a legacy for Tao - I

Angels Fear Revisited: Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind Applied to Religion-Science Debates

Mary Catherine Bateson

Abstract Gregory Bateson intended his posthumous book Angels Fear as an approach to the scientific explanation of natural phenomena in the living world based on cybernetics that would not be so narrowly mechanistic that it triggers a fundamentalist reaction. This issue is newly urgent in the contemporary context of global religious conflict, resurgent fundamentalism, and the intelligent design debate. A redefinition of mind in terms of process and organization sufficient to analyze both evolution and learning, and an application of the Russellian theory of logical types to explanatory systems are central to his approach.

Keywords Gregory Bateson, evolution, intelligent design, mind, metamessages, systems theory, fundamentalism, cybernetics, double bind, schizophrenia, logical types

Introduction

The interdisciplinary conference brought together in Copenhagen in August 2005 by Professor Jesper Hoffmeyer was a fitting climax to the Gregory Bateson Centennial. First, because my father sought ways to make what he was saying accessible and useful to biologists, but second, because the broader interdisciplinary conversation was essential to preserve the weave of Gregory’s thinking. For biologists to discover what may be useful in his work it is necessary to consider writings that are primarily oriented to other disciplines, about, for instance, mental illness, where much of his thinking about communication can be found, or religion. Gregory regarded religions as efforts to understand the living world that might encode insights yet to be explored in other contexts, as exemplified in his comparison between Genesis, in which order is imposed on the natural world by god, and a New Guinea origin myth in which order is immanent in the material world and it is disorder that needs to be defeated. His primary approach, even in discussing matters that his colleagues declined to discuss, was as a scientist, but he regarded a sense of wonder at the natural world as a valuable corrective to the limitations of science.

Bateson’s Redefinition of Mind

The rule when Gregory began work as a scientist, as he expressed it, was perfectly clear: “in scientific explanation, there should be no use of mind or deity, and there should be no appeal to final causes. All causality should flow with the flow of time, with no effect of the future upon the present or the past. No deity, no teleology, and no mind should be postulated in the universe that was to be explained”.

The turning point for his thinking at the Macy conferences on cybernetics, was reflected in the title Warren McCulloch gave to the second conference in 1946: “Teleological Mechanisms and Circular Causal Systems.” In that title there is already an expression of the particular epistemological exploration that engaged Gregory for the rest of his life: cybernetics could be looked at as a way of understanding what looks like final cause or purpose in systems where self-corrective feedback loops provide for an “effect of the future on the present.” If causation does not always flow with the flow of time, we need a way of talking about it without postulating an external agent or deity.

Because of this characteristic, particularly in living systems, Gregory defied taboo by redefining the word “mind” to refer to material systems so organized that they have the immanent capacity for self-correction. Gregory listed six “criteria of mental process” in Mind and Nature: “A mind is an aggregate of interacting parts… triggered by difference … requiring collateral energy …, [and] circular (or more complex) chains of determination … [resulting in] transforms (i.e. coded versions) of events … disclosing a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena”. I mention a seventh in Angels Fear that we discussed just before his death, the uneven distribution of information. He might have argued that this was entailed by one of the others but I put it forward because of his emphasis on the importance of parts of any system not having full information about other parts.

An examination of this list reveals that although Gregory is speaking of material systems dependent on physical energy, the process involves non-material abstractions and communication: triggering by difference, coding, and logical types.

the merry touch of Tao

Vladimir Horowitz

Mozart's Piano Concerto No.23 in A Major-K. 488-Allegro

The Orchestra of La Scala, Director:Carlo Maria Giulini

Burial site in the crypt of Toscanini family, his father-in-law Arturo Toscanini.
Cimitero Monumentale, Milano, Italy

The Horowitz Website

codependent arising selfless Tao

© Igor Morski

The absence of a Self revealed by the Abhidhamma analysis of the five aggregates of the subjective experience, with its consequences for cognitive sciences, poses the question of how it may be understood on the basis of a Selfless mind.

The authors begin this discussion in the context of three examples: the model of agents society proposed by Marvin Minsky - a paradigm for Artificial Intelligence -,  la object relations theory, proposed in psychoanalysis by William Fairbairn and developed by the work of Melanie Klein, and the idea of codependent arising, from eastern traditions:

Selfless Minds

Societies of Mind

We have now seen in some detail that brains are highly cooperative systems. Nonetheless, they are not uniformly structured networks, for they consist of many networks that are themselves connected in various ways. As we have already sketched for the case of the visual system, the entire system resembles a patchwork of subnetworks assembled by a complex process of tinkering, rather than a system that results from some clean, unified design. This kind of architecture suggests that instead of looking for grand, unified models for all network behaviors, one should study networks whose abilities are restricted to specific cognitive activities and then look for ways to connect the networks.

This view of cognitive architecture has begun to be taken seriously by cognitive scientists in various ways. In this chapter we will see how it also provides a natural entry point for the next stage of the dialogue between cognitive science and the mindfulness/awareness approach to human experience. To make the discussion clear, we will explore this next stage on the basis of Marvin Minsky's and Seymour Papert's recent proposal to study the mind as a society, for. This proposal takes the patchwork architecture of cognition as a central element.

