What is the dao of an ant

What is the Dao of an Ant A collage of Cognitive Science 25 slides Piero Scaruffi 2009 www.scaruffi.com
“ Trfg# fd%hsk er@et wn*nnf”
(loose transliteration of a traditional ant adage)

Piero Scaruffi
Cultural Historian
Cognitive Scientist
Software Designer
Poet
www.scaruffi.com

Enter the Perceiver
The world is always and only perceived.
Neither the tree nor the forest exist if no conscious being is perceiving them
“ Matter” without a conscious perceiver “is” only a shapeless, colorless, soundless amalgam of particles, waves, fields...
It is the perceiver who creates the world of trees, forests and sounds.
Berkeley, George: "The Principles of Human Knowledge" (1710)

Enter the Perceiver
We carefully separate the human mind from Nature, but Nature is an illusion of the human mind and the human mind is a product of Nature.
Both Relativity and Quantum Physics assign a key role to the observer: reality is relative to the observer, and the observer creates it.
The world of a perceiver is the world that the perceiver’s mind created
John Von Neumann: “Mathematical Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics” (1932)

Enter the Perceiver
The interaction of organisms with their environment is about picking up information from the environment.
Perceiving is actually "recognizing", which in turn is the essence of reasoning, which in turn entails action.
They (perceiving, reasoning, acting) are all facets of the same process, which is, ultimately, living.
Gibson, James-Jerome : “The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception” (1979)

Enter the Dao
The Dao is the way of the world, the inherent harmony of nature.
However, that is the world of the perceiver.
Varela, Francisco: “Principles Of Biological Autonomy” (1979)

What is a Living Being
Brains are, first and foremost, alive
Many definitions of life: reproduction, metabolism, evolution…
Richard Dawkins: living beings have to work to keep from eventually merging into their surroundings
Dawkins, Richard: "The Blind Watchmaker" (1987)
The identity of a living being is defined by a “membrane”: self/non-self boundary
Extended phenotype

Biological systems are about the flow and transduction of energy
Ecosystems are networks of energy flows
Organization emerges spontaneously whenever energy flows
Life is the property of an ecological system, not of a single isolated organism
Equilibrium is death
Morowitz, Harold: "Energy Flow In Biology" (1968)

The identity of a living being is defined by its interaction with the environment: input and output
Feedback
Wiener, Norbert: "Cybernetics" (1948)

Representation
No representation: pure behaviorism impossible because there must be a translation from the format/energy of the sensory input to the format/energy of the motor output
Linear representation: the “knowledge-based” approach (rules, frames, networks)
Nonlinear representation: neural nets
Searle John: "The Rediscovery Of The Mind" (1992)

What is a Thinking Being
Nonlinear Representation (Simulation)
A key property of life is the ability to predict the future
World situations are described by non-linear systems
The dynamics of nonlinear systems is such that it is virtually impossible to predict their behavior other than by simulating it
Simulation has to be very fast in order to be useful
The nervous system is precisely such a tool to perform fast simulations of nonlinear systems
Plausible reasoning (not precise logic)
Fox, Ronald: "Energy And The Evolution Of Life" (1988)

What is a Thinking Being
Nonlinear Representation (Simulation)
Note: The simulation of a non-linear world produces a largely linear world (the everyday world of objects) that obeys the linear laws of common sense
Kuipers, Benjamin: “Qualitative Reasoning” (1994)

The Factory of Illusions
Christof Koch: we are not aware of most of what our brain does.
Rodolfo Llinas: the brain is always working independently of our will.
Michael Gazzaniga: the brain acts before we are conscious of its action.
Tor Norretranders: our brain knows more than our consciousness does.
Norretranders, Tor: “The User Illusion” (1998)

Michael Gazzaniga: many minds coexist in a confederation.
Robert Ornstein: a mind is made of many competing minds.
Daniel Dennett: multiple drafts coexist in a mind.
William Calvin: mental Darwinism selects thoughts.
Calvin, William: “How Brains Think” (1996)

The Virtual Reality
The brain is a nonlinear computing system to simulate the environment
That "simulation" becomes the mind's perceived world
Each being lives inside the simulation it computes
Different kinds of brain create different kinds of worlds.
Deutsch, David: The Fabric Of Reality (1997)

The brain creates reality: we see what our mind can see (and expects to see)
The “harmony” of Nature is a harmony created by our brain
Other brains “see” a different harmony
The ant perceives a different Dao
(Is there a Dao of all Daos?)
Humberto Maturana: “Autopoiesis And Cognition” (1980)

The Cognitive Closure
There is a limit to what a brain can represent and can infer from its representations
There is a limit to what a human brain can do
Colin McGinn: “The Problem Of Consciousness” (1991) 3-dimensional space, visible light spectrum, human biological clocks, etc

Consciousness
Lucretius: "every creature with senses is made only of particles without senses”
Supervenience (Jaegwon Kim, David Chalmers): inherently flawed because it refers to our conscious perception of a phenomenon
“ Design without a designer", “Emergence", “Self-organization“: properties may appear when a system reorganizes itself due to external constraints
David Chalmers: “The Conscious Mind” (1996)

Panpsychism
Alfred Whitehead: every particle in the universe must be an event having both an objective aspect of matter and a subjective aspect of experience
Thomas Nagel: "proto-mental properties" must be present in all matter
Niels Bohr: the quantum wave function of matter represents its mental aspect
Thomas Nagel: “Mortal Questions” (1979)

Panpsychism
Everything is conscious to some extent
We don’t wonder why we are made of electrons: everything is made of electrons, therefore no wonder that my body too is made of electrons.
We wonder why we are conscious because we made the assumption that only some things (us) are conscious
Consciousness is a general property of matter
Whitehead Alfred: “Modes Of Thought” (1938)

Panpsychism
Mourning chimps
National Geographic, October 2009

Human Consciousness
The history of consciousness is the history of the parallel and interacting evolution of: tools, language, memes, emotions and the brain itself.
Consciousness is a product of having nothing better to do with our brain.
Terrence Deacon: "The Symbolic Species" (1998)

Civilization
What do ants do? Build ant-nests
The brain of an ant creates ant-nests
What do humans do? Build civilizations
The human brain creates civilizations

Civilization
Civilizations destroy the Dao (the harmony of Nature)

Civilization
Humans like to explore
Humans like to invent
Humans like to discover
Humans like to create
Art and science are forms of exploration
Exploration of the Dao
… for the purpose of destroying the Dao

Cognitive Enablers
What brain function enables tools?
Self/non-self awareness?
The “I” and the “You”?
Societies?
Reptilian brain: Emotions and spirituality?
Neo-cortex: Reasoning, language, civilizations

Human Consciousness
Religion
Religion is widespread across cultures
Emotions are common to mammals and birds
Spirituality is common to mammals and birds
Spirituality + Reason = Organized religion of the human race

Human Consciousness
Art
When did art become Art?
Earliest art was not Art, just representation
Earliest buildings were not Art, just buildings
Is a spider-web Art?

http://scaruffi.tumblr.com	302
http://boutofcontext.com	14
http://twitter.com	2

What is the dao of an ant

by piero scaruffi

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

3 Embeds 318

Statistics

What is the dao of an ant Presentation Transcript