Thursday, April 11, 2013

chromastrobic Tao

British artist, physicist, and all-around science enthusiast Paul Friedlander produces kinetic light sculptures that provide a colorful feast for the eyes. Each piece in his body of work offers a visual medley of light and motion by rapidly rotating a piece of string through white light. The vibrating rope becomes invisible to the human eye, but colors from the light (which would normally be invisible to the naked eye) are revealed in rapid succession.

The scientific artist gives insight into the history of his career shift into the arts and explains the science in it all: "I decided to focus on kinetic art: a subject in which I could bring together my divided background and combine my knowledge of physics with my love of light. In 1983, at London's ICA, I exhibited the first sculptures to use chromastrobic light, a discovery I had made the previous year. Chromastrobic light changes color faster than the eye can see, causing the appearance of rapidly moving forms to mutate in the most remarkable ways."
Origin of String Theory






Paul Friedlander
Kinetic light sculptor: scientific artist

Tao subsystems - III

Close-up picture of a detail of Salvador Dalì, The Persistence of Memory, 1931
The third subsystem for a system model of consciousness discussed by C.T. Tart, after extero-interoception and input processing, is memory:

Subsystems

Memory

The Memory subsystem is concerned with information storage, with containing residues of past experiences that are drawn upon in the present. Memory is thus a large number of semipermanent changes caused by past experience. We can think of memory as structures, presumably in the brain (but perhaps also in the body structure), which, when activated, produce certain kinds of information. And we should not assume that there is just one Memory; there is probably a special kind of memory for almost every subsystem.
Conventional psychological views of Memory also often divide memory functioning into short-term or immediate memory, medium-term memory, and long-term memory. Short-term memory is the special memory process that holds information about sensory input and internal processes for a few seconds at the most. Unless it is transferred to a longer-term memory, this information is apparently lost. Thus, as you look at a crowd, searching for a friend's face for a short time, you may remember a lot of details about the crowd. Then you find your friend's face, and the details about the crowd are lost. There is no point in storing them forever. This short-term memory is probably an electrical activity within the brain structure that dies out after a few seconds: no long-term structural changes occur. Once the electrical activity dies out, the information stored in the pattern or in the electrical activity is gone forever.
Medium-term memory is storage of from minutes to a day or so. It probably involves partial structural changes as well as patterns of energy circulation. You can probably recall what you had for breakfast yesterday morning, but in a few days you will not remember the contents of that meal.
Long-term memory involves semipermanent structural changes that allow you to recall things experienced and learned a long time ago.
This division into short-, medium-, and long-term memory is of interest because these kinds of memories may be differentially affected during d-ASCs. At high levels of marijuana intoxication, for example, short-term memory is clearly affected, although long-term memory may not be. Thus, a marijuana user often reports forgetting the beginning of a conversation he is engaged in, but he continues to speak English. There is little more we can say about differential effects of various d-ASCs on these three kinds of memory, as they have not yet been adequately studied. They offer a fruitful field for research.
A most important aspect of Memory subsystem functioning in various d-ASCs is the phenomenon of state-specific memory. In a number of studies, subjects learned various materials while in d-ASCs, usually drug-induced, and were tested for retention of these materials in a subsequent ordinary d-SoC. Generally, retention was poor. The researchers concluded that things were not stored well in Memory in various d-ASCs. it is now clear that these studies must be reevaluated. Memory is specific. The way in which information is stored, or the kind of Memory it is stored in, is specific to the d-SoC the material was learned in. The material may be stored, but may not transfer to another state. If material is learned in a d-ASC and its retention tested in another d-SoC and found to be poor, the nonretention may indicate either an actual lack of storage of the information or a state-specific memory and lack of transfer. The proper way to test is to reinduce the d-ASC in which the material was learned and see how much material is retained in that state. State-specific memory has been repeatedly demonstrated in animals, although the criterion for the existence of a "state" in such studies is simply that the animals were drugged to a known degree, a criterion not very useful with humans, as explained later.
There is now experimental evidence that for high levels of alcohol intoxication there is definite state-specific memory in humans. It is an experimental demonstration of the old folk idea that if you lose something while very drunk and cannot find it the next day, you may be able to find it if you get very drunk again and then search. Experiential data collected in my study of marijuana users also indicate the existence of state-specific memory, and I have recently received verbal reports that laboratory studies are finding state-specific memory for marijuana intoxication. There also seems to be state-specific memory for the conditions induced by major psychedelic drugs.
State-specific memory can be readily constructed for hypnosis that is, state-specific memory may not occur naturally for hypnosis, but it can be made to occur. If you tell a hypnotized subject he will remember everything that happened in hypnosis when he comes back to his ordinary state such will be his experience. On the other hand, if you tell a deeply hypnotized subject he will remember nothing of what went on during hypnosis or that he will remember certain aspects of the experience but not others, this will also be the case when he returns to his ordinary state. In any event he will recall the experiences the next time he is hypnotized. This is not a pure case of state-specific memory, however, because amnesia for hypnotic experiences in the waking state can be eliminated by a prearranged cue as well as by reinducing the hypnosis.
