Tao reflections

cognitive Tao within the circle

M.C. Escher, Dragon, 1952

Defined the cognitive science main approaches Varela, Thompson and Rosch introduce the specific basic characteristic for the study of the mind: the circular recursion of the operational closure of the autopoietic living systems characterized by their autonomy and cognition becomes maximum and paradoxical when with the mind one attempts to investigate the mind; the result is in an endless recursion between the describing mind and the described mind, where the distinction between subject and object disappears. For the enactive point of view proposed by the authors this circularity is central and should be integrated with experience:

Cognitive Science within the Circle

We began this chapter with a reflection on the fundamental circularity in scientific method that would be noted by a philosophically inclined cognitive scientist. From the standpoint of enactive cognitive science, this Circularity is central; it is an epistemological necessity. In contrast, the other, more extant forms of cognitive science start from the view that cognition and mind are entirely due to the particular structures of cognitive systems. The most obvious expression of this view is found in neuroscience, where cognition is investigated by looking at the properties of the brain . One can associate these biologically based properties with cognition only through behavior. It is only because this structure, the brain, undergoes interactions in an environment that we can label the ensuing behavior as cognitive . The basic assumption, then, is that to every form of behavior and experience we can ascribe specific brain structures (however roughly). And, conversely, changes in brain structure manifest themselves in behavioral and experiential alterations. We may diagram this view as in figure: (In this diagram and those that follow, the double arrows express interdependence or mutual specification.)

Interdependence or mutual specification of structure and behavior/experience.

Yet upon reflection we cannot avoid as a matter of consistency the logical implication that by this same view any such scientific description, either of biological or mental phenomena, must itself be a product of the structure of our own cognitive system. We may diagram this further understanding as in figure:

Interdependency of scientific description and our own cognitive structure.

Furthermore , the act of reflection that tells us this does not come from nowhere; we find ourselves performing that act of reflection out of a given background (in the Heideggerian sense) of biological, social, and cultural beliefs and practices. We portray this further step as in figure:

Interdependency of reflection and the background of biological, social, and cultural beliefs and practices.

But then yet again, our very postulation of such a background is something that we are doing : we are here, living embodied beings, sitting and thinking of this entire scheme, including what we call a background.

Plainly, this kind of layering could go on indefinitely, as in an Escher drawing . This last move makes it evident that, rather than adding layers of continued abstraction, we should go back where we started, to the concreteness and particularity of our own experience - even in the endeavor of reflection . The fundamental insight of the enactive approach as explored in this book is to be able to see our activities as reflections of a structure without losing sight of the directness of our own experience.

The Theme

This book is devoted to the exploration of this deep circularity . We will endeavor throughout to keep in mind our theoretical constructs about structure without losing sight of the immediacy of our experience.

Some aspects of the basic circularity of our condition have been discussed by philosophers in various ways at least since Hegel. The contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor refers to it when he says that we are " self-interpreting animals" and so wonders "whether features which are crucial to our self-understanding as agents can be accorded no place in our explanatory theory " The usual response on the part of cognitive scientists is well put by Daniel Dennett when he writes that "every cognitivist theory currently defended or envisaged . . . is a theory of the sub-personal level . It is not at all clear to me, indeed, how a psychological theory - as distinct from a philosophical theory - could fail to be a sub-personal theory." For Dennett, our self-understanding presupposes cognitive notions such as believing, desiring , and knowing but does not explain them. Therefore, if the study of mind is to be rigorous and scientific, it cannot be bound to explanations in terms of features essential to our self-understanding.

For the moment we wish simply to emphasize the deep tension in our present world between science and experience. In our present world science is so dominant that we give it the authority to explain even when it denies what is most immediate and direct- our everyday, immediate experience. Thus most people would hold as a fundamental truth the scientific account of matter/space as collections of atomic particles, while treating what is given in their immediate experience, with all of its richness, as less profound and true. Yet when we relax into the immediate bodily well-being of a sunny day or of the bodily tension of anxiously running to catch a bus, such accounts of space/matter fade into the background as abstract and secondary.

