il dilemma del Tao attuale oggi

il dilemma del Tao sempre attuale 2011 - 1978

gerarchie meta-Tao

La quarta metastruttura introdotta da Tyler Volk e Jeff Bloom sono le gerarchie (dal greco ἱεραρχία, ierarchia, derivato di hierárkhēs, composito di hieros "sacro" e árkhō "presiedere" o "essere capo", quindi - complessivamente - "presiedere i sacri riti"), strutture concettuali che definiscono relazioni tra strati, fogli, gruppi di elementi o livelli di un sistema; il tipo più noto e comune di struttura gerarchica è la piramidale, in cui i livelli di descrizione e i flussi di informazione del sistema sono convenientemente rappresentabili in una struttura verticale, tipicamente utilizzata nelle organizzazioni.

Nel caso dei sistemi socio-culturali, nella misura in cui una gerarchia piramidale viene percepita dai soggetti coinvolti, si stabiliscono dei miti quali "controllo" e "potere":

e concetti relativi quali quello di leadership:

Le gerarchie di tipo piramidale normalmente considerate hanno la caratteristica che i livelli posti in relazione verticale hanno elementi omogenei, ad esempio contengono sempre persone, anche se con ruoli e funzioni diverse. La gerarchia Russelliana dei tipi logici illustra invece una discontinuità logica tra livelli e metalivelli, applicata ad esempio da Bateson alle categorie logiche dell'apprendimento e della comunicazione, e presenti anche in gerarchie di descrizione dove tra i livelli vi sia una disomogeneità logica, ad esempio nel caso di passaggio dai livelli fisico-chimici delle scienze naturali a quelli superiori della vita e dei fenomeni emergenti in sistemi complessi. Le gerarchie piramidali non sono le uniche possibili; per la descrizione di diversi sistemi concettuali categorizzazioni di tipo trasversale o laterale possono essere convenienti.

Background

Hierarchies tend to be depicted as pyramidal arrangements of sheets. Hierarchies are identified as the relationships between layers become evident. In most cases, hierarchies are exemplified by power or control moving downward. In other cases, the top layers may indicate greater importance or significance. Information, materials, or energy move upward. They tend to create stratified stability. However, this stability may depend upon the types of binary relationships and other patterns that are created within the overall structure.

Examples

• In science: trophic layers, phylogenetic trees, animal societies (bees, ants, chimpanzees, wolves), etc.
• In architecture and design: pyramids, building design and layout, etc.
• In art: as form, etc.
• In social sciences: governmental and organizational structures; classrooms, schools and schooling; some learning theories; etc.
• In other senses: information trees, branching decision trees, etc.

Metapatterns

The Pattern Underground

spiegazione del Tao

Nelle varie parti in cui il benefattore di Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan, articola la spiegazione degli stregoni - il modello di riferimento del mondo delle esperienze vissute - una parte essenziale è la coppia tonal/nagual, l'analogo della coppia Teh-del-Tao/Tao, che rappresenta la totalità dell'Io che percepisce.
La differenza nella spiegazione del mondo tra quella comune condivisa (la realtà consensuale) e quella degli stregoni secondo Don Juan è:

"Non avete ancora sufficiente potere personale per andare in cerca della spiegazione degli stregoni, e ne avete ormai a sufficienza per scartare le spiegazioni comuni."

"Allora c'è una spiegazione degli stregoni!"

"Certo. Gli stregoni sono uomini. Siamo creature pensanti. Cerchiamo di vedere chiaro."

"Avevo l'impressione che il mio grande difetto fosse di cercare spiegazioni."

"No. Il vostro difetto è di cercare spiegazioni appropriate, che convengano a voi e al vostro mondo. E alla vostra ragionevolezza che mi oppongo. Uno stregone spiega le cose del suo mondo, ma non come voi."

"Come posso arrivare alla spiegazione degli stregoni?"

"Accumulando potere personale. Il potere personale vi farà scivolare con la massima facilità in un'area dove la spiegazione degli stregoni è possibile. La spiegazione non è ciò che voi chiamereste una spiegazione; ciò nonostante essa rende il mondo e i suoi misteri, se non chiari, meno terribili. Questa sarebbe l'essenza di una spiegazione ma non è ciò che voi cercate. Voi seguite il riflesso delle vostre idee. Gli specchi deformanti li avete dentro, e il mondo deve adeguarvisi."

Nel libro successivo, Castaneda illustra come Don Juan (denominato el Nagual) spiegò la dicotomia tonal/nagual ad un altro gruppo di apprendisti; la spiegazione è basata sul fatto che la conoscenza del tonal avviene tramite la prima attenzione, la normale attenzione condivisa, mentre quella del nagual avviene attraverso una seconda attenzione:

La Gorda mi raccontò in che modo el Nagual aveva rivelato loro la dicotomia tonal-nagual. Un giorno se n'andarono in una valle remota, desolata, fra montagne rocciose. Prima di partire, el Nagual aveva messo ogni sorta di oggetti in un fagotto (inclusa la radio di Pablito) e aveva ordinato a Josefina di accollarsi quel fardello. A Pablito aveva ordinato di accollarsi un pesante tavolino. In tal modo si misero in marcia. Dovevano darsi il cambio a portare quei pesi.