Minsky and Papert present a view in which minds consist of many "agents" whose abilities are quite circumscribed: each agent taken individually operates only in a microworld of small-scale or "toy" problems. The problems must be of a small scale because they become unmanageable for a single network when they are scaled up. This last point has not been obvious to cognitive scientists. It is to a large extent a result of the many years of frustration in AI with attempts to find global solutions (for example, in the form of a General Problem Solver) and of the relative success in finding solutions to more local tasks - solutions that cannot, however, be extended beyond specific domains. The task, then, is to organize the agents who operate in these specific domains into effective larger systems or "agencies," and these agencies in tum into higher-level systems. In doing so, mind emerges as a kind of society.

It is important to remember here that, although inspired by a closer look at the brain, this model is of the mind. In other words, it is not a model of neural networks or societies; it is a model of the cognitive architecture that abstracts from neurological detail. Agents and agencies are not, therefore, entities or material processes; they are abstract processes or functions. The reader is no doubt familiar with this theme of various levels by now, but the point bears emphasizing, especially since Minsky and Papert sometimes write as if they were talking about cognition at the level of the brain.

The model of the mind as a society of numerous agents is intended to encompass a multiplicity of approaches to the study of cognition, ranging from distributed, self-organizing networks to the classical, cognitivist conception of localized, serial symbolic processing. The society of mind purports to be, then, something of a middle way in present cognitive science. This middle way challenges a homogenous model of the mind, whether in the form of distributed networks at one extreme or symbolic processers at the other extreme.

This move is particularly apparent when Minsky and Papert argue that there are virtues not only to distribution but to insulation, that is to mechanisms that keep various processes apart. The agents within an agency may be connected in the form of a distributed network, but if the agencies were themselves connected in the same way, they would, in effect, constitute one large network whose functions were uniformly distributed. Such uniformity, however, would restrict the ability to combine the operations of individual agencies in a productive way. The more distributed these operations are, the harder it is to have many of them active at the same time without interfering with one another. These problems do not arise, however, if there are mechanisms to keep various agencies insulated from each other. These agencies would still interact, but through more limited connections, such as those typical of sequential, symbolic processing.

The details of such a view are, of course, debatable. But the overall picture of mind not as a unified, homogenous entity, nor even as a collection of entities, but rather as a disunified, heterogenous collection of networks of processes seems not only attractive but also strongly resonant with the experience accumulated in all the fields of cognitive science. Such a society can obviously be considered at more than one level. What counts as an agency, that is, as a collection of agents, could, if we change our focus, be considered as merely one agent in a larger agency. And conversely, what counts as an agent could, if we resolve our focus in greater detail, be seen to be an agency made up of many agents. In the same way, what counts as a society will depend too on our chosen level of focus.

Let us take an example. Minsky begins his Society of Mind with the example of an agent whose specialty is building towers out of toy blocks. But to build a tower, one needs to start the tower, add new blocks, and decide when to finish. So this agent-Builder-requires the help of the sub-agents Begin, Add, and Finish, and these subagents require still more agents, such as Find and Pick up. The activities of all these agents combine to accomplish the task of building a tower. If we want to think of Builder as a single agent (a homunculus, maybe even with a will, who performs actions), then Builder is whatever it is that switches on all these agents. From the emergent point of view, however, all of these agents combine to produce Builder as an agency that constructs toy towers.

Minsky's and Papert's society of mind is not, of course, concerned with the analysis of direct experience. But Minsky draws on a delightfully wide range of human experience, from playing with children's blocks to being an individual who is aware and can introspect. In many ways, Minsky's work is an extended reflection on cognitive science and human experience, one that is committed to the "subpersonal,"but does. not wish to lose sight for too long of the personal and experiential. At certain points, Minsky even senses the kinship between some of his ideas and those of the Buddhist tradition, for he begins six of his pages with quotations from the Buddha.

Minsky does not follow the lead that his own citations suggest, however. He argues instead that although there is no room for a truly existing self in cognitive science, we cannot give up our conviction in such a self. At the very end of The Society of Mind, science and human experience simply come apart. And since we cannot choose between the two, we are ultimately left with a condition of schizophrenia, in which we are "condemned" (by our constitution) to believe in something we know not to be true (our personal selves).

Let us emphasize that this kind of consequence is not peculiar to Minsky. Indeed, cognitivism forces us to separate cognition as representation from cognition as consciousness and in so doing inevitably leads us to the view that, in Jackendoff's words, "consciousness is not good for anything."

Thus rather than building a genuine bridge between the computational and the phenomenological mind, Jackendoff simply reduces the latter to a mere "projection" of the former. And yet, as Jackendoff also notes, "Consciousness seems too important to one's life-too much fun-to conceive of it as useless." Thus once again science and human experience simply come apart.

It is only by enlarging the horizon of cognitive science to include an open-ended analysis of human experience that we will be able to avoid this predicament. We will return to consider this impasse in its Minskian form in greater detail. At this point, however, we will tum to a discussion of ideas of society and properties of emergence in two disciplines that examine experience from perspectives other than cognitive science: we will discuss psychoanalysis briefly and the mindfulness/awareness meditation tradition at greater length.