When it is cognition or mind that is being examined, the dismissal of experience becomes untenable, even paradoxical. The tension comes to the surface especially in cognitive science because cognitive science stands at the crossroads where the natural sciences and the human sciences meet. Cognitive science is therefore Janus-faced, for it looks down both roads at once: One of its faces is turned toward nature and sees cognitive processes as behavior. The other is turned toward the human world (or what phenomenologists call the "lifeworld") and sees cognition as experience.

When we ignore the fundamental circularity of our situation, this double face of cognitive science gives rise to two extremes: we suppose either that our human self-understanding is simply false and hence will eventually be replaced by a mature cognitive science, or we suppose that there can be no science of the human life-world because science must always presuppose it.

These two extremes'summarize much of the general philosophical debate surrounding cognitive science. At one end stand philosophers such as Stephen Stich and Paul and Patricia Churchland who argue that our self-understanding is simply false. (Note the Churchlands'suggestion that we might come to refer to brain states instead of experiences in actual daily discourse.) At the other end stand philosophers such as Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor who seriously doubt the very possibility of cognitive science (perhaps because they often seem to accept the equation of cognitive science with cognitivism).

The debate thus recapitulates - though with new twiststhe typical oppositions within the human sciences. If, in the midst of this confusion, the fate of human experience has been left to the philosophers, their lack of agreement does not bode well.

Unless we move beyond these oppositions, the rift between science and experience in our society will deepen. Neither extreme is workable for a pluralistic society that must embrace both science and the actuality of human experience. To deny the truth of our own experience in the scientific study of ourselves is not only unsatisfactory; it is to render the scientific study of ourselves without a subject matter.

But to suppose that science cannot contribute to an understanding of our experience may be to abandon, within the modem context, the task of self-understanding. Experience and scientific understanding are like two legs without which we cannot walk.

We can phrase this very same idea in positive terms: it is only by having a sense of common ground between cognitive science and human experience that our understanding of cognition can be more complete and reach a satisfying level. We thus propose a constructive task: to enlarge the horizon of cognitive science to include the broader panorama of human, lived experience in a disciplined, transformative analysis. As a constructive task, the search for this expansion becomes motivated by scientific research itself, as we will see throughout this work.

the last pianoTao

Tao revised

René Magritte, La Clairvoyance, 1936

The witch, the sapta, the mystic, the schizophrenic, the fool, the prophet, the trickster, and the poet are all variants of the bus. (The witch traditionally has freedom in three dimensions. He or she is perhaps best symbolized by some flying, lurching, and dizzy vehicle such as a helicopter.) They all share a partial freedom that sets them at odds with the conventional world.

Long ago, in 1949, when psychiatrists still believed in lobotomy, I was a new member of the staff of the Veterans Administration Mental Hospital in Palo Alto. One day one of the residents called me aside to see the blackboard in our largest classroom. A lobotomy meeting had been held there that afternoon and the board was still unerased.

This was thirty years ago, of course, and nothing of the sort could happen today, but in those days lobotomy meetings were great social occasions. Everybody who had had anything to do with the case turned up – doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and so on. Perhaps thirty or forty people were there, including the five-man Lobotomy Committee, under the chairmanship of an outside examiner, a distinguished psychiatrist from another hospital.

When all the tests and reports had been presented, the patient was brought in to be interviewed by the outside examiner.

The examiner gave the patient a piece of chalk and told him, “Draw the figure of a man.” The patient went obediently to the blackboard and wrote: DRAW THE FIGURE OF A MAN

The examiner said, “Don‘t write it. Draw it.” And again the patient wrote: Don‘t write it draw it The examiner said, “Oh, I give up.” This time the patient revised the definition of the context, which he had already used to assert a kind of freedom, and wrote in large capital letters all across the blackboard:

