) evolutionary process. The plausibility of this first thesis is argued on the basis of innate design constraints for the control of specifically -and especially- complex and dangerous processes. This, I propose, was exactly the "engineering problem" that evolution was faced with in the design of control systems for complex metacellular organisms. The primary argument for this model, and against representation, (even behavior isomorphism/representation), is made elsewhere -at the conclusion of chapter 2, in chapter 3 and appendices A and B. The only argumentative, (per se), aspect of this chapter lies in what I believe is its stronger evolutionary plausibility vis a vis representation.

2. Chapter 2 approaches the mind-brain problem from the other side, (i.e. mind-brain |div|1 mind). It presents my hypothesis for the origin and the organization of the mind. This chapter too is primarily constructive, (rather than argumentative), and constitutes a totally independent line of investigation from that of chapter 1. It investigates the nature of logic and specifically of the formal logical concept, (/category). It expands Cassirer's insight that the logical concept, (category), is a "new form of consciousness" profoundly distinct and independent from those of perception and abstraction. I expand on Cassirer's highly original

1 i.e divided by or, "seen from the perspective of"

and mathematically oriented, (and generally overlooked), logical results,1 plausibly extending them in terms of (one of) Hilbert's pivotal and purely mathematical revelation(s), i.e. "implicit definition"2, to conclude that mind itself is a single (higher order and, like Cassirer's, a rule-based) concept, the (constitutive) "concept of implicit definition". This, I argue, is the only "form of consciousness", subsuming all the others. But this concept, like the axiom systems of abstract mathematics, internally, (rather than referentially or oppositionally3), resolves its very objects. Nor are they local, but global. It supplies thereby, for the first time, a plausible rationale for the "Cartesian theatre", i.e. awareness. For how, in Leibniz' formulation, could the many be expressed in the one? How could this part of even a "mental substance" know that part? This is a purely logical problem -the problem of the "homunculus".

Implicit definition4 permits knowing, (as a whole -i.e. "the one"), what are, in some real sense, our distinct and separate parts, ("the many"). This is because those parts, (objects), are in fact non-localized and virtual (logical) expressions of the whole, (the rule). It opens a genuine possibility, therefore, for the resolution of this essential requirement of "naive" consciousness.

"Implicit definition" takes on a new significance in light of Cassirer's reinterpretation of the formal logical concept, and a new, (and very different) application to the mind-brain problem in view of my first thesis. If the function of mind and brain is primally organizational rather than referential, then "interpretation" as an assignment of meaning -and reference- is no longer the crucial issue -other than as it applies internally to the model itself. (Chapter 4 deals specifically with the problem of reference. Appendix B is also directed to this issue.)

3. Combining the conclusions of the second chapter with that of the first, I conclude that if we identify the mind as the single (higher order and constitutive) “concept” defined by the primitive logical, (i.e. logically behavioral), rule of the brain, (legitimized under the new formal concept), then a perfectly natural and plausible physical definition of "mind" is possible: i.e. that the mind is the concept5

1 Throughout his later writings, Cassirer constantly refers back to "Substance and Function" wherein he developed the logical ideas which are their basis. cf, e.g. "Einstein's Theory of Relativity", "Symbolic Forms", "Determinism and Indeterminism", etc.2 ? as strongly distinguished from Hilbert’s “formalism” which was specifically a theory of proof and quite distinct3 ? i.e. as opposed to presentation vs. attention/abstraction4 ? and the concept of implicit definition

5 alternatively, the behavioral rule

of the brain! But here both "concept" and "logic" are themselves interpreted reductively -biologically and operationally, (i.e. materially). This, I propose, is the physical, (i.e. Naturalist), answer to the mind-body problem.1 But the combination of the first two hypotheses creates a staggering epistemological problem, and involves moreover, (so it seems), an obvious self-contradiction. If both our perceptual and intellectual objects are solely artifacts of biological coordination, then on what ground can knowledge, (and my own argument), stand? If the very language, (to include the very "biological coordination" and "evolution" of my argument), in which I describe the problem, (being part of that self-same human reality), is only internally organizational and not referential, then what is it that am I describing? How can I even discuss the problem itself? Doesn't my theory contradict itself? How, then, could there be science at all?

4. Chapter 3 makes the first thrust towards the resolution of this epistemological problem, (created by the combination of the first two theses). It also lays the groundwork for a solution of the metaphysical problem of existence -i.e. "Where could a mind exist?". Framing my argument in the context of Maturana and Varela's "Tree of Knowledge", (and specifically in their concept of "structural coupling"), I argue an initial Kantian conclusion of "substantia phaenomenon" confirming what I consider to be the two minimal and necessary (Kantian2) realist assumptions: the "axiom of externality" and the "axiom of experience". (These will also lay the foundation for my solution of the problem of existence.)

5. Building on the groundwork of chapter 3, chapter 4 tackles the epistemological difficulty head-on. Building on -and delimiting- Cassirer's thesis of "symbolic forms", (itself rigorously based in actual scientific methodology), I argue that knowledge is not referential, but organizational. With Cassirer, I argue that the essential flaw in the referential conception of knowledge, ("scientific realism"), lies in its confusion of a particular "frame of reference", i.e. "symbolic form", (and its assumption that there is only one comprehensive frame possible3), with the invariant relationality of experience in the abstract, (i.e. under all consistent frames). This, we argue, is the heart of the issue. It results in a confusion of a specific organization of experience with the experience itself,4

1 ? Please note that I am not just saying that we can have a conception of the mind, but rather that mind itself is a single (functional) concept (== rule) of a "higher dimension".

2 who, I argue, was very much a realist!3 i.e. Naturalism

4 to include scientific experiment as an extension of ordinary experience

which is organized. It results in an (improper) assignment of (unique) metaphysical reference rather than a (legitimate) judgement of empirical, (i.e. experiential), adequacy for the primitives of the theory. I believe that Cassirer was, in fact, very much a modern "antirealist"1, (though I question the ultimate scope of his conception), and argue that his essential solution is, in Van Fraassen's terminology, "coordinate-free". His reformulation of the formal logical concept, (/category), allows a new logical possibility and an escape from the dilemma.

Just as Einstein relativized measurement and disembodied the ether, so did Cassirer argue for a scientific relativization of knowledge, and a disembodiment of direct reference. But Cassirer's is not a frivolous, laissez-faire relativism, (nor is it solipsism); it is an explicit and technical -I might well say "mathematical" epistemological relativity rigorously grounded in the phenomenology of science.2

I argue beyond Cassirer however that "experience" itself may be defined as precisely the relativistic invariant under all consistent and comprehensive worldviews, (forms). The relativism that I argue is a rigorous one grounded in the principles of science; its invariants are experience. This conclusion, I maintain, resolves the epistemological problem created by my first theses.

Nowhere does Cassirer, nor do I, question the profound effectiveness or the legitimacy of modern science. His orientation is wholly and profoundly scientific. Rather, the various sciences are preserved as perspectives, as organizations of phenomena. Cassirer has provided the tools necessary to resolve the epistemological dilemma created by the combination of my first and second theses.

For even though my thesis assumes the validity of the Naturalist organization, (at least on the human scale), it does not assume the metaphysical reality of Naturalism's primitives thereby. In questioning our actual, (referential), cognition of metaphysical reality, it is not, therefore, innately self-contradictory! Though stated in Naturalist terms, (as a legitimate but relative organization -and its terms as "focal points" of that organization), my thesis can consistently and

1 a word I consider to be a total misnomer2 Why is Einstein not saying that any measurements, (at all!), are valid? Why is

Einstein's itself not a laissez-faire physical relativism? It is because there is a rigid structure at the core of his assertion -i.e. the specific, (and precise), invariant equations of relativity. It is the rigid and invariant "equations", (alternatively "the topology"), of experience that structure valid theories. These "equations", this "topology", must be retained as invariant(s) under all viable theories. This is why neither mine, nor Cassirer's, is an irenic relativism. Also see my discussion of the “ideals” of Abstract Algebra.

legitimately question the actual (metaphysical) existence of, (and even the possibility of knowledge of), absolute referents of those terms!

Repeating my conclusion of chapter 4: the results of my first two theses are therefore consistent under this epistemological rationale. The resolution lies in the scientifically and mathematically, (but most certainly not arbitrarily), conceived relativization of knowledge itself. Relational implications, predictive systems, (to include scientific theories), are not, (with Quine), epistemologically determinate. Rather, their essence, (which is their predictivity), can be isolated, (following Cassirer), as relational invariants, (in a mathematical sense), over the field of consistent hypotheses in a sense parallel to that in which Einstein's equations of special relativity were isolated as invariants from the "ether" in which they were originally grounded by Lorentz. Or, rather, relational implications are invariant, but predictive organizations, (i.e. theories), even comprehensive ones, are not! They are the (better or worse), "SUPERB" or "MISGUIDED"1 "forms" which organize those implications.

It is in Cassirer's sense of the organizational,2 rather than the referential relevance of theories that I propose that the relations of ordinary Naturalism -and my own thesis as well- can be, (must be), retained in a deeper realism.

6. Building on the results of chapters 3 and 4, chapter 5 proposes an actual solution to the problem of the "substance", (the "figment" in Dennett's mocking characterization), of mind. But the problem has now, (by virtue of the perspectives gained in chapters 3 and 4), been considerably simplified.

I propose that the actual and metaphysical basis for mind is already presumed under any and all realist, (i.e. not idealistic), conceptions of reality. And that presumption is that of the interface itself -i.e. the connectivity necessarily, (a priori), presumed, (howsoever it may be reduced/explanatorily-oriented under any particular conception), between a cognating entity and the external reality in which it exists. It is that minimal interface itself, conceived in its most abstract and minimal sense, (as a limit) -the intersection of necessity of all realist theories- which I maintain, (as a realist), therefore metaphysically exists! It is apodictic, (by definition), under all realist worldviews.

But I maintain furthermore that this minimal, (and analytically conceived), interface is sufficient to the problem of the substance of mind as well. If it is assumed that this (minimal) interface (metaphysically) exists,3 and if it is furthermore assumed that it is structured as postulated in my first two hypotheses,

1 cf Penrose "The Emperor's New Mind" (his CAPS!)2 i.e. as organizations of phenomena

3 which, as realists, we must

then mind itself (metaphysically) exists! It fully and internally defines -and knows1- its objects! This is my third hypothesis. I conclude that we, as minds, are (metaphysically == truly) real! We do (metaphysically == actually) exist! We are sentient!

The problem of substance was caused, I argue, by Naturalism's overstrong metaphysical presumptions which left no room for, and concealed the possibility for a (metaphysical) reality of mind. To repeat myself, the problem was that (Van Fraassen's) "egg" of Naturalist metaphysics was just too full and left no room for anything else. Or, rather, we were ignoring the shell!

End of Outline.

In a serious, (and regrettable), way I suppose that the form and the order of my argument is in itself confusing -it is certainly complex. But it is complex, necessarily I think, because I am proposing a very different paradigm wherein even the simplest questions demand new answers. On the most general level of organization, I argue backwards, (analytically). rather than forwards, (synthetically), but I feel the nature of the subject, and the demands of comprehension compel me to do so. Each of the three steps reorients and reevaluates, (and to some extent invalidates), the one before it. They are each, as Kant calls such a move, a "Copernican revolution", and this disorientation is in the very nature of such moves. There is good precedent for such a plan, however. They have constituted the most effective and the most critical strategies of our intellectual history and are the actual record of our scientific advance. It is also the way we necessarily learned in school. Before we could adopt more sophisticated perspectives, we were required to "learn our facts" in more simplistic settings.

Do not be confused. I have, for the most part, talked the language of ordinary Naturalism -as I must and should. It is good language. We must accept the reality of the experience which we necessarily (?) describe in Naturalist terms. But we needn't thereby accept the absolute reference which Naturalists demand. I argue, ultimately, that our naive, human-scale world stands to the ultimate reality beyond it in the same relationship that modern physics does, i.e. that of ontic indeterminism.

8. I equate the ultimate worth of my theory with the practical and pragmatic results it will, (or will not!), ultimately generate. Though I, (personally), feel it is innately beautiful, it is certainly a large meal to swallow. But just as the (beautiful and esoteric) theories of modern physics damage our naive psyche, so do they

1 i.e. it does not just "account for" them

produce immediate, practical, and unarguable results, impossible without them. So do I propose that my thesis will produce the immediate and pragmatic results vis a vis neuroscience, (amongst other things), that we so desperately need. The mind-body problem is the key to the whole of human culture, and I believe that I have supplied its first truly plausible solution.

Question: on what basis did we ever presume that the foundations of biology, philosophy and psychology were necessarily more simplistic than those of modern physics? If the solution to the mind-body problem were that easy, would it not be a long settled question?

9. Mine is a realist theory. It is not idealism, no more than was Kant's. Rather, (repeating Kant's claim), it bridges the gap between realism and idealism and resolves their differences. It resolves the mind-body problem and is eminently compatible with contemporary science.

Appendix H : Extended Abstract

This book presents a tentative but comprehensive solution to the mind-body problem. The approach is classical rather than merely technically innovative, and triangulates the answer between three distinct but related theses: one biological and evolutionary, one logical, and one epistemological. Though individually controversial, I argue that together they constitute the first plausible and truly adequate answer to the mind-body problem.

1. My first hypothesis, (in agreement with Maturana and Varela, Freeman and Edelman, for instance), asserts that the brains of organisms, (human or otherwise), do not embody representations of their environment as realists generally assert. I propose further, however, that the "objects" of those brains embody schematic and virtual organizations of reactive biological process instead. I propose that their primary evolutionary purpose was to enable an internal operational and calculational simplicity uniquely empowered by a virtual object. I argue that this simplicity and its implicit efficiency was necessary for the adroit functioning of profoundly complex metacellular beings in a hostile environment. This purpose, I argue furthermore, was actually antithetical to a representative role. (The apparently self-defeating epistemological implications are resolved in my third thesis.)

2. Contrary to Dennett, Hofstadter, Churchland, et al, my second hypothesis asserts that the problems of sentiency –of consciousness: the "homunculus" problem, the "mind's eye", "the Cartesian theatre",... are capable of solution, (and I have proposed an explicit one). Indeed they must be if mind in our ordinary sense of the term is to exist at all. But they are not solvable within the confines of classical Aristotelian logic or its modern embodiments. Current logic, still based essentially in the Aristotelian, (i.e. "generic"), formal concept, is inadequate, I maintain, for the specifically logical problems implicit in the mind-brain problem. Building on Ernst Cassirer's innovative rule-based, (rather than property-based), reformulation of the classical concept itself, (his "functional concept of mathematics"), and a new application of David Hilbert's brilliant logical reorientation of mathematics onto purely axiomatic grounds: "implicit definition", (as strongly distinguished from his "Formalism"), I propose a further extension of Cassirer's technical Concept, (and its subsequent logic), largely equivalent to the complex rule of an axiom system. It is the “Concept of Implicit Definition”, (CID). Following and extending Cassirer's cogent arguments, dualism and opposition, (innate in classical logic and themselves the basis of the “homunculus”, I argue), are then no longer innate in this new Concept. As Cassirer argued for his own “Functional Concept of Mathematics”, CID no longer derives from

presentation vs. attention and abstraction in cognition- which latter is generally accepted as the theoretical basis of the classical Concept, but is unary and internally, (i.e. logically), resolving of its objects in the sense of modern mathematics. The extended Concept, (CID), is no longer confined to intellectual cognition, (i.e. logic and concepts), however, but is adequate to perceptual cognition, (i.e. "objects"), as well. It is part of a constitutive logic in the sense envisaged by Kant. In concert with the first hypothesis, (non-representation == "not presentation"), it allows a solution of the logical problem by permitting cognition and "objects" without presentation and the latter's implicit oppositional "cognator" -i.e. without a homonculus. Reconceiving brain function as organization rather than representation allows mind and cognition in our ordinary, unified sense.

A significant corollary of this hypothesis is that it allows mind to be productively defined as the biologically logical, (i.e. operative), "concept", (as an expression of the behavioral rule), of the brain. (But here "logical" itself and "concept" itself are taken in a reductively materialist sense.) This is an important result since I have argued that it is only in taking our objects as specifically logical objects that the homunculus problem can be solved, and it shows the relevance of that conclusion to the biological problem. But the "logic" just mentioned is biological logic in the sense of the first hypothesis. It is the “calculus” of our biological “schematic model”.

3. My third hypothesis is epistemological, an extension of Kant's, and ultimately of Cassirer's epistemology. Its purpose is to reconcile the apparent self-contradictions of the first two hypotheses and to supply, as well, a plausible answer to the "what" of mind. Expanding on, (and modifying), another of Cassirer's original conceptions, his theory of "Symbolic Forms", it resolves both the problem of reference raised by my prior theses and that of their seeming inconsistency as well, (their being stated in the very language of reference). Arguing from Hertzian grounds, Cassirer maintained that our knowledge is organizational, (as an organization of the phenomena), rather than metaphysically referential. There is, he argued therefore, a plurality of alternative and equipotent (symbolic) "forms", (and their concomitant "objects"), corresponding to different possible organizations of the phenomena and different organizational intents.1 It is the confusion of (the "objects" of) a particular form with the invariant relationality of the phenomena which it organizes, he argued, which leads to an unwarranted assertion of metaphysical reference for its objects. His is, as Swabey stated it, a genuine "epistemological theory of relativity". I argue that it is "coordinate free", (and non-referential), in Van Fraassen's sense as well. It allows my first and second hypotheses to stand as consistent, though relativistic, organizations of the phenomena using the language of naturalism, but without the latter’s commitment to reference. I further argue an essentially Kantian position consistent with Cassirer's to reduce the de facto metaphysical presumptions of naturalism to their legitimate and necessary minimum. This, surprisingly, leaves room for the actual existence of a "substance" of mind for which I propose a specific and plausible answer.

There remain, of course, significant problems. The most obvious of which still remains "reference". But I argue that there is a categorical difference between metaphysical reference and the internal, model/model automorphisms of what I maintain is our logically closed human cognitive world. (cf Quine). It is the latter which constitute the problem of science, and I have suggested a particular kind of automorphism between the brain and the world. (See Appendix B).

However totally "antirealistic" it may sound, I will argue that my thesis is more compatible with contemporary science than any alternative currently proposed. It preserves science and ordinary experience as well.

1 This is clearly parallel in many respects to the function and intent of Lakoff’s “Idealized Cognitive Models”!

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Afterward: Lakoff, Edelman, and “Hierarchy”

As I mentioned in the Introduction, I had not seen George Lakoff’s “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things” nor Gerald Edelman’s “Bright Air, Brilliant Fire" until very recently. It was remarkable to me, therefore, to see how closely Lakoff’s logical and epistemological conclusions resembled those of Cassirer1, (considered as the combination of Cassirer’s dual theses: his logical thesis of “the functional Concept of mathematics" and his epistemological thesis of “Symbolic Forms”), and how closely Edelman’s biological and philosophical answers, based in Lakoff’s and his own original work, resembled my own conclusions. There is an uncanny parallelism of structure, (though not of consequence), between the paths we have followed to arrive at our conclusions.

Our structural differences are differences of degree –but important differences. I believe that Lakoff, (and Edelman), have gone too far in the case of logic, and not far enough in the case of epistemology. They fail2, crucially thereby, to provide the grounds for an answer to the ultimate problem: i.e. how can “mind” or “consciousness”, (normally taken) coexist with the existence of the brain?

Lakoff:

Lakoff grounds his work in logical reflections of Wittgenstein3 which questioned the adequacy of the classical logical Concept and in the work of Rosch and a host of modern empirical researchers which further challenged that classical Concept by demonstrating exceptions in actual human usage of language and concepts across cultures and even within our own legitimate contemporary usage. From these grounds and his own original work, Lakoff drew strong conclusions about the nature of logic4 –and the human mind- itself.

1 Of which Lakoff, apparently, was unaware2 -innocently for Lakoff who never promised such an answer, but more

pointedly for Edelman who did3 E.g. Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances”4 compare Cassirer: "... Every attempt to transform logic must concentrate

above all upon this one point: all criticism of formal logic is comprised in criticism of the general doctrine of the construction of concepts." –cited at the beginning of my Chapter 2.

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The Classical Concept

The classical concept1 is defined “by necessary and sufficient conditions” -that is, by set theoretic definitions on properties. It is an elementary theorem of logic that the whole of the operations of sentential logic, for instance, may be grounded solely in the primitive operations of intersection and complement.2 More generally, logical sets and categories, (concepts3), are defined on presumed “atomic properties” and are commensurable wholly based on the set-theoretic possibilities of those sets –i.e. union, intersection, complement, etc.

Concept-sets, (within this classical perspective), express a hierarchical “container schema” moreover, (using Lakoff’s language). Though Lakoff frames his discussion to the same end slightly differently, by this I mean that whenever we classically specify a genus, we do so by eliminating one or more of these atomic properties, (by intersection of the properties of species), at the same time thereby specifying an expanded extension, (union) –i.e. the set of “objects” which the genus concept encompasses. The delimitation, (by property containment), of the genus category is contained within, (is a subset - an intersection of), that of the species category while the extension of the species category, conversely, is contained within, (is a subset of), the extension of the genus category. In specifying a species category on the other hand, we do so by adding one or more properties –ultimately “atomic properties” to the properties of the genus concept and this species concept encompasses a diminished, (intersectional), extension of the extension of the genus.4 This classical categorization therefore expresses an absolute, rigid and nested hierarchy of levels and containment. In Lakoff’s terms it expresses a hierarchical “container schema”.5

Ultimately, (because they are nested), at the limits these processes specify (1) a largest concept: “something”, (defined by no atomic properties), whose extension is “everything”, and (2) a smallest concept: a particular “object” in reality, (or possible reality), defined by all its atomic properties6. Given the

1 Lakoff is concerned with primarily with categories, but the distinction is technical and not necessary to this discussion. Cassirer dealt specifically with concepts, but he covered essentially the same ground.

2 Or on other subsets of set operations as well3 See prior footnote: categories vs. concepts4 “Cross categorization”, the “other . . . classical … principle of organization

for categories” refers to the various possibilities at any stage of genus or species categorization – on the particular choices of which “atomic properties” are to be eliminated or added. Cf Lakoff pps. 166-167

5 ibid6 to include spatio-temporal properties

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classical paradigm then, reason necessarily begins with “something”, (the most general concept), and points, inexorably, to some ”thing”, i.e. a specific object.1

But Lakoff plausibly argues that concepts2 in legitimate human usage are actually determined by any rule, (to include the classical rules of set operations on properties as just one special case of a rule), or even by no rule at all ! Thus metaphorically based categories, such as the Japanese concept of “hon” are generated, (determined by), a metaphoric rule of extension and metonymically based categories are generated by a rule of metonymy. (Metonymy is the case where one instance of a category is made to stand for the category.) “Don’t let El Salvador” become another Vietnam” is an example Lakoff uses of a metonymically based category.3 Here “Vietnam” stands for the concept of all hopeless, unending …. wars.

In the case of “radial categories”, such as the concept of “mother”, (to include birth mother, adoptive mother, foster mother, surrogate mother, etc.), or of “Balam”4 in the Dyirbal aboriginal language in Australia, they are determined by simple historical accident –they are not generated from the central model by general rules .. [but] .. must be learned one by one.”5 (Extensions from the central model are not “random” however, but are “motivated”, his emphasis, “by the central model plus certain general principles of extension.”)6

He argues his case rigorously and scientifically by exhibiting myriad examples that are not compliant with the classical Concept and analytically by demonstrating the degradation of concepts in actual bi-cultural environments –i.e. where a culture and language is being overrun by another, (“language death”), as is the case with the Dyirbal aboriginal language in modern Australia.7 The degradation is characterized by the loss of blocks of suborganizations, not of random individual elements.

1 or the exact converse –i.e. beginning with some specific object or objects in reality or possible reality and ending with everything!

2 he would say “categories”3 P. 77. Actually I like his “ham sandwich” better, but it was pre-empted by

Edelman!4 The category which is the source of his title and includes, among other

things, women, fire, and dangerous things.5 Lakoff, P.916 As I will repeat later, this discussion of Lakoff’s thesis is woefully

inadequate, but it will have to do for the purposes of this appendix. He states as the “main thesis of [his] book .. that we organize our knowledge by means of structures called idealized cognitive models, or ICMs, and that category structures and prototype effects are by-products of that organization.” Ibid, p.68

7 See Lakoff, pps. 96-102510

Lakoff’s logic is not trivialized by this “free formation” of concepts however, (as it might seem it would be1- logic being [paraphrase] “mostly concerned with categories”), as he bases logic and the relevance of concepts ultimately in a preconceptual context rather than in the concepts themselves. Concepts, (categories), he argues, are not created in a vacuum, but within preconceptual schemas: “idealized cognitive models”, (ICMs). The latter are ultimately determined, (he argues), by the function of the body in the external world–all describable from “body in the world”.

“There are at least two kinds of structure in our preconceptual experiences:A. Basic-Level structure: Basic-level categories are defined by the convergence of our gestalt perception, our capacity for bodily movement, and our ability to form rich mental images.B. Kinesthetic image-schematic structure: Image schemas are relatively simple structures that constantly recur in our everyday bodily experience: CONTAINERS, PATHS, LINKS, FORCES, BALANCE, and in various orientations and relations: UP-DOWN, FRONT-BACK, PART-WHOLE, CENTER-PERIPHERY, etc.”2

These schemas, however, being at the basis of our reasoning3, are necessarily mutually relativistic and equipotent and we utilize them on a “best fit” rationale. The concepts that arise within them need not be commensurate across them. Thus he arrives at a relativism of logic and concepts.

1 If, according to Lakoff, (1) legitimate concepts may be formed on any principle or no principle, and if, also according to Lakoff, (2), most of the business of logic is concepts, (categories), then it would appear, (at first glance), that (3) logic could prove any conclusion. But if logic can prove anything, then it can prove nothing! Thus it would appear, on the face of it, that his purported impossibility of a rigorous, comprehensive structure for categories in general would imply the invalidation of logic in general.

2 Lakoff, p.267.3 rather than categories

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Lakoff’s Concept/category in many ways resembles Cassirer’s1 and he rejects, (as does Cassirer), the classical “necessary and sufficient conditions”, (as he phrases it), which ground set theoretic abstraction and the Aristotelian generic Concept. His logical and ultimately epistemological relativism, (in his “idealized cognitive models”), is also very similar to, (though it is not as abstract and comprehensive as), Cassirer's “Symbolic Forms” which is described in my Chapter 4.

Cassirer and Lakoff’s Logic

Cassirer rejected the logical sufficiency of classical categorization as does Lakoff, but he did not reject the possibility of any absolute, comprehensive structure for categories, (which Lakoff does). Instead Cassirer retained an overall formal structure for categorization in the notion of a mathematical functional rule or series.

Cassirer did not question the legitimacy of the classical schema, but he did question its necessity and sufficiency. (Which is pretty much where Lakoff and myself stand as well.) He argued that it is, in fact, a special and limit case of the Concept and of the possibilities of logic. Cassirer maintained that many concepts –and specifically the very concepts of mathematical and physical science2 –demonstrate another mode of concept formation and specification than the classical scheme, (this is the subject of my Chapter 2). Both concept

1 There is an uncanny parallelism of argument throughout between Lakoff’s and Cassirer’s treatment of logic. Consider, as an example, the following:

“Category cue validity defined for such psychological (or interactional) attributes might correlate“, (his emphasis), “with basic-level categorization, but it would not pick out basic-level categories; they would already have to have been picked out in order to apply the definition of category of category cue validity so that there was such a correlation.” (Lakoff: P.54, my emphasis) This is almost an exact parallel to one aspect of Cassirer’s argument against the classical concept, and the “theory of attention”, (see my Chapter 2), –and for a “new form of consciousness”.

Discussing Erdman, Cassirer writes: “…instead of the community of ‘marks,’ the unification of elements in a concept is decided by their ‘connection by implication.’ And this criterion, here only introduced by way of supplement and as a secondary aspect, proves on closer analysis to be the real logical prius; “ (his emphasis), “for we have already seen that ‘abstraction’ remains aimless and unmeaning if it does not consider the elements from which it takes the concept to be from the first arranged and connected by a certain relation.” Cassirer, “Substance and Function”, p.24

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formation upward, (genera), and downward, (species), can obey another rule-based law, i.e. the properties of their extensions can embody a series other than the specific series of identity. As a crude example, one member of the extension of a concept, (using an example drawn from numeric sets), might contain the numeral “2”, another the numeral “4”, another “8”, “16”… rather than the numeral “2” being in all of them. Thus the concept would express, (and be formed on the principle of), the series 2,4,8,16,… across its extension rather than being based in the series of identity: 2, 2, 2,…. , (the classical schema). The extension of a category, therefore, may be defined based upon the possession of some property belonging to a series or function on properties rather than on the possession of some identical property(ies). Concepts can be specified by a function other than identity. 1

Cassirer has supplied a clear counterexample and an alternative to the classical schema, (which I explained at length and further extended as the subject of Chapter 2). Simplistically, (and as crude illustration), we may have three pieces of “metal” in front of us for instance, wherein none of their properties are the same! The first is a one pound piece of gold, (color: yellow, specific gravity: a.aaaa…., conductivity: b.bbbb…., etc.), the second a two pound piece of lead, (color: gray, specific gravity: l.lll…, conductivity: m.mmm…., etc), and the third a three pound piece of tin: (…, …., …., etc.) None of these properties need be identical however. They are related as “metal”, (and are specified as “metal objects”), because the color of each, (for instance), is a value of the function COL(x) {yellow, gray, silver,…), the specific gravity of each is a value of the function SG(x) {lll…, ggg…, …}, and so on. These objects, (the objects called “metal objects”), can “cross party lines”, so to speak –i.e. they are not the product of strict set-theoretic intersection of atomic properties. In the illustration their intersection across these properties is null! The extension of scientific and mathematical concepts, (specifically, Cassirer argues), need have no atomic properties in common2 . Repeating a short citation from my Chapter 2:

2 Cf Cassirer, “Substance and Function”, “Einstein’s Theory of Relativity”. Incidentally, the original title for “Substance and Function” was “Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff”, i.e. Substance Concepts and Function Concepts!

1 Cassirer's "series" could be ordered by radically variant principles, however: "according to equality", (which is the special case of the "generic concept"), "or inequality, number and magnitude, spatial and temporal relations, or causal dependence"? -so long as the principle is definite and consistent. But please remember that these are principles of category construction rather than properties of categories. see my Chapter 2

2 ? Compare Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances”.513

"Lambert pointed out that it was the exclusive merit of mathematical 'general concepts' not to cancel the determinations of the special cases, but in all strictness fully to retain them. When a mathematician makes his formula more general, this means not only that he is to retain all the more special cases, but also be able to deduce them from the universal formula."1

But this possibility of deduction does not exist in the case of the scholastic, (Aristotelian), concepts, "since these, according to the traditional formula, are formed by neglecting the particular, and hence the reproduction of the particular moments of the concept seems excluded."2

"The ideal of a scientific concept here appears in opposition to the schematic general presentation which is expressed by a mere word. The genuine concept does not disregard the peculiarities and particularities which it holds under it, but seeks to show the necessity of the occurrence and connection of just these particularities. What it gives is a universal rule for the connection of the particulars themselves.... Fixed properties are replaced by universal rules that permit us to survey a total series of possible determinations at a single glance."3

Consider “the ellipse as a simple mathematical example of a genus” for instance. Its species are functionally related –and fully recoverable- in the defining equation of ellipses in general.

Conversely in the specification of species and subspecies, (“downward”), the process does not necessarily lie in the addition of (identical) atomic properties either, (the members of the extension of a subspecies, which is also a category, need not contain (any) identical atomic properties by the same reasoning), but can be accomplished instead in the identification of the value of a sub-function whose possibility is implicit within the genus.4 Ultimately, (and recursively), the question proposes itself: need there be a lowest, “bottom” level

1 ? Cassirer, “Substance and Function”, P.20-232 ? ibid P.20-23, my emphasis3 ? ibid P.20-234 ? Since we can build a genus without commonality, so can we build a

super-genus. Turning our perspective around, then, we may speciate downward from that super-genus without the utilization of commonality!

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concept at all?1 Speciation is no longer necessarily intersection or containment,2 (it is no longer necessarily nested), so there is always the possibility of another, further rule of assembly for a subspecies of any species –at any level!3 There is thus no longer a necessary logical focus on an ultimate “thing”.

Cassirer argues that the ultimate “objects” , (the “theoretical objects”), of mathematics and physical science are “implicitly defined” by, (and express), the fundamental laws of the science itself. He argues that they are instances of complex speciation based in the general functional rules, (the laws), of the sciences themselves and not objects “in reality”.