The Society of Object Relations

Within psychoanalysis, a new school, so different from Freudian theory that it has been called a paradigm shift, has emerged. This is object relations theory. Freud already anticipated this theory in an embryonic form. For Freud, the superego results from the "internalization" of parental morality as an internalized parental figure. Freud also discussed particular psychological states, such as the mourning process, in terms of relations between the self and such an internalized parent. Object relations theory has extended this idea to encompass all of psychological development and to act as an explanatory framework for adult functioning. In object relations theory, for example in the work of Melanie Klein, the basic mental developmental process is the internalizing of a rich array of persons in various aspects. Fairbairn goes so far as to reconceptualize the concept of motivation into object relations terms; for Fairbairn the basic motivating drive of the human is not the pleasure principle but the need to form relationships. Horowitz joins object relations theory to cognitive science by describing internalized object relations as interpersonal schemas. These schemas and subschemas act very much as Minskian agents.

The convergence between psychoanalysis, in the form of object relations theory, and the concept of mind as a society in artificial intelligence is striking; Turkle suggests that this convergence may be of benefit to both. Object relations theory has been much criticized for reifying interdependent, fluid mental processes into an image of independent, static mental structures. In the society of mind portrayal of the emergence of agency from agents, however-as in our previous example, Builder-it becomes quite apparent how one can structure such a conceptual system-how one can incorporate aspects of the disunity of mind to which object relations theory points without reification.

Psychoanalysis is not just theory but a practice. Troubled patients who see an object relations therapist learn to explore their minds, behavior, and emotions in terms of object relations-they come to see their reactions in terms of internalized agents. Does this, we wonder, lead them to question their basic sense of self altogether? This surely happens in some instances between a gifted therapist and a committed patient. But more generally it is unlikely to happen in the present cultural context in Britain and North America since psychoanalysis has been co-opted by psychiatry to an important degree.

Thus more often than not it is seen as medicine rather than as a means to gain knowledge about the nature of mind. A successful object relations analysis, like any other analysis, is designed to make the patient better-more functional, with improved object relations, and with greater emotional comfort; it is not designed to lead him to question, "Isn't it odd that I am so zealously pursuing my object relations and my comfort when all I am is a set of object relations schemas? What is going on?" In more general terms, it is apparent that object relations analysis, like other contemplative traditions, has discovered the contradiction between the lack of a self that analysis discovers and our ongoing sense of self. It is not, however, apparent that psychoanalysis in the form of object relations theory has faced, or even fully acknowledged, this contradiction. Rather, object relations theory appears to accept the basic motivation (the basic grasping) of the ongoing sense of self at face value and employs analytic discoveries about the disunity of the self to cater to the demands of the ongoing sense of self. Because object relations psychoanalysis has not systematically addressed this basic contradiction-the lack of a unitary self in experience versus the ongoing sense of self-grasping the open-ended quality that is possible in analysis, though present in all psychoanalysis and particularly in object relations therapy, is limited. Lacanian analysis in Europe may be one exception, and it may have gained some of its power and notoriety because of this quality.

A fuller discussion of this fascinating bridge between psychoanalysis and modem cognitive science - and eventually with the meditation tradition - is, however, beyond the scope of this book. We therefore tum once again to mindfulness/awareness and the expositions of the Abhidharma.

Codependent Arising

How is it, if we have no self, that there is coherence in our lives? How is it, if we have no self, that we continue to think, feel, and act as though we had a self-endlessly seeking to enhance and defend that nonfindable, nonexperienced self? How and why do the momentary arisings of the elements of experience, the five aggregates and mental factors, follow one another temporally to constitute recurrent patterns?

The Buddha was said to have discovered on the eve of his enlightenment not only the momentariness of the arising of the aggregates but also the entire edifice of causality - the circular structure of habitual patterns, the binding chain, each link of which conditions and is conditioned by each of the others - that constitutes the pattern of human life as a never-ending circular quest to anchor experience in a fixed and permanent self. This insight came to be named with the Sanskrit word pratityasamutpada, which literally means "dependence (pratitya) upon conditions that are variously Originated (samutpada)."

We will use the term codependent arising, since that gloss best expresses the idea, familiar in the context of societies of mind, of transitory yet recurrent, emergent properties of aggregate elements.

This circle is also called the Wheel of Life and the Wheel of Karma. Karma is a topic with a long history, both pre- and post-Buddhist, on which an immense amount of scholarship has been focused. The word karma has also found its way into contemporary English vocabulary where it is generally used as a synonym for fate or predestination.

This is definitely not the meaning of karma within Buddhism. Karma constitutes a description of psychological causality -  how habits form and continue over time. The portrait of the Wheel of Life is intended to show how it is that karmic causality actually works. The emphasis on causality is central to the tradition of mindfulness/awareness and as such is quite compatible with our modem scientific sensibility; in the case of mindfulness/awareness, however, the concern is with a causal analysis of direct experience, not with causality as an external form of lawfulness. The concern is also pragmatic: How can the understanding of causality be used to break the chains of conditioning mind (an idea quite contrary to the popular notion of karma as predestination) and foster mindfulness and insight?