VICTORY

Innocence and Experience

101 Tao: 26

26. Trading Dialogue for Lodging

Provided he makes and wins an argument about Buddhism with those who live there any wandering monk can remain in a Zen temple. If he is defeated, he has to move on. In a temple in the northern part of Japan two brothers monks were dwelling together. The elder one was learned, but the younger one was stupid and had but one eye. A wandering monk came and asked for lodging properly challenging them to a debate about the sublime teaching.
The elder brother, tired that day from much studying, told the  younger one to take his place. 'Go and request the dialogue in silence,’ he cautioned.
So the young monk and the strange went to the shrine and sat down. Shortly afterwards the traveler rose and went in to the elder brother and said: 'Your young brother is a wonderful fellow. He defeated me.' 'Relate the dialogue to me,' said the elder one. 'Well,' explained the traveler,' first I held up one finger, representing Buddha, the enlightened one. So he held up two fingers, signifying Buddha and his teaching. I held up three fingers representing Buddha, his teaching, and his followers living the harmonious life. Then he shook his clenched fist in my face, indicating that all three come from one realization. Thus he won and so I have no right to remain here.' With this, the traveler left.
'Where is that fellow?' asked the younger one, running in to his elder brother. “I understand you won the debate.' 'Won nothing. I'm going to beat him up.' ‘Tell me the subject of the debate,' asked the elder one. 'Why, the minute he saw me he held up one finger, insulting me by insinuating that I have only one eye. Since he was a stranger I thought I would be polite to him, so I held up two fingers congratulating him that he her two eyes. Then the impolite wretch held up three fingers, suggesting that between us we only have three eyes. So I got mad and started to punch him, bur he ran out and that ended it.’

Tao components: awareness and energy

© Edgar Mueller

Introduced in the system analysis of the states of consciousness the three system components: awareness - energy and structures, Charles T. Tart illustrates their characteristics and interactions:

Awareness and Energy

We begin with a concept of some kind of basic awareness — an ability to know or sense or cognize or recognize that something is happening. This is a basic theoretical and experiential given. We do not know scientifically what its ultimate nature is, but it is where we start from. I call this concept attention/awareness, to relate it to another basic given, which is that we have some ability to direct this awareness from one thing to another.

This basic attention/awareness is something we can both conceptualize and (to some extent) experience as distinct from the particular content of awareness at any time. I am aware of a plant beside me at this moment of writing and if I turn my head I am aware of a chair. The function of basic awareness remains in spite of various changes in its content.

A second basic theoretical and experiential given is the existence, at times, of an awareness of being aware, self-awareness. The degree of self-awareness varies from moment to moment. At one extreme, I can be very aware that at this moment I am aware that I am looking at the plant beside me. At the other extreme, I may be totally involved in looking at the plant, but not be aware of being aware of it. There is an experiential continuum at one end of which attention/awareness and the particular content of awareness are essentially merged, and at the other end of which awareness of being aware exists in addition to the particular content of the awareness. In between are mixtures: at this moment of writing I am groping for clarity of the concept I want to express and trying out various phrases to see if they adequately express it. In low-intensity flashes, I have some awareness of what I am doing, but most of the time I am absorbed in this particular thought process. The lower end of the self-awareness continuum, relatively total absorption, is probably where we spend most of our lives, even though we like to credit ourselves with high self-awareness.

The relative rarity of self-awareness is a major contributor to neurotic qualities of behavior and to the classification of ordinary consciousness as illusion or waking dreaming by many spiritual systems... The higher end of the continuum of self-awareness comes to us even more rarely, although it may be sought deliberately in certain kinds of meditative practices, such as the Buddhist vipassana meditation...

The ultimate degree of self-awareness, of separation of attention/awareness from content, that is possible in any final sense varies with one's theoretical position about the ultimate nature of the mind. If one adopts the conventional view that mental activity is a product of brain functioning, thus totally controlled by the electrical-structural activity of brain functioning, there is a definite limit to how far awareness can back off form particular content, since that awareness is a product of the structure and content of the individual brain. This is a psychological manifestation of the physical principle of relativity... Although the feeling of being aware can have an objective quality, this conventional position holds that the objectivity is only relative, for the very function of awareness itself stems from and is shaped by the brain activity it is attempting to be aware of.

A more radical view, common to the spiritual psychologies, is that basic awareness is not just a property of the brain, but is (at least partially) something from outside the workings of the brain. Insofar as this is true, it is conceivable that most or all content associated with brain processes could potentially be stood back from so that the degree of separation between content and attention/awareness, the degree of self-awareness, is potentially much higher than in the conservative view.