Percorsero circa 60 chilometri prima di arrivare a quella valle solitaria. Quando vi giunsero, el Nagual ordinò a Pablito di collocare il tavolo al centro della valle fra i monti. Poi ordinò a Josefina di disporre sul tavolo gli oggetti contenuti nel fagotto. Quando il tavolo fu colmo di roba, spiegò loro la differenza fra tonal e nagual. A me l'aveva spiegata - allo stesso modo - in una trattoria di Città del Messico. Ma nel loro caso la spiegazione fu assai più spettacolare.

Disse loro che il tonal è l'ordine di cui siamo coscienti nel nostro mondo quotidiano ed è, inoltre, l'ordine personale che noi portiamo lungo il cammino della vita sulle nostre spalle; come loro avevano trasportato il tavolo e il fagotto. Il tonal personale di ognuno di noi è come il tavolino in quella valle: una minuscola isola colma di oggetti a noi familiari. Il nagual, invece, è l'inesplicabile quid che tiene in piedi il tavolo ed è simile alla vastità di quella valle deserta.

El Nagual disse loro che gli stregoni sono obbligati a guardare il loro tonal da distante allo scopo di veder meglio ciò che c'è intorno a loro, realmente. Li fece salire su una balza, da dove si dominava una vasta zona. Da lassù il tavolino era appena visibile. Quindi li fece tornare presso il tavolo e ce li fece salir sopra, allo scopo di far loro capire che l'uomo qualsiasi non possiede un campo visivo vasto come quello dello stregone, poiché l'uomo qualsiasi si trova sopra il suo tavolo, tenendosi stretto agli oggetti che vi sono collocati.

Fece loro lanciare, uno alla volta, un'occhiata agli oggetti sul tavolo; poi sottraeva uno degli oggetti e - per misurare la loro attenzione - gli chiedeva quale fosse l'oggetto sottratto. Tutti quanti superarono l'esame a pieni voti. Egli fece loro notare che la loro abilità a ricordare così facilmente gli oggetti sul tavolo era dovuta al fatto che tutti loro avevano sviluppato la loro attenzione del tonal, ovvero la loro attenzione sopra il tavolino.

Successivamente chiese loro di lanciare un'occhiata a tutto ciò che era al suolo, sotto il tavolo; e mise alla prova la loro memoria sottraendo un sasso, un fuscello, o altre cose ch'erano lì in terra. Nessuno di loro ricordava ciò che avevano visto sotto il tavolo. El Nagual allora tolse via ogni cosa da sopra il tavolino e ve li fece sdraiare sopra, uno alla volta, a pancia sotto, e disse loro di guardare attentamente il terreno lì sotto. Spiegò loro che, per uno stregone, il nagual è la zona sotto il tavolo. Poiché è impensabile affrontare l'immensità del nagual - analoga all'immensa valle desolata - gli stregoni eleggono a dominio della loro attività la zona immediatamente sottostante all'isola del tonal, analoga a quella che c'era sotto il tavolino. Questa zona è il dominio della seconda attenzione - ovvero l'attenzione del nagual - ovvero l'attenzione sotto il tavolo. L'attenzione viene raggiunta solo dopo che il guerriero ha sgombrato il piano del tavolo, facendone tabula rasa. Raggiungere la seconda attenzione fa sì che le due attenzioni si uniscano in un tutto inscindibile, e questa unità rappresenta la totalità dell'Io.

La spiegazione degli stregoni tramite la dualità tonal/nagual, non lascia spazio neanche alla comprensione anche di quella parte che crediamo ragionevolmente di conoscere, il tonal; il tonal organizza e fornisce ordine e comprensione al mondo percepito, il quale altrimenti sarebbe solo caos, ma benché questo ordine ci permetta di dare senso al mondo, il meccanismo che lo produce è in se stesso indescrivibile:

"Far si che la ragione si senta sicura è sempre il compito dell'insegnante" disse don Juan. "Io ho ingannato la vostra ragione, facendole credere che del tonal si potesse parlare, che lo si potesse spiegare. Genaro ed io ci siamo affaticati a darvi l'impressione che solo il nagual fosse di là dalla portata delle spiegazioni; ecco la prova che l'imbroglio è riuscito: ancora adesso vi sembra che, nonostante tutto quello che avete sperimentato, vi resti un nucleo che potete dichiarare vostro: la vostra ragione. E' un miraggio. La vostra preziosa ragione è solo un centro di raduno, uno specchio che riflette qualcosa di esterno ad esso. La notte scorsa siete stato testimone non soltanto dell'indescrivibile nagual, ma anche dell'indescrivibile tonal."
"L'ultimo brano della spiegazione degli stregoni afferma che la ragione si limita a riflettere un ordine esterno, e che la ragione non sa nulla di tale ordine; non può spiegarlo, così come non può spiegare il nagual, La ragione può soltanto essere testimone degli effetti del tonal, ma non può mai comprenderlo o svelarne l'enigma. Il fatto stesso che noi pensiamo e parliamo indica la presenza di un ordine che seguiamo senza mai sapere come riusciamo a farlo o che cosa tale ordine sia."