Some of Lakoff’s categories, it is true, are also rule based, (other than the classical rule), but in the case of his “radial categories”, they may be formed by historical accident. Lakoff concluded that categories may be formed by classical rules, other rules or “no rule at all”! But this characterization divorces him from the possibility of any universally comprehensive categorical structure.4 Cassirer includes this special latter case as an ad hoc rule, (series), however, rather than as an example of “no rule”. It would correspond to the special case in mathematical set theory wherein a set is defined by the explicit listing of its members. Cassirer’s conception may be likened to a line segment bounded on one end by the classical criterion of identity of properties across members, (a “unity”), with the central section composed of any and all functional rules, (i.e. rules of series/regular functions on those properties), and bounded at the other end by the rule of explicit listing, i.e. no other rule, (a “zero”). This view reconciles the two conceptions, I think, and might be acceptable to Lakoff.5

1 ? The other pole is clearly impossible. There is clearly no Concept, (category), of all concepts under Cassirer’s vision as it would necessarily be defined on “the rule of all rules”. But some, (most), rules are obviously inconsistent with other rules –disallowing the concept.

2 ? Since there is no longer a necessary presumption of nesting, the implication that there must be a “least member” is no longer justified.

3 ? Remember that under Cassirer's Concept, we do not eliminate properties to speciate, but rather functions.

4 Cf: the discussion of the crucial role of comprehensiveness vis a vis mathematical ideals near the end of this Afterword.5 ? Compare Lakoff, p.146 : “in the classical theory, you have two choices for characterizing set membership: you can predict the members (by precise necessary and sufficient conditions, or by rule), or you can arbitrarily list them, if there is a finite list. The only choices are predictability (using rules or necessary and sufficient conditions) and arbitrariness (giving a list). But in a theory of natural categorization, the concept of motivation”, (his emphasis), “is available. Cases that are fully motivated are predictable and those that are totally unmotivated are arbitrary. But most cases fall in between –they are partly motivated.”

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What it does besides, however, is reveal a comprehensive structure across the whole of categories/concepts.

I have suggested a further extension beyond Cassirer’s “Functional Concept” and sets of n-tuples however in my arguments of Chapter 2. Just why is the color of “gold-metal” yellow instead of gray? Why is “gold” a particular n-tuple rather than some other mix of possible place-values? Physical scientists will never agree with Lakoff, for instance, that it could be just an (accidental) property of a “radial category”, nor, possibly even with Cassirer, that it is simply an element in a multi-place series. They will insist that it must be a necessary property determined by physical law. Cassirer apparently glimpsed this connection in his conception of the “ideal objects” of the sciences, but he never fully exploited it. (I have pursued it in my “Concept of Implicit Definition”.1)

Both Lakoff and Cassirer followed the paths of their logical conclusions to see the essential flaw in “naïve realism”, (as Cassirer termed it), and “objectivism”, in Lakoff’s words, (I have used the term “naturalism”). If the classical logical schema of strict hierarchical containment were legitimate, and, more importantly, if it were necessary and sufficient, then the only possibility of science, as the resolution of experience and reality with logic, would lie in the absolute objective existence, (however reduced), of our ordinary objects. If valid logic and conceptualization is broader than that, however, then the possibility of reality is considerably enriched. Valid conceptual, (or utilitarian cognitive), “objects” need not then express “membranes” around spatio-temporally contiguous properties of ontological, (i.e. metaphysical), objects or groups of such objects!2 They can “cross party lines”!

Cassirer suggested another, (and more classical), “middle ground” wherein the principle of “necessary and sufficient” is not grounded in an identity of properties, but in a functional relationship between them. The relationship between their proposals is more complex than is possible to describe here, but as a thumbnail sketch of my opinion, the deficiencies in the classical category that Cassirer resolves in his “Functional Concept of Mathematics”, Lakoff attributes to his Cognitive Models whereas the deficiencies in classical metaphysics are resolved by both of them very similarly in the epistemological relativity of “Symbolic Forms” by Cassirer and of “ICM’s” by Lakoff. Cassirer’s is the more general of the two solutions to the latter problem, however, as it is not framed within a specific image of the world, but within the constraints only of abstract epistemology as Kant definitively iterated them.

1 Cf my Chapter 22 ? This discussion constitutes my answer to one of the more difficult objections to my first thesis wherein it is objected that “schematism” is “just a level of abstraction”, (Richard Reiner, private communication). The discussion above shows why it need not be!

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Cassirer had no problems with such an implication. It was implicit, of course, in his neo-Kantian origins. Lakoff did. In his laudable commitment to realism, he was forced to consider the minimal necessary requirements of such a (scientific) realism.1

He lists Putnam’s requirements of “internal realism”2

as:(1) “A commitment to the existence of a real world external to human

beings(2) a link between conceptual schemes and the world via real human

experience; experience is not purely internal, but is constrained at every instant by the real world of which we are an inextricable part

(3) a concept of truth that is based not only on internal coherence and “rational acceptability”, but, most important, on coherence with our constant real experience

(4) a commitment to the possibility of real human knowledge of the world.”3

He has extended and refined Putnam’s position somewhat from this basis, (his “basic realism”), to be able to answer certain further questions that arise, but this is a reasonably concise rendition of his stance vis a vis realism. I have discussed his position, (as reiterated by Edelman), briefly in the preface to my Chapter 2, wherein I agreed with (1) – (3), but strongly qualified (4). I had argued the equivalent of his essential conclusions as the subjects of my chapters 3 and 4, i.e. the (bare) “axiom of externality”, and the (bare) “axiom of experience” respectively. Because of his conclusions, Lakoff was further forced into a position of epistemological, (as well as logical), relativism –against what has been called a “God-eye view of reality”.4

Lakoff’s relativism, necessary because of his logical conclusions but challenged in his own mind, (admirably, I maintain, as I consider myself a strong realist as well), by his fervent commitment to science and realism, is ill-defined however. Though he talks about relativism at length, he never clearly defines it. He begins by noting the anathema which “relativism” is considered by the scientific world, but argues that there are, in fact, many different forms of

1 The criteria of Putnam’s, Lakoff’s and Edelman’s basic realism are, I have argued in my chapters 3 and 4, essentially the same ones definitively identified by Kant. Kant is grossly mischaracterized as an “idealist”. He was, in fact, the penultimate modern realist in just the sense demanded by these thinkers. See chapters 3 and 4.

2 Which he uses as the jumping off point for his own “experiential realism”. Edelman, incidentally, has adopted Putnam’s definition pretty much “as is”.

3 P.2634 cf my chapter 4 for a discussion of Cassirer’s arguments on the same

subject and of my extension of them.517

relativism. (Neither he, nor I, advocate a “relativism of everything”.) The most cogent interpretation I can give to it, (Whorf aside), is that he advocates a cognitive and logical relativism based on bodily function, (in the world), which leads to a relativism of contexts, (ICM’s), which employ different categorical, (conceptual), schemas. Within each of these ICM’s, there does exist a structure consistent with rigor, however,1 but ultimately the ICM’s themselves are relativistic.

I like what Lakoff has done, (hugely!), but his ICMs, the relativism in which he has based them, and his epistemology are deficient insofar as they are all derived from, (grounded in the concept of), the human body and the functions of that body in the world. This is his overview, and this is the context within which they are framed. That very body in the world is conceived in the primary set theoretic sense, (he would call it the “container schema” ICM), however! But if they all may be described within the container schema, (the body in the world), then ultimately all of his ICMs and his epistemology are theoretically reducible to a container schema! This is a contradiction of his own position against a “God’s eye” picture of the world.2 It is the generality of Cassirer’s solutions3and of my extensions of them, (founded ultimately in a neo-Kantian perspective), which allows the solution of the general logical and ultimately of the epistemological problems.

Though Lakoff rejects the view that “anything goes” –that any conceptual system is as good as any other, nowhere does he approach the possibility of a scientific, mathematical relativism which would give rigor to his conceptions –save within a tacit objectivist context.

It is the possibility of a general and comprehensive structure of the Concept which allows the true relativity of the essential forms/ICMs. I will argue shortly, in the context of mathematical “ideals”, that the various “generators” of such an ideal must each be capable of generating the whole of the “space” of that ideal –to include all possible alternative generators as well. Thus each (legitimate) structure must be comprehensive to be translatable, (i.e. capable of itself being generated by another set of generators). But its concepts/categories/objects may be distributed in the translation.4 This is intelligible only outside of the classical conception of logic, and is the essence of my conclusion of chapter 4. Lakoff’s “Concept” is certainly broader than the 1 ? “The main thesis of this book is that we organize our knowledge by means of structures called idealized cognitive models, or ICM’s, and that category structures and prototype effects are by-products of that organization..” Lakoff, 1987, p.68, his emphasis.

2 I.e. all his arguments against it are reducible within it. I will have more to say on this subject shortly and will suggest a way out of his dilemma.

3 and their origins in science and mathematics4 cf my Chapter 4

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classical concept, but he takes his arguments too far –against any rule of concept formation.

Please do not misunderstand me. I loved Lakoff’s book. It is brilliant, far reaching, and, I believe, essentially valid. He develops and documents his arguments solidly, but I think his strongest point is in his clear and cogent examples from our own normal usage1, (as well as from extensive anthropological studies), which makes his essential case almost unanswerable. His conception is considerably richer than it is possible to describe within the confines of an appendix, nor is it as simplistic as I have characterized it. We have huge areas of agreement and possible interaction, (his and Rosch’s “basic level categories” have a natural correlate in my “schematic perceptual objects”, for instance.)

Lakoff’s ICMs are biologically based –on the human organism. Human cognition and human reason consists, for Lakoff, in the application of the best fit of these inbuilt ICM’s, (and their respective categories), to a given problem or situation. They constitute an “embodied logic” deriving from the nature of the human organism itself. There is an obvious parallel between Lakoff’s “embodied logic” and the more general case I have argued. I have argued that logic is indeed embodied, but at the primitive level of cellular process! This more general characterization allows the crucial epistemological move,2 (which Lakoff’s does not), beyond the “God’s eye view” he disclaims.

The distinction is important because at the cellular level of phenomenology biology becomes a pure form, (in Cassirer's sense and compatible with Cassirer's Hertzian premise). This is especially transparent in Maturana and Varela's book, for instance, (see chapter 3), i.e. in its explicit constructiveness and the subsequent purity of their phenomenology.

Citing a few pertinent examples quoted earlier in chapter 3:

"Our intention, therefore, is to proceed scientifically: if we cannot provide a list that characterizes a living being, why not propose a system that generates all the phenomena proper to a living being? The evidence that an autopoietic unity has exactly all these features becomes evident in the light of what we know about the interdependence between metabolism and cellular structure." "Autopoietic unities specify biological phenomenology as the phenomenology proper of those unities", (my emphasis), "with features distinct from physical phenomenology... because the phenomena they generate in functioning as autopoietic unities depend on their organization

1 Cassirer’s case was grounded primarily in scientific examples.2 Through what Maturana and Varela call “structural coupling”

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and the way this organization comes about, and not on the physical nature of their components.""Ontogeny is the history of structural changes in a particular living being. In this history each living being begins with an initial structure. This structure conditions the course of its interactions and restricts the structural changes that the interactions may trigger in it", (my emphasis). "At the same time, it is born in a particular place, in a medium that constitutes the ambience in which it emerges and in which it interacts. This ambience appears to have a structural dynamics of its own, operationally distinct from the living being. This is a crucial point. As observers, we have distinguished the living system as a unity from its background and have characterized it as a definite organization. We have thus distinguished two structures that are going to be considered operationally independent of each other, (my emphasis), "living being and environment."

These are purely constructive and operational definitions, (or capable of being made so within "structural coupling"), in the precise sense of Hertz and Cassirer and clearly mesh with the substance of my chapter 4. They are Hertzian "images" with a definite, predictive logical structure.

At the level of cellular biology therefore, biology becomes a pure form, and, as such, it, (and the logic I posit within it), is capable of legitimate embodiment1 within the now viable scientific epistemological relativism espoused by Cassirer and myself. It is this deeper placement, (and not as reductive physics), which allows an escape from the inconsistent "God's eye view" implicit in Lakoff's and Edelman's theses, and enables a truly consistent relativism.

It is because of Lakoff's Wittgensteinian origins, I think, that he has gone too far, (-and not far enough). Had he started from Cassirer instead, the case might have been different. I will return to Lakoff presently to suggest a “cleaner” solution to his problem consistent with his apparent needs –in the mathematical notion of “ideals”. There is a way to save it, but I think it is too limited and inconsistent with the dictates of modern biology as espoused, for instance, by Edelman.

Edelman:

Gerald Edelman has adopted Lakoff’s, (and Putnam’s), logical and epistemological conclusions as the philosophical underpinning to his own theories of “Neuronal Group Selection”, (TNGS), and “re-entrant topobiological

1 i.e. as a legitimate, fundamental "symbolic form"520

maps”. He proposed the combined result as an actual answer to the problem of mind-brain. Though Edelman's is a very plausible theory of brain development and function, it is limited to dealing with “mind” only reductively -i.e. as strictly biological and therefore physical process and falls to the same objections that I, (and the preponderant Naturalist camp as well), have raised. “Mind”, normally taken, is therefore superfluous therein! Edelman explicitly denies the “homunculus”, (as do I), but his “Cartesian theatre” is specifically a physical and spatial one. It is spatially and temporally distributed. Though he does not explicitly deny the existence of “mind” as ordinarily taken, he tacitly reinterprets it and reduces it to a description of process. He fits very comfortably, I feel therefore, within the naturalism, (and “objectivism”), which Dennett, Churchland, et al espouse.1 I do not question the insightfulness or the importance of Edelman’s work –it is profoundly important and very solid –but, because of its limitations, (derived from Lakoff), it falls short of an answer to the problem of consciousness, retains internal inconsistencies, and does not resolve the mind-body dilemma.

Starting with the nature and limitations of embryology, Edelman makes a case for a very different concept of “recognition systems”. His exemplar “recognition system” is the immune system. The immune system, he argues, does not depend on information about the world –i.e. we do not create new antibodies from informational templates resident in newly arrived antigens. Rather, science finds that the body randomly generates a huge diversity of antibodies before the fact and reactively selects from this pre-existing diversity “ex post facto” as he phrases it. This, the immune system, is a system of process, not of information.

“A recognition system … exists in one physical domain”, (for the immune system it is within an individual’s body), “ and responds to novelty arising independently in another domain, (for the immune system it is a foreign molecule among the millions upon millions of possible chemically different molecules) by a specific binding event and an adaptive cellular response. It does this without requiring that information about the shape that needs to be recognized be transferred to the recognizing system at the time when it makes the recognizer molecules or antibodies. Instead, the recognizing system first generates a diverse population of antibody molecules and then selects ex post facto those that fit or match. It does this continually and, for the most part, adaptively.” Edelman, P.78

1 Save on the issue of “information”521

Cognition, our ultimate “recognition system”, he argues, is a parallel case and must be reconceived accordingly. Because of the sheer size, and the place and time sensitivity of embryological neural development, the neural system, (he argues), is progressively “pruned” ex post facto from random preexisting variety over the stages of its development in like manner to the immune system.

“given the stochastic (or statistically varying) nature of the developmental driving forces provided by cellular processes such as cell division, movement, and death, in some regions of the developing nervous system up to 70 percent of the neurons die before the structure of that region is completed! In general, therefore, uniquely specified connections cannot exist.” “the principles governing these changes are epigenetic –meaning that key events occur only if certain previous events have taken place. An important consequence is that the connections among the cells are therefore not precisely prespecified in the genes of the animal.” Edelman, pps. 23- 25

Of the great diversity of (preexisting) neural connections generated at any stage, particular connections are reinforced and kept, or pruned and deleted, in tune with place and time dependent events the scenario of which is too complex “by several orders of magnitude” to be embodied in the human genome. This pruning is achieved operationally, not informationally. Embryological development is too complex, too dependent on place and time to be prespecified. His argument in some ways parallels my own of appendix A wherein I argued that there simply hasn’t been enough time in evolutionary history, (nor ever will be), to create such an information engine.

In his “ex post facto” adaptive “TNGS”, Edelman argues a criterion of competence , (as, indeed, did Darwin –and as did I in my first chapter), rather than one of information in the evolution and development of organisms –and specifically of the human organism.

“The immune selective system has some intriguing properties. First, there is more than one way to recognize successfully any particular shape. (my emphasis) Second, no two individuals do it exactly the same way; that is, no two individuals have identical antibodies. Third, the system has a kind of cellular memory.” Edelman, P.78 (These comments are directly relevant to my discussion of bounds and limits and the “parallel postulate” of cognitive science.)

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He too disclaims the possibility of a “God’s eye view” by an organism of reality.1 But competence, as I have argued, does not imply parallelism. It is the question of bounds and limits that I have argued previously,2 and Edelman falls into the same epistemological trap as does Lakoff, (and Maturana and Varela as well). Other than this failing, however, I believe his overall position and arguments are very strong.

On “Presentation”

Edelman challenges ordinary logic and ordinary epistemology, (the classical, “objectivist”/”naturalist” views), for some of the same reasons that I do. In his TNGS, he has framed the same problem, and reached largely the same conclusion that I did under the issue of “presentation”.

“some of the reasons for considering brain science a science of recognition", [under his special definition of "recognition systems" cited above]. " The first reason is almost too obvious: brain science and the study of behavior are concerned with the adaptive matching of animals to their environments. In considering brain science as a science of recognition I am implying that recognition is not an instructive process. No direct information transfer occurs, just as none occurs in evolutionary or immune processes. Instead recognition is selective.”

“a potent additional reason for adopting a selective rather than an instructive viewpoint has to do with the homunculus. …the little man that one must postulate ‘at the top of the mind’, acting as an interpreter of signals and symbols in any instructive theory of mind…. But then another homunculus required in his head and so on, in an infinite regress… selectional systems, in which matching occurs ex post facto on an already existing diverse repertoire, need no special creations, no homunculi, and no such regress.” Edelman pps. 81-82

1 cf: my “Axiom of Externality” and “Axiom of Experience”, (Chapters 3 and 4).

2 Let me repeat a footnote of my Chapter 1: The question, of course, is whether "information" is necessary to competence. I will argue, (in Chapter 3), that it involves a distinction between "bounds" and "greatest lower bounds" of biologic survival. A given organism, (to include human beings), must reflect a lower bound of competence in the world. But "information" requires that it reflect a greatest lower bound, and this is inconsistent with the fundamental premises of evolution. It is the "parallel postulate" of cognitive science.

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Presentation, in any sense other than an eliminative one, requires a homunculus, and this is the problem that Edelman believes he has solved- in essentially the same way that I did. But, in doing so, he believed he had solved the whole of the mind-body problem.

Re-entrant Maps

To this point, (his theory of “TNGS”), his argument is very plausible and compatible with my own conclusions. His rationale from that point onward, however, bears examination.

His theory of re-entrant topobiological maps, (reactively linked cortical surfaces), is quite plausible and highly interesting, but, ultimately, it is tied to a truly topological correspondence of those maps with the “real” world, (contrary to his conclusions of the first part of his thesis). “Maps… correlate happenings at one spatial location in the world without a higher-order supervisor…”1 These maps themselves do, therefore, embody a “God’s eye view”, (contrary to the implications of TNGS). I have suggested a different orientation of Edelman’s schema in the discussion of my Chapter 1, wherein I suggested we step back from our human (animal) cognitive prejudice and consider the larger “global mapping” also described by Edelman, (which relates “non-mapped” areas of the brain to the topobiological maps), as the primary focus of biological process. Under this perspective, the “objects” of our topobiological maps may be reconceived, not as God’s-eye renditions of ontology, but rather as organizational foci, (efficacious artifacts), of process.2

1 Edelman, p.87, my emphasis2 An aside: While I hope it should be clear by now that I have no affinity for

traditional idealism, I think it is worth quoting a short passage from Edelman as it talks about levels of “strangeness” in theories:

“and Berkeley’s monistic idealism –suggesting that inasmuch as all knowledge is gained through the senses, the whole world is a mental matter –falters before the facts of evolution. It would be very strange indeed if we mentally created an environment that then subjected us (mentally) to natural selection.” Edelman, p. 35

Berkeley aside, Edelman seems very put out with the very strangeness of the (recursive, re-entrant?) complication of such an idea. The complication, he implies, boggles the mind! But much of modern science is even more mind-boggling. My thesis proposes an even greater “boggle”, but results in an integration of epistemology and an actual solution to the mind-body problem.

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Edelman rationalizes his biological solution to the problem of the brain and the mind upon Lakoff’s, (and Putnam’s), answer. To him that answer is important because it allows a rationale for the brain which is not based in information as, in fact, he has concluded that it is not, (inconsistently with his theory of re-entrant maps, I maintain). He therefore reaches a conclusion very similar to my own. But again, like Lakoff’s, his conception is too limited and incorporates an inherent contradiction. His concept of the world, like Lakoff's is based in a container schema. We, you and I and Lakoff and Edelman, are organisms too after all. But then “TNGS” requires that even our brains are not informational!1 It is the generality of Cassirer’s solution –and of my extension of it –the generality of the Concept and the generality of the scientific relativism which allows a consistent and meaningful solution2 to the problems of the brain, mind and epistemology.

The Cartesian Theatre

What Edelman has not solved is the other problem, the problem of the “Cartesian theatre”3, (i.e. “mind”, ordinarily taken), and this is the most important problem. It is that which we normally mean when we use the terms “consciousness”, “sentiency”, etc. Its comprehensive solution is the subject of Chapter 2: the Concept of Implicit Definition and its integration with biology as the unified rule of ontogenic coupling. Edelman’s solution remains an

Modern epistemology is radical at both the extremely small and at the extremely large (and fast) scales. It is only as algorithms they are comprehensible. And yet everyone, (read this as “most realists”), seems to accept that at the middle scale epistemology must be simple. Consider instead the truly mind boggling possibility I propose that the middle scale is algorithmic as well! Does this not explain “the prototype” which Rosch demonstrated and which ground Lakoff’s and Edelman’s very logical theses. Prototypes and the logical relations between them would, under this view, represent the “objects” and the “calculus” of algorithmic biology. If this thesis be accepted, then continuity, temporarily removed from epistemology by modern science, is restored across the board. This is a major epistemological and scientific result and worth the price we must pay for it. So was quantum mechanics!

1 I think that Edelman would comment here, as he did on another occasion, that this conclusion would “boggle the mind”! Maybe so, but I think we’d better get used to such a state. Modern physics? Edelman’s own conclusions? …

2 by allowing a reorientation of the problem to a consideration of forms rather than of information

3 after Dennett525

essentially naturalist, (objectivist), one itself however and is, I argue moreover, epistemologically inconsistent. It is compatible with the rest of the eliminativist camp in that ultimately all his correspondences, (his stated epistemology to the contrary), are from topobiological maps, themselves topologically corresponding to “the (real) world”! His “mind” is purely process, spatially and temporally localized –and known! His is “a God’s eye view”.

Edelman is very derisive of Penrose’s “Emperor’s New Mind”,1 but I think he has missed a major aspect of it. Penrose, (though he doesn’t say so explicitly), and the “quantum people” are trying, (Goedel aside), I think, to supply a “non-localization” –i.e. a spatial universality to the brain’s perceptual and cognitive objects- to make headway on the problem of knowing. They are trying to conceive an answer to Leibniz’ problem of the “one and the many” within a physical space. The “chaos theory people” stand in a similar motivation I think, but attacking the logical problem of the object from a perspective of localized process, conceiving our objects as “attractors”. But even were such solutions meaningful, (and they are interesting), they would miss the requirement of a self-standing logical space in depth which the Concept of Implicit Definition, as combined with the schematic model of biology, supplies and which furnishes the foundation of “meaning” and “knowing”. Dennett glimpsed such a possibility2 for a Cartesian theatre based in logic in Shakey the Robot’s program, (as I cited previously3), but his naturalist/objectivist metaphysical prejudice enervated the concept before it could bear fruit.

But ordinary logic//////,4 (Shakey’s program for instance), is inadequate to the problem. It is essentially dimensional: linear, planar, multi-dimensional, missing the integration in depth –missing the autonomy and (logical) self-sufficiency which is necessary to knowing and to meaning. 5 6

1 “Penrose’s account is a bit like that of a schoolboy who, not knowing the formula of sulfuric acid asked for on an exam, gives instead a beautiful account of his dog Spot.” Edelman, P.217

2 but using an inadequate logic3 cf the "Dennett Appendix" - "the color phi"4 “associationist logic” in Dreyfus’ term5 Wittgenstein’s objection is clearly pertinent here. He raised the question of

the necessity for one to have another rule: i.e. another rule to apply any given rule. C.I.D./biology, however, supplies a consistent rationale. “One” is a rule, “one” doesn’t apply the rule. “One” is the single, “ex post facto” and unified rule of ontogenic coupling!

6 and which could provide the enrichment necessary to the possibility of future scientific development moreover. All the other proposals yet presented are essentially just explanatory –i.e. logically reductive- and hold little promise for further exploitation.

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That aspect of ordinary mind we call the “Cartesian Theatre” does not work as a linear, a planar, or even as a multidimensional space1 -even as a logical space. As I argued in chapter 2, each requires “presentation”, either physical or logical. Nor do such conceptions supply “knowing”, “meaning” or “motivation”, except as unnatural and gratuitous appendages.

C.I.D. and the schematic model focus logic and cognition in biology. Biology has innate depth and structure –derived from the single principle of efficacy as coupled with Darwinian survival –of ontogenic coupling, and these necessarily pass to the logic and the cognition which are embedded in it! The Concept of Implicit Definition as coupled with the schematic model2 supplies an integration and a rationale in depth –and an autonomy- implicit in its biological roots.3 Edelman got very close to this answer, but his efforts were frustrated by his epistemological beginnings.

Cassirer, (“symbolic forms”), Rosch, (“prototypes” and “basic levels”), and Lakoff, (ICM’s), demonstrate that dimensional logic is not adequate to the realities of the human mind. Nor, even putting aside the problem of “information”, (Maturana and Varela, Freeman, Edelman), can such a logic supply meaning or motivation except in a very unnatural and perverted sense. It is biology itself which supplies this aspect –in the concept of a schematic model and an enlarged logic. This is my argument of Chapter 1 as culminated in Chapter 2.

1 cf Wlodek Duch for instance2 i.e. the “concordance” mentioned in the Introduction3 It supplies “the rule which we need to apply the rule which we need to

apply the rule …” demanded by Wittgenstein. Ultimately it is a constitutive rule. But one doesn’t “apply" this rule. Rather, “one” is a rule –namely the constitutive rule of ontogenic coupling as the term is used by Maturana and Varela.

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On Epistemology:

But let me be more generous to Lakoff and Edelman. In basing their conceptions on our ordinary world, or, to call a spade a spade, on our ordinary naïve realistic conception of the world, (people, baseballs, cars and all the things they do), they are trying to preserve experience! This they identify with realism. They seek to preserve their logical and biological conclusions with the objects of that ordinary realism,1 and their relativism is a laudable and understandable attempt at a reconciliation. I have explained my answer to the same problem in terms of the multiple possible axiomatic foundations of mathematical systems, but another line of understanding is possible. Consider the notion of a mathematical “ideal”.

The mathematical definition of an ideal is technical,2 but the example given by Birkhoff and Mac Clane3, while rather “longish" is more easily understood and is clearly directly applicable, (by its substance), to the immediate problem.4 It illustrates a very different and very concrete notion of “relativism”. While encompassing a scope much wider than simple geometry, that example provides a very clear illustration of the concept:

“The circle C of radius 2 lying in the plane parallel to the (x,y) plane and two units above it in space is usually described analytically as the set of points (x,y,z) in space satisfying the simultaneous equations:

(16) x2 + y2 –4 = 0, z – 2 = 0.

1 cf Lakoff’s discussion, (p.262) of the “objects” of our experience –his chair, for instance. “It is important not to read Putnam out of context here, especially when he talks about objects. An ‘object’ is a single bounded entity…. Putnam, being a realist, does not deny that objects exist. Take, for example, the chair I am sitting on. It exists. If it didn’t, I would have fallen on the floor.” (my emphasis). Compare this reference with my modification of Kant’s position on “objects” which I advocated in the footnote in Chapter 5.

2 “Definition. An ideal C in a ring A is a non-void subset of A with the properties

(i) c1 and c2 in C imply that c1 – c2 is in C;(ii) c in C and a in A imply that ac and ca are in C”

Birkhoff and Mac Clane, “Modern Algebra”, 1953, pps.3723 ibid, pps.380…4 i.e. it deals with well defined "objects"

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These describe the curve C as the intersection of a circular cylinder and a plane. But C can be described with equal accuracy as the intersection of a sphere with the plane z = 2, by the equivalent simultaneous equations:

(17) x2 + y2 + z2 – 8 = 0, z – 2 = 0.

Still another description is possible, by the equations

(18) x2 + y2 – 4 = 0, x2 + y2 – 2z = 0.

These describe C as the intersection of a circular cylinder with the paraboloid of rotation:

x2 + y2 = 2z.

Therefore the only impartial way to describe C”, (my emphasis), “ is in terms of all the polynomial equations which its points satisfy. But if f(x,y,z) and g(x,y,z) are any two polynomials whose values are identically zero on C, then their sum and difference also vanish identically on C. So, likewise, does any multiple a(x,y,z)f(x,y,z) of f(x,y,z) by any polynomial a(x,y,z) whatsoever.”, (my emphasis). “This means that the set of all polynomials whose values are identically zero on C is an ideal. This ideal then, and not any special pair of its elements, is the ultimate description of C.

In the light of this observation the special pairs of polynomials occurring in equations (16)-(18) appear simply as generators”, (my emphasis), “ of the ideal of all polynomials which vanish identically on C. Any polynomial obtained from the equations of (16) by linear combination with polynomial coefficients, as

(19) h(x,y,z) = a(x,y,z)(x2 + y2 – 4) + b(x,y,z)(z – 2),

will be in this ideal. Conversely, it can be proved that any polynomial equation h(x,y,z) = 0, which represents a surface passing through our circle, can be represented in the form (19). But the set of all these polynomials (19) is simply the ideal (x2 + y2 – 4, z – 2), generated by the

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two original polynomials (16) in the ring R#[x,y,z] of all polynomials in x, y, z with coefficients in the field R# of real numbers. The polynomials of (17) generate the same ideal, for these polynomials are linear combinations of (16), while those of (16) can conversely be obtained by combination of the polynomials of (17). The polynomial ideal determined by this curve thus has various bases,

(20) (x2 + y2 – 4, z – 2) = (x2 + y2 + z2 – 8, z – 2) = (x2 + y2 – 2z, z – 2)…”

The mathematical “ideal” just described opens a door to a better conclusion to Lakoff’s and Edelman’s arguments, and a simpler understanding of my own. None of these generators stands prior to any other, nor does it “create” the figure comprehended. Each stands, rather, as an equipotent and relativistic “logical”, (i.e. explanatory), basis fully exhausting the actuality of the figure.

But we must consider this example in the larger context of mathematics. Not only can such descriptions be relativized in relation to a fixed coordinate system, but the very coordinate systems themselves stand in like case. Axes need not be orthogonal, nor need they be rectilinear, (e.g. polar coordinates are possible). Nor need they be fixed. They may be in translation –e.g. relative motion, (which translates to special relativity), and they need not be Euclidean, (nor Hyperbolic nor Spherical). Russell, for instance, further argued1 that our descriptions of phenomena might even be based in projective geometry. But need they be even spatial? Can we not conceive of such explanations being framed as abstract transformations, which latter are not defined on spaces, but on abstract sets! Abstract sets, however, fall naturally within the scope of axiomatics wherein I grounded C.I.D.

Such a relativism of descriptions, combined with a scientific relativism of logic and epistemology themselves as argued by Cassirer, Lakoff, and myself, (superceding the traditional “container schema” and broadening the very ideas of “set” and “object” themselves), points to the further possibility for such an “idealistic”, (in the mathematical sense), foundation of logic itself. Need mathematics, or logic, be necessarily grounded in objectivist sets, (ultimate “atomic” –i.e. least objects -and a fixed "Universe" of such objects), or could it not pick itself up by its own bootstraps, (following the cue of mathematical

1 Russell, “Foundations of Geometry”, 1956530

“ideals”1 and the findings of Cassirer and Lakoff), and stand without them?2 This is a question –not an easy one to be sure- for abstract mathematics and the future of logic.

If we think of “experience” in the abstract –i.e. as the “axiom” without interpretation, (i.e. “impartially” in the sense of “basic realism”), – then I think an “ideal” in this sense is a very reasonable way of understanding it – beyond any particular “generator”, beyond any particular interpretation.3 But it is not necessarily a spatial interpretation either. Ideals are broader than this.