Whichever ultimate view one takes, the psychologically important concept for studying consciousness is that the degree of experienced separation of attention/awareness from content varies considerably from moment to moment.

Attention/awareness can be volitionally directed to some extent. If I ask you to become aware of the sensations in your left knee now, you can do so. but few would claim anything like total ability to direct attention. If you are being burned by a flame, it is generally impossible to direct your attention/awareness to something else and not notice the pain at all, although this can be done by a few people in the ordinary d-SoC and by many more people in certain states of consciousness. Like the degree of separation of attention/awareness from content, the degree to which we can volitionally direct our attention/awareness also varies. Sometimes we can easily direct our thoughts according to a predetermined plan; at other times our minds wander with no regard at all for our plans.

Stimuli and structures attract or capture attention/awareness. When you are walking down the street, the sound and sight of an accident and a crowd suddenly gathering attract your attention to the incident. This attractive pull of stimuli and activated structures may outweigh volitional attempts to deploy attention/awareness elsewhere. For example, you worry over and over about a particular problem and are told that you are wasting energy by going around in circles and should direct your attention elsewhere. but, in spite of your desire to do so, you may find it almost impossible.

The ease with which particular kinds of structures and contents capture attention/awareness varies with the state of consciousness and the personality structure of the individual. For example, things that are highly valued or are highly threatening capture attention much more easily than things that bore us. Indeed, we can partially define personality as those structures that habitually capture a person's attention/awareness. In some states of consciousness, attention/awareness is more forcibly captivated by stimuli than in others.

Attention/awareness constitutes the major energy of the mind, as we usually experience it. Energy is here used in its most abstract sense — the ability to do work, to make something happen. Attention/awareness is energy (1) in the sense that structures having no effect on consciousness at a given time can be activated if attended to; (2) in the sense that structures may draw attention/awareness energy automatically, habitually, as a function of personality structure, thus keeping a kind of low-level, automated attention in them all the time (these are our long-term desires, concerns, phobias, blindnesses); and (3) in the sense that attention/awareness energy may inhibit particular structures from functioning. The selective redistribution of attention/awareness energy to desired ends is a key aspect of innumerable systems that have been developed to control the mind. The concept of psychological energy is usually looked upon with disfavor by psychologists because it is difficult to define clearly. Yet various kinds of psychological energies are direct experiential realities. I am, for example, full of energy for writing at this moment. When interrupted a minute ago, I resented having to divert this energy from writing to dealing with a different issue. Last night I was tired; I felt little energy available to do what I wished to do. Those who prefer to give priority to observations about the body and nervous system in their thinking would tell me that various chemicals in my bloodstream were responsible for these varied feelings. But "chemicals in my bloodstream" is a very intellectual, abstract concept to me, while the feelings of energy and of tiredness are direct experiences for me and most other people. So we must consider psychological energy in order to keep our theorizing close to experience.

I cannot deal in any detail with psychological energy at this stage of development of the systems approach, for we know little about it. Clearly, changing the focus of attention (as in trying to sense what is happening in your left knee) has effects: it starts, stops, and alters psychological processes. Also, attention/awareness is not the only form of psychological energy. Emotions, for example, constitute a very important kind of energy, different in quality from simple attention/awareness shifts, but interacting with attention/awareness as an energy. So while this book deals concept of psychological energy is much more complex and is one of the major areas to be developed in the future.

Note that the total amount of attention/awareness energy available to a person varies from time to time, but there may be some fixed upper limit on it for a particular day or other time period. Some days, we simply cannot concentrate well no matter how much we desire it; other days we seem able to focus clearly, to use lots of attention to accomplish things. We talk about exhausting our ability to pay attention, and it may be that the total amount of attention/awareness energy available is fixed for various time periods under ordinary conditions.

Tao psicothesis

Sigmund Freud has done great work in creating psychoanalysis, but it is only half.
The other half is psychosynthesis done by Assagioli – but it too is only half, the other half.

It is not that he is right and Freud is wrong; both are wrong taken separately.
They are right only when they are put together.

Psychothesis* is the whole. 
* Thesis, latin, from greek ϑέσις (position, something which is placed), derivation of τίϑημι, set, placed.