There are twelve links (called nidanas) in the circular chain (the patterning situation as shown in figure):

The circle is an analytic structure that can be used to describe events of any duration from a single moment to a lifetime or, in the Buddhist view, to many lifetimes. Metaphorically, we could say that these motifs have a fractal character: the same patterns seem to appear even when we change the scale of observation by orders of magnitude. Descriptions of the twelve interdependent links follow.

1 Ignorance

Ignorance is the ground of all karmic causal action. It means being ignorant of, not knowing, the truth(s) about the nature of mind and reality. In the material we have discussed so far, this means being ignorant-personally experientially ignorant of the lack of ego-self.

It also means the confusions-the mistaken views and emotions of believing in a self - that come from that ignorance. Hence it could also be rendered as bewilderment. (In later formulations, it came to include other truths. about which a sentient being could be ignorant.)

2 Volitional Action

Out of ignorance, one acts on the basis of a self. That is to say, in the selfless state there are no self-oriented intentions. Because of ignorance of the lack of ego-self, the urge toward habitual, repetitive actions based on a self arises. Ignorance and volitional action are the ground, the prior conditions, sometimes called the past conditions, that give rise to the next eight links (the third through the tenth). If this analytic scheme is being used to talk about the links arising in time, then these eight are said to constitute the present situation.

3 Consciousness

Consciousness refers to sentience in general, the dualistic state we talked about as the fifth aggregate. It may mean the beginning of consciousness in the life of any sentient being or the first moment of consciousness in any given situation. Remember that consciousness is not the only mode of knowing; one is bom into a moment or a lifetime of consciousness, rather than wisdom, because of volitional actions that were based on ignorance. If we are speaking of the arising of a particular moment of consciousness, its precise form (which of the six sense bases it arises upon, whether it is pleasant, unpleasant, etc.) is conditioned by the seeds laid down by the volitional action(s) of the previous link.

4 The Psychophysical Complex

Consciousness requires a body and mind together. Moments of consciousness in a given situation can gravitate toward one or the other end of the psychophysical complex: perhaps the consciousness is primarily sensory; perhaps it is primarily mental.

5 The Six Senses

A body and mind mean that one has the six senses. Even brief situations, for example, eating a piece of fruit - involve moments of each of the six sense consciousnesses: one sees, hears, tastes, smells, touches, and one thinks.

6 Contact

Having the six senses means that each sense is able to contact its sense field, its appropriate object. Any moment of consciousness involves contact between the sense and its object (contact is an omnipresent); without contact, there is no sense experience.

7 Feeling

Feeling - pleasurable, displeasurable, or neutral - arises from contact. All experience has a feeling tone (feeling is also an omnipresent factor). Feeling has, as its basis, one of the six senses. At the point of feeling, one is actually struck by the world-in phenomenological language, one could say that we find ourselves thrown into the world.

8 Craving

Craving arises from feeling. Although there are innumerable specific kinds of craving (84,000 in one system), the basic form of craving is desire for what is pleasurable and aversion for what is displeasurable. Craving is a fundamental, automatic reaction.

Craving is an extremely important juncture in this chain of causality. Up to this point, the links have rolled off automatically on the basis of past conditioning. At this point, however, the aware person can do something about the situation: he can interrupt the chain or he can let it go on to the next link (grasping). The handling of craving is what determines the possibilities for perpetuation or change.

It is a traditional exercise to contemplate the chain of codependent arising in both directions, backward as well as forward. Because such an exercise communicates well the codependent emergent quality of this causal analysis, we will show what happens when we go backward in our reasoning from the point of craving: craving for pleasure requires that there be sense feelings; to have feelings, there must be contact with the objects of the senses; to contact the sense objects, there must be the six sense faculties; for the six sense faculties to exist, the entire psychophysical organism is required; for there to be a psychophysical organism, there must be sentience.

9 Grasping

Craving usually results immediately in grasping and clinging. Grasping refers not only to grasping after what one does not have and desires but also to a version for what one has and desires to be rid of.

10 Becoming

Grasping automatically sets off the reaction toward becoming, toward the formation of a new situation in the future. New tendencies and suppositions are formed as a result of the cumulative effect of the previous seven motifs, which themselves were set into motion by volitional action based on ignorance. Becoming initiates the formation of new patterns that carry over into future situations.

11 Birth

In birth, a new situation, as well as a new mode of being in that situation, is finally born. It is usually at this point only that one senses the causal chain and wants to do something about it. It is at this point, perhaps, that Western philosophers talk about akrasia (weakness of the will). The irony is that in normal life, the point at which one wakes up to a situation is past the point where one can do anything about it. Birth into a new situation, even an agreeable one, always has an edge of uncertainty.

12 Decay and Death

Wherever there is birth, there is death; in any process of arising, dissolution is inevitable. Moments die, situations die, and lives end.

Even more obvious than the uneasiness of birth is the suffering (and lamentation, as is said) experienced when situations or bodies grow old, decay, and die. In this circular chain of causality, death is the causal link to the next cycle of the chain. The death of one moment of experience is, within the Buddhist analysis of causality, actually a causal precondition for the arising of the next moment. If there is still ignorance and confusion, the wheel will continue turning endlessly in the same fashion.