On a narrower focus, the possible generators of an ideal rigorously parallel the explanatory possibilities which can absolutely preserve the objects of ordinary experience and naïve realism, (conserving shapes, boundaries, etc.). As such, the ideal they ground is entirely commensurate with Lakoff’s and Edelman’s conceptions and logically validates their (limited) relativism.

Within the perspective of that same “basic realism”, the “experience“ we deal with need not be taken as ultimately informational however,4 but can be taken as specifically organizational and operative instead5 as I have argued in my Chapter 1 and consistently with Edelman’s “TNGS”. Though connected with externality, (as representative of successful- .i.e. adequate process6), it need not be further taken as conveying information about that externality. It need not be taken as paralleling externality. The latter presumption, I have argued, goes far beyond the needs and the implications of Darwinian biology.

The deeper issue is that of an adequate definition of “experience” itself. Need we identify it with the absolute and necessary preservation of ordinary objects? Or, might we not, consistent with the foundations of their own conceptions and the work of Rosch upon which it is grounded, consider even our ordinary perceptual objects as “prototypes” of a larger experience? Prototypes are objects of utility, of efficacy, after all, they are not foundational objects.7 Could not our ordinary objects be considered, (as I have argued), as prototypes, (“schematic perceptual objects”), of a biological calculus?

“Experience” in a modern sense must be broadened to include the experience of the results of scientific experiment, and that experience, at least insofar as modern physics is concerned, is not commensurate with the preservation of objects, nor is it commensurate with ordinary spatiality. Without even considering the deeper implications of QM or of Relativity, one need only

1 though presently itself conceived in set-theoretic terms2 This would be the truly transcendental logic after which Kant sought.3 “context-free” in Van Fraassen’s term4 This my qualification on Putnam’s 4th requirement of basic realism5 contrary to Putnam’s 4th requirement6 “ex post facto”, in Edelman’s words7 see Lakoff for a discussion of Rosch, prototypes, and the logical

significance of the latter. It is a very illuminating discussion.531

consider results of the “twin slit” experiment or the implications of its multiple execution to see the point. Not even cardinality is preserved!1 Similarly, consider Penrose’s “most optimistic" view of quantum mechanics, (most optimistic for objectivism/naturalism, that is):2

"I shall follow the more positive line which attributes objective physical reality to the quantum description: the quantum state.

"I have been taking the view that the 'objectively real' state of an individual particle is indeed described by its wavefunction psi. It seems that many people find this a difficult position to adhere to in a serious way. One reason for this appears to be that it involves our regarding individual particles being spread out spatially, rather than always being concentrated at single points. For a momentum state, this spread is at its most extreme, since psi is distributed equally all over the whole of space, (my emphasis),...It would seem that we must indeed come to terms with this picture of a particle which can be spread out over large regions of space, and which is likely to remain spread out until the next position measurement is carried out...."

The particle -this smallest part of our "object"- is not included, (spatially, reductively, nested), within the spatiality of the atom or within the molecule -or even within the human scale object of which it is the theoretical (and supposed material) foundation. Naturalism/objectivism can no longer support, therefore, even a consistent hierarchy of spatial scale!3 At the human

1 In answer to a question I asked on this point, a physicist correspondent of mine replied that “Yes, you can have many slits one after another, (it is better with Mach-Zehnder interferometers than slits, with the same result that one doesn’t know if the photon went through or was reflected by a mirror…. We can say that one photon may be in an arbitrary number of places at once.” (Wlodek Duch, private correspondence) My point was that even the cardinality of this basic object, (the photon), was purely arbitrary –it could be 1 or 2 or 3 or 1,000,001 or …, depending on the branching structure of successive slits and the design of the experiment. But innate cardinality is perhaps the most basic “property” we ascribe to ordinary objects, so I think the conclusion is significant.

2 Repeating a section of a prior appendix3 Compare Lakoff, p.195: “In the case of biological categories, science is not

on its [objectivist philosophy’s] side. Classical categories and natural kinds are remnants of pre-Darwinian philosophy. They fit the biology of the ancient Greeks very well….but they do not accord with phenomena that are central to evolution. … Objectivist semantics and cognition and, to a large extent, even

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level, of course, it is a very useful tool, and that is just what I propose it is -constructed by evolution! Science and logic suggest other, non-scaled and non-hierarchical organizations -i.e. they support any other efficacious organization. It is a simple matter of utility.

Conclusion

To conclude this appendix, let me repeat that I truly admire Lakoff’s and Edelman’s work. It is both profound and crucial to the resolution of the ultimate problem. But then I really like the work of all the authors I have cited –even those most contrary to my own conclusions. (I would not cite or spend much time on anything of lesser quality –the problem is too huge and too difficult to be distracted.) Dennett’s work, for example, is very beautiful to me in his honorable and perceptive pursuit of the hard implications of naturalism. P.S. Churchland, as another example, has a “clean” mind and frames the problem wonderfully from the perspectives of biology and philosophy. None of them has resolved the fundamental problem, however, though all have come very close in different aspects of it. This is a hard problem, the hardest one, I maintain, that the human mind has ever dealt with. To solve it requires an intellectual ruthlessness, and specifically, a ruthless realism!

objectivist metaphysics are in conflict with post-Darwinian biology. I’d put my money on biology.”

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Appendix I: a few Illustrations

I. EDELMAN'S COGNITIVE ONTOLOGY: TOPOBIOLOGICAL MAPS AND A GOD'S EYE PARALLELISM

II. A METACELLULAR PERSPECTIVE: COGNITIVE OBJECTS AS ORGANIZERS OF PRIMITIVE PROCESS THROUGH A BLIND INTERFACE

III. UPPER AND LOWER BOUNDS OF A BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM'S PERFORMANCE / RESPONSE

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535

GOD'S EYE REALITYI.E. ONTOLOGY

EDELMAN'S EPISTEMOLOGICAL ERROR: TOPOBIOLOGICAL MAPS AND A GOD'S EYE VIEW

PARALLELISM

GLOBAL MAPPING

NON-

MAPPED

PROCESS IN THE

BRAIN

COGNITIVE INTERFACE: A

TOPOLOGICAL PARALLELISM / ISOMORPHISM

COGNITIVE INTERFACE: A TOPOLOGICAL PARALLELISM

(REPRESENTATIO

N)

THE BRAIN AS A CORRESPONDENCE MACHINE

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GOD'S EYE REALITY?

(I.E . ONTOLOGY)

A METACELLULAR PERSPECTIVE: COGNITIVE OBJECTS AS VIRTUAL ORGANIZERS OF PRIMITIVE PROCESS THROUGH A BLIND INTERFACE

GLOBAL MAPPING

NON-MAPPED PROCESS IN THE BRAIN

TOPOBIOLOGICAL MAPS: SPECIFICALLY AS COORDINATORS

OF PRIMITIVE PROCESS

THE BRAIN AS A VIRTUAL 3-D GRAPHIC USER INTERFACE /

CONTROLLER

A BLIND INTERFACE :

BASED IN APPROPRIATENESS RATHER THAN INFORMATION

HOW COULD A BIO/MECHANICAL ORGANISM KNOW REALITY?

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Upper and Lower Bounds of a Biological Organism's Performance / Response

1

2

3

and (3) represent the best and the least possible performance for an organism over the domain of its behavior in absolute (ontic) reality. Less than (3) results in lessened survivability or death; greater than (1) is impossible as it is perfect performance with perfect knowledge in actual reality. Between the two bounds, adequate performance, ( (2), (2'), (2''),…), need not match, nor even parallel these outer bounds. (Note: 2' and 2'' parallel 1, but 2 does not!) Any curve within them is consistent with evolution. Edelman, for instance, talks about the multiple, non-commensurate antibody responses to a given antigen. The same must surely apply to cognition, another "recognition system". Cognition and response must be adequate, but it isn't obvious that there is only one way -a mirroring way. Nor is it inherent that all ways be commensurate!

An organism's performance in its environment is measured, fundamentally, not in perfection or in rationality, but in simple adequacy. It is very easy to envision multiple, noncommensurate blind-though- adequate responses to a given situation. It is not easy to envision rational responses informed by information.

2'

2''

RANGE OF NECESSARY RESPONSES

AADEQUACY

BOUNDS OF SURVIVAL

Appendix J: (An elaboration of the possibilities of the discussion)(Hyperlinked to Chapter 1)

The acceptance of even the possibility of such a free formation of an interface, (calculus plus objects), and the further possibility of a fluid correlation, (i.e. one not constrained a priori –denotationally- by classical logical categories), from a substrate to that interface is difficult, admittedly. There are two primary difficulties.

The first sticking point is that an interface must correlate to "experience", (to have any value), and experience already has objects, it seems. "Experience" can be taken in a wider, more scientific sense1, however, to include the experience of the results of scientific experiment. Most generally, it can be taken as that which must be dealt with, (incorporated), in any comprehensive theory of reality.2 (Remember the Marxist's problem with the royalist's "God" in section A.1) I argue, (in Chapter 4), that it is the invariants, ("that which must be dealt with", taken in the most general sense- to include experience of the results of empirical science), that define “experience” in its widest sense and it need not, (as in fact science does not), necessarily conserve the objects of our normal naive realism as objects.

The second difficulty has to do with logic itself. Within the classical, Aristotelian conception of categories and logic, (which still underlies the whole of modern logic), all logical operations ultimately come down essentially to the intersection, union and complementarity of sets, (of properties for instance). Even "relation" is defined as a set of n-tuples. How then can a cognitive object viable3 in the world, (even a conceptual object), be conceived except as a collection of properties collected into like sets –preserving hierarchy4, spatiality and ultimately the real contiguity of properties in ontological objects, (their extension), in the world therefore?5 How can it relate to other objects except in terms of a commonality or disjunction of those primitive properties? It is a

1 ? cf Chapter 42 ? See Chapter 3 for a definition of “experience”, and Chapter 4, (the

“King of Petrolia”), for an elaboration.3 ? correlating to and existing in it in some manner4 ? See "Afterward: Lakoff & Edelman for a detailed discussion of

"hierarchy"5 ? cf Lakoff, 1987, pps. 157-184. Lakoff has outlined this overall problem

and the foundations of what he calls “objectivism” with great precision and lucidity. In spirit I think he is correct though I do not agree with the whole of his answer. See Afterward: Lakoff and Edelman

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question of logical possibility. I will deal briefly with this question here and expound it more fully as the subjects of Chapter 2 and Chapter 4.1

Modern cognitive theorists, (Lakoff for example), arguing from extensive and generally confirmed empirical data on how human beings, cultures and languages actually do categorize, (as opposed to a priori, philosophical and logical conclusions as to how they must categorize!), and the biologist Edelman suggest a very different constitution of our categories and concepts -and, in consequence, a very different constitution of the logic built upon them.2

Based in Rosch’s empirical researches demonstrating “prototype effects” and extensive other linguistic and anthropological findings, Lakoff argues3 for the existence of "metonymic", “metaphorical”, and “radial” categories which are not commensurable with classical set-theoretic categories, (though the latter are maintained as a special case –the “container schema”). These new categories are established by “association”, “similarity” and “motivation” rather than on the set theoretic intersection of properties. In the case of “radial” categories, they may be built by historical accident!

Lakoff’s “category” illustrates a conceptual “free formation” of a sort, (these criteria encompass any rule4), but I question aspects of it because it appears to be an anthropological blank check, losing credibility as the ground for an extension of scientific logic thereby. 5 Lakoff makes a good case, but it is too strong! Association, similarity and motivation –and the logic Lakoff grounds in them establish categories and a consequent logic with no bounds. They encompass whatever we can imagine!

In chapter 2 I will argue a similar but more constrained case from the more classical and formal logical position proposed by Ernst Cassirer6 over three quarters of a century ago and, sadly, largely overlooked. Cassirer's reformulation of the formal logical concept, (category), was based firmly in the

1 ? also see Afterward: Lakoff / Edelman2 ? As Lakoff noted, “most of the subject matter of classical logic is

categorization”. Lakoff, 1987, p. 353, (my emphasis)3 ? with lucid concrete examples and case studies4 ? Lakoff argues against rule basing in general. But what are

“association” or “motivation” … themselves? It is the classical, (set based rule), that he questions, I think. Cassirer, (see Chapter 2), would call it the rule of identity.

5 ? It is a triviality that if logic can prove anything, then it can prove nothing! Lakoff’s case is considerably better than this I admit, (ultimately it is logically grounded in ICM’s -idealized cognitive models), but still involves a fundamental epistemological contradiction as I will discuss in the preface to Chapter 2 and in the Afterward: Lakoff/Edelman.

6 ? Lakoff bases his logical stance in the ideas of Wittgenstein and Putnam who also question the classical concept.

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actual history of modern mathematics and physical science themselves. Mathematics and physical science have already expanded, (tacitly, he argued), the classical, Aristotelian Concept. Cassirer’s "Functional Concept of Mathematics", (which is a broadening of the general logical “concept” based in mathematical considerations and not a specifically mathematical entity), is broad enough to encompass the essence of Lakoff’s “category”, (concept) -and that of classical logic as a completely plausible and natural limit case as well. It does so in a more comprehensive and cogent manner I feel however, one from which a new working logical “calculus” could more plausibly be expected.1 Cassirer's category is “freely formed” as well, based on any (consistent) rule, any rule of series. It is "a new 'object' ... whose total content is expressed in the relations established between the individual elements by the act of unification... [But it is] a peculiar form of consciousness”, (and therein supplies a unique clue to the nature of consciousness incidentally!), “such as cannot be reduced to" [i.e. set theoretically abstracted from] "the consciousness of sensation or perception", (i.e. sensory objects).2 But please note that it is specifically an act, i.e. an independent (internal) construction, and by implication I will argue eventually, a biological act, (an act of the organism)- rather than a passive, (i.e. informational), derivation or abstraction from perception. Cassirer's case is made solely for intellectual concepts, (conceptual categories), however.

Lakoff and Edelman make an explicit distinction between perceptual categories and conceptual categories, (as does Cassirer between percepts and concepts). From an operational standpoint, (from the standpoint of biology for instance),3 this is clearly an artificial distinction however. These are simply the parts of operative categorization by a biological organism –i.e. non-verbal vs. verbal motor function.4 They are just the aspects of biological categorical function vis a vis environment. The extension of the formal logical "Concept" which I will eventually argue5 encompasses them both: both ordinary concepts, (conceptual categories), and, in Kant's usage, "constitutive" concepts, (perceptual categories), as well.

1 ? The reasonable prospect of such a calculus is, of course, crucial. It is the existence of powerful, simple and highly pragmatic algorithms based in classical logic, (formal logic, mathematical set theory, and the digital computer for instance), -and the lack of the prospect of any viable alternative –that severely challenges the credibility of any counterproposal for fundamental logic.

2 ? my emphasis. He argues that the rule of a series, -with which he equates the actual scientific “concept” -cannot be derived from any finite exhibition of its instances. It is, therefore, an independent act –a free creation- of the mind, and, by extension, of the brain.

3 ? Or from the critical perspective of Kant, for instance4 ? This clearly ties in with Lakoff/Edelman's "embodied" concepts.5 ? In Chapter 2

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There is a last issue involved in "free formation". Under the classical perspective, under the set-theoretic operations of intersection, union, complement,… of properties, what I will call "hierarchy"1 must be maintained at some level. It describes the requirement for the preservation of contiguous logical properties, (in a logical category), into contiguous physical, (really metaphysical), properties in ultimate reality: i.e. properties of logical2 objects, (categories), must correlate hierarchically to properties of objects in the world. Logical objects must be constituted as topology-preserving collections, (vis a vis properties), of their “objects”.3

Even Gerald Edelman, (though acknowledging Lakoff), preserves this kind of hierarchy in his thesis of the connectivity between the brain's myriad "topobiological maps"4. Given Cassirer’s extension of the category however –or even Lakoff’s, (which Edelman incorporates into his own thesis), hierarchy is not an a priori requirement of categories or of function, however. Indeed, Edelman himself speaks of the existence, (besides the massive, topology-preserving connectivity between his multiple “topobiological maps” in the brain), of the existence of another kind of connectivity in the brain -of the connectivity of a "global mapping ... containing multiple reentrant local maps ... that are able to interact with non-mapped , (i.e. non-topological), parts of the brain..".5

Though framed in a different context and for a different purpose, (and getting ahead of myself a bit), I think this non-topological connectivity from Edelman’s topobiological maps, and specifically the connectivity from the "objects" of those maps to the non-mapped areas of the brain, (the "global mapping"), -the general case6 -supplies a fortuitous illustration the kind of

1 ? Lakoff would call it a preservation of the properties of the “container” ICM. See the Afterward: Lakoff and Edelman for a fuller discussion of “hierarchy”.

2 ? or operational3 ? cf Afterward: Lakoff-Edelman4 ? -which themselves are supposed to preserve the property-topology, (i.e.

the contiguity of the properties in real discrete objects), of reality as sensory maps. This is an epistemological error, supplying the very "God's eye view" against which he argues so strongly. To move beyond it requires a fundamental reevaluation of epistemology itself. That is the subject of my Chapters 3 and 4. Lakoff's and Edelman's, (and Putnam’s upon which they are based), Maturana’s -and indeed any thesis denying a "God's eye view" -requires some version of or alternative to the scientific relativistic epistemology I will propose, (in Chapter 4), in order to maintain internal consistency.

5 ? Edelman, 1992, P.89, his emphasis6 ? retaining hierarchical mapping as a special case

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potential I wish to urge for a GUI, and ultimately1 for the brain itself. It allows "...selectional events”, [and, I suggest, their “objects” as well], “occurring in its local maps ... to be connected to the animal's motor behavior, to new sensory samplings of the world, and to further successive reentry events."2 Edelman, however, correlates the topobiological maps, (as sensory maps), directly with "the world" -inconsistently supplying thereby the very "God's eye view" whose possibility he emphatically denies.

But what if we take the converse perspective?3 What if we take Edelman’s stated epistemology seriously and blink our "God's eye"?4

Instead of adopting the perspective, (Edelman’s), wherein we look from the objects of the topobiological maps back towards the distributed process of the brain, let us step back from the prejudice of our human (animal) cognition and consider the converse perspective: beginning instead with the non-mapped areas of the brain, (distributed process), and proceeding to the "objects" of the topobiological maps themselves. Consider the converse perspective wherein "the objects" and the topobiological maps they operate in are taken as functions of, (organizing nexuses of), distributed process, and not the standard perspective wherein the distributed process is presupposed to serve the objects5. What if the

1 ? epistemologically reentrantly2 ? ibid3 ? I will supply my answer to this epistemological problem in Chapter 4.4 ? An aside: Edelman seems very put out with the very idea of “mentally

creat[ing] an environment that then subjected us (mentally) to natural selection”. (Edelman 1992, p. 35 ). The complication, he implies, boggles the mind! But much of modern science does likewise. I wish to suggest an even greater complication- we might as well face it right now.

I wish to suggest a conception wherein the visual cortices, (for example), do not receive a (metaphysically) topological correlate of their surroundings. I wish to look at a case wherein the cortex we view and the world which maps upon it are both aspects of (the same) internal process and not “God-given”!

Modern epistemology is radical at both the extremely small and at the extremely large (and fast) scales. It is only as algorithms that they are comprehensible. And yet almost everyone, (read this as “most realists”), seems to deny even the possibility that at the middle scale epistemology can be other than simple. Consider instead the possibility that the middle scale is algorithmic as well! Does this not fit better with the “prototypes” which Rosch displayed and which ground Lakoff’s and Edelman’s logical theses. Prototypes and the logical relations between them would, under this view, represent the “objects” and the “calculus” of practical algorithmic biology and epistemology would therein regain continuity across the board!

5 ? which would mirror the objects of ultimate reality. For Edelman this is an epistemological error.

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maps and their objects both were taken, instead, as existing to serve primitive process? This is the case I wish to suggest as an illustration of the most abstract sense of the GUI, (and which I will argue shortly).1

We have here a concrete model, (in Edelman's "global mapping"), which illustrates the more abstract possibility of a connection of "objects"2, (in a GUI), to non-topological process, (distributed process) -to “non-objectivist categories", (using Lakoff’s terminology). Edelman's fundamental rationale is "Neural Darwinism", the ex post facto adaptation of process, not “information”, and that rationale is consistent with such an interpretation. It does not require “information”. It does not require “representation”. Mathematics illustrates the general case in abstract transformations -whose ultimate biological application would be competence -i.e. survival, not information.3 What we are dealing with here, ultimately, are transformations, and transformations are defined on abstract sets, not on spaces!

For the GUI I urge, similarly and in the general case, that the "front end" of a GUI, (an interface), may be freely constructed, (ad hoc), based on pragmatic considerations which boil down, ultimately, to operational efficacy. It can be formulated, for all intents and purposes, in any consistent way we desire. The real trick, then, (because of the requisite simplicity of rules), is in the conception, (correlation), of the "objects" of the interface themselves so as to accomplish what is intended. But the example above suggests that the definition, (correspondence/linkage), of "an object" itself can, in a real sense, be freely formed as well. It may be linked to whatever "things" or processes -or parts of things or processes- we choose. We, (or evolution), can, therefore, freely construct a "GUI", a calculus-plus-objects to efficiently organize, (control), profoundly complex process. It is made good in the correlations,

1 ? This reorientation of perspective suggests an interesting possibility. It suggests that evolution’s “good trick”, (after P.S. Churchland’s usage), was not representation, but rather the organization of primitive process in a topological context. It suggests that the “good trick” was in the evolutionary creation of the cortex!

2 ? in the brain's spatial maps3 ? The question, of course, is whether "information" is necessary to

competence. I will argue, (in Chapter 3), that it involves a distinction between "bounds" and "greatest lower bounds" of biologic survival. A given organism, (to include human beings), must reflect a lower bound of competence in the world. But "information" requires that it reflect a greatest lower bound, and this is inconsistent with the fundamental premises of evolution. It is the "parallel postulate" of cognitive science.

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(connectivity), of the "objects" themselves –in the “global mapping”. ( Click here for a few drawings illustrating the concept: GRAPHICS).

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Heisenberg. New York. W.H. Freeman. Cassirer, Ernst. 1923. Substance and Functon and Einstein's

Theory of Relativity. (Bound as one. Translation by William Curtis Swabey). Open Court

Cassirer, Ernst. 1949. Spirit and Life. An essay included inThe Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer, New York. Tudor

Cassirer, Ernst. 1953. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. (Translation by Ralph Manheim). Yale University Press. Cassirer, Ernst. 1981. Kant's Life and Thought, (Hayden

translation). Yale Cassirer, Ernst. 1950. The Problem of Knowledge, (Woglom and

Hendel translation). YaleChalmers, David. 1995. Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness StudiesChurchland, Patricia. 1986. Neurophilosophy. Bradford Books.Churchland, Paul. 1990. Matter and Consciousness. MIT Press. Dennett, Daniel. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown,

and Company.Dreyfus, Hubert. 1992. What Computers Still Can't Do. MIT

Press.Edelman, Gerald M. 1992. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire. BasicBooks.Einstein, Albert. 1934. Essays in Science. Philosophical Library. Einstein, Albert. 1954. Ideas and Opinions. Crown Publishers.Fine, Arthur. 1986. The Shaky Game. University of Chicago Press.Flannagan, Owen. 1992. Consciousness Reconsidered. MIT Press.Freeman, Walter. 1995. Societies of Brains. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Gleich, James. 1987. Chaos. Penguin Books.Gould, Stephen Jay. 1994. The Evolution of Life on the Earth

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Hilbert, David. 1910. The Foundations of Geometry. (Translationby E.J. Townsend). Open Court.

Hofstadter, Douglas. 1979. Goedel, Escher, Bach. Vintage.Iglowitz, Jerome. 1996. The Logical Problem of Consciousness. Presented to the UNESCO "Ontology II Congress". Barcelona, Spain.James, William. 1890. The Principles of Psychology. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. (1952)Kant, Immanuel. 1950. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,

(Muhaffy translation). Liberal Arts Press.Kant, Immanuel. 1961. Critique of Pure Reason. (Norman Kemp

Smith translation). St. Martin's Press.Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. University of Chicago PressLara, Blaise. Semantics and Factor Analysis: an approach to the interpretation of factors semantics and factor analysis: an approach to the interpretation of factors. http://www.hec.unil.ch/people/blara/lara/factors0.htmMaturana, Humberto and Varela, Francisco. 1987. The Tree of Knowledge. Shambala Press.Minsky, Marvin. 1985. The Society of Mind. Touchstone.Penrose, Roger. 1989. The Emperor's New Mind. Penguin Books.Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1953. From a Logical Point of View

Harper Torchbooks.Quine, Willard Van Orman. 1960. Word & Object. The M.I.T. PressReid, Constance. 1970. Hilbert. Springer-Verlag.Resnik, Michael 1992. A Structuralist's Involvement with Modality, MIND, 101.104.Russell, Bertrand. 1956. An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry. Dover.Schlick, Moritz. 1974. General Theory of Knowledge. (Translation

by Albert E. Blumberg). New York: Springer-Verlag.Searle, John. 1990. Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?

Scientific American, January 1990. Volume 262Stewart, Ian. 1995. Fibonacci Forgeries. Scientific American, May, 1995. Volume 252, Number 5Stich, Stephen. 1992. What is a Theory of Mental Representation?MIND, 101.402.Van Doren, Carl. 1938. Benjamin Franklin. Viking. Van Fraassen, Bas C. 1989. Laws and Symmetry, Clarendon Press.Van Fraassen, Bas C. 1991. Quantum Mechanics, an Empiricist View. Clarendon Press.Weyl, Hermann. 1944. David Hilbert and His Mathematical Work.

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PREFACE TO SECTION TWO:

Section 1 is the original book. I feel you should read it first as it is a simpler and conceptually more continuous presentation. But section 2 has significant elaborations and developments of the major themes.

(1) i.e. chapter 1 is significantly enlarged and made more concrete in the first paper: “Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology” by being tied to current brain research –in the cortical refindings of Walter J. Freeman. Certain unresolved problems of epistemology are also answered in this paper –i.e. How could it work? See especially the “Freeman Appendix” of this paper.

(2) Similarly chapter 2 is enlarged and expanded, (and simplified in some aspects), in “Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the Mind-Body Problem”.

(3) I have included the “Mind-Brain: an Introduction for Beginners” as well. This is not aimed primarily at beginners but presents another, alternative to Cassirer’s “Symbolic Forms” grounded instead in the algebraic mathematical subject of “ideals”. It presents an overview of the subject of mind-brain as well.These later papers demonstrate more complete, specific improvements on the ideas in the book. In no way do they contradict it however. Please forgive the repetition, but these were attempts to communicate just specific parts of my thesis. I have concluded that this was a bad idea –it makes sense only in its whole, not in its parts. But Kant already said something very like that, didn’t he?

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SECTION 2, (3 PAPERS)

(1) Mind: The Argument from Evolutionary Biology, (A Working Model)

(This paper is a refinement and enlargement of the first chapter of my book –its references are to endnotes!)

Jerome Iglowitz     Copyright: January, 2003, Revised 2005.  All Rights Reserved

 Short Abstract In this paper I will propose the conceptually simplest, (though technically

most difficult), part of a three part hypothesis which I propose is the first viable solution to the problem of consciousness. (See “Virtual Reality:  Consciousness Really Explained” for my whole answer.)  It is hard, but I think it actually works.  It starts out in a highly abstract manner, but it ends in a very specific conclusion with a pointed example drawn from contemporary biology, (see "Appendix: Freeman and Automorphism").  This leg of my composite hypothesis proposes that the simplest evolutionary rationale for the brains of complex organisms was neither representation nor reactive parallelism as is generally presupposed, but was specifically an operational and internal (self)organization of primitive, (but blind!), biologic process instead. I will propose that our cognitive objects themselves are deep operational metaphors, (only!), of primitive biological response and that they are not informational referents to environment. I propose that they are the specifically organizational tools of the megacellular colossus. I urge that a pointedly operational organization was an evolutionary necessity to enable an adroit functioning of profoundly complex metacellular organisms in a hostile and overpoweringly complex environment. I argue that this organization was antithetical to a representative role however because the latter ignores the crucial factor of urgency -i.e. danger / risk, (the large database problem)! I have argued elsewhere, ("Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the Mind-Body Problem"), that this hypothesis, (in concert with ancillary logical and epistemological hypotheses), opens the very first real possibility for an actual and adequate solution of the problem of “consciousness” by allowing an operational use of

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the mathematical concept of “implicit definition” which, in itself thereby, supplies a theory of meaning. 

 

Ultimately, just as physics was forced to epistemology as a necessary part of its very science in its advances into Relativity and Quantum Theory, so is biology forced to epistemology to enable the science of mind.  Biological organisms cannot know the world around them, but they can and must operate in it.  The question devolves to how well they are capable of doing so and whether there is just one unique way.  The particular epistemology necessitated by this problem and which finally elucidates the problem of mind is already extant however: it is embodied in Ernst Cassirer’s “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms”. (See VR:Chapter 4)  I call it “Ontic Indeterminism” which I think characterizes it better.  Mine is a strange idea admittedly, and somewhat complex, but I think it is true.  It is explanatory for all the aspects of mind.

 

Long Abstract

 

This paper argues against mind as a representative device. But, unlike most such arguments, it sets forth a specific counterproposal, one that is not eliminative for “mind” as we normally mean the word. I argue that the objects of mind, (i.e. percepts, concepts), are, in fact, operational metaphors. I argue they are biological artifacts organizing and optimizing primitive metacellular response.

 

I begin with a series of examples challenging our normal expectations of the potentialities of models per se and introduce a new and specific kind of model –I call it a “schematic model”. This is not the abstractive model which usually goes by that name. It is, rather, a model whose very objects, (icons), are specifically and functionally molded to explicitly serve the purpose for which the model was designed. That purpose, I propose, was organizational efficiency. I go from very simplistic illustrations: training seminar models in a business setting -to classroom models in a university -to the models of control system engineers as actualized in the instruments and controls they fabricate. Finally I examine GUI’s, (graphic user interfaces), of computers, models constructed by software engineers. All these demonstrate a neglected potential of models for optimizing function over representation. They illustrate a schematism which is not

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abstractive. This series of examples is not intended as a linear series however, but as a logarithmic one. Please take heed.

 

Ultimately, it is the case of the GUI that I argue is the case of the mind. The particular GUI that I suggest is schematic however, (in the sense above), not representational or hierarchical. It is a specifically functional and non-hierarchical model whose penultimate purpose was organization. It was optimized for performance however, not information. It is like Edelman’s “topobiological maps” but seen through the filter of his larger non-topological “global mapping” to serve process rather than information. Alternatively, it might be seen from the perspective of Walter Freeman’s chaotic interface –as the rationale of his intentional “frames”. Freeman, in fact, supplies an almost exact illustration of the case I will make and I explore it in depth.

Next I make the formal and abstract logical argument from the perspective of functional efficiency. I argue that it was a schematic and virtual model, and not a representative one that was necessary for the optimization of performance in highly complex and specifically dangerous environments. But this is exactly the case for the evolutionary biology of complex metacellular organisms. Our megacellular world is overwhelmingly complex and specifically dangerous.

Finally, I present a unifying argument joining the conclusions of the present paper with those of my paper: “Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the Mind-Brain Problem”, (Iglowitz, 2001). Each approached the mind-brain problem from a different perspective and reached a radical, though plausible conclusion. The conclusions are different. Here I argue that the two conclusions are, in fact, compatible and synergistic. I argue that the implicitly defined, virtual and logical objects argued in the prior paper are the same as the organizational artifacts of the present paper. The rationale is simple: for modern science, our very logic itself –and all it contains- must necessarily be reduced to biology. (The alternative is mysticism!) The implicitly defined logical objects which reify “mind” are thus ultimately biological objects. They are organizational artifacts of the brain. 

Ultimately, however, it is the epistemological implications of each of these themes that ties the whole of the problem together.  Man, as a biological organism, cannot know the world in which he exists.  What man can do is provide productive hypotheses with which to act in it.  Organisms act, they do

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not know!  The mistake lies in the assumption that there can be only one comprehensive theory which exhausts it.  Cassirer argued otherwise in his "Theory of Symbolic Forms".  That thesis leads to a Kantian conclusion of ontic indeterminacy -i.e. we as biological organisms cannot know what the world really is.  This is a terrible conclusion, but it leads to an actual answer to the problem we originally posed.  That answer is grounded in the very fundamentals of scientific belief, not of knowledge.  It  is what scientific realism necessarily starts with.  It incorporates what Putnam, Lakoff and Edelman call the essential postulates of realist reason.  But these are necessarily postulates only.  They are:  (1)  The belief in an external reality beside and including ourselves, (2) the belief in the reality of experience, and (3) (I propose) that there must be some connection between the two.  It is the substance of the latter that I propose is the substance of mind.  This is the ground which is developed in my book:  “Virtual Reality:  Consciousness Really Explained”. (see especially chapters 4 and 5).