Another excellent example of state-specific memory is that occurring in spiritualist mediums. A medium enters a d-ASC in which his ordinary consciousness and sense of identity appear to blank out for a time. He may report wandering in what may be loosely called a dreaming state. Meanwhile, an alleged spirit entity ostensibly possesses him and acts as if it has full consciousness. Upon returning to a normal state, the medium usually has total amnesia regarding the events of the d-ASC. The alleged spirit communicator, however, usually shows perfect continuity of memory from state to state.
I suspect that state-specific Memory subsystems will be discovered for many or most d-ASCs, but the necessary research has not been done. The kinds of state-specific memories may vary in completeness. The ones we know of now—from marijuana intoxication, for example—are characterized by transfer of some information to the ordinary d-SoC but nontransfer of other information, the latter often being the most essential and important aspects of the d-ASC experience.
Ordinarily, when we think of Memory we think of information becoming accessible to awareness, becoming part of consciousness, but we should note that we "remember" many things even though we have no awareness of them. Your current behavior is affected by a multitude of things you have learned in the past but which you are not aware of as memories. You walk across the room and your motion is determined by a variety of memories, even though you do not think of them as memories.
Note also that you can remember things you were not initially aware of. When you scan a crowd looking for a friend's face, you may be consciously aware of hardly any details of other faces, being sensitive only to your friend's. A minute later, when asked to recall something about the crowd, however, you may be able to recall a lot of information about it. For this reason, Figure 8-1 shows a direct information flow arrow from Input-Processing to Memory.
We store in Memory not only things that have been in awareness, but also things that were never much in awareness to begin with.
An interesting quality of information retrieved from Memory is that we generally know, at least implicitly, that we are retrieving memories. We do not confuse these with sensations or thoughts. Some kind of operating signal or extra informational quality seems to be attached to the memory information itself that says "This is a memory." There is an intriguing analogy for this. In the early days of radio, when a newscast tuned you in to a foreign correspondent, there was an obvious change in the quality of the audio signal, a change that you associated with a foreign correspondent broadcasting over a long distance on short wave. The sound was tinny, the volume faded in and out, there were hisses and crackles. This was a noninformational extra that became so associated in listeners' minds with hearing a real foreign correspondent that many radio stations resorted to the trick of deliberately adding this kind of distortion years later when communication technology had improved so much that the foreign correspondent's voice sounded as if he was actually in the studio. The added distortions made the listeners feel they were indeed hearing a faraway reporter and made the broadcast seem more genuine. Similarly, memory information is usually accompanied by a quality that identifies it as memory. The quality may be implicit: if you are searching actively for various things in your Memory, you need not remind yourself that you are looking at memories.
This extra informational quality of memory can sometimes be detached from memory operation per se. It is possible to have a fantasy, for example, with the "this is a memory" quality attached, in which you mistakenly believe you are remembering something instead of just fantasizing it. Or, the quality may be attached in a d-ASC to an incoming sensory perception, triggering the experience of déjà vu, the feeling that you have seen this before. Thus you may be touring in a city you have never visited and it all looks very familiar; you are convinced you remember what it is like because of the presence of the "this is a memory" quality.
When information is actually drawn from Memory without the quality "this is a memory" attached, interesting things can happen in various d-ASC. Hallucinations, for example, are information drawn from memory without the memory quality attached, but with the quality "This is a perception" attached.
Much of the functioning of the Sense of Identity subsystem (discussed later) occurs via the Memory subsystem. You sense of who you are is closely related to the possession of certain memories. If the "this is a memory" quality is eliminated from those memories so that they become just data, you sense of identity can be strongly affected.
Other variations of Memory subsystem functioning occur in various d-ASCs. The ease with which desired information can be retrieved from memory varies so that in some d-ASCs it seems hard to remember what you want, in others it seems easier than usual. The richness of the information retrieved varies in different d-ASCs, so that sometimes you remember only sketchily, and at other times in great detail. The search pattern for retrieving memories also varies. If you have to go through a fairly complex research procedure to find a particular memory, you may end up with the wrong memories or associated memories rather than what you were looking for. If you want to remember an old friend's name, for example, you may fail to recall the name but remember his birthday.
Finally, we should note that a great many things are stored in Memory but not available in the ordinary d-SoC. The emotional charge connected with those memories makes them unacceptable in the ordinary d-SoC, and so defense mechanisms repress or distort our recall of such information. In various d-ASCs the nature of the defense mechanisms may change or their intensity of functioning may alter, allowing the memories to become more or less available.