The circle of conditioned human existence is called samsara, which is visualized as a perpetually spinning wheel of existence driven by a relentless causation and pervaded by unsatisfactoriness. There are many vivid traditional images for samsara: a ship lost at sea in a raging storm, a deer trapped in a hunter's net, animals racing before a blazing forest fire. According to one traditional story, the Buddha on the eve of his enlightenment worked through the twelve links of the chain seeking a way that the chain could be broken. Nothing could be done about the past; one cannot go back and remove past ignorance and volitional actions. And since one is alive and has a psychophysical organism, the six sense fields and their contact with objects are inevitable. Inevitable also are the feeling states to which the senses give rise and the craving that results. But must craving lead to grasping?

It is at this point, some traditions say, that the Buddha formulated the technique of mindfulness. By precise, disciplined mindfulness to every moment, one can interrupt the chain of automatic conditioning - one can not automatically go from craving to grasping and all the rest. Interruption of habitual patterns results in further mindfulness, eventually allowing the practitioner to relax into more open possibilities in awareness and to develop insight into the arising and subsiding of experienced phenomena. That is why mindfulness is the foundational gesture of all the Buddhist traditions.

At this point, we might return briefly to our theoretical formulation.

We asked how there could be coherence in our lives over time if there were no self. In the language of societies of mind, the answer lies in the concept of emergence. Just as any agency emerges from the action of individual agents, so the repetitious patterns of habitual actions emerge from the joint action of the twelve links. And just as the existence of the action of each agent is definable only in relation to the actions of all the others, so the operation of each of the links in the chain of codependent arising is dependent on all of the other links. As in any agency, there is no such thing as a habitual pattern per se except in the operation of the twelve agent motifs, nor is there such a thing as the motifs except in relation to the operation of the entire cyclic system.

The historical formation of various patterns and trends in our lives is what Buddhists usually mean by karma. It is this accumulation that gives continuity to the sense of ego-self, so evident in everyday, unreflective life. The main motivating and sustaining factor in this process is the omnipresent mental factor of intention.

Intention-in the form of volitional action-leaves traces, as it were, of its tendencies on the rest of the factors from moment to moment, resulting in the historical accumulation of habits, tendencies, and responses, some wholesome and others unwholesome. When the term karma is used loosely, it refers to these accumulations and their effects. Strictly speaking, though, karma is the very process of intention (volitional action) itself, the main condition in the accumulation of conditioned human experience.

In many fields of science, we are familiar with the idea that coherence and development over time need not involve any underlying substance. In evolutionary changes in the history of life, patterns of animal populations give rise to new individuals on the basis of the past (most.tangibly expressed in the nuclear genetics of the population) and on the basis of current actions (mating behavior leading to descendence and genetic recombinations). The tracks and furrows of this process are the species and subspecies. But in the logic of Darwin's account of evolution and the Buddhist analysis of experience into codependent arising, we are concerned with the processual transformation of the past into the future through the intermediary of transitional forms that in themselves have no permanent substance.

The agent motifs in the chain of conditioned origination are fairly complex processes. Each of these may be thought of as composed of subagents, or more accurately as themselves agencies composed of agents. In the mindfulness/awareness tradition, of course, the logic is focused upon immediate experience. Is there an experiential – or pragmatic-justification for increasing the layers of agency in the society of causality?

the Tao of programming: Book 4 - Coding

Geoffrey James, 1987

Book 4 -Coding

Thus spake the master programmer:

"A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program is its own hell."

4.1

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity.

A program should follow the "Law of Least Astonishment". What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least.

A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward appearances.

If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the program.

4.2

A novice asked the master: "I have a program that sometime runs and sometimes aborts. I have followed the rules of programming, yet I am totally baffled. What is the reason for this?"

The master replied: "You are confused because you do not understand Tao. Only a fool expects rational behavior from his fellow humans. Why do you expect it from a machine that humans have constructed? Computers simulate determinism; only Tao is perfect.

The rules of programming are transitory; only Tao is eternal. Therefore you must contemplate Tao before you receive enlightenment."

"But how will I know when I have received enlightenment?" asked the novice.

"Your program will then run correctly," replied the master.

4.3

A master was explaining the nature of Tao of to one of his novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software - regardless of how insignificant," said the master.

"Is the Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.

"It is," came the reply.

"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.

"It is even in a video game," said the master.

"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"

The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. ``The lesson is over for today,'' he said.

4.4

Prince Wang's programmer was coding software. His fingers danced upon the keyboard. The program compiled without an error message, and the program ran like a gentle wind.

"Excellent!" the Prince exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!"

"Technique?" said the programmer turning from his terminal, "What I follow is Tao - beyond all techniques! When I first began to program I would see before me the whole problem in one mass. After three years I no longer saw this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing. My whole being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit, free to work without plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program writes itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the program. I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my eyes for a moment and then log off."

Prince Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!"

meta-Tao sheets

The third metapattern introduced by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are sheets, patterns with bidimensional extension in space.