 

1. REPRESENTATION: THE PERSPECTIVE FROM BIOLOGY

Sometimes we tentatively adopt a seemingly absurd or even outrageous hypothesis in the attempt to solve an impossible problem -and see where it leads. Sometimes we discover that its consequences are not so outrageous after all. I agree with Chalmers that the problem of consciousness is, in fact, “the hard problem”. I think it is considerably harder than anyone else seems to think it is however. I think its solution requires new heuristic principles as deep and as profound as, (though different from), the “uncertainty”, “complementarity” and (physical) “relativity” that were necessary for the successful advance of physics in the early part of the 20th century. I think it involves an extension of logic as well. Consideration of those deep cognitive principles: “cognitive closure”, (Kant and Maturana), “epistemological relativity”, (Cassirer and Quine), and of the extension of logic, (Cassirer, Lakoff, Iglowitz), must await another discussion however. {3}

Sometimes it is necessary to walk around a mountain in order to climb the hill beyond. It is the mountain of “representation”, and the cliff, (notion), of “presentation” embedded on its very face, which blocks the way to a solution of the problem of consciousness. This hypothesis points out the path around the mountain.

Maturana and Varela’s “Tree of Knowledge”, {4} is a compelling argument based in the mechanics of physical science and biology against the very

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possibility of a biological organism’s possession of a representative model of its environment. They and other respected biologists, (Freeman, Edelman), argue against even “information” itself. They maintain that information never passes between the environment and organisms; there is only the “triggering” of structurally determinate organic forms. I believe theirs is the inescapable conclusion of modern science.

I will now present a specific and constructive counterproposal for another kind of model however: i.e. the “Schematic Operative Model”. Contrary to the case of the representative model, it does remain viable within the critical context of modern science. I believe that we, as human organisms, do in fact embody a model. I believe it is the stuff of mind!

2. THE SCHEMATIC MODEL: DEFINITION AND EXAMPLES. (DEFINING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE “AN OBJECT”)

Normally, when we think of “models”, we mean reductive, or at least parallel models. In the first we think of a structure that contains just some of the properties of what is to be mirrored. When we normally use the term “schematic model”, we talk about the preservation of the “schema”, or “sense” of what is mirrored. Again it is reductive, however- it is logically reductive. It is, as has been claimed, “just a level of abstraction”. There are other uses for models, however, -those that involve superior organizations! This is the new sense of “schematic model” that I propose to identify.

2.1 THE SIMPLEST CASE: A DEFINITION BY EXAMPLE

Even our most simplistic models, the models of even our mundane training seminars, suggest the possibility of another usage for models very different than as representative schemas. They demonstrate the possibility of a wholly different paradigm whose primary function is organization instead.

Look first at the very simplest of models. Consider the models of simplistic training seminars -seminars in a sales organization for instance. “’Motivation’ plus ‘technique’ yields ‘sales’.”, we might hear at a sales meeting. Or, (escalating just a bit), “’Self-awareness of the masses’ informed by ‘Marxist-dialectic’ produces ‘revolution’!”, we might hear from our local revolutionary at a Saturday night cell meeting. Visual aids, (models), and diagrams are ubiquitous in these presentations. A lecturer stands at his chalkboard and asks us to accept drawings of triangles, squares, cookies, horseshoes... as meaningful objects -with a “calculus” of relations, (viz: an “arithmetic” of signs), {5} between them, (arrows, squiggles, et al). The icons, (objects), of those graphics

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are stand-ins for concepts or processes as diverse, (escalating just a bit more), as “motivation”, “the nuclear threat”, “sexuality”, “productivity”, and “evolution”. Those icons need not stand in place of entities in objective reality, however. What is “a productivity” or “a sexuality”, for instance? What things are these?

Consider this: two different lecturers might invoke different symbols, and a different “calculus” to explicate the same topic. In analyzing the French Revolution in a history classroom, let us say {6} , a fascist, a royalist, a democrat might alternatively invoke “the Nietzschean superman”, “the divine right of kings”, “freedom”, ... as actual “objects” on his blackboard, (with appropriate symbols). He will redistribute certain of the explanatory aspects, (and properties), of a Marxist’s entities, (figures) -or reject them as entities altogether. {7} That which is unmistakably explanatory, (“wealth”, let us say), in the Marxist’s entities, (and so which must be accounted for by all of them), might be embodied instead solely within the fascist’s “calculus” or in an interaction between his “objects” and his “calculus”. Thus and conversely the Marxist would, (and ordinarily does), reinterpret the royalist’s “God”-figure, (and his –the Marxist’s- admitted function of that “God” in social interaction {8} ), as “a self-serving invention of the ruling class”. It becomes an expression solely of his “calculus” and is not embodied as a distinct symbol, (i.e. object). Their “objects” - as objects - need not be compatible! As Edelman noted: “certain symbols do not match categories in the world . ... Individuals understand events and categories in more than one way and sometimes the ways are inconsistent.” {9}

Figure 1

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Figure 2

What is important is that a viable calculus-plus-objects, (a given model), must explain or predict “history” -that is, it must be compatible with the phenomena, (in this particular example the historical phenomena). But the argument applies to a much broader scope. I have argued elsewhere, {10} (following the strong case of Hertz and Cassirer), that the same accounting may be given of competing scientific theories, philosophies, and, indeed, of any alternatively viable explanations.

Consider Heinrich Hertz: “The [scientific] images of which we are speaking are our ideas of things; they have with things the one essential agreement which lies in the fulfillment of the stated requirement, [of successful consequences], but further agreement with things is not necessary to their purpose. Actually we do not know and have no means of finding out whether our ideas of things accord with them in any other respect than in this one fundamental relation.” (Hertz, “Die Prinzipien der Mechanik”)

The existence of a multiplicity of alternately viable calculuses, (sic), and the allowable incommensurability of their objects {11} suggests an interpretation of those objects contrary to representation or denotation however. It suggests the converse possibility that the function and the motivation of those objects, specifically as entities, (in what I will call these “schematic models”), is instead

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to illustrate, to enable, -to crystallize and simplify the very calculus of relation proposed between them! {12} These "objects", I propose, are manifestations of the structure; the structure is not a resolution of the objects.

2.1.1 REVERSING OUR PERSPECTIVE:

I propose that the boundaries -the demarcations and definitions of these schematic objects, (their “contiguity” if you will) -are formed specifically to meet the needs of the operations. I propose that they exist to serve structure- not the converse. {13} Their objects –specifically as objects - serve to organize process, (i.e. analysis or response). They are not representations of actual objects or actual entities in reality. {14} This, I propose, is why they are “things”. They functionally bridge reality in a way that physical objects do not and I suggest that they are, in fact, metaphors of analysis or response. The rationale for using them, (as any good “seminarian” would tell you), is clarity, organization and efficiency.

Though set in a plebian context, the “training seminar”, (as presented), illustrates and defines the most general and abstract case of schematic non-representative models in that it presumes no particular agenda. It is easily generalized: it might as well be a classroom in nuclear physics or mathematics, the boardroom of a multinational corporation, -or a student organizing his lovelife on a scratchpad.

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Figure_ 3 Figure 4

2.2 A CASE FOR SCHEMATISM MORE SPECIFIC TO OUR SPECIAL PROBLEM: (NARROWING THE FOCUS)

(THE ENGINEERING ARGUMENT)

Engineers’ instrumentation and control systems provide an example of the organizational, non-representational use of models and “entities” in another setting. These entities, and the context in which they exist, provide another kind of “chalkboard”. {15}  Their objects need not mirror objective reality either. A gauge, a readout display, a control device, (the “objects” designed for such systems), need not mimic a single parameter -or an actual physical entity. Indeed, in the monitoring of a complex or dangerous process, it should not. Rather, the readout for instance should represent an efficacious synthesis of just those aspects of the process which are relevant to effective response, -and be crystallized around those relevant responses! A warning light or a status indicator, for instance, need not refer to just one parameter. It may refer to electrical overload and/or excessive pressure and/or... Or it may refer to an optimal relationship, (perhaps a complexly functional relationship), between

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many parameters -to a relationship between temperature, volume, mass, etc. in a chemical process, for instance.

The exactly parallel case holds for its control devices. A single control may orchestrate a multiplicity of (possibly disjoint) objective responses. The accelerator pedal in a modern automobile, as a simple example, may integrate fuel injection volumes, spark timing, transmission gearing...

Ideally, (given urgent constraints), instrumentation and control might unify in the selfsame “object”. We could then manipulate the very object of the display and it in itself could be the control device as well. Consider the advantages of manipulating a graphic or tactile object which is simultaneously both a readout and a control mechanism under urgent or dangerous circumstances. Now think about this same possibility in relation to our ordinary objects of perception -in relation to the sensory-motor coordination of the brain and the objects of naive realism in the real world! The brain is a control system, after all. It is an organ of control and its mechanics must be considered in that perspective. Its function is exceedingly complex and the continuation of life itself is at stake. It is a complex and dangerous world. Might not our naïve world itself be such a combined schematic control system? {16}

2.3 THE “GUI”: THE MOST PERTINENT AND SOPHISTICATED EXAMPLE OF A SCHEMATIC MODEL

(THE SPECIAL CASE)

The “object” in the graphic user interface, (GUI), of a computer is perhaps the best example of a purely schematic usage currently available. In my simplistic manipulation of the schematic objects of my computer’s GUI, I am, in fact, effecting and coordinating quite diverse, disparate and unbelievably complex operations at the physical level of the computer. These are operations impossible, (in a practical sense), to accomplish directly. What a computer object, (icon), represents and what its manipulation does, at the physical level, can be exceedingly complex and disjoint. The disparate voltages and physical locations, (or operations), represented by a single “object”, and the (possibly different) ones effected by manipulating it, correlate to a metaphysical object only in this “schematic” sense. Its efficacy lies precisely in the simplicity of the “calculus” it enables!  (It is the interface that must be simple!)

Contemporary usage is admittedly primitive. Software designers have limiting preconceptions of the “entities” to be manipulated, of a necessary preservation of hierarchy, and of the operations to be accomplished in the physical computer by their icons and interface. But I assert that GUI’s and their “objects”, (icons), have a deeper potentiality of “free formation”. They have the potential to link to

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any selection across a substrate, i.e. they could “cross party lines”. They could cross categories of “things in the world”, (Lakoff’s “objectivist categories”), {17} ), and acquire thereby the possibility of organizing on a different and the most pressing issue: i.e. urgency / risk. They need preserve neither parallelism nor hierarchy.

Biology supplies fortuitous examples of the sort of thing I am suggesting for GUI’s –e.g. in the brain’s “global mapping” noted by Edelman. {18}, (I will present Walter Freeman’s more explicit case in detail shortly). The non-topological connectivity Edelman notes from the brain’s “topobiological” maps, {19} and specifically the connectivity, (the “global mapping”), from the objects of those maps to the non-mapped areas of the brain supplies a concrete illustration the kind of potential I wish to urge for a GUI. Ultimately I will urge it as the rationale for the brain itself. This global mapping allows “... selectional events”, [and, I suggest, their “objects” as well], “occurring in its local maps ... to be connected to the animal’s motor behavior, to new sensory samplings of the world, and to further successive reentry events.” But this is explicitly a non-topological mapping. This particular mapping, (the global mapping), does not preserve contiguity. Nor need it preserve hierarchy.

Here is a biological model demonstrating the more abstract possibility of a connection of localized “objects” {20} , (in a GUI), to non-topological (distributed) process -to “non-objectivist categories “, using Lakoff’s terminology. As such, it illustrates “schematism” in its broadest sense. Edelman’s fundamental rationale is “Neural Darwinism”, the ex post facto adaptation of process, not “information”, and is thus consistent with such an interpretation. It does not require “information”. Nor does it require “representation”. Edelman, (unfortunately), correlates his topobiological maps, (as sensory maps), directly and representatively, (i.e. hierarchically), with “the world”. This is a clear inconsistency in his epistemology. It is in conflict with his early and continual repudiation of “the God’s eye view” on which he grounds his biologic epistemology.

 

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Figure 5: A Graphic Rendering of Edelman’s Epistemology(Note: hierarchy and contiguity are implicit!)

But what if we turn Edelman’s perspective around however? What if we blink the “God’s eye” he has himself so strongly objected to, and step back from the prejudice of our human (animal) cognition. What if the maps and their objects both were taken as existing to serve blind primitive process instead of information? (Figure 6) What if they are organizational rather than representative?

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Figure 6: A More Consistent Rendering of Edelman’s Epistemology Suggesting a New Paradigm for GUI’s

(Note: Neither hierarchy nor contiguity are implicit in this model.)

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This is the case I wish to suggest as an illustration of the most abstract sense of the GUI, (and which I will argue shortly) –i.e. a non-topological correlation! It opens a further fascinating possibility moreover. It suggests that evolution’s “good trick”, (after P.S. Churchland’s usage), was not representation, but was, rather, the organization of primitive process in a topological context. It suggests that the “good trick” was evolution’s creation of the cortex in itself!

2.4 TOWARDS A BETTER BIOLOGICAL MODELFigure 7

2.4.1 BIOLOGY, THE REAL THING: FREEMAN’S MODEL

What is needed now is a more explicit model, and a specific research problem to embody the proposal. Edelman’s “global mapping” is all very well and good, but it doesn’t really do what it has to. It is “too philosophical” and Popper would have predictably urged, not falsifiable. A more detailed and quite specific model comes from the work of the noted neurophysiologist, Walter J. Freeman. Based on extensive research first with the olfactory cortex, (arguably evolution’s first cortex), and then with the visual and other cortices, Freeman argues that the brain does not process information at all –it does other things! He has approached the problem directly and addressed the crux of the issue: what is the correlation between sensory input and resultant brain states? Is there one? This is explicitly empirical research clearly pertinent to the problems of parallelism and hierarchy and, if its conclusions are viable, is totally relevant to my argument. It is falsifiable! But, conversely, it is capable of falsifying the very premise of the standard paradigm -i.e. that of “representation” itself.

First, however, please look at Freeman’s model, and note the striking similarity to my own Figure 6 just above. Strikingly similar, that is, if we interpret his

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“topographic projections” as following behind Edelman’s “topobiological maps”. (feature detectors?)

 

Figure 8, (Freeman’s Figure 2)

“Fig. 2. The input path from receptors to the bulb has some topographic specificity. The output path to the prepyriform has broad axonal divergence, which provides a basis for spatial integration of bulbar output and extraction of the “carrier” wave. (From Freeman 1983, reproduced by permission.)

“It is based on a striking difference between two types of central path, one that provides topographic mapping from an array of transmitting neurons to an array of receiving neurons, the other having divergence of axons that provides for spatial integration of the transmitted activity.” (Freeman, 1994, my emphasis). Now compare Freeman’s Figure 2 with my Figure 6 shortly before it. This is an explicit case, truly drawn from biology illustrating the non-topological potential of virtual systems. It is not a topological mapping, does not preserve hierarchy, and does not preserve information. It is an actual case demonstrating the ultimate potential of schematic GUI’s for distributing, (or conversely, for centralizing), function into objects. Freeman’s model exposes a new paradigm for models. It demonstrates an organizational potential of models beyond representation.

Freeman begins:

“This book had its origin ... in an experimental finding....I was tracing the path taken by neural activity that accompanied and followed a sensory stimulus in brains of rabbits. I traced it from the sensory receptors into the cerebral cortex and there found that the activity vanished, just like the rabbit down the rabbit hole in ‘Alice in Wonderland’. What appeared in place of the stimulus-evoked activity was a new pattern of cortical activity that was created by the rabbit brain... My students and I first noticed this anomaly in the olfactory system... and in looking elsewhere we found it in the visual, auditory, and somatic cortices too... In all the systems the traces of stimuli seemed to be replaced by constructions of neural activity, which lacked invariance with respect to the stimuli that triggered them. The conclusion seemed compelling. The only knowledge that the rabbit could have of the world outside itself was what it had made in its own brain.” (Freeman, 1995, my emphasis.)

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What does this mean? What does it mean that the new pattern “lacked invariance” in regard to the stimuli? The “invariance” demanded correlates precisely to the “passage of information” -and it could not be found! “The visual, auditory, somatic and olfactory cortices generate... waves [that] reveal macroscopic activity ... from millions of neurons. ... These spatial AM patterns are unique to each subject, are not invariant with respect to stimuli, and cannot be derived from the stimuli by logical operations!” (Freeman, 1994)

In this paper, (“Chaotic Oscillations...”), Freeman actually makes two cases –one structural and one functional. The structural case is purely physiological and, I think, very strong. It deals with the actual connectivity of nerve tissue and argues against the possibility of maintaining topological integrity within the cortex. (The other case is for “Chaos theory” as an explanation of function which I will refer to later.) The former is the case I want to emphasize here as I think it supplies an explicit illustration of my argument for the non-topological possibilities of schematic models. This is what I believe evolution did and how it did it.

He divides nerve physiology into two categories:

(1) Those which preserve topological integrity: this is the case for the sensory nerves for instance.

“Sensory neurons exist in large arrays in the skin, inner ear, retina...so that a stimulus is expressed as a spatial pattern...carried in parallel along sensory nerves. Typically only a small fraction of the axons in a nerve is activated...with the others remaining silent” [for isolation] “...so that the ‘signal’ of the stimulus is said to be ‘encoded’ in the frequencies of firing of that subset of axons subserving ...the activated...receptors.”

“The code of sensory, motor and autonomic parts of the peripheral nervous system is the spatial”, [topological], “pattern of temporal pulse rates. The same code appears to hold...for the ascending and descending pathways and relays in the brainstem and spinal cord. ...Serious efforts have been made to extend this model to the cerebral cortex with considerable success in characterizing the receptive fields and ‘feature detector’ properties of cortical neurons in primary sensory areas.” (Freeman, 1994) (But he argues that ‘feature detection” occurs only early in cortical process.)

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Points on the retina, for instance, are mapped onto the cortex in a way that preserves the topology of the source and, apparently, feeds the feature detectors that are just the very beginning of cortical input.

(2) Within the cortex, however, it is a different story. Cortical neurons typically have short dendritic trees on the order of ½ millimeter. They are not, however, typically connected to the neurons physically adjacent to them!

“The main neurons in cortex ...intertwine at unimaginable density, so that each neuron makes contact with 5,000 to 10,000 other neurons within its dendritic and axonal arbors, but those neighbors so contacted are less than one percent of the neurons lying within the radius of contact. The chance of any one pair of cortical neurons being in mutual contact is less than one in a million.” (Freeman, 1995)

“Peripheral neurons”, [on the other hand], “seldom interact with other neurons, but offer each a private path from the receptor to the central nervous system. In contrast, each cortical neuron is embedded in a milieu of millions of neurons, and it continually transmits to a subset of several thousand other neurons sparsely distributed among those millions and receives from several thousand others in a different subset.” (Freeman, 1994)

This is reminiscent of Maturana’s comment:

“It is enough to contemplate this structure of the nervous system... to be convinced that the effect of projecting an image on the retina is not like an incoming telephone line. Rather, it is like a voice (perturbation) added to many voices during a hectic family discussion (relations of activity among all incoming convergent connections) in which the consensus of actions reached will not depend on what any particular member of the family says.” Maturana, (1987), 163-4.

And Edelman’s:

“… To make matters even more complicated, neurons generally send branches of their axons out in diverging arbors that overlap with those of other neurons, and the same is true of processes called dendrites on recipient neurons …. To put it figuratively, if we ‘asked’ a neuron which input came from which other neuron contributing to the overlapping set of its dendritic connections, it could not ‘know’.” (Edelman, 1992, p.27)

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Peripheral neurons are relatively isolated, (“private”), within nerve bundles and support a topological case to the point of ‘feature detection’ at cortex. Within the cortices, however, we are dealing with a different sort of connective process. We are no longer dealing with parallel or hierarchical, (i.e. information preserving), mappings. Because each cortical neuron is embedded in a milieu of millions of neurons, it “continually transmits and receives from several thousand others” and therefore has “continual background activity owing to its synaptic interactions with its neighbors”. This is a characteristic property of cortical neural populations not shared by peripheral neuron arrays.

Cortical process disburses function spatially through the brain, (“with strong axonal divergence”), through intertwined nerve process -not topologically. It connects point-to-point fitfully within the volumetric space of the brain, not topologically. These cell assemblages act as units which “provide for spatial integration [projection] of the transmitted activity.” The cortices generate dendritic potentials…arising from synaptic interactions of millions of neurons. They share “a spatially coherent oscillation… by which spatial patterns of amplitude modulation are transmitted in distinctive configurations… The neurons sharing the macroscopic, aperiodic oscillations comprise a local neighborhood that can be viewed as an equivalence class.” (Freeman, 1994, my emphasis) These “equivalence classes” thereby provide a non-contiguous spatial distribution onto the physical space of the brain. These spatially extensive and intertwined complexes of cells throughout the cortex achieve the connectivity that mere parallelism, (or hierarchy), cannot.  Freeman shows us how a topological mathematical space can be mapped onto the specifically physical space of the brain.  But that particular physical space is determined by its specific connectivity -by evolution and ontogeny, not representation.  Determined by genetics and learning, (ontogeny), it has the ability to connect specific process “ad hoc”.  It has the ability to self-organize on principles other than topological ones.

“The local neighborhoods corresponding to cortical columns and hypercolumns seldom have anatomical boundaries of their internal synaptic connections, so that an area of cortex composed of hundreds and even thousands of neighborhoods can act as a coherent element of function in generating a spatially coherent carrier wave. These distributed neural populations are dynamically unstable and are capable of very rapid global state transitions [which can] easily fulfill the most stringent timing requirements encountered in object recognition.” (ibid).

He argues against the proposal of “phase locking”, often cited as an explanation of cortical function, (of the “binding problem”), because of the scarcity of periodically oscillating neurons in the cortex. “They are found occasionally, but,

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in general conform to a Poisson distribution” –i.e. random statistical output. Also, because of the paucity of time-lagged correlations between pairs of neurons, “the definitions of ‘phase locking’ and ‘phase coherence’” cannot be made. They can only be derived for discrete frequencies. Whence, then, comes the “phase” in “phase locking”? On another tack, he argues against this conception because of the “slow onset and long duration of bursts of synchrony in comparison to the rapidity of object recognition.” “In a typical perceptual event lasting on the order of a tenth of a second, a participating neuron ...has time to fire only once or twice if at all.” “Phase locking” is only meaningful with repetition, (i.e. the actual existence of a “phase” to begin with).

Freeman concludes: “The transform effected by the output path defines the self-organized macroscopic activity as the cortical ‘signal’.” “In brief, ... the central code cannot be the same as the peripheral code.”(Freeman, 1994, my emphasis) He argues ultimately that the brain is a self-organizing entity, specifically obeying the laws of Chaos theory, (“Chaos can make as well as destroy information!”). I am frankly unqualified to judge this aspect of his argument. His physiological case: i.e. the connectivity of the CNS, however, is entirely sufficient in itself to demonstrate the kind of mapping, the broadest logical potential of “schematic GUI’s” and their explicit relevance to cognition. This model actually does “cross party lines”. I don’t think his physiological argument is answerable. This is how the brain and specifically, the cortex, actually works.

That the brain is, in fact, “self-organized” is exactly the case I am making. I argue that it is self-organized specifically for optimal efficiency, (i.e. urgency / risk), not for reference. Freeman’s case, I believe, constitutes an actual instance demonstrating the deepest possibilities of “schematic models”. It demonstrates the possibility of a truly useful model organized on non-topological principles, and, as such, demonstrates the deepest capabilities of a schematic GUI. This is not just “a level of abstraction.”

But where, accepting Freeman’s description of the actual brain, do these cell assemblages, (these “equivalence classes”), come from, and what is their function? How do these particular entangled arrays of cells, interconnecting and overarching ”the less than one percent of the neurons lying within the radius of contact”, arise? I propose that they arise evolutionarily –as internal, blind organizations of function. This is exactly what we would expect the organizing principle of a “self-organizing” metacellular entity to be. {21} Representation is neither required, nor, accepting Freeman, is it possible in cortex. This is what we would expect if neural organization were modeled on efficiency over “truth” -and how. Our “percepts”, moreover, are what we would expect if we joined the loop of output to input!

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 “In particular, Maurice Merleau-Ponty in "The Phenomenology of Perception" [2] conceived of perception as the outcome of the "intentional arc", by which experience derives from the intentional actions of individuals that control sensory input and perception. Action into the world with reaction that changes the self is indivisible in reality, and must be analyzed in terms of "circular causality" as distinct from the linear causality of events as commonly perceived and analyzed in the physical world."  W.J. Freeman, 1997 {22}

 

2.4.2 AN EXPLICIT MODEL OF THE MIND:

  If we turn our perspective around and think of our (input) topographic maps as the looping, re-entrant extension of our output, then we can clearly see them, (and their “objects”), in their specific role as organizing artifacts of cortical function itself.  Our “percepts” are just the combined-in-one icons previously described in the “engineering” argument!  They are the “A-D”, (“analog/digital”), converters, so to speak, of the reentrant loop of process. {23}  This is what we would expect taking “percepts” as expressly schematic objects of process. These are what we would expect to see!  (see Figure 9)  I propose that our cognitive interface lays precisely in the topobiological models themselves, mediating between an unknowable externality and the optimized functionality of the cortex.  I claim that this constitutes an explicit and non-representational model for the mind.

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Figure 9

GOD’S EYE?(Edelman -to Freeman -to Edelman!)

Freeman’s model exposes a new paradigm for models. It also exposes the possibility of a new correspondence with reality. We want to believe that our knowledge of reality is direct –or at least parallels that reality. How could it be otherwise? How could a model be other than “an abstraction” and still be useful? Moreover, what is the evolutionary rationale for all of this? Modern science says that what truly is, absolute reality, (or “ontology” to use an old but precise word), consists of some ultimate particles: atoms or subatomic particles, quarks, etc. We are allowed to retain our normal view of reality within this view

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however because we envision our ordinary objects, (baseballs, you, me, the sun, etc.), as spatial containers, (and logical, theoretical hierarchies), in the new absolute reality we are forced to believe in. We may still preserve the sense of our ordinary objects as physical and logical clusters, (hierarchies), of those deeper existences. I can think of myself as a cluster of atomic particles and fields shaped like me, doing all the things I do, and positioned in ontic reality next to other things and persons just as I ordinarily see myself. There is a necessary belief in a continuity, and a contiguity, (“next-to-ness”), in this belief system. This is the “hierarchy” or “logical containment” implicit in the Newtonian World and it is mirrored in the hierarchies of contemporary mathematics and of logic. Truly modern science says otherwise, however. Quantum theory and Relativity say that the world, (reality), is an even stranger place. Freeman’s conclusions, moreover do not allow it at all. If we live anywhere, we live in cortex.

ON CHURCHLAND:

“At some point in evolutionary history, nature performed a “good trick”. It allowed for an internal representation of environment…. and this allowed competence in the larger world.” (P.S. Churchland, paraphrase)

But look at the reality. Somehow two neurons joined together to form an input/output loop. In a metacellular organism, how could nerves themselves arise however? And why? A nerve is a specialized cell that communicates from one area of the metacellular to another. How could it interpose itself between the parallelism of input and the parallelism of output? Where and how could it begin? As a correspondent of mine noted:  “It is clear that mollusks and ants, indeed all the ‘lesser’ animals exist and function in this world and it is further clear that most of them have nowhere near the neural capacity necessary for a representative model.  Perhaps it is time to turn our perspective around.”

If we turn the question around however, it makes more sense. Suppose there arise, (by mutation), some (blind?) processes that are evolutionarily valuable. This is where it makes sense to attach connections -for internal coordination, but those connections must be dictated by efficacy, (survival). At some point we might add a topological parallelism, but only as a modulator of the core process. This is our world, not God’s. We do not and cannot have a God’s eye view.

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3. THE FORMAL AND ABSTRACT PROBLEM:

3.1 THE FORMAL ARGUMENT

Consider, finally, the formal and abstract problem. Consider the actual problem that evolution was faced with. Consider the problem of designing instrumentation for the efficient control of both especially complex and especially dangerous processes. In the general case, (imagining yourself the “evolutionary engineer”), what kind of information would you want to pass along and how would you best represent it? How would you design your display and control system?

It would be impossible, obviously, to represent all information about the objective physical reality of a, (any), process or its physical components, (objects). Where would you stop? Is the color of the building in which it is housed, the specific materials of which it is fabricated, that it is effected with gears rather than levers, -or its location in the galaxy- necessarily relevant information? (Contrarily, even its designer’s middle name might be relevant if it involved a computer program and you were considering the possibility of a hacker’s “back door”!) It would be counterproductive even if you could as relevant data would be overwhelmed and the consequent “calculus”, (having to process all that information),   {24} would become too complex and inefficient for rapid and effective response. Even the use of realistic abstractions could produce enormous difficulties in that you might be interested in many differing, (and, typically, conflicting), significant abstractions and/or their interrelations. {25} This would produce severe difficulties in generating an intuitive and efficient “calculus” geared towards optimal response.

For such a complex and dangerous process, the “entities” you create must, (1) necessarily, of course, be viable in relation to both data and control -i.e. they must be adequate in their function. {26}  But they would also, (2) need to be constructed with a primary intent towards efficiency of response, (rather than realism), as well -the process is, by stipulation, dangerous! The entities you create would need to be specifically fashioned to optimize the “calculus” while still fulfilling their (perhaps consequently distributed) operative role!

Your “entities” would need to be primarily fabricated in such a way as to intrinsically define a simplistic operative calculus of relationality between them -analogous to the situation in our training seminar. Maximal efficiency, (and safety), therefore, would demand crystallization into schematic virtual “entities” -a “GUI”- which would resolve both demands at a single stroke. Your objects could then distribute function, (in a “global / cortical mapping”), so as to

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concentrate and simplify control, (operation), via an elementary, intuitive calculus. These virtual entities need not necessarily be in a simple (or hierarchical -i.e. via abstraction) correlation with the objects of physical reality however. {27}  But they would most definitely need to allow rapid and effective control of a process which, considered objectively, might not be simple at all. It is clearly the optimization of the process of response itself –i.e. a simplistic “calculus”- that is crucial here, not literal representation. We, in fact, do not care that the operator knows what function(s) he is actually fulfilling, only that he does it (them) well!

3.2 THE SPECIFIC CASE OF BIOLOGY

Biological survival is exactly such a problem! It is both especially complex and especially dangerous. It is the penultimate case of complexity and embodies a moment-by-moment confrontation with disaster. It is a schematic model in just this sense that I argue evolution constructed therefore, and I propose it is the basis for both the “percept” and the “mind”. But it is just the converse of the argument made above that I propose for evolution however. It is not the distribution of function, but rather the centralization of disparate atomic biological function into efficacious schematic -and virtual- objects that evolution effected while compositing the complex metacellular organism. (These are clearly just the complementary perspectives on the same issue.)   {28}

But let’s talk about the “atomic” in the “atomic biological function” of the previous statement. There is another step in the argument to be taken at the level of biology. The “engineering” argument, (made above), deals specifically with the schematic manipulation of “data”. At the level of primitive evolution, however, it is modular (reactive) process that is significant to an organism, not data functions. A given genetic accident corresponds to the addition or modification of a given (behavioral/reactive) process which, for a primitive organism, is clearly and simply merely beneficial or not. The process itself is informationally indeterminate to the organism however -i.e. it is a modular whole. No one can presume that a particular, genetically determined response is informationally, (rather than reactively), significant to a Paramecium or an Escherichia coli, for example, (though we may consider it so). It is significant, rather, solely as a modular unit which either increases survivability or not. Let me therefore extend the prior argument to deal with the schematic organization of atomic, (modular), process, rather than of primitive, (i.e. absolute), data. It is my contention that the cognitive model, and cognition itself, is solely constituted as an organization of that atomic modular process, designed for computational and operational efficiency. The atomic processes themselves remain, and will forever remain, informationally indeterminate to the organism.

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The evolutionary purpose of the model was computational simplicity! The calculational facility potentiated by a schematic and virtual object constitutes a clear and powerful evolutionary rationale for dealing with a multifarious environment. Such a model, (the “objects” and their “calculus”), allows rapid and efficient response to what cannot be assumed, a priori, to be a simplistic environment. From the viewpoint of the sixty trillion or so individual cells that constitute the human cooperative enterprise, that assumption, (environmental simplicity), is implausible in the extreme!