Tao subsystems - II

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

that Tao within me

St. Mary Magdalene Church, Hucknall Torkard, Nottinghamshire, England

Monday, April 8, 2013

a legacy for Tao - IV

Jeroen Anthoniszoon van Aken called Hieronymus Bosch, the Master of Hertogenbosch
Ship of Fools
oil on wood, 1494
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Angels Fear Revisited:
Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind
Applied to Religion-Science Debates

Mary Catherine Bateson

Bateson and Religion
Gregory used to quote Kipling’s lines, “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right.”. That is, I think, a fairly interesting way of talking about religion: to say that there is something that human religions are trying to get at that matters. And they get at some of it in many different ways which include vast amounts of nonsense, much of it dangerous, but we perhaps do not yet have a better way of getting at it, whatever it is. For Gregory, that something could be approached by describing mind in cybernetic terms and recognized aesthetically in the similarities of living systems, the pattern that connects.
Gregory was profoundly ambivalent about what we generally call religion, but deeply concerned with the alienation created by the Cartesian mind–body partition that has been so liberating for science and yet leads to a whole series of isomorphic dualisms separating the sacred from the secular and our species from the rest of nature . He said that he “had always hated muddle-headedness and always thought it was a necessary condition for religion”. He grew up exposed to religious texts, reading the Bible in order – it was hoped – to avoid “empty-headed atheism”, and exposed to the art that surrounds religion, great master drawings and above all the works of William Blake collected by his father. There was an extraordinary Blake water color of “Satan Exulting over Eve” hanging in the dining room in his childhood (now in the Tate Gallery in London).


According to David Lipset, William Bateson, the pioneering geneticist who was Gregory’s father, was not a great student of the prophetic books of Blake – but Gregory went on to read them and other religious texts and poetry, puzzling over the content as well as the aesthetic value. Gregory grew up in a family that sturdily insisted that orthodox religion was nonsense, and at the same time he was stimulated by exposure to religious images, metaphors and poetry that demanded a different kind of understanding.
Gregory planned the book that became Angels Fear to discuss religion and aesthetics as ways of knowing that might prove to be indispensable to human survival and to that recognition of the larger interactive system of the biosphere he called wisdom. “The sacred (whatever that means) is surely related (somehow) to the beautiful (whatever that means)”. For him, as a scientist, to begin to talk about religion and aesthetics was to step onto dangerous ground – Where Angels Fear to Tread – places he felt it was essential to venture, but where he was going to get into trouble with his colleagues, and he knew it. Yet the exclusion of certain ideas – the Cartesian partition of ways of knowing – seemed to him damaging.
- detail -

Thursday, April 4, 2013

steps to a middle Tao


The sense of dissatisfaction which comes from the separation of the cognitivist and emergent approaches to cognition from direct experience lays the basis for a refounding of the heart of theories and models of the cognition sciences: the concept of "representation":