Background

As physical forms, sheets maximize transfer across surface areas, maximize surface area to volume ratio, and extend or grow two-dimensionally. In general terms, sheets represent capture, contact, and movement across a plane. In addition, when put together, they can form layers and can act as borders. Spheres and tubes can be made of sheets.

Two-dimensional layer crystals of carbon: structure of graphene.
Two-dimensional honeycomb hexagonal network of carbon atoms (spheres) on a plane. A monolayer of carbon atoms is called graphene, multiple layers of which form graphite.

Examples

• In science: leaves, surface tension, membranes, individual layers of the Earth and atmosphere, fins, airplane wings, skates and rays, films, snow coverage, etc.
• In architecture and design: walls, open areas as in large convention centers, fans and windmills, sails, turbines, etc.
• In art: canvas, shapes, etc.
• In social sciences: movement within a space, separation, etc.
• In other senses: clothing, rain coming down in sheets, bed coverings, parking lots, etc.

Space-time curvature in the presence of mass.

Oh Sheet! © Thomas Barbèy

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

discrete Tao

In this specific chapter Tart defines and describes in a more detailed way the discrete states of consciousness:

Discrete States of Consciousness

The terms state of consciousness and altered state of consciousness have become very popular. As a consequence of popularization, however, the terms are frequently used in such a loose fashion as to mean almost nothing in particular. Many people now use the phrase state of consciousness, for example, to mean simply whatever is one one's mind. So if I pick up a water tumbler and look at it, I am in "water tumbler state of consciousness," and if I now touch my typewriter, I am in "typewriter state of consciousness." Then an altered state of consciousness simply means that what one is thinking about or experiencing now is different from what it was a moment ago.

To rescue the concepts of state of consciousness and altered state of consciousness for more precise scientific use, I introduce the terms and abbreviation discrete state of consciousness (d-SoC) and discrete state of consciousness (d-ASC). I discussed the basic theoretical concepts for defining these crucial terms. Here, I first describe certain kinds of experiential data that led to the concepts of discrete states and then go on to a formal definition of d-SoC and d-ASC.

Mapping Experience

Suppose that an individual's experience (and/or behavior and/or physiology) can be adequately described at any given moment if we know all the important dimensions along which experience varies and can assess the exact point along each dimension that an individual occupies or experiences at a given moment. Each dimension may be the level of functioning of a psychological structure or process. We presume that we have a multidimensional map of psychological space and that by knowing exactly where the individual is in that psychological space we have adequately described his experiential reality for that given time. This is generally accepted theoretical idea, but it is very difficult to apply in practice because many psychological dimensions may be important for understanding an individual's experience at any given moment. We may be able to assess only a small number of them, and/or an individual's position on some of these dimensions may change even as we are assessing the value of others. Nevertheless, the theory is an ideal to be worked toward, and we can assume for purposes of discussion that we can adequately map experience.

To simplify further, let us assume that what is important about an individual's experiences can be mapped on only two dimensions. We can thus draw a graph, like Figure 5-1:

Each small circle represents an observation at a single point in time of where a particular individual is in this two-dimensional psychological space. In this example, we have taken a total of twenty-two binary measures at various times.

The first thing that strikes us about this individual is that his experiences seem to fall in three distinct clusters and that there are large gaps between these three distinct clusters. Within each cluster this individual shows a certain amount of variability, but he has not had any experiences at all at points outside the defined clusters. This kind of clustering in the plot of an individual's locations at various times in experiential space is what I mean by discrete states of consciousness. Put another way, it means that you can be in a certain region of experiential space and show some degree of movement or variation within that space, but to transit out of that space you have to cross a "forbidden zone" where you cannot function and/or cannot have experiences and/or cannot be conscious of having experiences; then you find yourself in a discretely different experiential space. It is the quantum principle of physics applied to psychology. You can be either here or there, but not in between.

There are transitional periods between some d-SoCs; they are dealt with in more detail later. For now, being in a d-SoC means that you are in one of the three distinct regions of psychological space shown in Figure 5-1.

Now let us concretize this example. Let us call the vertical dimension ability to image or hallucinate, varying from a low of imaging something outside yourself but with nothing corresponding in intensity to a sensory perception, to a high or imagining something with all the qualities of reality, of actual sensory perception. Let us call the horizontal dimension ability to be rational, to think in accordance with the rules of some logic. We are not now concerned with the cultural arbitrariness of logic, but simply take it as a given set of rules. This dimension varies from a low of making many mistakes in the application of this logic, as on days when you feel rather stupid and have a hard time expressing yourself, to a high of following the rules of the logic perfectly, when you feel sharp and your mind works like a precision computer.

We can assign names of known d-SoCs to the three clusters of data points in the graph. Ordinary consciousness (for our culture) is shown in the lower right-hand corner. It is characterized by a high degree of rationality and a relatively/ low degree of imaging ability. We can usually think without making many mistakes in logic, and our imaginings usually contain mild sensory qualities, but they are far less intense than sensory perceptions. Notice again that there is variability within the state we call ordinary consciousness. Logic may be more or less accurate, ability to image may vary somewhat, but this all stays in a range that we recognize as ordinary, habitual, or normal.