But theirs, (i.e. that perspective), is the most natural perspective from which to consider the problem. For five-sixths of evolutionary history, (three billion years), it was the one- celled organism which ruled alone. As Stephen Gould puts it, metacellular organisms represent only occasional and unstable spikes from the stable “left wall”, (the unicellulars), of evolutionary history.

“Progress does not rule, (and is not even a primary thrust of) the evolutionary process. For reasons of chemistry and physics, life arises next to the ‘left wall’ of its simplest conceivable and preservable complexity. This style of life (bacterial) has remained most common and most successful. A few creatures occasionally move to the right... “

“Therefore, to understand the events and generalities of life’s pathway, we must go beyond principles of evolutionary theory to a paleontological examination of the contingent pattern of life’s history on our planet. ...Such a view of life’s history is highly contrary both to conventional deterministic models of Western science and to the deepest social traditions and psychological hopes of Western culture for a history culminating in humans as life’s highest expression and intended planetary steward.”(Gould, 1994)

3.3 RETRODICTIVE CONFIRMATION

Do you not find it strange that the fundamental laws of the sciences, (or of logic), are so few? Or that our (purportedly) accidentally and evolutionarily acquired logic works so well to manipulate the objects of our environment? From the standpoint of contemporary science, this is a subject of wonder -or at least it should be. (cf contra: Minsky, 1985) It is, in fact, a miracle! {29} From the standpoint of the schematic model, however, it is a trivial, (obvious), and necessary consequence. It is precisely the purpose of the model itself! This is a profound teleological simplification.

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3.4 CONCLUSION, (SECTION 3)

Evolution, in constructing a profoundly complex metacellular organism such as ours, was confronted with the problem of coordinating the physical structure of its thousands of billions of individual cells. It also faced the problem of coordinating the response of this colossus, this “Aunt Hillary”, (Hofstadter’s “sentient” ant colony). {30} It had to coordinate their functional interaction with their environment, raising an organizational problem of profound proportions.

Evolution was forced to deal with exactly the problem detailed above. The brain, moreover, is universally accepted as an evolutionary organ of response, (taken broadly {31}). I propose that a schematic entity, (and its corresponding schematic model), is by far the most credible possibility here. It can efficiently orchestrate the coordination of the ten million sensory neurons with the one million motor neurons, {32} -and with the profound milieu beyond. A realistic, (i.e. representational /informational), “entity”, on the other hand, would demand a concomitant “calculus” embodying the very complexity of the objective reality in which the organism exists, and this, I argue, is overwhelmingly implausible. {33}

Figure 10

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4. THE CONCORDANCE: BIOLOGY’S PROPER CONCLUSION

Now I will move to what I think is the most important purely scientific implication of the combination of this and my paper, (“Consciousness, a Simpler Approach...”, Iglowitz, 2001). I call it “the concordance”. In “Consciousness”, I argued that the objects of mind are solely virtual. I argued that they are logically and implicitly defined by the axioms of brain function. I believe this line is profoundly explanatory for the deepest dilemmas of mind as we normally conceive it. In the present paper, I have argued another course -that the objects of mind are schematic artifacts. They are optimizing metaphors, artifacts integrating primitive brain process.

Now I propose the biological argument which relates the two themes. By identifying the “rule” of the brain, which, accepting Cassirer’s conclusions, (Cassirer, 1923), specifies a distinct logical concept -with the rule of “structural coupling” of the human organism, (after Maturana and Varela’s profound characterization of biological response), then “mind” may now reasonably be defined as the “concept”, (/rule), of the brain. Given that the rule is of the specific structure of my extended concept however, (i.e. the concept of implicit definition - my second hypothesis, Iglowitz, 1995), then mind becomes the specifically constitutive concept of the brain in the sense of Immanuel Kant, and not an ordinary concept. It is a concept necessary to -inbuilt into- our cognition, (in the exact sense that Kant used the word), not one imposed upon it. It is not something with which we conceive; it is, rather, the “we” which conceives. Following the arguments of my prior paper, it implicitly defines and therefore knows its “objects”.

Combining the results of the two papers, I now assert a concordance. I claim that their conclusions are commensurable. “Consciousness” made the case that it is only by considering our mental objects as operative logical objects, as objects implicitly defined by the system, that the wholeness and the logical autonomy of sentiency becomes possible. Referential objects do not convey the same possibility. The present paper has made the case that it is only as virtual and metaphorical objects, artifacts of the system of control, that the profound difficulties of the integration of megacellular response may be overcome. Again, referential objects do not convey the same possibility. The “objects” of each thesis are thus solely objects of their systems! The objects of the first, purely logical and cognitive thesis are thus commensurable with the objects of the second, purely biological and operative thesis. The discovery of such correspondences has always been crucial in the history of science.

But biology affirms the correlation. Modern day biology necessarily must reduce

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logic itself! From an evolutionary perspective, human logic must itself be taken as a strictly biological, evolutionarily derived rule of response, (broadly conceived –see {31}). So too must the concepts and categories contained within it. Logic can no longer be taken as “God-given”, or “God-knowledgeable”. Such mysticism is not compatible with the perspective of modern science. It is more than plausible, therefore, for biology to identify that human “logic”, (that bio -logic -and the “implicit definition” resident within it), with the rules governing the “objects” of the cognitive GUI of the present paper. “Mind”, as the constitutive concept of that bio-logic then, is the biological interface: the constitutive, holistic, and logical, (i.e. bio -logical), expression of the human organism’s organization of response. This conclusion restores “mind” as we normally understand it to biology and enables a science of mind.

This, the biological perspective of the concordance, I maintain, is the logical and proper biological perspective on the whole of the mind-brain problem. It is where biology must ultimately come to stand. The special significance of the “concordance” for neuroscience is that it finally enables a viable perspective within which biological and specifically neural process might be scientifically correlated with the actual specifics of the mind under evolutionary and operational paradigms. The latter, moreover, remain the most productive heuristic principles in contemporary biology. It opens the prospect of a physical description of mind itself.

Our perceptual objects are not objects in reality; they are the implicitly defined logical objects, (alternatively, clearly now, operative objects), of this constitutive logic. They are objects of process.

5. PLAIN TALK:

Let’s talk loosely for a bit. We do not start with absolutes anywhere in our logical and scientific endeavors. Somewhere we start with beliefs. I, for one, believe that I have a mind and a consciousness in the naive senses of those words. I think most of you believe that you do too. By this we do not just mean that our bodies mechanically and robotically produce words and actions which “cover the territory” -which merely simulate, (substitute for), sentiency in our naive sense of it, but that there is some universal and unified existence which is aware. But how?

The solution I propose lies in the combination of the concepts of implicit definition, virtual existence -and logic as biology. This is the only model within

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our intellectual horizons that seems to hold even any promise for sentiency in our ordinary sense of it. It suggests the only scientifically plausible solution to “the mind’s eye” and the “Cartesian theatre” and the only non-eliminativist answer, (for “mind”), to the homunculus problem. But these are answers which must exist if mind in our ordinary sense is to be real. Implicit definition permits knowing, (as a whole), what are, in some real sense, our distinct and separate parts precisely because those parts, (objects), are in fact non-localized and virtual (logical) expressions of the whole. It opens the first genuine possibility, therefore, for a resolution of this essential requirement of “naive” consciousness.

But that pathway, (implicit definition), does not make sense from the standpoint of representation! Implicit definition solves the problem logically -from the standpoint of constitutive logic -and speaks to nothing other than its own internal structure. “Objects”, (under this thesis), are known to a system, (i.e. universally/globally), only because they are specifically expressions of the system. It becomes a viable and natural solution to the problem of awareness, therefore, only when the objects of consciousness themselves are conceived operationally and schematically, (and specifically, logically), rather than representatively. When our objects are taken as specifically schematic representations of process however, (as per the present paper), the solution becomes both natural and plausible. The logical problem of sentiency is resolved.

How could evolution organize -as it had to organize- the reactive function of this colossus of sixty trillion cells? Even this formulation of the question disregards the yet more profound complexity of the reactivity of the individual cells -also organisms- themselves! It was the overwhelmingly crucial issue in the evolution of complex metacellulars. My thesis of schematism is both viable and plausible in this context.

But what does this evolutionary development and organization of the reactive process of complex metacellulars have to do with “information”? That the progressive evolutionary reactivity of this megacollosus occurred under the bounds of real necessity is, of course, a given. It is the basic axiom of Darwinian “survival”. But that it could match that possibility -i.e. that it could achieve a (reactive) parallelism to that bound -i.e. “information!” -is a hypothesis of quite another order and teleologically distinct. It is, I assert moreover, mathematically immature. Objective reality is a bound to the evolutionary possibility of organisms, but under that bound infinitely diverse possibilities remain. I may, as a crude metaphor for instance, posit an infinity of functions under the arbitrary bound Y = 64,000,000. I may cite semi-circles, many of the trigonometric functions, curves, lines ... ad infinitum. Only one of these matches the bound, and only a specific subset, (the horizontal lines Y = a,

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a <= 64,000,000), parallels it. It is a question of the distinction between a bound and a limit. (See Figure 11)

The reactive evolutionary actuality of an organism certainly exists within, (and embodies), a lower bound of biologically possibility. But that some such, (any such), organism, (–to include the human organism!), embodies a greatest lower bound -i.e. that it, (or its reactivity), matches and meets, (or parallels, i.e. knows!), the real world does not follow. It is incommensurate with the fundamental premise of “natural selection” and stands as the “parallel postulate” of evolutionary theory. Organisms do not know, organisms do! Organisms survive!

How much more plausible, is it not, that the primary and crucial thrust of evolution was coordination, and specifically a coordination of allowable or appropriate, (rather than “informed”), reactive response? I submit that from a biological perspective the schematic object is far more plausible than the representative one. It involves no “magic”, and is totally consistent with our deepest conceptions of biology.

I submit that no other viable, (i.e. non-eliminative or non-dualistic), explanation, -an actual explanation rather than a prevarication, has ever even been offered for mind and consciousness as understood in our ordinary sense. The argument, then, is one of demonstration. If no truly viable alternative can be offered, then this one must be considered seriously.

The operational process of brain, (and its evolutionarily determined structural optimization), I argue, implicitly defines its “objects”, its “entities” in the same sense and in the same manner that the “process” of an axiom system implicitly defines its “objects”. The “objects of perception” are “intellectual objects”. They are (constitutive) conceptual objects. But those, in turn, are schematic objects, (alternatively, “operational objects”), only, in no necessarily simple correspondence with objective reality. They are metaphors of response.

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Figure 11 –an Illustration of Bounds and Limits

(1) and (3) represent the best and the least possible performance for an organism over the domain of its behavior in absolute (ontic) reality. Less than (3) results in lessened survivability or death; greater than (1) is impossible as it is perfect performance with perfect knowledge in actual reality. Between the two bounds, “adequate performance” , ( (2), (2’), (2”), ...) need not match, nor even parallel these outer bounds. [Note: 2’ and 2” parallel 1, but 2 does not! ] Any curve within them is consistent with evolution.

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Edelman, for instance, talks about the multiple, non-derivative antibody responses to a given antigen. The same must surely apply to cognition itself, another “recognition system”, (using Edelman’s terminology). Cognition and response must be adequate, but it is not obvious that there is only one way -a mirroring way. Nor is it inherent that all ways be commensurate! An organism’s performance in its environment is measured, fundamentally, not in perfection or in rationality, but in simple adequacy. It is very easy to envision multiple, noncommensurate, blind-though-adequate responses to a given situation. It is not easy to envision rational responses informed by information.

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APPENDIX, (FREEMAN AND AUTOMORPHISM)

An aside: a fascinating quote from Freeman, (it rings strong “bells” in my head)!

“Some people turn to chemicals as a way to deepen the privacy within solipsistic chasms, and in order to retreat from social stress into inner space. A few have induced these states so as to peer through the solipsistic bars and dirty windows in order to see what is ‘really there’, although, as minds disintegrate, what comes are swirls and tinglings, and ultimately the points of receptor inputs like stars, flies or grains of sand.” (Freeman, 1995, my emphasis)

Freeman and I have the same problem -in our innate resistance to the consequences of our own nonrepresentationalism. I too have wrestled with the “points” of sensory input -“like stars, flies or grains of sand”. The conclusion I have reached however is that our “points” are, in fact, primitive, atomic, (unspecified) process, not information. From the simpler perspective of ordinary biology, this is more obvious. These processes, (i.e. pragmatic and adequate, but not informational processes), are the necessary basic building blocks of biological cognition. These are our “points’. The difficulty lies in the automorphism we presume in cognition itself, and this is not an easy problem.

How can science continue to make new, profound discoveries?  How can the level of verifiable intricacy continue to multiply, seemingly without bounds within the legitimate confines of science?  How can the various branches of science continue to integrate and resolve themselves within one comprehensive picture?  How could, and why does statistics in fact work?  These are the real and crucial questions that a non-representational conception of mind must address.

 

The fact that the overall picture is getting better –that it is completing itself- does not in itself invalidate the hypothesis that it is non-representational however.  Nor does its overwhelming level of intricacy.  To answer the objection, let me reiterate a counter question from my book.  Is it not possible that we, like a swarm of bees, are merely building, (completing), a “hive”, (our worldview)?  We may be completing our interface with externality, but it does not follow at all that that interface is representational.  What does follow is that it is the most efficient one possible within our context.

We presume that our science maps back, (automorphically), onto the very model we visualize.  But the path of the automorphism we seek, I propose, lies through

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the very “gears and levers” of the original evolutionarily derived topobiological cognitive model itself, (re-using its "objects") -through another iteration –in another re-entrant mapping which supplies the mechanics and the transformation (back into Freeman's non-topological dispersive mapping into the overall brain) that we seek. I propose that reafferance within the loop of brain function combines with input from outside the loop, (passing through the environment), to yield a consistent, compound map which either does, or does not confirm our theoretical constructs.  Nowhere does this conception demand the absolute (ontic) reality of those constructs, however.  It is a reuse of our evolutionarily pragmatic (cortical) objects, (like Rosch's prototypes??), saying nothing whatsoever about the real (external) world in which we live. 

Why is this an important advance in our perspective?  Because it allows the use of my second hypothesis of "implicit definition" in a legitimate scientific context.   ("A Shortcut to the Problem: Consciousness per se ! ").  That second thesis enables, for the very first time, legitimate scientific conceptions of the most fundamental aspects we demand for "mind" itself:  i.e. a "Cartesian Theatre", the elimination of the problem of the "homunculus", and "knowing" per se.  This is not a trivial consequence.

Thus microscopy, anatomy, biology, physics … is fed through the same interface to yield an image --of the body of another being or of our own, for instance, or the nature of our environment.  But the "objects" are functions of the interface itself, not of an external ontology.  This, I believe, is the mechanics of the automorphism we seek –i.e. the one processed by the brain, using its own transformation and mapping back onto its own map reusing the "objects" of that map. It is Edelman plus Freeman plus Merleau-Ponty and back to Edelman.  It already exists.  (The automorphism can be skewed by the intent of the model however –i.e. it can be processed to a different purpose.)

 We do not need yet another map, (e.g. Lehar, 2003), inside the brain to accomplish our purpose.  As Dreyfus notes: “… the human world is the result of this energy processing and the human world does not need another mechanical repetition of the same process in order to be perceived and understood.”  (Dreyfus, 1992, P.268)

(The whole of this is nonsense, of course, in the absolute form within which it is stated.  Does our feedback really preserve parallelism in the absolute form I have proposed?  It is valid within a context, but in an absolute ontological sense these are things we can never truly know.  A proper formulation must await the introduction of a completely new philosophical perspective -i.e. that of Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic Forms which I detailed in Chapter 4 of my book, (“Virtual Reality: Chapter 4”).  This supplies the rigorous, (and

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biologically necessary), scientific epistemological relativism required by the parameters of the problem.)

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GOD’S EYE? 

                                      Edelman to Freeman to Edelman                                       ----------------------------------------     = Epistemological Relativism!                                               (DIV Merleau-Ponty)Quoting Freeman:

“To explain how stimuli cause consciousness, we have to explain causality.  [But] We can’t trace linear causal chains from receptors after the first cortical synapse, so we use circular causality to explain neural pattern formation by self-organizing dynamics.  But an aspect [a key aspect] of intentional action is causality, which we extrapolate to material objects in the world.  Thus causality [as far as humans are concerned] is a property of mind, not matter.” (Freeman, 1999)

Where is the world outside? What is the world outside? Freeman describes his stance as “epistemological solipsism”. I understand his rationale, but let me suggest something else. As realists, we necessarily accept the actual existence of an external reality, (as does Freeman), but the fact is we can never know it. Instead of epistemological solipsism, (which is circular ontological language at

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best), let me suggest another characterization: i.e. ontic indeterminism. We must accept the existence of externality, but, as biological organisms, there is not even a possibility that we may ever know it. We can never attain a “God’s eye view”. There is a good side to this, however. If we accept the existence of other beings as well, (as I think both you and I do as intentional belief), then we are not limited to enclosing them hierarchically. We are not obliged to limit them to their “properties”. Who is old or young? Who is black or white? Who is crippled or sound? Who is beautiful or ugly?  What is the possibility and the “soul” of man?

I have made a point in another writing that I think is worth repeating here. I argued, (Iglowitz, 1995), that it is not important that the “operator” of such a complicated process knows what it is, (specifically), that he is doing It is important only that he does it well. It is crucially important that he does it diligently, however. It is imperative that he be locked into the loop of his virtual reality -that he “pay attention”. This introduces the necessity of an inbuilt realistic imperative -i.e. a mechanical guarantee of his dedication, (see Hume). The universal and dogmatic belief in the simple reality of our natural world is thus itself a consequence of my thesis -and the greatest obstacle to its acceptance!

Speaking of falsifyability, consider Dennett’s “Color Phi” from our new perspective. Here is a case where the mental content is falsifiable under the standard interpretation. And yet it exists -it has been confirmed repeatedly. What else follows? Phantom limbs, blindsight? Are these not clear examples, falsifying the standard paradigm, (i.e. representationalism), and easily incorporated into the converse picture of a virtual mind?

CONCLUSIONS:

This paper, by itself, does not answer the questions of consciousness.  I do claim it as a valid biological perspective and part of the solution however.  It is important at this early stage because it enables my next crucial hypothesis:  i.e. that of "implicit definition".  That hypothesis finally offers an explanation of the profoundest problems of mind, per se.  It finally elucidates Leibniz'  profound problem:  "How is it possible for the one to know the many?"  It answers it by finding that "the many" are, in fact, part of "the one".  The logic of brain implicitly defines our objects because they are operational objects.  This is how we are able to know them!  This is the ground of the "Cartesian Theatre" and finally lays the "homonculus" to rest.  (See "Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the Mind-Brain Problem" ).  But implicit definition as a solution to these problems makes sense only in an operational system, not an informational one.

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But still we are not at the end of our quest.  There still remain two more critical steps.  The first is an examination of what any kind of knowledge per se could possibly be.  Ernst Cassirer proposed that all knowledge is axiomatic.  Otherwise stated, it is all hypothesis and organization, (and, of course, commensurate with experience).  His brilliant conclusion was to realize that there could be many beginnings, many organizations, and that the comprehensiveness of a given theory did not preclude the comprehensiveness of another.  What it leads to is a conclusion of the indeterminacy of our absolute understanding of the world around us, (ontic indeterminacy).  But this is just what we would expect of the biological organisms we both understand ourselves to be.

This frustrating conclusion actually leads to the proper ground for an understanding of "mind" however.  That ground lies in the realization of our basic realist posture itself -our belief system.  It is what we, as realists, absolutely refuse to give up and which is innately incorporated in any theory we will countenance.   Putnam,  Lakoff and Edelman, (and Kant himself),  propose three basic tenets of scientific realism.  They are:

  (1) “A commitment to the existence of a real world external to humanbeings(2) a link between conceptual schemes and the world via real humanexperience; experience is not purely internal, but is constrained at everyinstant by the real world of which we are an inextricable part(3) a concept of truth that is based not only on internal coherence and“rational acceptability”, but, most important, on coherence with our constantreal experience(4) a commitment to the possibility of real human knowledge of theworld.”  (I differ with this postulate for obvious reasons.)

But I propose a further postulate, (elaborating on the innate sense of the three first above).  I propose  the actual ontic existence of an "interface" between the "real world" and "experience"  however–consistent with Freeman’s conclusions, for instance.  It is the substance of this “interface” that I propose is the substance of mind.  (Cassirer places strong limitations on our description of this interface however.)  My third hypothesis is to assume that this interface is structured in the same way as the brain and experience, (my first and second hypotheses).   All the other substantive problems are answered in my first and second hypotheses.  Thus it follows that we are, (this interface is), live, we are, (this interface is)  conscious, we, (as minds), do exist.

 

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REFERENCES :

Cassirer, E. (1923). Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of                              Relativity. (Bound as one: translation by William                              Curtis Swabey). Open Court.Cassirer, E. (1953). The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. (Translation by                    Ralph Manheim).  Yale University Press.Dreyfus, H. (1992). What Computers Still Can’t Do. MIT Press.Edelman, G. (1992). Bright Air, Brilliant Fire. BasicBooks.Freeman, W.J. (1994) Chaotic Oscillations and the Genesis of                              Meaning in Cerebral CortexFreeman, W.J. (1995). Societies of Brains . Lawrence Erlbaum                              Associates, Inc. Freeman, W. J. (1997) / Sarafatti, J.  Comments on “Constructing a                              Conscious Android”                               http://www.qedcorp.com/pcr/pcr/freeman1.html Freeman, W.J. (1999). Consciousness, Intentionality, and Causality.                              Journal of Consciousness Studies, Dec. 1999Gould, S. J. (1994). The Evolution of Life on the Earth.Hofstadter, D. (1979). Goedel, Escher, Bach . Vintage.Iglowitz, J. (1995). Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained.                              Online at www.foothill.net/~jerryiIglowitz, J. (1996). The Logical Problem of Consciousness . Presented                              to the UNESCO “Ontology II Congress”.                              Barcelona, Spain.Iglowitz, J. (2001). Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the                              Mind-Brain Problem  (Implicit Definition, Virtual                              Reality and the Mind) Online at                              www.foothill.net/~jerryiLakoff, George (1987). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things.                               University of Chicago PressLehar, Steven (2003) Gestalt Isomorphism and the Primacy of Subjective                             Conscious Experience: A Gestalt Bubble Model                             Behavioral and Brain Sciences. (Paper in Process)Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1987). The Tree of Knowledge. Shambala Press.Minsky, M. (1985). The Society of Mind. Touchstone.Smart, H. (1949). Cassirer’s Theory of Mathematical Concepts in The

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                   Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer , Tudor Publishing.  ENDNOTES:1. See Iglowitz, 19952. See Iglowitz, “Consciousness, a Simpler Approach…”, 2001 and Iglowitz, 19953. See Iglowitz, “Consciousness, a Simpler Approach…”, 2001 for the logical problem, and Iglowitz, 1995, Chapters 3 & 4 for the epistemological problem and a summary of Cassirer’s thesis.4. Maturana and Varela, 19875. Webster’s defines “calculus”: “(math) a method of calculation, any process of reasoning by use of symbols”. I am using it here in contradistinction to “the calculus”, i.e. differential and integral calculus.6. a classroom is a kind of training seminar after all!7. Is this not the usual case between conflicting theories and perspectives?8. Dennett’s term “heterophenomenological” -i.e. with neutral ontological import -is apt here.9. Edelman, 1992, pps. 236-237, his emphasis.10. Iglowitz, 1995, especially Chapter 411. together: the possible conceptual contexts12. c.f. the arguments of Chapters Two and Four for a detailed rationale13. c.f. Iglowitz, 1995: “Afterward: Lakoff/Edelman” for a discussion of mathematical “ideals” which bears on this discussion.14. this relates to the issues of “hierarchy” which I will discuss shortly15. Their designers are the “lecturers”, and the instruments they design are the “objects” of their schematic models16. A Couple of other lesser but still useful Schematic Models : A “war room”, (a high-tech military command center resembling a computer game), is another viable, though primitive, example of a schematic usage. It is specifically a schematic model, expressly designed for maximized response. The all-weather landing display in a jetliner supplies yet another example.17. Cf Lakoff, 1987. Also see Iglowitz, 1995, “Afterward: Lakoff, Edelman…”18. Edelman, 199219. The multiple, topological maps in the cortex20. in the brain’s spatial maps21. See Maturana, 1987 and Edelman, 199222  My function, however, is to introduce a mechanics –which I have done.  Merleau-Ponty is not “my philosopher”, but the concept seems pregnant.23  This is, at best, a crude metaphor –but it crystallizes the idea nicely.  A more apt characterization would be “topological / non-topological” converters.24. cf Dennett, Dreyfus on the “large database problem”

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25. This is typically the case. A project manager, for instance, must deal with all, (and often conflicting), aspects of his task -from actual operation to acquisition, to personnel problems, to assuring that there are meals and functional bathrooms! Any one of these factors, (or some combination of them), -even the most trivial- could cause failure of his project. A more poignant example might involve a U.N. military commander in Bosnia. He would necessarily need to correlate many conflicting imperatives -from the geopolitical to the humanitarian to the military to the purely mundane! Or, in a metaphor on the earlier discussion, he might need to take a “Marxist” perspective for one aspect of his task, and a “royalist” perspective for another!26.  Simple adequacy is quite distinct from information or parallelism however.27. See Iglowitz, 1995: Lakoff/Edelman appendix for a discussion of abstraction and hierarchy28. See Birkhoff & Mac Lane, 1955, p.350, discussion of the “duality principle” which vindicates this move. More simply put, and using Edelman’s vision, it is a question of which end of the “global mapping” we look from!29. The “anthropic principle” is clearly self-serving and tautological.30. cf Hofstadter, 1979. His is a very nice metaphor for picturing metacellular existence.31. Freeman has objected to my characterization of the human brain as an “organ of response”.  I understand his objection, as it seems to imply acceptance of “stimulus-response” causality” –which is clearly not my intention.  At this level of discussion, I think the characterization is warranted however.  See Iglowitz 1995, Chapter 4 for a full and better treatment of this issue, and the Appendix to this article for a rationale.32. Maturana and Varela, 198733. See Dreyfus on the “large database problem”. Also see Appendix A of Iglowitz, 1995 for a “combinatory” counterargument.

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Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the Mind-Brain Problem, (Implicit Definition, Virtual Reality and the Mind)

Jerome Iglowitz

(Note: references are to endnotes.) 

ABSTRACT (SHORT)

No explicit model of consciousness has ever been presented. This paper defines the beginnings of such a model, (which is my second hypothesis towards a solution of the mind-brain problem), paralleling mathematicians' "implicit definition" for their own axiom systems as compounded with virtual reality. Dennett's "color phi" argument suggests the necessary extension to fit real minds. I conclude that the mind is wholly intentional and virtual.  It is the virtual model implicitly defined by the axioms of primitive brain process.

EXTENDED ABSTRACT: I begin by stating what I believe is obvious: that no explicit model of consciousness exists.  It is obvious because of the wide and fundamental disagreement in even the basic definitions of the problem .  There is in all proposed solutions, moreover, a fundamental difference of sense with the Darwinian model that modern science is obliged to accept.  Material organisms really have no possibility of knowledge, they are involved, rather, in strategies that work!  Contemporary science thinks it circumvents this problem by incorporating a mechanistic internal model of externality.  But it doesn’t really work, does it?

I maintain that a prototype model already exists however.  It exists in the axiom systems of modern algebra when considered under the perspective of Hilbert's "implicit definition" and I begin by exhibiting such an example.  Even such simple systems exhibit properties crucial to the dilemma at hand.  In their own mathematical world, mathematicians have already supplied answers to problems seemingly unsolvable in the world of neuroscience.  They have supplied answers to the problems of autonomous meaning, wholeness and unity.

Next I begin to expand that prototype model towards the fulfillment of an explicit model of actual mind itself.  I begin with a restatement of Dennett's "color phi" argument which, I maintain, contains the necessary clues for an

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expansion of the model I initially propose.  I measure Dennett's dilemma against Einstein's famous "train” thought experiment, and then against Helmholtz's and Cassirer's conclusions on the nature of the actual mental percept, ("the stereometric object"), and find that Cassirer opens an alternative to Dennett's nihilistic conclusions.

Cassirer argued that even a simple mental percept contains elements not derivable from sensory data.  It contains autonomous integrating elements which are supplied "as a new form of consciousness" by the organism itself.  These elements are clearly intentional, (i.e. internal and not derivational or informational), aspects of the percept and provide the first wedge against the percept as the solely representative entity Dennett conceives it to be.  I argue beyond Cassirer, however, that the percept is wholly intentional -the product of implicit definition and present a brief sketch of my projected model of mind.  I conclude that mind is entirely intentional and virtual.  It is an organizational and optimizing metaphor of complex metacellular response.  My conclusion allows mind-as-we-ordinarily-conceive-it to exist in a physical world for the first time.

I conclude with a brief survey of the existing models of brain function as they relate to my ideas.  I give a special place to Walter Freeman's which I believe is the most pertinent to my own ideas and the most promising.   

1. THE NEED FOR AN EXPLICIT MODELThere are several ways to present any given idea. For a proposed solution to the mind-brain problem, this is important. The approach from biology {1 } , (See "Mind, the Argument from Evolutionary Biology" ), is the only logically self-contained one I think. It must begin from a solid biological perspective to credibly propose any viable or original solution to the problem of consciousness. That is not easy reading however. There is another route that could be taken. It is not logically autonomous, but it provides an easier access to the ideas I would like to present here. It begins with an attack on the difficulties of "consciousness" per se.

Nowhere in all the profound and litigious debate on the mind-brain problem can I find any concrete model of consciousness even suggested. Consciousness is identified, variously, with meaning, linguistic function, computation, brain process... Demands like "unity" and "understanding" are either vaguely conceptualized, disputed in principle, or reduced to distributed mechanical or logical process and eliminated. Nowhere are the tenets of the "mental side" of dualism, (e.g. wholeness, unity, knowing, meaning, non-extension, non-

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spatiality…), more than simply posited, (or denied), -and quite vaguely at that. "Emergence", to this date, has made no concrete suggestion -other than, (paraphrasing): "whatever neuroscience eventually concludes about brain function is what it is!  Consciousness emerges from that!" {2} What is needed is some explicit model of consciousness within which the dialogue might be visualized.

I would like to propose such a model here,{3} and then examine how well it meets our desires for a description of consciousness. If it is plausible, then I think we will have made a positive advance. The initial model I will propose is an old one and abstract. It is, moreover, flawed in reputation and insufficient as it stands. Nonetheless, I think it provides an indication as to where we would like to go and the beginnings of a viable language in which to envision our goal. The model, drawn from mathematics, is "implicit definition".

1.1 IMPLICIT DEFINITION: THE CONCEPT

"Implicit Definition" is a mathematical conception first enunciated by David Hilbert {4} at the turn of the last century in his pioneering book, "Foundations of Geometry". {5} The book is a respected and recognized milestone in the history of mathematics. In it he proposed a new axiomatic foundation for Euclidean geometry, but his approach was subsequently extended across a wide range of mathematics. The core of the conception however, and its novelty lies in his methodology.

Hilbert's axioms for Euclidean geometry, (as usual), referred to certain objects: "points", "lines" and "planes" and to relations between them: "to belong to", "between", and "congruent to". His radical innovation however and the core of his conception lay in the fact that he quite purposefully never specified, (and never had to specify), what "point", "line" and "plane" were to be. Nor did he ever specify the meanings of the relations between them. He did not require a specification of properties! The sole significance and exclusive consequence of his "objects", (i.e. the undefined terms: "point", "line", "between", etc.), was to lie entirely in their logical operationality as expressed in the axioms which related them. Thus they were said to be "implicitly defined" by those axioms. A "point" or a "line", for instance, is exactly that which the axiom system within which it is specified determines that it is -i.e. it is neither reductively nor referentially defined.  (Thus, paraphrasing Hilbert, we might just as well substitute "cigar" for "point" and "Xanadu" for "line", let us say, and all theorems would still remain provable.) They are totally "blind" posits, shaped only by the rules of connection. Hilbert's was a radical revolution in the history of thought. The surprising thing is that it worked- this "shaping" was enough! It worked in geometry and it worked subsequently across the whole field of

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Modern Algebra. The important thing for our problem is the new power and dimension it opens for logic. It exposes a new possibility in our conception of "objects"- i.e. of thingsthemselves! It is a possibility necessary for any viable conception of "mind".