Steps to a Middle Way

The Cartesian Anxiety

A Sense of Dissatisfaction
Why should it be threatening to question the idea that the world has pregiven properties that we represent? Why do we become nervous when we call into question the idea that there is some way that the world is “out there," independent of our cognition, and that cognition is a re-presentation of that independent world?
Our spontaneous and unreflective common sense would deny that these questions are scientific, perhaps by thinking, “How else could the mind and the world be related?” The realist in us claims that our questions are simply “phiiosophical"-a polite way of making them seem interesting, yet also irrelevant. It is true. that they are partly philosophical, but we can also rephrase them as questions in cognitive science. What actually is the scientific basis for the idea that the mind is some kind of information-processing device that responds selectively to pregiven features of the environment? Why do we assume that cognitive science cannot call into question these notions of representation and information processing not just philosophically but in its day-to-day research?
To think that we cannot raise such issues is a blindness in contemporary common sense, deeply entrenched in our Western tradition and recently reinforced by cognitivism. Thus even when the very ideas of representation and information processing change considerably, as they do in the study of connectionist networks, self-organization, and emergent properties, some form of the realist assumption remains. In cognitivism, the realism is at least explicit and defended; in the emergence approach, however, it often becomes simply tacit and unquestioned. This unreflective stance is one of the greatest dangers facing the field of cognitive science; it limits the range of theories and ideas and so prevents a broader vision and future for the field.
A growing number of researchers in all areas of cognitive science have expressed dissatisfaction with the varieties of cognitive realism. This dissatisfaction derives from a deeper source than the search for alternatives to symbol processing or even mixed "society of mind" theories: it is a dissatisfaction with the very notion of a representational system. This notion obscures many essential dimensions of cognition not just in human experience but when we try to explain cognition scientifically. These dimensions include the understanding of perception and language, as well as the study of evolution and life itself.
Our discussion so far has focused on linking the two poles of science and human experience. This part will continue this task, but by developing a nonrepresentationist alternative from within the heart of cognitive science. We now need to pause and reflect on the scientific and philosophical roots of the very idea of representation. We are thinking not merely of the current notions in cognitive science of computation and information processing but of the entire philosophical tendency to view the mind as a "mirror of nature."

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

meta-Tao clonons

The next metapattern discussed by Tyler Volk and Jeff Bloom are clonons, physical or mental components intrinsic in a holarchy. The main characteristic is their sameness, due to the replication-cloning process. The typical example are cells which, replicating, may form supra-systems with holarchies such tissues and organs. The analogy is that of bricks used as elements to build walls and structures increasingly complex, but always formed by the same identical elements.
Detail of decoration on the Taj Mahal, Agra, India (Photo: David Castor)

Background

The notion of clonons falls within the scope of holarchies, in that specific objects or ideas are repeated to create layers of embeddedness. As with the process of cloning, a specific object can be replicated. Clonons can build wholes and each whole can be a clonon of larger set.

Examples

  • In science: identical cells in different layers of tissue, protons, neutrons, electrons, worker ants, each fish in a school, identical atoms in a molecule (e.g., two clonons of hydrogen joining a holon of oxygen to form a holon of a water molecule, which in turn become a clonon of water molecules in a cup of water), etc
  • In architecture and design: bricks in a wall, tiles on a floor or ceiling, each light fixture in ceiling, each office or room on a floor, each floor in a building, windows in skyscraper, each house in a subdivision, etc.
  • In art: each brush stroke in a painting, each decorative design unit in a pottery bowl, each point in a pointillism painting, etc.
  • In social sciences: each individual in a community or society, each client in a business, each factory worker at a specific point in an assembly line, etc.
  • In other senses: each tomato on a tomato plant, each tomato plant in a tomato garden, etc.
Corporate colones; Dale O'Dell

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

Friday, March 29, 2013

the Places of Tao: Concordia Circle

Concordia Circle (about 4800 m.) is the area of the confluence of the Baltoro and Godwin-Austen glaciers, in the heart of Karakoram range, Pakistan, and the obligatory point of passage for expeditions in the area for over a century. Around there's an impressive number of peaks among the most beautiful and relevant of the world, including four eight-thousanders and a large number of 7000s and 6000s.
Panoramic view from Concordia.
K2 south face view from Concordia.
K2 and Broad Peak view from Concordia.
MuztaghTower view from Concordia.
Concordia view toward the Gasherbrum group.