At the opposite extreme, we have all experienced a region of psychological space where rationality is usually very low indeed, while ability to image is quite high. This is ordinary nocturnal dreaming, where we create (image) the entire dream world. It seems sensorily real. Yet we often take considerable liberties with rationality.

The third cluster of data points defines a particularly interesting d-SoC, lucid dreaming. This is the special kind of dream named by the Dutch physician Frederick Van Eeden, in which you feel as if you have awakened in terms of mental functioning within the dream world: you feel as rational and in control of your mental state as in your ordinary d-SoC, but you are still experientially located within the dream world. Here both range of rationality and range of ability to image are at a very high level.

Figure 5-1 deliberately depicts rationality in ordinary nocturnal dreaming as lower than rationality in the ordinary d-SoC. But some nocturnal dreams seem very rational for prolonged periods, not only at the time but by retrospectively applied waking state standards. So the cluster shown for nocturnal dreaming should perhaps be oval and extend into the upper right region of the graph, overlapping with the lucid dreaming cluster. This would have blurred the argument about distinct regions of experiential space, so the graph was not drawn that way. The point is not that there is never any overlap in functioning for a particular psychological dimension between two d-SoCs (to the contrary, all the ones we know much about do share many features in common), but that a complete multidimensional mapping of the important dimensions of experiential space shows this distinct clustering. While a two-dimensional plot may show apparent identity or overlap between two d-SoCs, a three-dimensional or N-dimensional map would show their discreteness. this is important, for d-SoCs are not just quantitative variation on one or more continua (as Figure 5-1 implies), but qualitative, pattern-changing, system-functioning differences.

A d-SoC, then, refers to a particular region of experiential space, as shown in Figure 5-1, and adding the descriptive adjective altered simply means that with respect to some state of consciousness (usually the ordinary state) as a baseline, we have made the quantum jump to another region of experiential space, the d-ASC.The quantum jump may be both quantitative, in the sense that structures function at higher or lower levels of intensity, and qualitative, in the sense that structures in the baseline state may cease to function, previously latent structures may begin to function, and the system pattern may change. To use a computer analogy, going from one d-SoC to a d-ASC is like putting a radically different program into the computer, the mind. The graphic presentation of Figure 5-1 cannot express qualitative changes, but they are at least as important or more important than the quantitative changes.

Figures 5-2 and 5-3 illustrate the qualitative pattern difference between two d-SoCs. Various psychological structures are show connected information and energy flows into a pattern in different ways. The latent pattern, the discrete altered state of consciousness with respect to the other, is shown in lighter lines on each figure. The two states share some structures/functions in common, yet, their organization are distinctly different.

Figure 5-2. Representation of a d-SoC as a pattern of energy/awareness flow interrelating various human potentials. Lighter lines show a possible d-ASC pattern.

Figure 5-3. Representation of a d-ASC as a reorganization of information and energy flow pattern and an altered selection of potentials. The b-SoC is shown in lighter lines.

Figures 5-2 and 5-3 express what William James meant when he wrote:

Our ordinary waking consciousness... is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are all there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness.

It is important to stress that the pattern differences are the essential defining element of different d-SoCs. Particular psychological functions may be identical to several d-SoCs, but the overall system functioning is quite different. People still speak English whether they are in their ordinary waking state, drunk with alcohol, stoned on marijuana, or dreaming; yet, we would hardly call these states identical because the same language is spoken in all.

Definition of a Discrete State of Consciousness

We can define a d-SoC for a given individual as a unique configuration or system of psychological structures or subsystems. The structures vary in the way they process information, or cope, or affect experiences within varying environments. The structures operative within a d-SoC make up a system where the operation of the parts, the psychological structures, interact with each other and stabilize each other's functioning by means of feedback control, so that the system, the d-SoC, maintains its overall pattern of functioning in spite of changes in the environment. Thus, the individual parts of the system may vary, but the overall, general configuration of the system remains recognizably the same.

To understand a d-SoC, we must grasp the nature of the parts, the psychological structures/subsystems that compose it, and we must take into account the gestalt properties that arise from the overall system — properties that are not an obvious result of the functioning of the parts. For example, the parts of a car laid out singly on a bench tell me only a little about the nature of the functioning system we call an automobile. Similarly, a list of an individual's traits and skills may tell me little about the pattern that emerges from their organization into a personality, into a "normal" state of consciousness. But understand adequately either the car or the individual, I have to study the whole functioning system itself. To illustrate this, let us go back to the question about whether you are dreaming you are reading this book rather than actually reading it in your ordinary d-SoC. To conclude that what was happening was real (I hope you concluded that!) you may have looked at the functioning of your component structures (my reasoning seems sound, sensory qualities are in the usual range, body image seems right) and decided that since these component structures were operating in the range you associate with your ordinary d-SoC, that was the condition you were in. Or you may have simply felt the gestalt pattern of your functioning, without bothering to check component functions, and instantly recognized it as your ordinary pattern. Either way, you scanned data on the functioning of yourself as a system and categorized the system's mode of functioning as its ordinary one.