Moritz Schlick, (physicist/philosopher and founder of the famous "Vienna Circle"), {7} grasped the deep implications of Hilbert's innovation:

"[Hilbert's] revolution lay in the stipulation that the basic or primitive concepts are to be defined just by the fact that they satisfy the axioms.... [They] " acquire meaning only by virtue of the axiom system, and possess only the content that it bestows upon them. They stand for entities whose whole being is to be bearers of the relations laid down by the system.", (my emphasis). {8}

It is difficult to bring this conception to life for one who has never plowed these fields. (See 1.2 for an overview and the first prototype model.) These "things", ("entities"), actually do all the things we need them to do. They develop the necessary complexity to stand in place of "real objects" and they take on a very "live" character. They do all the things that real mathematical objects do, ("up to isomorphism"), and, short of metaphysics, they can supplant them. 1.2 A FIRST (PROTOTYPE) MODEL: THE INTEGRAL DOMAIN OF MODERN ALGEBRA

Consider a typical application of Hilbert's ideas: the "Integral Domain" of Modern Algebra, (like the ordinary whole numbers of arithmetic). Axiomatization begins with the rawest assumption of a set of "elements", (its "domain"), meant to obey a small set of operative rules, (axioms -e.g. the laws of Closure, Uniqueness, the Commutative and Distributive laws). The objects of its domain and "existence" terms generally are assumed, (as Wilder points out) only "presumptive[ly]" and "permissive[ly]" however. They are assumed, (conditionally only), solely to legitimize our employing the rules. We are told nothing about them in an objective sense.

The only objects posited explicitly and definitionally are the identity elements '0' and '1', the additive and multiplicative identity objects respectively, (and their conditionally supplied additive inverses). But these identity objects are presumptive and permissive as well. They are wholly specified as simply the "identity elements" under these operations and no more - they are not the real (?) 0 and 1 or any other real objects, (nor are they necessarily distinct). No referential properties other than these simple internal and operational ones can be derived from the fact. Indeed, they are preferentially named otherwise -"e",

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for instance or placed in quotes by mathematicians to divorce them from real experience. The "addition" and "multiplication" operations, ('$' and '#' as perfectly good designations for instance), are conceived as totally blind operations as well.

What is conceptually significant about the mathematical Integral Domain is that there are two distinct operations, connected by the distributive law, not that they are some special operations. What is conceptually important about it is that the result, ungrounded in a refinement of properties, is not logically sterile.

What are we actually given about the "e" object, ("1", for instance, or "0")? What properties are assumed? Only that under the unspecified operations '#", ("multiplication"), or "$", ("addition"), the result of combining any other objects with them, (e.g. [ e # x, or "0" $ y], x,y any members of the domain), that the result is again x or y respectively.

x # e = x, y $ "0" = y

This is the absolute whole of their definition and it is totally operational. The "equality" relation, ("="), tying all this together is unqualified and axiomatized as well, (as it is in Modern Algebra generally). It is taken specifically as an "equivalence relation", (under the rules/axioms of reflection, symmetry and transitivity), but it is taken as the most basic (and equally blind) equivalence term under which all other equivalence relations, (" "), are defined. It is not necessary to assume, (a priori), for instance, that "4" and "3 + 1" are "names" for, (i.e. denote), the same object, only that they are operationally equivalent under this most basic equivalence relation of "equality", (i.e. that "4" = "3 + 1").

We derive the other elements of the domain operationally as well, (under the additional conditional assumption that '1' = / = '0'.). Thus '1' + '1' = '2', for instance, and '2' + '1' = '3', etc. Another element, "-1" also "exists" in the same way as the "0" and the "1" as the additive inverse of the "1" element, (under the conditional "existence" axiom of the additive inverse: if x, then -x), and 'negatives' of the others as well. Continuing this (conditional) process, solely in terms of the axiomatic laws, (operationally), we can build the whole of an integral domain and it relates to the real integers "up to isomorphism". The objects of this integral domain do the same things, the truths about them are the same as for the "real integers", and they can substitute for them -up to isomorphism!

The relevant point of all this is that the whole process of specification -i.e. the whole of the definitional content of the elements, (objects), of this integral domain is achieved solely in terms of the blind operations specified in the axioms acting on property-indiscernible, equally blind, objects, and not by set

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theoretic refinements on primitive, (atomic), properties of these elements. Nowhere in this axiomatic system are the primitive operations identified with real integer operations, (or any other "real" operations), nor are they dependent upon them. The case is the same for the elements/objects of the system. Nowhere are they dependent upon any "real" objects, so no real properties may be legitimately identified with them. This is, as Schlick says, a genuine "Copernican revolution", (after Kant's terminology), in the history of mathematics. More, it is a new kind of logic, distinct from the logic of Aristotle which is wholly dependent on set theoretic refinement of original properties of its objects.

Hilbert's conception results in a novel and very different kind of "object", one which is wholly constituted as an expression of the logical relations of the axioms. It is a wholly logical object and it is "tangible" -i.e. non-vacuous! Repeating Schick’s insight:

"The revolution lay in the stipulation that the basic or primitive concepts are to be defined just by the fact that they satisfy the axioms." [They] "acquire meaning only by virtue of the axiom system, and possess only the content that it bestows upon them . They stand for entities whose whole being is to be bearers of the relations laid down by the system.", (Schlick, 1974, my emphasis)

Beyond the confines of mathematics, this is a genuine and profound "Copernican Revolution" in logic itself. Here relation defines entity, not the converse. This entity as entity is a function of (logical) process. Implicit definition does not define its objects within the dualistic and oppositional context implicit in the foundations of classical Aristotelian logic. It does not define objects within the classical schema of presentation / [divided by] attention = abstraction of properties. It resolves them instead by internal resolution of its fundamental operations. These are internal, logical and autonomous objects of the system as a whole only. Implicit Definition therein supplies the first clue to a logical possibility for sentiency. It supplies the first logical possibility for the hardest problem of sentiency as the latter is ordinarily conceived: the "many-in-the-one", (Leibniz), and it supplies a crucial clue to the problem of how a biological system, an operational, mechanical system of response, could "know" anything at all. I will propose that such a biological system can know its objects because they are solely operational objects of the selfsame system itself. I will propose they are the implicitly defined objects of modular "axioms" of response. This is the prototype model I propose.  

“Implicit Definition" in Hilbert's sense doesn't mean "innately points to some 595

specific thing", it means "generates from within".  Thus it presents the first viable keyway to the deepest aspects of the mind and a solution of its deepest dilemmas -i.e. how can we know anything at all? {8’}Its internally generated objects "acquire meaning…and possess … the content …it bestows on them". I propose that the “objects” of the mind are specifically the implicitly defined operational objects of the brain. They are metaphors of response.  But they are implicitly defined in a constitutive logic not requiring reference, obviating the necessity of an observer and a homunculus. Implicit Definition supplies the first possibility, consistent with science, for the existence of "mind" in our natural sense of the word, and its first primordial model. {8’’}

1.3 KNOWING, MEANING

Follow me just a little further please.  Implicit definition is particularly interesting in the way it would know its entities moreover - if "knowing" could indeed be said to be relevant to this system. It would be the system as a whole which would know them. This is because they are, in fact, solely objects of the system as a whole only. It is only as such that they exist at all. "Meaning" and "understanding" would stand likewise. "[They] acquire meaning only by virtue of the axiom system, and possess only the content that it bestows upon them".

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This system, moreover, is non-spatial and non-extensive. Its "substance" is a logical and unified substance from the very bottom.

Granting the supposition just an instant longer, its entities would not be known in a "planar" or "dimensional" sense however. They would not be "seen from above" or as presented to the system, (i.e. they would not be known in reference). They would be known, instead, logically and internally as part of a viable and autonomous "constitutive logic", (using the term in its exact Kantian sense)! They would manifest within it.

1.4 A VIRTUAL MODEL:

Does this have promise as the beginnings of a model of consciousness then? Could it be considered in any sense as the beginnings of an explicit model? Yes, I think it could if we considered such a system as a virtual model -as a virtual reality! Its "entities" would then become genuine, (i.e. "tactile"), objects existing within a virtual world. They would become tangible !

But existing examples of virtual realities, (games and instruments), specifically input into our sensory organs you will understandably object. The "realities" they embody still imply a "me", a "seer" to make them tangible and known. This particular virtual model makes sense for our purposes when we reconceive it, (and its objects), in a special way -not as something to be seen , but rather, as the seer itself -i.e. as the mind itself.  It makes sense when we consider it not as some tool we use in mental conception, but rather as the "we" itself, the constitutive model implicitly defined by the operative process of the brain. If this were consciousness, then our objects would in fact be known to the whole. The problem of "the one and the many" would be solved. The antinomies of the homunculus and the Cartesian Theater would disappear. It does not require yet another seer; it is itself the Cartesian Theater. Perceptual objects, (and conceptual objects), would no longer be presented to another seer, they would be implicitly defined as part of  the seer and known . They would not be known in reference!

Imagine yourself and the objects of your mind as a product of implicit definition. Imagine them as the implicitly defined, operational artifacts of the axioms of your brain. (The self-reference dilemma is addressed specifically in the Appendix of “Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology”.)  Those axioms, I propose, are the modular, macroscopic physical components of brain physiology. I propose that those "axioms" are the modular units of response. They implicitly and virtually define a world and a mind.

This is the case I suggest as a prototype model for the consideration of mind and I think it fits many of our intuitive ideas of what a mind actually is. It supplies

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the beginnings of an answer to the issues of wholeness, unity, knowing, meaning, non-extension, non-spatiality. It is also biologically cogent, as it supplies the beginnings of a non-eliminative answer to the problem of how a biological organism, considered as a system of physical process, {9} could internally embody knowing or meaning at all. The rules of this system, (its "axioms"), {10} are, I argue, the adaptive and pragmatic rules of evolutionary survival. These are the operative rules of the brain. (They needn't be simple however.)

The gross anatomy of the brain seems to argue for such a modular, (axiomatic), approach. {11} The perplexing simplicity of the division of the brain into definite gross anatomical substructures is corroborative. If the brain were "wired" randomly and incrementally on a "breadboard", {12} (as we would expect if it were developed in response to incrementally acquired evolutionary information), we would expect an amorphous clutter. Instead, we see very definite gross structure.

Previously there was no conceptual model matching the requirements for a mind at all. A virtual model logically paralleling axiomatic mathematics supplies the first prototype conceptual model fitting the fundamental requirements. I admit that this model is nowhere near specific enough as it stands and presents many further problems. I do think it is a long advance on the present situation however -i.e. of no cogent conceptual model at all. For the first time it gives us a way to conceive an answer to the problem of how a brain, (a system of pure biological process), could "know" anything . It supplies clues to "meaning" and to "objects". It resolves the "homunculus" and the "Cartesian Theater" and, (perhaps most importantly), the model is logically and biologically autonomous.

The problems raised by this hypothesis are, of course, enormous and varied. The Churchlands, for example, have raised reasonable questions about the actual scale of the purported "unity" of consciousness. These are undoubtedly legitimate objections, (and not particularly new), {13} but I do not think they answer the need for some minimal core of unity. There are many other questions as well, but they are not within the scope of this particular writing. {14} The real problems I should be discussing here are those dealing with the actual viability and possible extensions of the proposed model itself. One of the key issues is that which I will dub the "static problem". It is a technical issue and important.

1.5 THE "STATIC PROBLEM"

The axiom systems of mathematics tend to create uniform, "static" fields of objects: the integers, for instance, or the real numbers. True, there are special, unique objects within them, pi, or e, or 1 for instance, but these are not promising for the kind of usage we will need to see for viable mental objects. To

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this point, the model I have proposed stands more in the sense of a Platonic "form", and lacks the viability of Aristotle's conjunction of "form and matter" for the existence of actual, special objects. Let me try to suggest the beginnings of a solution for the existence of such objects within such a system. Let me try to suggest a rationale for actual perceptual objects!

Daniel Dennett, (though he is a confirmed anti-mentalist), has provided an inspiration. It derives from his treatment of the "color phi" phenomenon, -though his conclusion must be stood on its head. I suggest that the answer to the "static problem" and the ground of viable perceptual objects lies in recognizing intentionality as a primary component of brain process. {15} It is a necessary "axiom". {16}

2. THE COLOR PHI: TOWARDS THE NECESSARY EXTENSION OF THE MODEL

2.1 DENNETT ON THE COLOR PHI

"The color phi" names an actual experiment wherein two spots of light are projected in succession, (at different locations), on a darkened screen for 150 msec intervals with a 50 msec interval between them, (citing Dennett). The first spot is of a different color, (red, say), than the second, (green). Just as in the case of motion pictures, (the "phi phenomenon"), subjects report seeing the continuous motion of a single spot, but interestingly, they report that it changes color, (from red to green), midway between the two termini! { 1 7} Dennett bases a very interesting, (and, I feel a very important), argument against the very possibility of a "Cartesian Theater" -against a unity, (and "figment" = substance), of consciousness on this well documented and reproducible experiment. Dennett's argument, in brief, is this:

Mental states or a "Cartesian Theater", if they exist, are subject to the laws of causality, of time precedence. For one event to affect another, it must occur before it. Let me, for discussion's sake, label the events described. Let E1 be the ("heterophenomenological" {18} ), perception, (hereinafter to be called by me "h-perception"), of the first, (red), spot. Let E2 be the h-perception of the red-changing-to-green midpoint, and let E3 be the h-perception of the final green spot.

Dennett argues, based on the principle of causality, that E2 cannot occur until after E3. Since there were only two actual, (physical), events, (the first and second projected spots), he argues that the h-perceived midpoint, (the "mental event", i.e. red-changing-to-green), cannot occur until after the reception of the second actual event, (green projection), as it was that which provided the very sensory data necessary to the h-perception of change. Other than a (mystical)

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hypothesis of "projection backward in time", there remain for Dennett just two possibilities for an internal, "Cartesian Theater" consistent with the experiment: the "Stalinesque" and the "Orwellian" hypotheses.

The first involves the creation of a "show trial" staged by a subterranean "central committee", (after the fact of both real events, of course, and involving a "delay loop"), wherein the complete, (and partially fabricated), sequence, (red ->red-changing-to-green -> green), is "projected", (i.e. achieves sentiency). Under this hypothesis, the whole of our sentiency, (our consciousness), occurs "after the fact". The second possibility, the "Orwellian" hypothesis, is that the actual events are received by our sentient faculty as is , but that our memory then rewrites history, (just as the thought police of Orwell's "1984" did), so that we remember not two disjoint and separate events, but the connected, and pragmatically more probable sequence red -> red-changing-to-green -> green.

Dennett argues that ultimately neither theory is decidable -that either is consistent with whatever level and kind of experimental detail science may ultimately supply, and that, therefore, the only pragmatic distinction between them is purely linguistic, and therefore trivial. He argues that there is no "great divide", no actual moment, (nor existence), of sentiency, but only the underlying brain process, (which all theories must countenance), itself. Based on the "spatial and temporal smearing of the observer's point of view", he expounds his thesis of "multiple drafts" wherein there is no "theater", only brain process -and its various "speakings", (drafts).

And yet the observer himself has absolutely no problem with these events! His perspective is very clear: E1 E2 > E3. It is our interpretation (and rationale), for this sequence that causes the problem.

I think Dennett has a very strong argument, but I want to refocus it. Nondecidability is all very well and good, but it is a much weaker line than the one he started out with- on the possibility of synchronization ! In a very real sense, I feel it is very similar in intent and consequence to Einstein's famous "train argument" against simultaneity.

2.2 DENNETT AND EINSTEIN: ON SYNCHRONY

Consider, (with Einstein), an imaginary train moving (very fast {19} ) down a track, with an observer, (TO), standing midway on top of the moving train and observing two (hypothetically instantaneous) flashbulbs going off at either end of the train. The train goes by another (stationary) observer, (SO), standing (hypothetically infinitely close) by the track as the bulbs go off. Suppose that the moving observer, (TO), reports both flashes as simultaneous. He argues that since both photon pulses reach him simultaneously, (simultaneity is granted for

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all frames on the local, infinitesimal scale, and thus agreed on (?) by both observers who are assumed infinitely close -i.e. side by side), that therefore the pulse from the rear of the train, having to "catch" him, must have left its source sooner than the pulse from the front which added his velocity to its own and so must have left later. Relative to SO, (stationary observer), however, the two sources travel the same distance to a stationary target, (himself). Since TO and SO are momentarily adjacent to each other, (i.e. within a local frame), they should be able to agree that the two pulses arrive there simultaneously. What they cannot agree on, however, (in that instance), is whether the events, (the flashes), occurred simultaneously - nor that the other could have thought, (i.e. could have observed), them so! Time, in Dennett's words, is "smeared"! {20} (We could, of course and significantly, {21} vary the parameters to make either event "earlier" and the other "later".)

Just as Einstein's two observers, near the limits of physical possibility, cannot agree whether the two lights were simultaneously flashed at the ends of the train or not, (i.e. cannot establish a common temporal frame of reference), nor, (given that situation), that the other could observe them locally as such, neither, given Dennett's pointed argument, can we establish a common temporal frame of reference for "the world" and "the mind" at the limits of cognition. For macroscopic science, these limits are at the scale of the speed of light. For atomic physics, they are at the scale of Planck's constant. For the brain, I suggest, they are at the scale of minimal biological response times , i.e. in the 100 msec. range.

I agree with Dennett that "the color phi" identifies a legitimate and critical aspect of the mind-body problem. The spatial and temporal "smearing" of the percept and the non-explicit reference of qualia that he demonstrates forces a profound extension to our traditional conception of the "theater". But his dimensional "smearing" actually fits very well {22} with the model I am proposing. I submit that it is more plausible in terms of the "focus" and "function" of an operational object than in terms of his "multiple drafts", "demons" and "memes" in the "real world". His objections to the ordinary "Cartesian Theater" are admittedly valid, -but so were those of Helmholtz and Cassirer long before him:

2.3 HELMHOLTZ AND CASSIRER ON DENNETT'S DILEMMA"If we conceive the different perceptual images, which we

receive from one and the same 'object' according to our distance from it and according to changing illumination, as comprehended in a series of perceptual images, then from the standpoint of immediate psychological experience, no property can be indicated

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at first by which any of these varying images should have preeminence over any other." {23}

It is only the totality of these data of perception that constitutes what we call empirical knowledge of the object; "and in this totality no single element is absolutely superfluous." No one of the successive perspective aspects can claim to be the only valid, absolute expression of the 'object' itself; "rather all the cognitive value of any particular perception belongs to it only in connection with other contents, with which it combines into an empirical whole."

"...In this sense, the presentation of the stereometric form plays 'the role of a concept '", (my emphasis), "'compounded from a great series of sense perceptions, through the living presentation of the law, according to which the perspective images follow each other. This ordering by a concept means, however, that the various elements do not lie alongside of each other like the parts of an aggregate, but that we estimate each of them according to its systematic significance...."

Consider the strong consequences of these observations however. Our actual (physical) percept is not only constructed from a temporal series of sense impressions, but from lateral ones as well. It is specifically named as a "stereometric " image -from two eyes! So must it be constructed from the rest of our perceptual input as well -from audible, olfactory, and tactile impressions. Surely the multiple cortical maps are pertinent as well.

2.4 WHAT CASSIRER MEANT BY SAYING THAT THE PERCEPT PLAYS THE ROLE OF "A CONCEPT" HOWEVER

"The cognitive value of any percept belongs to it only in connection with the other contents, with which it combines into an empirical whole." "In this sense the presentation of the stereometric form", [the percept], " plays the role of a concept". [my emphasis]

The meaning of this statement, from Cassirer, is important. Cassirer spent much of his life in a debate on the actual constitution of the technical logical "Concept" {23'} whose traditional Aristotelian interpretation he strongly disputed. His original reformulation of the formal logical Concept must be considered for an understanding of his argument here. Consider the force of his examples:

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When we form the concept of metal …we cannot indeed ascribe to the abstract object that comes into being the particular color of gold, or the particular luster of silver, or the weight of copper, or the density of lead; however, it would be no less inadmissible if we simply attempted to deny all these particular determinations of it." (The latter would be the classical interpretation -my emphasis.)

It would not suffice to characterize the concept "metal", he argues "that it is neither red nor yellow, neither of this or that specific weight, neither of this or that hardness or resisting power". But it is necessary to add "that it is colored in some way in every case, that it is of some degree of hardness, density and luster." Nor could we entertain the general concept of "animal", "if we abandoned in it all thought of the aspects of procreation, of movement and of respiration, because there is no [one] form of procreation, of breathing, etc., which can be pointed out as common", (my emphasis), "to all animals." {24} 2.5 CASSIRER'S ALTERNATIVE: "THE FUNCTIONAL CONCEPT OF MATHEMATICS"

He proposed instead a reformulation of the logical Concept itself as the "Functional Concept of Mathematics" extending the concept-making process of mathematics to logic generally. Here the special cases are not lost to abstraction , but rather are retained in functional form in the generalization to a genus. A simple mathematical example is the general equation of the straight line: y = mx + b. As m and b range through real values, it fully embodies all the straight lines in the plane. The equation fully embodies and can reconstruct the whole of its domain. This is not an abstractive definition.  It is the same for the generalized equation of the ellipse: p(x-a) 2 + q(y-b) 2 = r .  Again the whole, ( all ellipses including the circle), are totally embodied, (and recoverable), in a functional concept. But this, after all, is now the usual method of generalization, (genus-making), in mathematics. These are not abstractive, (i.e. via logical abstraction), concepts. Cassirer argues convincingly moreover that this  embodies the actual method and working "Concept" of modern science generally since, at least, Isaac Newton.

Cassirer reformulates the logical "Concept" instead as a function. "Metal", for instance, is necessarily colored in some way", [x], in every case, it is of some degree [y], "of hardness, density", [z], "luster", [w]. He reformulates the formal Concept as a functional rule , f(x,y,z,...), (alternatively a multi-dimensional surface), which organizes and fully embodies the totality of its extension. The concept is "the form of a series". That "series" may be ordered by radically variant principles however: "according to equality", (which is the special case of the "generic Aristotelian concept"), "or inequality, number and magnitude,

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spatial and temporal relations, or causal dependence" {25} -so long as the principle is definite and consistent.

   But, (and this is the crucial point),  if the concept is indeed functional, it follows  that the "Concept" cannot be the mere abstraction of its extension. It is an independent and original contribution instead, logically distinct from what it orders!

"That which binds the elements of [a] series a, b, c, ... together is not itself a new element, that was factually blended with them, but it is the rule of progression, which remains the same, no matter in which member it is represented. The function F(a,b), F(b,c),..., which determines the sort of dependence between the successive members, is obviously not to be pointed out as itself a member of the series, which exists and develops according to it." {26}

2.6 CASSIRER'S CRUCIAL RESULT FOR COGNITION This is a profound result for cognitive science.  Helmholtz and Cassirer have driven a wedge between "information" and the percept itself! If the percept indeed "plays the role of a concept", then that percept is now constructed, not deduced. It is neither wholly an abstraction nor a representation of "information".  It is intentional. The distinction between the percept, ("playing the role of a concept"), and that which it "orders" is "a new expression of the characteristic contrast between the member of the series and the form of the series".

This is the "systematic significance", (the "playing the role of a concept"), he purports with Helmholtz as necessary for "the presentation of the stereometric form" and " empirical knowledge of the object" -i.e. it is a rule of construction . But that rule is not (deductively) derived, ( as "F(a,b)" ), from the contents themselves. It is a new and original content - "a new form of consciousness" at work. (The source of this contribution, I strongly suggest, is evolution {27} , not logic!) I urge, extending Cassirer's insight, that the stereometric form itself, the percept itself, {28} is wholly a function. Following Hertz and Cassirer, we do not perceive even our simple perceptual objects in any direct sense. We construct them. (See also Freeman, 1994, {28'})  I will argue shortly that this "new form of consciousness" is the only form of consciousness!

If we take the mind as specifically a "predictive" and "intentional" {29} model, (surely biologically cogent and which extension I will suggest shortly), rather than a static and "representative" one {30} , then the temporal and spatial "smearing" of the percept do not have the implications against the "theater" per se that Dennett attributes to them. I argue that simple percepts themselves, (e.g.

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even the very E1 and E3 themselves), are conceptual, (albeit specialized, invariant and constitutive), and therefore, following Cassirer, functional. They are entities of order and process -and they are "smeared". But it is the ordinary nature of functions to be smeared! What Dennett explains by "multiple drafts", (and the "demonic" process he envisions beneath them), I explain by "focus". We focus the percept, (via implicit definition) according to operational need.

2.7 THE FACTS OF PHI

The fact is that the midpoint E2 is actually experienced in repeated experimental confirmations! It does have actual conscious existence, (assuming you believe there is such a consciousness in the first place)! The conscious existence of E2 is clearly and specifically intentional however-whatever else could it be? Thereby it provides a crucial clue to viable mental objects in general -to include the very E1 and E3 themselves! I suggest that all of our mental objects - all our actual mental objects are intentionally constituted! I suggest that the solution to the "static problem" lies in adding axioms of intentionality to the axioms of ordinary process.

The original "phi phenomenon", (the illusion of motion in a motion picture), is even more significant to the problem of consciousness than the "color phi" phenomenon however. The frank credibility and intentional depth, (i.e. the realism), of a series of oversized, rapidly sequenced still pictures, (a movie), is quite suggestive. Its potential for an uncanny parallelism with our ordinary experience suggests that the latter, (i.e. ordinary experience itself), is itself a predictive and integrative phenomenon grounded in an intentional model in precisely the same manner as I propose the "color phi" to be.

The cognitive effect of motion pictures is clearly intentional, as are the objects within them. To the extent that they are not merely patterns on a screen, their objects come alive. We believe them. We agree or disagree with them. We like them or hate them. They give us "experience" which we did not have previously and provide interpretations of future events! Their objects are clearly intentional objects however, in just the same sense as the color phi objects. They are just the interposition of a series of oversized, rapidly sequenced still pictures!

3. AN EXTENSION OF THE MODEL: A BRIEF SKETCH

Let me try to flesh out this model briefly. Let me try to sketch the design of real minds! Follow me in a thought experiment! Keeping your eyes fixed to the front, you perceive this paper in front of you, (in your conscious perceptual model), the wall behind it, and, perhaps, the pictures of your family. There may be pens and pencils, books. You may hear music from the stereo next to you, (and

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perhaps still in peripheral vision). There may be a window, and the lights of the neighbor's house beyond it. But there is no wall behind you!

There is no car in the driveway outside of your house -indeed, there is no "house" at all. There is no city, no taxes, no friends. The sun does not exist in this model. There is no government, no "universe", -no tomorrow! The (purely?) perceptual model is incomplete as a model of "reality" and it is, (Naturally!), inadequate even to keep you alive. There is something else necessary for completeness of any model of your sentiency, i.e. a new perspective on it. It is an intentional aspect. It is necessary to supply the object behind your back and the reality "over the hill"! It supplies the connection to "tomorrow" and "yesterday". It supplies "causality". It is necessary for the completeness of a model of "the world". {31}

It is necessary, (specifically following Dennett!), even for the individual "objects" of perception itself, (E1 and E3 for instance {32} ). This model, I suggest, is where E2, (the object of Dennett's perplexity), lives. It cohabits there very comfortably with E1 and E3 which, I argue, are also predictive and intentional objects. There is a seamless integration, (above the scale of 100 ms, let us say), of what we normally think of as our pure percepts and the intentional fabric within which they are woven. {33} This model, I propose, is the actual "home" of mind, and the legitimate purview of a truly scientific psychiatry.

I propose that the whole of our consciousness is a virtual intentional model. I propose that the field of virtual reality could be the archetypal science of the mind. It could be the primitive beginning of scientific psychiatry. {34}    

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4. FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

But what could axioms of intentionality be? They would be theorizing axioms. Not axioms of a theory, mind you, but axioms of theory construction. Brains theorize to cope with an everchanging reality. Penrose made a start towards analyzing the criteria of good theories. {35} All the great theorists acknowledge aesthetic criteria in theory construction. Even the current debate acknowledges at least some -"Occam's Razor" is a case in point. There are others.

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But why posit theory construction as the basic function of brains? It is because it is difficult to posit knowledge to biological systems. Their functioning entails only survival. The methods of survival, however, are not fixed. Edelman, for instance, speaks of the multiple possibilities for response to a given antigen. Successful response does not depend on prior knowledge of the antigen. {36} It depends, rather, on the prior, evolutionarily determined existence of empirically adequate, (but cognitively blind), responses, (antibodies). So too must be our other cognitive response. It consists in the integration and theoretical organization of our other empirically adequate , (but equally blind), behavioral response. It is an intentional program!

5. CONCLUSION

As a conceptual model, implicit definition makes positive inroads on the problem of consciousness. It is, I think, the only cogent model on the table. (But see below). It provides explanatory ideas and makes sense within the current dialogue while at the same time providing answers to the ancient questions. It must be admitted that it opens more questions than it answers, but that is the nature of science. It is, moreover, just what we might hope for in a new discipline.

6. POSTSCRIPT: ARE THERE OTHER EXPLICIT MODELS?

In the paragraph above, I made the claim that this is the only explicit model on the table. What I meant by this was that it was the only explicit model of consciousness specifically . But any theory of mind must marry with biology! Without that tie, it is mere dialectic. Let me therefore briefly critique the few explicit models actually proposed. They are all biological: Crick's, Penrose's, Maturana's, Edelman's, and Freeman's…. All of them have strengths, some more than others. None of them actually provide a rationale for consciousness however - they are theories of brain function. Some are logically compromised, (Maturana, Edelman, Freeman) -they lose the legitimacy of their own language by the epistemology implicit in them. (This is a long discussion, outside the confines of this paper.) {37}

6.1 STANDARD NEUROSCIENCE

Standard neuroscience is eliminative for "mind". It attempts to reduce brain function to discreet steps. As research, it is impeccable, but it retains "mind" only as a hope. The Churchlands express that hope best as "emergence". Somehow mind, as we normally conceive it, will emerge from the complication

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of process just as water emerges from the properties of its constituent hydrogen and oxygen. I think they are wrong -they obfuscate the reduction of theories with their fundamental premise of a necessary ontological reduction to "material". The necessary discreteness of brain process in space and time implicit in the latter does not admit the possibility of a unified mind and consciousness. Crick's hypothesis , as part of this category, provides a synchronization of process; it does not unify or explain consciousness. It explains the synchrony of brain function, but gives no clue to autonomous meaning or internal cognition.

6.2 EDELMAN'S HYPOTHESIS

Edelman's hypothesis is somewhat more complex, but is deficient on the same grounds as Crick's. His epistemology is more complex, (and nearer to the truth, I think), but with it he compromises the language within which he expresses it.

6.3 FREEMAN'S HYPOTHESIS

Walter Freeman's is the most interesting of the proposed models to me. He begins by trying to understand just one small part of the incredibly complex brain completely, (the olfactory system). The olfactory system is the most primitive sensory system and sensory input is surely the heart of the representation problem . He has started from what seems to be the soundest approach to the mind-brain problem -take the most primitive, the simplest part and follow an evolutionary rationale. He concluded that his empirical results were incompatible with "information" and "representation" and proposed a solution grounded in nonlinear dynamics instead. He proposes an extension of his conclusions to the brain as a whole. Though I am woefully ignorant of nonlinear dynamics, his general approach is certainly the right one. What particularly interests me is his incorporation of intentionality, (via the limbic system), and his disavowal of "information" and "representation" in his conception. I do not think he has solved the problem of consciousness however. This is a deep and specifically logical problem.

His "sequences of amplitude modulated spatial patterns observed in the brains of animals and humans in the gamma range of the EEG" do not show that "consciousness is organized and based in discrete global patterns in much the way that a black-and-white cinema is composed of frames with a high repetition rate." His problem in this, like the others, is that spatial frames integrate -become conscious -only to an observer. (It is the "homunculus" revisited.) Alternatively, even taking the whole global pattern as the mind itself, how does one part of even that mental space know another part? His mental space is specifically a physical space. This is the unequivocally logical problem which I have addressed with "implicit definition". {38}

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I think that his work may have an even more profound import for this problem, however. Integrating sensory and intentional perspectives, it suggests itself that he may actually be laying the broader, biological foundation for an expansion of technical logic itself -a deep logic which would include intentionality .

Freeman has beautifully crystallized and profoundly reoriented the problem of the mind. He correctly argues that it is not a problem of the perception of "sensations", (Kant, Cassirer), but a problem of response and the generation of a different, (though related), perceptual world internal to the organism. For Freeman, (and for Edelman, and Maturana as well), "information" never passes! The chaotic boundary he describes between the two corresponds to Maturana's "structural coupling" and to my "interface"! {38'} But it is internal to this interface that the problem of consciousness must be solved -not in the plain physical description of it. This is the coupling between biology and logic that I have argued elsewhere as the "concordance" {39} between biology and logic. This is the ground within which the problem must be solved.