Discreteness of States of Consciousness

Let me make a few further points about the discreteness of different states consciousness, the quantum gap between them.

First, the concept of d-SoCs, in its commonsense form, did not come from the kind of precise mapping along psychological dimensions that is sketched in Figure 5-1. Rather, its immediate experiential basis is usually gestalt pattern recognition, the feeling that "this condition of my mind feels radically different from some other condition, rather than just an extension of it." The experiential mapping is a more precise way of saying this.

Second, for most of the d-SoCs we know something about, there has been little or no mapping of the transition from the baseline state of consciousness (b-SoC) to the altered state. Little has been done, for example, in examining the process by which a person passes from an ordinary d-SoC into the hypnotic state, although for most subjects the distinction between the well-developed hypnotic state and their ordinary state is marked. Similarly, when a person begins to smoke marijuana, there is a period during which he is in an ordinary d-SoC and smoking marijuana; only later is he clearly stoned, in the d-ASC we call marijuana intoxication. Joseph Fridgen and I carried out a preliminary survey asking experienced marijuana users about the transition from one state to the other. We found that users almost never bothered to look at the transition: they were either in a hurry to enter the intoxicated state or in a social situation that did not encourage them to observe what was going on in their minds. Similarly, Berke and Hernton reported that the "buzz" that seems to mark this transitional period is easily overlooked by marijuana users.

So, in general for d-SoCs, we do not know the size and exact nature of the quantum jump, or indeed, whether it is possible to effect a continuous transition between two regions of experiential space, thus making them extremes of one state of consciousness rather than two discrete states.

Because the science of consciousness is in its infancy, I am forced to mention too frequently those things we do not know. Let me balance that a little by describing a study that has mapped the transition between two d-SoCs—ordinary waking consciousness and stage 2 sleep. Vogel et al, using electroencephalographic (EEG) indices of the transition from full awakeness (alpha EEG pattern with occasional rapid eye movement, REMs) to full sleep (stage 2 EEG, no eye movements), awoke subjects at various points in the transition process, asked for reports of mental activity just prior to awakening, and asked routine questions about the degree of contact with the environment the subjects felt they had just before awakening. They classified this experiential data into three ego states. In the intact ego state, the content of experience was plausible, fitted consensus reality well, and there was little or no feeling of loss of reality contact. In the destructuralized ego state, content was bizarre and reality contact was impaired or lost. In the restructuralized ego state, contact with reality was lost but the content was plausible by consensus reality standards.

Figure 5-4

Figure 5-4 (from G. Vogel, D. Foulkes, and H. Trosman, Arch. Gen. Psychiat., 1966, 14, 238-248) shows the frequency of these three ego states or states of consciousness with respect to psychophysiological criteria. The psychophysiological criteria are arranged on the horizontal axis in the order in which transition into sleep ordinarily takes place. You can see that the intact ego state is associated with alpha and REM or alpha and SEM (slow eye movement), the destructuralized ego state mainly with stage 1 EEG, and the restructuralized ego state mainly with stage 2 EEG. But there are exceptions in each case. Indeed, a finer analysis of the data shows that the psychological sequence of intact ego — destructuralized ego — restructuralized ego almost always holds in the experiential reports. It is more solid finding than the association of these ego states with particular physiological stage. Some subjects start the intact — destructuralized — restructuralized sequence earlier in the EEG sequence than others. This is a timely reminder that the results of equating psychological states with physiological indicators can be fallacious. But the main thing to note here is the orderliness of the transition sequence from one discrete state to another. This kind of measurement is crude compared with what we need to know, but it is a good start.

The intact ego state and the restructuralized ego state seem to correspond to bounded regions of experiential space, d-SoCs, but it is not clear whether the destructuralized ego state represents a d-SoC or merely a period of unstable transition between the b-SoC of the intact state (ordinary consciousness) and the d-ASC of the restructuralized state (a sleep state). We need more data about the condition they have labeled destructuralized before we can decide whether it meets our criteria for a d-SoC. The later discussions of induction of a d-ASC, transitional phenomena, and the observation of internal states clarify the question we are considering here.

We have now defined a d-SoC for a given individual as a unique configuration of system of psychological structures or subsystems a configuration that maintains its integrity or identity as a recognizable system in spite of variations in input from the environment and in spite of various (small) change in the subsystems. The system, the d-SoC, maintains its identity because various stabilization processes modify subsystem variations so that they do not destroy the integrity of the system.

In closing, I want to add a warning about the finality of the discreteness of any particular d-SoC. Stated that the particular nature of the basic structures underlying the human mind limits their possible interactions and so forms the basis of d-SoCs. Note carefully, however, that many of the structures we deal with in our consciousness, as constructed in our personal growth, are not ultimate structures but compound ones peculiar to our culture, personality, and belief system. I want to emphasize the pragmatic usefulness of a maxim of John Lilly's as a guide to personal and scientific work in this area: "In the province of the mind, what one believe to be true either is true or becomes true within certain limits, to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are beliefs to be transcended."

Lilly's work comparing the mind to a human biocomputer, as well as his autobiographical accounts of his explorations in consciousness, are essential reading in this area.