Logic, however, is itself biology!  It is a biological and evolutionary program organizing response. From that point on however, I argue that meaning, knowing and "wholeness", (all the aspects of sentiency), must be generated internally to the new logic so constructed. . {40}   If my supposition is true, then Freeman's hypothesis could supply the link between the purely logical "implicit definition" I have proposed and its concrete biological foundation. It would supply the biological basis for consciousness and a truly "embodied logic". {41}

Like Edelman, (because of their common covenant with biology), Freeman disavows "representationalism", and he names himself an "epistemological solipsist". This is unfortunate. There are other epistemological positions better suited to his conclusions and the demands of modern science. Cassirer's "Symbolic Forms" is more fitting. {42} It is the very embodiment of the epistemological relativity required by Freeman's, (and my), formulation of the problem. It exonerates our doing science and our behaving as we do, (as brains ourselves), in a world our brains cannot ultimately know.

"Epistemological but not ontological solipsism" is an explicit contradiction in terms!  How can we name something that is real solipsistically?  Edelman makes this claim, and Freeman does as well.  Maturana comes close.  I am sympathetic to their meaning, but strongly reject their language precisely because these authors use ontological language to make their cases.  This is just plain wrong. What is it they describe?  It is the same case I made against Maturana, (described at length in Chapter 3 of my book), that I make against all such cases. What is needed, what is truly consistent and productive, (though harder conceptually), is an ontological indeterminism and an epistemological

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relativism.  This was exactly the case made by Ernst Cassirer in his "Symbolic Forms".

ReferencesBirkhoff, G. and Mac Lane, S. (1955) A Survey of Modern Algebra.

New York. The Macmillan Company. Cassirer, E. (1923) Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. (Translation by William Curtis Swabey).          Chicago-London. Open Court (Bound as one)

Cassirer, E. (1953) The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms . (Translation by Ralph Manheim). New Haven. Yale University Press.

Churchland, Patricia. (1986) Neurophilosophy . Cambridge, Ma. Bradford Books.

Churchland, Paul. (1990) Matter and Consciousness . Cambridge, Ma. MIT Press.

Dennett, D. (1991) Consciousness Explained. Boston-Toronto-London. Little, Brown, and Company.

        Edelman, G. M. (1992) Bright Air, Brilliant Fire. BasicBooks.         Freeman, W. J. (1995) Societies of Brains. Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates        Freeman, W.J. (1994) Chaotic oscillations and the Genesis of Meaning in Cerebral Cortex.  

Springer-Verlag         Hilbert, D. (1902) The Foundations of Geometry. (Translation by E.J.

Townsend). Open Court. Iglowitz, J. (1995) Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained,

Online book, (www.foothill.net/~jerryi)         Iglowitz, J. (2001), Mind: The Argument from Biology, (A Very

Different Kind of Model) Online Article,                   (www.foothill.net/~jerryi)

        Lakoff, G. (1987) Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago-London. University of Chicago Press.

        Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1987) The Tree of Knowledge. Boston-London. Shambala Press,

        Penrose, R. (1989) The Emperor's New Mind. New York-London. Penguin Books.

        Reid, C. (1970)  Hilbert.  Springer-Verlag.

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        Schlick, M. (1974) General Theory of Knowledge. (Translation by Albert E. Blumberg). New York:

         Springer-Verlag, (Orig. (1918).Berlin )        Wilder, R. (1967) Introduction to The Foundations of Mathematics New

York-London.John Wiley & Sons.

FOOTNOTES :

{1}. See Iglowitz 1995

{2}. -i.e. its conception is as vague as theirs

{3}. Note: I cannot possibly detail the whole of my proposal nor answer more than a small part of the problems it raises within the confines of this limited format, but I can try to expose some crucial aspects of it. See Iglowitz, 1995 for a comprehensive treatment. See especially Chapter 2 for the model and Chapter 1 for the biological rationale.

{4}. and strongly distinguished from the "Formalism" he also argued. They are not the same. Formalism says that all there is is a manipulation of tokens, (it is a theory of proof). They never gain meaning -they are always tokens. Implicit definition is a very different idea. It is specifically a theory of meaning, (="definition" in "implicit definition"). It is a delicate point, and I'm not sure that Hilbert himself ever distinguished them clearly.

{5}. Hilbert, 1902

{6}. Thus, paraphrasing Hilbert, we might just as well substitute "cigar" for "point" and "Xanadu" for "line", let us say, and all theorems would still remain provable.

{7}. which included Rudolf Carnap and Kurt Goedel

{8}. Schlick, Moritz., translation by Albert E. Blumberg, 1974{8’}  Some people think that "implicit definition" merely means refining

down to or eliminating extraneous possibilities so that only one possibility is left.  It is for them thus a process of categorical refinement to a given definition. Neither Hilbert nor Schlick meant it that way.   For them, "implicit definition" reflected a generation from and within the rules themselves.  For this perspective see Shapiro’s characterization of Hilbert’s “implicit definition” as “structural definition” and his discussion of the Hilbert / Frege correspondence.  (Shapiro,

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http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/academic/philosophy/arche/papers/implicit.pdf) “Implicit Definition" in Hilbert's sense doesn't mean "innately points to some specific thing", it means "generates from within".  It arises interior to, it is not applied to the process.

{8’’} Note: "Relation", definable within a mathematical system, (as an n-tuple, for instance), is an operation of a different order and meaning than the operational, (relational), primitives of that system which are employed to define that "relation". The primitive operations of an axiom system, ("addition" and "multiplication", for instance), are the constitutive relations of axiomatics. When axiomatics defines a "relation" internally, however, it is a subsidiary relation and has a different import –it is defined relative to the primitives.   {9}. Behavior, considered as a system of physical response, is specifically a program of creative-i.e. original physical response. (This is the point of Maturana, Edelman, Freeman) From the standpoint of evolution, the specific response of an organism doesn't matter -only that it gets the job done. Crudely put: one can kill a mosquito with either a newspaper or a flyswatter, (it really doesn't matter), and natural selection has no preference between the two. The proper criterion is adequacy , not matching , (i.e. not recognition, parallelism, or representation). You must kill it, but you needn't even know it is a mosquito! It is not a causal relationship. Calling it a "system of physical response" does not invoke a "stimulus-response" metaphor, (as Freeman has objected), but that is certainly the way we ordinarily think of it. This is a complex epistemological problem which I have addressed in Iglowitz, 1995.

The problem of metacellular response becomes then the specific problem of the organization of such creative processes. But these are intentional processes -they are not informational but purposive. The agenda, I will conclude, is wholly intentional.

{10}. I am using the word "axioms" in the sense of Modern Algebra, (not of philosophy). Those axioms are the rules of manipulation of its objects. E.g. -the distributive law of an Integral Domain. This is Hilbert's sense of "axiom". The axioms of the brain are the fundamental, and, I propose modular, operative rules of response.

{11}. Axiom systems are modular by definition. Consider the stepwise addition of axioms in the  progression from the abstract group to a field, for instance. Each stage defines a different system and different objects.

{12}. I.e. a generic electrical circuit board for protyping

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{13}. See the sections of Cassirer's "Symbolic Forms" dealing with perceptual abnormalities for example. It is an old discussion, but clinically based, very lucid and still quite pertinent. (Vol.III, pps. 205-277)

{14}. See Iglowitz, 1995.  Incidentally, Patricia Churchland stated that any proposed model of mind must answer the dilemmas of "blindsight", "phantom limbs", etc.  The model I will propose here clearly answers such questions directly and simply.

{15}. Ultimately, I argue, it becomes the whole of behavioral process-i.e. it is the only component

{16}. Actually it is part of the rules for the axioms.  Freeman, interestingly, incorporates intentionality, (via the limbic system), as a key element of his model of brain function. 

{17}.and not, for instance, that it is red all the way till its terminus, with a final and sudden change-to-green.

{18}. Dennett introduces the very useful criterion "heterophenomenological" to describe "mental events", which he does not believe in, to describe whatever-it-is that is named by them, i.e. to talk about them as they are (linguistically) used by real bodies and brains, (which he does believe in), but with a neutral metaphysical commitment.

{19}. nearing the speed of light

{20}. Are the observers, (and the experimental apparatus), then "heterophenomenological"?

{21}. i.e. -relative to Dennett's problem, (suppose they were asynchronous "just enough"!)

{22}. when taken "heterophenomenologically" -i.e. with a neutral ontic commitment.

{23}. Cassirer, 1923, pp. 288-289, citing Helmholtz

{23'}. I will capitalize "concept" when I am speaking about the formal logical concept to avoid circumlocutions like "the concept of the concept"...

{24}. ibid P.22

{25}. ibid P.16

{26}. ibid P.17 -Also see Lakoff 1987 on this issue.

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{27}. -i.e. biology See also the Edelman discussion to follow

{28}. This, the percept as concept, is clearly at odds with, but, (I argue), a legitimate extension of, Cassirer's ideas.  See Iglowitz, 1995, (Chapter 2), for my extension of Cassirer's "Functional Concept of Mathematics" into the "Concept of Implicit Definition".

{28'}   Freeman, 1994

{29}. I have approached intentionality from two perspectives.  My argument starts from the standard philosophical and cognitive science conception - to build a case that there are no non-intentional objects in the mind, (conceived thusly).  Ultimately, (from the standpoint of brain science), I think it is another issue. "Intentionality", from that biological perspective, is what I describe in the next-to-last paragraph of this paper: "It ["intentionality"] consists in [is] the integration and organization of, (i.e. theorizing on), our other empirically adequate, (but equally blind), behavioral response."  It is an autonomous internal generation, an integration and organization of biologic process. Walter Freeman has suggested such a program specifically, and Humberto Maturana, (1987), and Gerald Edelman, (1992), hint at it.

{30}. i.e. vis-à-vis current process

{31}. It has been asserted that " Most animals live very well with such a (minimized, non-intentional) perceptual model of 'reality' (cf. Uexkull)". (Anonymous reviewer). Is this so? Consider a cat tracking a mouse as it runs behind a tree. Or consider a bumblebee pursuing you yourself as you dance and run!

{32}. which, he concludes, do not themselves exist!

{33}. Dennett argues strongly and convincingly that "figment", (mental states), are logically inconsistent with our, (his), ordinary (naïve) views of cognition and reality. But let us turn Dennett's argument around. The "color phi", he himself says, embodies a precise and reproducible experiment -you and I would both expect to "see" it! If, instead of accepting his conclusion, we choose to accept the reality of that figment -E1, E3, and E2 , -if we believe that E2 is actually perceived, (whatever it may be), then his argument takes on a radically different import.

{34}. Consider the world-views implicit in paranoia or schizophrenia, for instance, or in bipolar illness

{35}. See Penrose, 1989

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{36}. It is interesting and important that Edelman identifies both the immune system and human cognitive function as examples of what he terms "recognition systems"! But the "recognition" he identifies is recognition in the sense of the biological immune system on which he is an acknowledged expert.

"A recognition system … exists in one physical domain", (for the immune system it is within an individual’s body), " and responds to novelty arising independently in another domain, (for the immune system it is a foreign molecule among the millions upon millions of possible chemically different molecules) by a specific binding event and an adaptive cellular response. It does this without requiring that information about the shape that needs to be recognized be transferred to the recognizing system at the time when it makes the recognizer molecules or antibodies . Instead, the recognizing system first generates a diverse population of antibody molecules and then selects ex post facto those that fit or match. It does this continually and, for the most part, adaptively." Edelman, 1992, P.78

Cognition, our ultimate "recognition system", he argues, is a parallel case and must be reconceived accordingly. {37}. See Iglowitz, 1995, specifically the discussion of the inconsistency of Maturana's epistemology, (in Chapter 3). It is applicable to Edelman and Freeman as well.

{38}. Freeman's response was that "in my view, the frames give content to a process that IS the observer". (his CAPS). But how does this process integrate? How does it know ? This is the specific problem I have addressed in my model.

{38'}.  See Iglowitz 1995, Chapter 5

{39}. See Iglowitz 1995, Chapter 2. It is too long a discussion to include here.

{40}. See Iglowitz, 2001, "Mind: The Argument from Biology"

{41}. Using Lakoff's term

{42}. See Iglowitz, 1995, Chapter 4 for a synopsis of Cassirer's "Symbolic Forms"

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(3) The Mind-Brain Problem -an Introduction for Beginners

Jerome Iglowitz11/02/1999

(Revised October, 2005)

 

Introduction, (What are "facts"?)

I had a discussion with a friend awhile ago which I thought might serve as a lead-in to someone trying to understand the rough outline of the mind-brain problem. I have never talked to this friend about my own theories as they are not within his scope of interest, though he has a naturally philosophical mind in other areas. It seems he had gotten into a discussion with a co-worker at his job about "facts" and asked my opinion. (Facts will be very much in our scope of concern here.)

My friend acknowledged that his co-worker was a very bright individual who had argued that "facts" were solely a function of the person expressing them. He said his co-worker had made a very strong argument and compared the latter's position to what I had once described to him as "solipsism". I told my friend that to understand the problem, we had better look first at what it means to reason with another human being. Reasoning does not start out from absolutes. Were I to reason with him or with you, we must start out from some basis of common agreement . Without it, we have absolutely no place to go!

"Solipsism" is the philosophical position that all that exists: you, me, the car sitting in the driveway, the sun in the sky -exists only in my, (your), head. This may seem a very strange viewpoint, but it is provably logically consistent . The point is that if you were to express your belief in such an idea to me, there would be no point in my continuing a conversation with you about such things. My response would be to smile politely and switch the topic of conversation to what we would like to have for lunch, for instance. The only legitimate response, (and I once considered it seriously), would be a "Zen-ish" one - to slap the believer across the face to make him deal with the reality of it. What saved me from this (purely philosophical) response was the realization that this individual was quite likely to call his solipsistic police and have (solipsistic) me thrown into his

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solipsistic jail!

There is another fundamental, also consistent philosophical position contrary to our normal beliefs: i.e. classical idealism. For it, all that exists are ideas. There is nothing beyond. Again, because it is consistent, (and my prospects hopeless), my only reasonable response is a question: "Soup or a salad?" This is not to say that these positions are stupid or meaningless, only that I could have no productive purpose in continuing a conversation -and certainly not in debating about them. As I have acknowledged, they are logically consistent. This does not automatically make them true however. We have no basis of common agreement from which even to start.

  Most of us fall into the philosophical position called "realism", and this is the context, (because we can agree on it), where you and I will carry out our reasoning together. There must be a basis of common agreement to even begin. There are many names for this "realism" and many variations on it. Most of us belonged, at least in the beginning, to the position of what has been called "naïve realism". This is the belief that what is truly real outside of ourselves and including ourselves is our normal experiential world. It is you and me, the car on the driveway, the sun in the sky, salads and baseballs and all the things these things do. These would constitute our first definition of "facts". If I were to turn my head away from this baseball and then back again, it would still be "round". (Or it would be a fact that somebody ran over it with a car in the interim, let us say, -to make it otherwise).

But most of us in the modern world have been forced to modify this naïve realistic view somewhat. Scientific experiment gives us new facts: positions of needles on gauges, or digital readouts in certain experimental situations, or photographic plates with nuclear tracks, or petri dishes showing certain growth patterns of bacteria under certain conditions. These situations and the extended body of experience which contains them, (to include the former, normal experience -baseballs, et al as well ), force us to extend the worldview of naïve realism. This is so mainly because these new facts simply don't fit with such a simple, "solid" view of reality. We are forced to accept the modified "scientific" reality they imply because it has produced results, (the things they do), right at our normal, naïve scale. The predictability of the motions of the planets, and the atomic bomb are verifiable facts, (for realists). And so is radio, television, electricity, the transistor, lasers, vaccines, and so on, and so on…

Most of us have modified our naïve realism, (because of our forced belief in the miracles-that-work of science), to what some have called the "Newtonian

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world", or the "billiard-ball world", (after Roger Penrose's usage). This "Newtonian" view is the belief that what truly is , absolute reality, (or "ontology" to use an old but precise word), consists of some ultimate particles: atoms or subatomic particles, quarks, etc. We can retain our normal view of reality within this view however because we envision our ordinary objects, (baseballs, you, me, the sun, etc.), as spatial containers in the new absolute reality we are forced to believe in. If we had suitable eyes of extreme magnification, all the ultimate things , (the ultimate particles), which constitute Harry Jones would be next to each other in an ultimate spatial context, and separate from those of his ex-wife's checkbook or her lawyer. There is a necessary belief in a continuity, and a contiguity, ("next-to-ness"), in this belief system. This is the "hierarchy" or "logical containment" implicit in the Newtonian World and it is mirrored in the hierarchies of contemporary mathematics and of logic. The ultimate "facts" of this system, (atoms, molecules, the laws of Newtonian physics, et al), consist of the ultimate objects, (and what they do), of the belief system of the science which argued them. They are "facts" because our past experience has agreed with what it has predicted and we expect that our future experience will agree as well.

Modern science, or rather the science of the twentieth century, (which is not so new any more), was forced to modify its picture of ultimate reality, however. It was forced to do so because the Newtonian world picture simply didn't work to explain actual new scientific experience. (Note: Roger Penrose's "Emperor's New Mind" contains a succinct and lucid discussion of this topic without prerequisites. It is not easy, but it is very good.) Quantum theory, our scientific deepest "smallness" for instance, does not believe in, (cannot believe in), the existence at a specific place, -nor even in a specific region of its fundamental particles, the ultimate objects of its realistic reality. These particles -each particle even- exist(s) across the whole of reality, and the whole of space! The ultimate facts of Harry Jones are no longer discrete and separate from his wife's checkbook -and not even from her lawyers! Quantum theorists did not adopt this position out of choice or whim, but because they had to - to explain experimental evidence. The Newtonian worldview simply could not be made to fit the facts of scientific experiment. Ultimate space, (the "aether" wherein they were to exist and move), was challenged long ago by Galileo, and euthanized, finally by Einstein.

  What then, is a "fact" now? It has certainly become a much looser and more abstract thing than we had supposed, even for us realists. As realists, conversely and by agreement, we must believe in some ultimate reality beyond ourselves. We also believe that this ultimate reality must be consistent with our personal

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experience and the laboratory experience of experimental science. These are the basic presuppositions of our dialogue.

                                                                                              On another tack, the renowned and seminal thinker Immanuel Kant argued that because we, (and specifically our experience), is part of whatever it is that ultimate reality may eventually turn out to be, then even our cognition, (experience), must be considered relativistically! He reasoned that it is impossible to separate out the parts that make up our personal experiencing from the parts that are "outside". What reality ultimately and specifically is by itself, ("the facts"), he concluded, we can never know. (Kant is sometimes very wrongly labeled an "idealist". The definition of "idealism" above, Kant's own, shows the error of that label).

What then, (again), is a "fact"? Let me suggest a definition. "Facts", (alternatively "the phenomena"), are that which all consistent and comprehensive theoretical descriptions of reality must account for. And yet they are not necessarily the same as the way that these theories account for them. "Facts" are those "things" that the solipsist, the idealist, and all forms of realists must account for. They constitute "experience" in its most general sense and they must be consistent with both the past and the future. The squashed baseball is a fact that all good theories must explain. What "the baseball" is, however, (and what "squashing" is), are elements of the theory that explains them. "Fact" is not the same as theory; nor is it the same as "ontology". By agreement as realists however, we must assume some connection.

The problem of "facts" is very much a part of the Mind-Brain problem. Indeed, it is very much a part of the theories proposed to solve any problem. Our particular "take" on it determines the whole of our context of possibility and limits our consideration to just those theories consistent with it.

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The Mind-Brain Problem:

 The real war today is between dogmatic materialists and anybody else. Within the belief system of the former, all that exists is material and the relationships between it. Part of that belief system is also heavily vested in the descendant of Aristotelian logic -the logic of classes -and in the "hierarchy" implicit in it. Dogmatic materialism has an admittedly long and very successful history in science. In fact, it is a spectacularly successful history. It has actually produced the miracles that religion once promised. Democritus' descendants seem to have won the field. But there are gaps in their line. Most of modern physics -the part of physics which is modern - just doesn't fit. In the case of the Mind-Brain problem, I think they will ultimately fall. Does this mean that I think they are wrong? Not exactly. It is a subtle point, but, crudely put, I think that theirs is a system that works, (mostly), but that it is necessarily only one of several. I believe it does not describe "what is"; it simply, (superbly), predicts future. It is a wonderful predictive mechanism, but it does not describe ontology. What is wrong with it is the "dogmatic" part. It limits the possibility of new theories to its own dogmatic assumptions, assumptions unnecessary to its function and limiting our explanatory power.

The mind-body problem consists in finding some way that each, (the mind or the brain), could legitimately exist given the actual existence of the other. It sounds pretty easy, but, surprisingly, it is not. Actually the biggest problem for someone approaching this issue for the first time is to realize just how difficult it really is. Science today is actively attempting to fully explain the workings of the human brain. Its conclusions will be affected by its presuppositions. Those conclusions will profoundly affect the whole course of future civilization.

The real beginning to the modern formulation of the mind-brain problem began with Descartes. Following his vision of analytical geometry, he was the first to envision a modern, geometrical physics encompassing the whole of the world. Because of it, (successful or no), he was forced to deal with the dilemmas of physical determinism.  It was clear from the start that the physical brain was part of the physical universe, and, given an actual deterministic physics of the latter, was subject to the same physical laws. Given that the brain is the final arbiter of the actions of the body, it was further clear that the whole of human action must be physically determinist. Daniel Dennett -in the most honest statement of modern dogmatic materialism -argues that mind cannot exist within this belief system. True, there are less forceful statements of its implications, but I think Dennett had it right --

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physically and temporally discrete process can only produce other physically and temporally discrete process. Nowhere is the integration and "understanding" demanded by our conceptions of mind possible.

Surely all of us believe that the brain exists. We have seen actual brains, (or pictures at least), and know its gross shape. We have seen drawings or photographs of actual nerves inside it and are prepared to believe scientists when they tell us of actual, provable biological processes within it. Most of us are prepared to believe that these nerves, chemicals and perhaps other physical processes within the brain cause all of the function of that brain. The brain is a pretty well defined physical thing -at least in general terms.

But what of the mind? Where, or how, could it exist within that physical thing? Or does it? Here is the crux of the problem. Most of us are willing to believe, (again), that the mind is intimately associated with the brain. In fact, most are willing to believe that mind is in the brain. If the brain is destroyed or seriously injured, then the mind ceases to exist or is lessened. Brain injuries and disease bear clear witness. (Conversely, if we were to lose our arms, or our legs, or our noses, let us say, most of us are prepared to believe that our minds would not necessarily be diminished.) Is the mind in all of the brain, or only part of it? Is it different from the physical process or some level of complication of it?

The "replacement argument" is germane and quite well known.  It is both clear and convincing and it should help to clarify the context. It goes like this. Let us assume that some small part of the physical brain can be replaced by a mechanical substitute -whose net effect on overall function is exactly that of the replaced physiological part. (This is not an absurd assumption given the state of actual research which is attempting things just like that.) Furthermore, for the purposes of discussion, let us take "having consciousness" as very roughly equivalent to "having a mind".

Question: assuming that the original brain was conscious, (roughly equivalent to "had a mind"), would the modified brain still be conscious, (have a mind)? Suppose we were to replace each of the physiological parts and functions of the brain successively in a like manner. At what specific point would the brain cease to be conscious, (have a mind)? Or would it? This is an actual research problem in the discipline of artificial intelligence, but it also frames large aspects of the general question reasonably well.

The flip side of the argument is the question of whether a "mind" in our ordinary sense ever did exist! Now this is a very shocking idea, but again it is a logically consistent position. Under this idea all that exists are the physical world and our

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bodies and brains within it. Under it what we call "mind" is a "figment" of language. We are automatons, ("zombies"), which only produce sounds and mechanical writings mimicking "mind" because of the design of the mechanism! This is Dennett's conclusion.

Though absurd and extreme at first hearing, if you grant that the whole of the brain may be considered as, (or perhaps replaced by), pure mechanism, then all aspects of human behavior may be legitimately considered completely in terms of the functioning of that mechanism. Since such a view is adequate, and no productive placement of "mind" in our physical universe in any other sense has till now been proposed, it becomes a very strong argument. There are other strong aspects of this argument having to do with perceptual experiments -the "color phi" for instance which demonstrate flaws in our perception of time -of sequences of perceptions. Another line of the argument has to do with the "homunculus problem" -the apparent necessity of an infinite logical regress under our normal preconceptions. (See my Dennett and Edelman appendices respectively for an elaboration.)

Sensory surfaces are topologically mapped onto cortical surfaces. Squares are mapped roughly onto squares and triangles roughly onto triangles. Thus, it would seem, the brain's cortex actually "sees" what is presented to it. But what is it that subsequently sees the maps on the cortex itself? Is it another cortex, another brain? Is it a little man within our brain on whose brain it is projected? But then how does his brain see it?……. This is the problem of infinite regression which is termed the "homunculus problem". And where, moreover, is the (simultaneous) theater in which it is projected? Dennett's "zombie" argument mentioned above questions even the possibility of such a theater -he argues that it cannot synchronize itself with external time.

There are other materialist positions, not quite so strong, but all stand before the same dilemma. How can a bio-mechanical process distributed through space and time, (like the gears in a working machine), be integrated in any sense other than a mechanical one? That the machine as a whole can act decisively is indisputable, but can it "know" what it does? Where and how? We as observers seem to be able to know, but how can a "gear" know its own function or the function of other gears within the machine? It can certainly be affected by them, (or synchronized with them), but how can it know them? Knowing is not something that "gears" do, after all, gears just do!

Under the standard paradigms of brain function, data (stimuli) only "wash

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through" the brain. By this, I mean they are received in their parts, those break down into modules, submodules and submodules of submodules…. and finally make their way out of the body as action. Nowhere, however, does the process require nor can it embody consciousness. It is distributed process, pure and simple. Other functions, those that require self-recognition, and body awareness for instance, feed back and modulate on the overall process–but they too only "wash through" the brain –at the same level again without any requisite, (or even a possibility of), consciousness. This is brain science, pure and simple. Synchrony, integration are only aspects of that process. They provide temporal integration, (a "clockspeed", so to speak), which holds it all together.

Freeman, under another conception, sees the brain as contributing a primary independent biological component which is chaotically modulated by the flow of information and internal forces which leads to spatial distribution.  These are instantaneous "frames".  But, again, how are they seen?

My own opinion is that this materialist position is very close to correct. But it is the "very close" that is the heart of the issue. I do not believe that my mind, (taken in its ordinary sense), is a "figment". I believe it truly exists. This is an absolute part of my realist beliefs. I think it is probably part of yours also. But how and where? The ultimate question, I argue, comes down to what is truly real in reality? What is the "stuff" that is really real? This question must be considered within the context of our initial realist agreement and forces a refinement of our "contract" assumed at the beginning of our discussion.

Some of us think there are two basic kinds of things in reality: physical stuff and mind stuff. These are the dualists. Others think there is only mind stuff. These are the classical idealists. A few believe there is only their mind stuff -these are the solipsists. Most, however, believe that all that there is -is physical stuff. These are the materialists and they dominate the current scene largely because of the profound and productive scientific results their view has produced in our modern life. Materialists also like to call themselves "realists" as they refer all questions of reality to "material". It is the last group that I wish to talk to. Though the other positions are certifiably consistent, their positions can lead to no productive result -of any kind! There is no experiment, (necessarily material and physical), which would prove or disprove their ideas.

The mind-brain problem is the most difficult problem we have ever been called to solve. But why? Why is this particular problem so difficult? I think that the answer lies in what we demand to be and what we are prepared to believe -is real.

All of us begin by believing that the ordinary world in front of us - cars, trains, 624

people and baseballs and all the things they do -are real. But more than that! We believe that they are really, really real! That is, we believe they exist "out there", independent and absolute. But the sense of this last sentence brings up deeper issues of reality and knowing and, scary and tainted as the word is, of "METAPHYSICS"! This most disreputable word is the hallmark of charlatans, herbal mediciners, palm readers, and, (as my daughters would say), is not a particularly polite word to use! The best sense of the word in its modern usage brings up images of centuries-ago academicians and theologians arguing endlessly and unprofitably about such things as "first causes" and "the mind of God". Modern man and modern scientific minds in particular consider themselves well rid of that verbal jungle, establishing themselves more profitably on the plains of experimental science.

But historical metaphysics had a larger scope. Even what we now call "science" was itself once called "natural metaphysics". There was yet another aspect to that ancient discipline which dealt with something we all must and do still consider, though we may not explicitly admit we do so. This is the aspect of what is -or could be- really, really real "out there". It was called "ontology", and I will preserve the name to distinguish it from any other aspect of metaphysics. What I have described above, our beginning belief about reality is termed "naïve realism" and it means that our ordinary objects -as they appear- are truly, really real -they are ontic objects.

Since the time of ancient skepticism and certainly through the course of modern science, this view has receded more and more from respectability. The practical miracles of science make us believe that ontologic reality, (actual reality), is composed of the objects science says it is - atoms, quarks, fields, et al. What allows us to accept this view is that we may still preserve the sense of our ordinary objects as physical clusters of those deeper existences: i.e. I can think of myself as a cluster of atomic particles and fields shaped like me, doing all the things I do, and positioned in ontic reality next to other things and persons just as I ordinarily see myself.

This is still the view of most educated persons on the issue of ontology- at least as considered at the human scale, -but it is an old view. It incorporates what Roger Penrose calls the "billiard ball view of reality" and constitutes, essentially, a Newtonian view of the universe. Under this view all reality consists in the motions and dynamics of atomic particles in an ontologically existing "space". Modern science -20th century science- has questioned this view however. The primary theoretically and technologically productive theories under which science now operates question the spatiality we envisioned, and even the ontological clustering of that view. The atomic particles of me no longer exist,

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(really exist), in a specific location, but are spread across the whole of space! Even the "how many" of a given particle is not fixed. (See Penrose.)

This is the view of current physics, and its strength stands, like the physics before it, upon the actual scientific miracles it has produced and is still producing. The Newtonian science which preceded it could produce no plausible alternative! Since the new science works and produces new miracles, it would seem to necessitate a new picture of ontology, a new and different picture of what is really real "out there".

But Neils Bohr, the recognized "father" of quantum theory said that such a picture was unattainable! He characterized his new science as a pure algorithm, (i.e.: a rote, purely pragmatic but profoundly and overwhelmingly useful procedure), instead. What the actual reality beneath it is, he said, we cannot know and cannot picture. His theoretical world could not, (cannot), fit any normal sense of the real world. And yet it works and leads to the production of new things -transistors, nuclear power plants, etc.

Most thinkers on our particular subject say that theory on the scale of fundamental physics is not relevant to the mind-brain problem however. They say that events and things of the size, (scale), of the brain and its happenings -at the human scale- behave like the things of Newtonian physics. (Only a few disagree.)

I find this view disturbing and self-contradictory, however. If we are, in fact, products of the ultimate objects of science, (the "real stuff"), how then can we ignore them at any scale, especially in our conceptions of what it is that really exists? More disturbing is the blind confidence those thinkers have in the "facts" of the scale with which we are concerned.

I personally do not find it surprising that physics has reached Bohr's conclusion. This is because I believe that even our very own "naïve world", our normal perceptual and conceptual world, (by reasons of evolutionary biology and logic), is itself precisely such an algorithm in Bohr's sense! (See Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology)  I believe it is a virtual algorithm which enables an optimized biological function! It is this conception, I will argue, which allows an actual solution, (and not just a prevarication), of the mind-brain problem within the confines of science just as Bohr's allowed the solution of the problems of atomic physics. It also allows a consistent and plausible logical explanation of the dilemmas of mind itself.  It is not at all surprising to me therefore that when our naïve world is pushed to the (small) limit in the experimental experience of science that it must reach an algorithmic conclusion. This is exactly what my

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own theories would predict from the starting point of biology. The science of cognition is like the science of ultimate physics, I conclude, not because it must adopt the "objects' of the latter to explain its dilemmas, (as Roger Penrose has suggested), but in that it must adopt the selfsame strategy!

But what of the reality behind this strategy? Can we totally give up on what is truly, really real -i.e. ontology? Even Immanuel Kant admitted that the latter was impossible. He saw that all men needed a conception of the real. The task he set himself was to define what it is that we really can know about it -and how.

Though I cannot accept Kant's "categories", (and their implicit quality of hierarchy), his overall conclusions embody a much deeper conception of ontology - a relativistic view. He argued, in quite a modern vein, that while sane, (i.e. realist), reason must accept the actual existence of an ontological reality, it has no means of knowing any of its particulars, (its ultimate "facts"). This is because human cognition, being part of that reality, cannot separate its own particulars from that which it cognates. Cognition, (experience), itself, he argues, is relativistic! (This is very similar to Heisenberg's classic "indeterminacy" argument in quantum mechanics 150 years later.) Kant's relativism is not laissez faire relativism, (like "cultural relativism), however, but one which, like Einstein's, preserves a very rigid, "mathematical" core: i.e. the constants and invariants of phenomenal connection.

Kant is probably the least understood and the most misunderstood philosopher in history. This is too bad because the problem he set himself was exactly the same modern problem of human cognition which is our concern here. It is the precise concern of modern cognitive science. Sadly he has been so mislabeled and trivialized through history that modern thinkers are having to reinvent what he has already blueprinted very clearly. He is admittedly hard to comprehend, but this is a result of the specific nature, (the forced relativism), of his problem, not of his writing skills. Relativism is a difficult "stretch" for any mind.

Have you ever seen the modern remake of the movie "Cinderella", ("Forever After")? There is a scene in it where the heroine is seen paddling around, face-up in a lake. Prince Charming arrives on the scene accompanied, strange to say, by Leonardo da Vinci dressed, appropriately, in medieval clothes. Leonardo decides to try out his latest invention, a pair of miniature canoe-like floatation shoes, and he proceeds to walk on water, startling the heroine when he reaches her.

Try to hold that image - of the medieval Leonardo walking across the lake. It reminds me, strange to tell, very much of Immanuel Kant exploring the "lake" of

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ontology. Kant looked at the possibilities of human cognition and concluded that our knowledge, (what we can know), could not be the "solid knowledge" of "bottom dwellers", (objectivists, materialists), nor could it be the "airy knowledge" of birds, (idealists, solipsists), flying unattached and independent of the earth. He concluded that human knowledge must take account of its own medium, (the water). The best we could do was to discover the means to float upon it. We cannot build a bridge here, (as the bottom dwellers insist), because the lakebed is made of quicksand and the deeper we attempt to drive the piers, the deeper they sink. Kant's "means", (his "buoyancy"), lay in the fundamentally relativistic conception of realism that he spelled out. It centers in the innate necessities of human cognition itself. The only knowledge we are capable of is that "which floats"!

The metaphor is, of course, insufficient and incomplete. Most metaphors are. The crucial element in Kant's relativism is that human cognition cannot separate the aspects it in itself contributes from the aspects of the elements it "sees".

And yet, Freeman may be right about Kant. Kant saw perception as the (relativized) passage of information, (sensory data). Even though relativized, it is still a "passage". Maturana is more right. It is a "triggering" of response to generate a reaction (in Freeman's sense). I have dealt with this issue in my book. These are converse perspectives depending on which end of the "telescope" one looks through.

A Sketch of My Answer:

Once, long ago as a student, I was overwhelmed with a blindingly beautiful idea. I thought about the possibility of looking at complex metacellular animals specifically as communities, -as "societies" of their individual cells rather than as irreducible wholes! Enthused with my idea, I mentioned it to a pre-doctoral assistant in a biology lab. Without batting an eye, (and I have had the highest respect for the philosophical abilities of biologists ever since because of it), he said simply and without hesitation "Sure. There are sponges, for instance, which can be forced through a sieve to break them into their individual cells, and which subsequently come back together to make a metacellular entity." I don't claim to have invented this idea, but I discovered it for myself, and it has influenced my thinking ever since. I think it is the right idea!

At the level of single celled organisms, there is clearly no point in talking about internal models of reality -there is no possible canvas upon which to draw them.  What we have instead are merely input-output reactive couplings which are

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either beneficial or not to the individual organism.  Still at the level of the unicellular, we may have multiple such couplings.  The task for that unicellular is to combine them in some beneficial way.  But how? 

The obvious biological answer is: by pure luck, -i.e. by random genetic accident.  Increased survival then leads to genetic passage to descendants!  Such is surely the case for the simplest multicellulars as well.  Up through the levels of the sponges, the mollusks, the ants, there is no platform even conceivably close to that needed to supply a model of environment.  What possible rationale for organization can there be then?  The rationale is self-organization based on optimization -whatever it is that will work better!  But "whatever it is" must be equated with "anything that works”.  But does this organization, -need this organization preserve contexts?  There is no implicit requirement for a hierarchy of response.  This is where the conception of a self-organizing system enters the picture.  The only rule of such an organization is one of bettered survival.  Given a billion years or so, we can envision a holistic response to environment -but it is not necessary to envision a unique one!  Current thinking believes that such an organization must be a perfect mirror of externality, or, at the very least a perfect parallelism to that externality.  But why?  It need only work!

I. My FIRST argument, (of three), begins with biology at the metacellular level, and specifically at the level of very complex metacellulars. (The human metacellular, for instance, is composed of about 70 trillion cells!) Because the essence of the evolutionary principle is an optimization of performance, ("survival of the fittest"), I argue that the very coordination –as coordination per se -of metacellular, ("megacellular"), response is the key issue.  But this response involves a profoundly difficult organizational and control issue. In the case of profoundly complex metacellulars, I argue further that an optimization of control is in actual conflict with an incorporation of our assumed internal representative model of ontology. (This is the "large database" problem elaborated in Dreyfus' book: "What Computers Still Can't Do"-i.e. because such a system must search the whole of its database to resolve its particulars.)  It is in conflict with even a parallel model of reality in biologic function, (as urged by most modern cognitive scientists), because it neglects the factor of urgency, (i.e. what is most important -danger / risk)! Knowledge per se, more succinctly I claim, is in conflict with performance! I urge that the pathway to an optimization of performance and control, (the necessary evolutionary thing), lies rather in a schematic control interface like, (but vastly more complex than), the graphic user interface, ("GUI"), of a modern computer -of a Macintosh, or "Windows" on a PC for instance. This interface is keyed to urgency and response, however, not to representation.  The schematism of that control interface clusters primitive, "atomic" response into “icons” however; it does not cluster properties

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of or information about ontic objects "out there".  Our humanoid "objects", I argue, are actually metaphors of response!  How could it work?  I present an answer using W.J. Freeman's, (and Edelman's), findings on the brain in "Mind: The Argument from Evolutionary Biology".  It postulates a chaotic rather than a hierarchical mapping.s

Imagine a GUI, not in two dimensions, but in three or four. Imagine that the "objects" of this GUI embody the control functions of both the monitoring readout and the operative control for some immensely complex process, but combined in one as "icons". Imagine that the control of this process is accomplished by a manipulation of those icons themselves. It would be like controlling the speed of your car by pulling on the speedometer needle itself!

Have you seen the movie "Matrix"? In it the hero, (and all the other humans in the world), lived out his prior life immobile in a stationary nurturing pod, while his mind lived in our contemporary world as part of a universal computer program. His experiences were our normal, real world experiences and did not reflect his actual existence. Hold the image!

Now let's modify the script somewhat to present a different conception. Imagine our hero, (whatever he may truly be), performing some important and complex project, or controlling some dangerous and immensely complex process by manipulating icons under some appropriate set of "world laws", (i.e. the writer's scenario). The icons and the rules would embody his most efficient means to deal with the profound complexity and dangerous urgency of his actual existence and he would be the "hero" of his megacellular fiefdom. This is the sort of thing that I argue for our normal perceptual and conceptual cognitive world. Following Kant, we never see, and have no means of seeing the "pod" in which we live.

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HOW IT MIGHT WORK: (RE-USING OUR EVOLUTIONARY ARTIFACTS -AKA "OBJECTS")(from Appendix:  "Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology" )

II. My SECOND hypothesis starts, not from biology, but from formal logic. Surprisingly it meshes smoothly with my first and confirms it.

How is it possible to "know" anything? Leibniz stated the problem as: "how is it possible for 'the one' to know 'the many'?" How could one part of even a mental existence, (even a Solipsistic or an Idealist one), know another part? In the terms of modern cognitive science, it translates into "how could there be a 'Cartesian theater'?" (Dennett's term roughly corresponds to the screen which the homunculus would see.)  The answer lies in the operative application of Hilbert's "implicit definition". 

It is possible for a system as a whole to actually know its objects if and only if those objects are implicitly defined, (i.e. logically defined), by the totality of the

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system itself.  These, however are explicitly operative objects! I want to entice you, (only), with a brief citation on this aspect of my second thesis and let your imagination supply some of the details:

    Moritz Schlick, (physicist/philosopher and founder of the famous "Vienna Circle"), grasped the deep implications of Hilbert's innovation:

"[Hilbert's] revolution lay in the stipulation that the basic or primitive concepts are to be defined just by the fact that they satisfy the axioms.... [They] " acquire meaning only by virtue of the axiom system, and possess only the content that it bestows upon them. They stand for entities whose whole being is to be bearers of the relations laid down by the system.", (my emphasis).

Now think about this citation in the context of the Mind-Brain problem.  Think about the problem of "knowing"!  How can a system know its own "objects"?  It can -if those objects are specifically operative objects of the system as a whole itself.  Mathematics, (in principle), has already solved this key aspect of the mind-brain problem!  This is our keyway into Leibniz's problem, into the "Cartesian Theatre", and into the "homonculus".  But this solution is commensurate with my first hypothesis  -I call this commensurability "the Concordance".

Ultimately I propose a formal extension to logic derived from mathematical considerations. I propose that the fundamental logical units are like the axioms of mathematical axiom systems, and that these "axioms" constitute the ultimate rules of thought which are capable of "knowing". ( See Consciousness: A Simpler Approach to the Mind-Brain Problem).  They "implicitly define" their objects, (after the renowned mathematician David Hilbert's usage), and can truly know them as they are objects (solely),of the system itself. This is an actual solution, (for the first time), of Leibniz's problem!  But, under that same conception, the only objects they can truly know are their own operative objects -i.e. the objects of the system.  As I hope you can see, this conforms very well with my first hypothesis whose only "objects" are again objects of the system.   I propose that we identify them with each other.  Thus the ultimate rule of logic and mind corresponds to the ultimate rule of the brain itself. (See Cassirer on “concept” as a rule:  Logic)  Logic must be turned around and itself be considered as biological! It becomes, instead, the rule of biological coupling with environment, (extending Maturana's conception).  Logic becomes bio-logic.  (This thesis defines a theory of meaning as well -the first, I think, with any intuitive support at all -it defines meaning as contextual placement.)

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S(from "Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the Mind:Brain Problem")

III. My THIRD and final hypothesis is the most crucial one for the existence of the mind.  It is also the most conceptually difficult.  It involves a deepening and expansion of science itself.  Biology, (i.e. the considerations above), forces us there.  It focuses on the very relativity of the scientific method.  But its conclusion must lie within science itself, and not in philosophy.  I propose an ultimate theory of relativity, (grounded in biology), following in the path of Ernst Cassirer's "Philosophy of Symbolic Forms" which is an analysis and confirmation of the actual basis of the scientific method.  Cassirer's thesis, like Galileo's and Einstein's, is based in the mathematical conception of invariance, (the relativity of measurement while conserving the invariance of relationships).  Cassirer's "invariant", however, is the constancy of the phenomena themselves.  On the path to this third hypothesis, I examine the same kinds of issues that Kant was forced to deal with. What do we know and what can we know? I arrive at a solution very much like Kant's but radically enlarged through the eyes of Cassirer. In his “Philosophy of Symbolic Forms”, Cassirer argued that all knowledge, and specifically scientific knowledge deals not with the knowing of ontology itself, but rather with the purely internal organization of experience,

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(i.e. the phenomena -to include scientific experience). To quote a passage from Heinrich Herz, (cited by Cassirer on the methodology of science -i.e. on its defining of its primitive objects and relations):

"The images of which we are speaking are our ideas of things; they have with things the one essential agreement which lies in the fulfillment of the stated requirement, [of successful consequences], but further agreement with things is not necessary to their purpose.  Actually we do not know and have no means of finding out whether our ideas of things accord with them in any other respect than in this one fundamental relation."   (H. Hertz, "Die Prinzipien der Mechanik", p.1 ff, my emphasis)

What we can know, and all that we can know are the constant, internal, and unchanging rules which relate one organization of experience with another. (This section of my book also deals with the question of why it is not inherently self-contradictory for my theory to be framed in the terms of ordinary science while at the same time arriving at a conclusion where they are not necessarily, ontically true.) Cassirer proposes an absolute epistemological relativism stemming from the very methodology of science. He argues that there are multiple fundamental (and comprehensive) organizations of reality -even in science itself. The reality of physics, he argues, is not the reality of biology, nor of chemistry. Each "frames its questions differently"!  Biology, at least, seems to be reaching the same conclusion. (Maturana, Edelman, Freeman)  Biology's primitive objects, for Maturana for instance, are "autopoetic entities", "triggering" and "environment"; they are not the "atoms", "quarks" or "superstrings" which are the primitives of physics!

Because there is a multiplicity of possible organizations  however, (of possible beginnings, accepting Cassirer's thesis), the real world, (ontology itself), cannot ever be known. Because any given scientific explanation involves a unique and distinct private logical framework, (its particular laws and presuppositions), it implies that reality in itself, "the thing in itself" stripped of that particular logical context becomes “a mere 'X' ", forever beyond our knowing.  This is the “ontic indeterminism” I argue, and it leads to a proper solution to the Mind-Brain problem.  It opens the possibility of shifting our focus from ordinary logic, ("knowing"),  to intentional logic, ("believing", "thinking" -to include scientific beliefs), which is the crux of the problem.

There is an easier and more intuitive approach to Cassirer’s ideas employing the mathematical notion of an “ideal” however.  The example given by Birkhoff and Mac Clane, (“A Survey of Modern Algebra”),  is clearly directly applicable, (by its substance), to the immediate problem.  It illustrates a very different and

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very concrete notion of "relativism".  While encompassing a scope much wider than simple geometry, that example provides a very clear illustration of the concept.  The point is that the same object, (here, the physical circle and, in general, phenomena themselves -baseballs, elephants and all the things these things do), can be preserved in a context-free setting.

“The circle C of radius 2 lying in the plane parallel to the (x,y) plane and two units above it in space is usually described analytically as the set of points (x,y,z) in space satisfying the simultaneous equations:

(16)                  x2 + y2 –4 = 0,                z – 2 = 0.

 

These describe the curve C as the intersection of a circular cylinder and a plane.  But C can be described with equal accuracy”, (as well), “as the intersection of a sphere”, (my emphasis), “with the plane z = 2, by the equivalent simultaneous equations:

 

(17)                  x2 + y2 + z2 – 8 = 0,                  z – 2 = 0.

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i DEDICATION: This dedication will be different from what you are used to. If you choose to skip it therefore, that is your decision. What I choose to put into it, however, is mine. I have lived long as a relative hermit and as a fanatic to the cause of these ideas. Many people dear to me have been forced to pay the price. I dedicate this book to all these compassionate and forgiving souls who have had the tolerance to put up with, and some even to love me:

To my (few) intellectual friends: to Ruelle Denney, whose kindly, (and genuinely aristocratic), response to my youthful naivete and arrogance I will forever remember, to Tom Owens who, in the kindness of his heart was the first willing to risk apoplexy from my initial two and three-page quotations and quivers of "!"'s, to Dr. Arnold Leiman who was the first comprehending being to tell me I was not a raving megalomaniac, to Dr. Hubert Dreyfus who caused me to read Maturana and Varela, to Dr. David Elliott who, over the last year and a half, through his generosity of spirit and kindness has helped me to endure the unendurable. And lastly, mostly, to my dear friend, David Casacuberta who, though he remains an unrecalcitrant Naturalist, (:-) ), in his largeness of spirit and innate decency, has helped me to perfect what is, from his point of view, an enemy's plan of battle. I can never thank him enough.

To my family: I could never give back what you gave to me. I lacked the normal background of human interaction, (because of the circumstances of my childhood), to communicate to you the real love I have always felt for you. And beyond that, my fanaticism and almost total distraction towards the resolution of the problem set for me have robbed you of precious time and attention. But my purpose, beyond the duties of my own spiritual obligation, was to do you honor! I hope that happens. But, if my answer is right, it is important for you as well as for me -I hope it will make life better for you, and, if not for you, then for your grandchildren and theirs.

To "Pops", to "Momma Jung", to Doug, to Rich, to "Bee", (Burbank Jr.), and to Matt, who unselfishly gave me the real family I never had, I am truly and forever grateful.

To my mother and father -I wish I could have made your lives better, and to my brother Ron -I wish we could have been closer. It was probably my fault.

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Still another description", (my emphasis), " is possible, by the equations

 

(18)                  x2 + y2 – 4 = 0,                         x2 + y2 – 2z = 0. 

These describe C as the intersection of a circular cylinder with the paraboloid of rotation:

 

x2 + y2 = 2z.

To my wonderful daughters, Chenin-blanc Yic-mun-fuung Iglowitz and Mook-lan Sauvignon Iglowitz. In you, God has truly blessed me, and I know it every day. I love you guys.

And finally and especially, to my wife of 24 years, Christina Teresa Sun-Jung Iglowitz, I could never have done it without you. This is the holy crusade we talked about on our first date high in the Berkeley hills, (Chinese girls don't kiss?!) I guess it's how I "conned" you into marrying that strange creature. Well, here it is. I have learned, (so far as I am capable of learning it), decency and compassion from you who, I still think, embodies these traits more fully than any other human being I have ever met, and I will be forever in awe of you. I love you now, and, whatever happens, will love you till the day I die.

Jerome IglowitzOctober 22, 1995

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Therefore the only impartial way to describe C”, (my emphasis), “ is in terms of all the polynomial equations which its points satisfy."

The descriptions above represent just a few of the ways to represent the circle "C" however.    But in fact there are an infinity of ways to do so!

"But if f(x,y,z) and g(x,y,z) are any two polynomials whose values are identically zero on C, then their sum and difference also vanish identically on C.  So, likewise, does any multiple a(x,y,z)f(x,y,z) of f(x,y,z) by any polynomial a(x,y,z) whatsoever.”, (my emphasis).  “This means that the set of all polynomials whose values are identically zero on C is an ideal.  This ideal then, and not any special pair of its elements, is the ultimate description of C.  In the light of this observation the special pairs of polynomials occurring in equations (16)-(18) appear simply as generators of the ideal of all polynomials which vanish identically on C. ... ”, (my emphases).

"The polynomial ideal determined by this curve thus has various bases,

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(20) (x2 + y2 – 4, z – 2) = (x2 + y2 + z2 – 8, z – 2) = (x2 + y2 – 2z, z – 2)…, ......, ......, ......, ......., .........................”

 

The subject of mathematical “ideals” open a door to a better understanding of Cassirer’s arguments, and a simpler understanding of my third thesis. None of these generators stands prior to any other, nor does it create the figure comprehended. It is experience which creates it. Each stands, rather, as an equipotent and relativistic “logical”, (i.e. explanatory), basis fully exhausting the actuality of the figure. We start with the phenomena themselves, not with theories.  Theories must validate the phenomena, not the converse.  (But we must incorporate Merleau-Ponty's input-output loop -his "intentional arc"- to truly understand the relationship).  "The circle" cited here would stand for Cassirer's "phenomena", (sic), for my "percept" or for an elephant. It is the invariant component of perception that we must needs preserve. It is focused as an invariant under varying perspectives relativistically but rigidly. This is how

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we can preserve the actuality of our phenomena as relativistic invariants of our symbolic forms and understand the rationale of those forms themselves! Percepts are not created by, nor are they dependent upon any particular frame of reference. If they reference ontology, then they do it as a composite ideal, and not in their particular frames. This was the sense of Galileo’s profound insight long, long ago.

But we must consider the "ideal" within the larger context of mathematics.  Not only can such descriptions be relativized in relation to a fixed coordinate system, but the very coordinate systems themselves stand in like case.  Axes need not be orthogonal, nor need they be rectilinear, (e.g. polar coordinates are possible).  Nor need they be fixed.  They may be in translation –e.g. relative motion, (which translates to special relativity), and they need not be Euclidean, (nor Hyperbolic nor Spherical).   Russell, for instance, further argued that our descriptions of phenomena might even be based in projective geometry.  But need they be even spatial?  Can we not conceive of such explanations being framed as abstract transformations, which latter are not defined on spaces, but on raw and unstructured abstract sets as suggested in my illustration for brain function in my first hypothesis.!  Abstract sets, however, fall naturally within the scope of axiomatics which grounds Cassirer’s “Symbolic Forms”. 

Finally, consider the position of modern physics on the issue of ontology.  The noted mathematical physicist Roger Penrose classified theories as "SUPERB", "USEFUL", "TENTATIVE", AND "MISGUIDED", (his CAPS).  For instance, he classified the best of the best:  Euclidean geometry as SUPERB: ("over a meter's range, ...errors in treating the geometry as Euclidean amounting to less than the diameter of an atom of hydrogen!")  Newtonian physics qualified as "SUPERB" as well:  ("As applied to the motions of planets and moons, the observed accuracy.. is phenomenal -better than one part in ten million.").  Einstein's relativity falls into the same category:  ("One of these -the binary pulsar shows Einstein's theory to be accurate to about one part in 10 to the 14th power").  Quantum mechanics is also classified as "SUPERB", but as "having no known discrepancies", (at all!)," from experiment!"   (Penrose: p152-154, 298)

But consider the viewpoint of the latter that Penrose describes on the issue of ontology.   Its perspective is very close to Cassirer's, Freeman's and my own perspective in many details.

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"Many physicists, taking their lead from the central figure of Niels Bohr, would say that there is no objective picture", (for quantum physics), "at all.  Nothing is actually 'out there', at the quantum level.  Somehow, reality emerges only in relation to the results of 'measurements'.  Quantum theory, according to this view, provides merely a calculational procedure, and does not attempt to describe the world as it actually 'is'.  This attitude seems to me to be too defeatist, and I shall follow the more positive line which attributes objective physical reality to the quantum description:  the quantum state."  (ibid, P.226, his emphases)

But what is a quantum state -what is this "more positive" reality of quantum physics?  Quantum states, (psi functions), are the combinations of "square roots of probabililty functions" spread over the whole of space and time.

"We have seen that all alternatives must somehow be combined together with complex number weightings", (i.e. amplitudes), "like the 'complex square roots' of a probability...This collection of complex weightings describes the quantum state of the particle.    ...every single position that the particle might have is an 'alternative' available to it.   I am taking the view that view that the physical reality of the particle's location is, indeed, its quantum state psi." (Pps 240-243)

"There is a very precise equation, the Schroedinger equation, which provides a completely deterministic time-evolution for this [quantum] state.  But there is something very odd about the relation between the time-evolved quantum state and the actual behavior of the physical world that is observed to take place.  From time to time -whenever we consider that a 'measurement' has occurred -we must discard the quantum state that we have been laboriously evolving, and use it only to compute various probabilities that the state will  'jump' to one or another of a set of new possible states."  (ibid, P.226, his emphases)

In this “more optimistic” view, it is only "in relation to the results of 'measurements'" that concrete reality emerges -i.e. that a specific rendition of space-time is enabled.  What a strange conclusion, but it is the conclusion of the deepest part of modern physics on the issue of ontology!

Now consider the very comparable biological picture I have proposed for the human brain -the ontic indeterminacy that Cassirer, Freeman, (with Merleau-Ponty) and I have argued -and look at the strong parallelism between these two perspectives.  The existence of "an observer", (more precisely -the results of a measurement), conditions the focus of the ontological objects of quantum theory.  So also it is feedback through the sensory loop, (through "the intentional

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arc" -in relation to the results of 'measurements' through an observation), that conditions our perceptual and theoretical reality in response to chaotic input using our evolutionary "objects"/artifacts, (as proposed in the Appendix to "Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology").  These two perspectives are strikingly close in import and consequence.  Each embodies what Freeman would call "circular causality". 

Quoting Freeman:

“To explain how stimuli cause consciousness, we have to explain causality.  [But] We can’t trace linear causal chains from receptors after the first cortical synapse, so we use circular causality to explain neural pattern formation by self-organizing dynamics.  But an aspect” [a key aspect] “of intentional action is causality, which we extrapolate to material objects in the world.” (Freeman, 1999)

“In particular, Maurice Merleau-Ponty in 'The Phenomenology of Perception' conceived of perception” [itself] “as the outcome of the 'intentional arc', by which experience derives from the intentional actions of individuals that control sensory input and perception. Action into the world with reaction that changes the self is indivisible in reality, and must be analyzed in terms of "circular causality" as distinct from the linear causality of events as commonly perceived and analyzed in the physical world."  W.J. Freeman, 1997

Freeman has proposed that our neural and mental world is intentional.  That is, that it is populated with entities of the sort: "I think...", "I believe.., I want….".  But these consist of  probabilities.  Science, (clearly in the case of quantum mechanics), consists in the establishment of a metric across probabilities as well.  Each resolves itself by acting out into the world by way of measurement.  How different are these perspectives?  Not very, I think.

Penrose says:  "The rules of quantum mechanics appear even to insist that cricket balls and elephants out to behave in this odd way... however we never actually see cricket balls or elephants superimposed in this strange way.  Why do we not?"  (ibid P.236)

I think I can supply the beginnings of an answer from the perspective of biology.  Repeating an argument from my paper:  "Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology", we presume that our science maps back, (automorphically), onto the very model we visualize.  But the path of the automorphism we seek, I propose, lies through the very "gears and levers" of the

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original evolutionarily derived topobiological cognitive model itself, (re-using its naive "objects").  Through another iteration -in another re-entrant mapping which supplies the mechanics and transformation, (back into Freeman's non-topological -chaotic- dispersive mapping into the overall brain), it supplies the correlation that we seek. 

I propose that reafferance within the loop of brain function combines with input from outside the loop, (passing through the environment), to yield a consistent, compound map which either does, or does not confirm our theoretical constructs, (but necessarily preserving the phenomena).  Nowhere does this conception demand the absolute (ontic) reality of our constructs, however.  It is just a reuse of our evolutionarily pragmatic (cortical) objects, (like Rosch's prototypes??), saying nothing whatsoever about the real (external) world in which we live.  I believe that our so-called "objects", (our naive physical objects), are really evolutionary artifacts which are re-used, but solely within the brain.  They are locked into the perceptual loop, functioning solely to distribute the flow of process within the brain.  They moderate perception outside the loop, they do not determine it.  Our ontic world is indeterminate!

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Knowing vs Belief: Where the answer to the problem of consciousness lies.

On the issue of necessary realist belief, (which is different from realist knowledge), Cassirer believed, as did Kant, that there were two ontological primitives, (assumptions about ontology), in our intentional realist posture.  (And these are definitely scientific premises -they lie at the core of science itself).  These assumptions are: (1) the ontological existence of the outside world, ("substantia phenomena"), and (2) the ontological existence of experience, ("intuition").

I strongly differ. I propose that there is a necessary third ontological postulate, (an intentional postulate), to our realism. As realists we must presume the actual ontological existance of some necessary connection between these two, and therein lies the key. Cassirer's relativism forbids any specific description of this connection other than a relativistic one. I call it, simply, "interface". It is the

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substance of interface, (whatever and however it may be -but we must presume that it is!), which supplies the requisite substance of the mind!  My third hypothesis is to assume that this interface is structured in the same way that I argued previously for my first two hypotheses. Granting that hypothesis, all of the substantive problems of "mind" are solved within my first two theses.  "Mind" becomes real.  We are conscious. We do exist.  I maintain that all three premises lie at the heart of our realist beliefs, and therefore at the heart of realist science itself.    The Mind-Body problem is solved.

From a strictly biological or physical standpoint however, I believe that consciousness is the physical connectivity of the cortex, (i.e. the organization of that connectivity).  It is the non-hierarchical, dispersive mapping of the cortex described by Freeman viewed through the perspective of Merleau-Ponty.  (See "Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology" -especially "Appendix: Freeman and Automorphism" ).  Does this physical description describe ontology itself?  No, it cannot for the reasons outlined above -it is necessarily only one of many.

My ultimate conclusion, like Kant's, says that science will never answer the really real question of ontology. That is not the business of science. I argue, as he did, that there is room for faith. Our "realism" is based in intentionality.  It is based in belief -and that belief is grounded in its primitive axioms: I propose they are the three I have just named.

But how can I possibly ask you to take such an obvious absurdity seriously? As a movie script it might be plausible, but as a fundamental belief about reality it is quite another matter. You are right, and it is a perfectly reasonable objection. Absurdity is only plausible if it produces profound results. Consider my reasons carefully:

(a). It is exceedingly strong purely as a biological and evolutionary argument -I believe it is the only consistent evolutionary argument for consciousness.

(b). It is sound from an engineering standpoint.

(c). It provides the basis for the first explanation yet put forth and consistent with science, of our normal mental world. No other alternative, (rather than a denial of the problem itself), has yet been proposed to this fundamental aspect, (i.e. the existance of an actual "mind"), of our realist agreement. Under my thesis, there can be a "Cartesian theater" – a wholeness and an awareness of experience. (My second hypothesis deals specifically with the logical aspects of

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the problem.) It solves the homunculus problem as well.  (See "Consciousness: a Simpler Approach to the Mind-Brain Problem").  These are huge and necessary aspects of the problem we have set ourselves!

(d). It produces a viable and believable theory of meaning for the first time. Migrating Hilbert's "implicit definition" to a biological, operative setting supplies such a rationale. (e). There is a long list of other "others", (too long to be listed here), not the least of which is its consistency with the viewpoint of modern physics. But, most of all, I suppose, because it leads to fruitful new perspectives across a myriad of issues -which latter is what we believe our deepest theories must do. It may be absurd, but it is absurd, I argue, in just the same way that modern physics is absurd.

(f) Perhaps most importantly from a pragmatic point of view, it agrees with new and fundamental brain research. This is where its fate will be ultimately decided. Walter Freeman, for instance, argues a very similar case, (as elaborated in the "Mind: the Argument from Evolutionary Biology" paper mentioned above.)

I have concluded, with Walter Freeman, that the essence of mind is ultimately intentional -in reflects organic necessity, not representation. If this is so, then our "knowledge" is really a choice of beliefs. I do not believe that all beliefs are equal however; neither do I believe that there is only one best belief. Materialism has gone too far. It has gone from being the basis of a superb and wonderfully productive theory of science into a "religious" dogma. It purports to know reality, not just to explain and predict it. It has been mortally wounded by 20th century science, and, as a dogma, I believe it will finally break itself upon the rock of "mind". We cannot tithe to this church though we must support its good works! I think we need to be realists, but I do not think we need to be dogmatic materialists.

If you would like to examine my ideas further, let me suggest that you begin with my book itself:  "Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained", (or the same in PDF form), and, if that piques your interest, that you examine the two papers mentioned above, ("Evolutionary Biology" and "Consciousness" which are revisions and crucial expansions of chapters one and two of that book.

Conclusion:

In the beginning we started from the necessity of mutual agreement. We had to agree on our basic premises to arrive at common answers. This is actually an

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instance of Cassirer's epistemological relativism, (his theory of "Symbolic Forms"), in its rawest form. Different premises, even purely scientific ones, lead to different world views. The biological reality of Maturana, (or Edelman or Freeman), is not the same as that of the mathematical physicist. This is where it makes most sense to conceive of axiomatics. Different fundamental assumptions, (axioms), lead to radically different conclusions about the world. But why must we assume that there is a privileged set of fundamental assumptions. Without "god-knowledge", (which I don't think anybody would posit for biological organisms), it is not an option. This is where the relativism comes in. We manufacture systems, (of premises), to explain and operate in our reality. Alternative systems explain different aspects of that reality. There is room even for purely ethical and religious perspectives provided they meet the necessary criteria.  Must only one of them mirror ontology? Or can we, extending Einstein, (and like Cassirer), conceive a relativity of our very epistemology itself?

  Dogmatic materialism requires the death of "mind" and "spirit". Thereby it robs ethics, humanism, religion of any real significance. Under its mechanical absolute it does not really matter whether a given mechanistic organism makes "pain noises" or "happy noises". What then is the choice between Dauchau and a humanitarian fundraiser? All that remains are relative ethics, relative values and those are as changeable as the wind.

I do not believe in relative ethics, (cultural relativism) -I think it leads nowhere. This is not to say that I believe that each and every, (or any), aspect of my particular, culturally influenced views is absolute. Far from it. What I do believe is that there are absolutes -inherents of the unique human brain and spirit and that they are ultimately approachable scientifically. If my specific beliefs do not match those findings, then I will have to abandon them.

This is a new world, barely glimpsed and must be the subject of other works. This particular writing has only one thing to say on the subject: there is room for faith. But not all "faiths" are equal.

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