Esposi allora il concetto della ricerca dell'uomo occidentale circa l'attività cerebrale, come possibilità di spiegare cosa fosse quell'ordine. Don Juan dichiarò che tutto quanto poteva fare tale ricerca era attestare che qualcosa stava accadendo.

"Gli stregoni fanno la stessa cosa con la loro volontà" disse. "Essi affermano che attraverso la volontà possono essere testimoni degli effetti del nagual. Posso ora aggiungere che attraverso la ragione, non importa cosa facciamo con essa o come lo facciamo, siamo puramente testimoni degli effetti del tonal. In entrambi i casi non c'è speranza, mai, di capire o di spiegare quello di cui siamo testimoni."
"Per la prima volta, la notte scorsa, avete volato sulle ali della vostra percezione. Eravate ancora molto timido. Vi siete avventurato solo lungo la banda della percezione umana. Uno stregone può usare quelle ali per raggiungere altre sensibilità: quella di un corvo per esempio, di un coyote, di un grillo; o per raggiungere l'ordine di altri mondi nello spazio infinito."
"Volete dire altri pianeti, don Juan?"
"Certo. Le ali di di percezione possono portarci ai confini più reconditi del nagual o ad inconcepibili mondi del tonal"

"Per esempio, uno stregone può andare sulla luna?"

"Si capisce" rispose don Juan. "Non sarebbe in grado, però, di riportare di là un sacco di pietre."
Ridemmo e ci mettemmo a scherzare su questo punto; ma la sua affermazione era stata in tono estremamente serio.
"Siamo arrivati all'ultima parte della spiegazione degli stregoni" disse don Juan. "La notte scorsa Genaro ed io vi abbiamo mostrato gli ultimi due punti che formano la totalità dell'uomo, il nagual e il tonal. Una volta vi ho detto che quei due punti sono all'esterno dell'uomo, e tuttavia non lo sono. Questo è il paradosso degli esseri luminosi. Il tonal di ciascuno di noi è soltanto un riflesso di quell'indescivibile ignoto che è pieno di ordine; il nagual di ciascuno di noi è soltanto un riflesso di quell'indescrivibile vuoto che contiene ogni cosa."
"Ora bisogna che restiate qui seduto, nel luogo preferito di Genaro, fino al crepuscolo; nel frattempo dovrete collocare la spiegazione degli stregoni al suo posto. Qui, ora, solo la forza della vostra vita lega insieme quel grappolo di sensazioni."
Don Juan si alzò.
"Il compito di domani sarà per voi immergervi da solo nell'ignoto, mentre Genaro ed io staremo a guardare senza intervenire", disse. "Sedete qui e interrompete il dialogo interno. Potete raccogliere il potere necessario per spiegare le ali della vostra percezione e volare verso quell'infinito."

Il passo seguente per Castaneda sarà infatti quello di buttarsi giù da una mesa, e per sopravvivere raccogliere la sua seconda attenzione ed entrare nell'ignoto del nagual.

induzione del Tao

the Division Bell, cover, Storm Thorgerson

L'induzione di uno stato discreto alterato di coscienza (d-ASC) a partire dallo stato base di coscienza b-SoC è un procedimento non banale, anche se in molti casi del tutto naturale, ad esempio per il passaggio dallo stato di veglia al sonno. Lo stato base discreto di coscienza è stabilizzato in modi multipli e per passare ad un d-ASC è necessario l'intervento di diverse "forze" che lo distruggano e lo ristrutturino.

Induction of Altered States

We have now seen that a d-SoC is a system that is stabilized in multiple ways, so as to maintain its integrity in the face of changing environmental input and changing actions taken in response to the environment. Suppose that the coping function of the particular d-SoC is not appropriate for the existing environmental situation, or that the environment is safe and stable and no particular d-SoC is needed to cope with it, and you want to transit to a d-ASC: what do you do? This chapter examines that process of inducing a d-ASC in general from the systems approach, and then considers its application to three transitions from ordinary consciousness: to sleep, to hypnosis, and to meditative states.

Inducing a d-ASC: General Principles

The staring point is the baseline state of consciousness (b-SoC), usually the ordinary d-SoC. The b-SoC is an active, stable, overall patterning of psychological functions which, via multiple stabilization relationships (loading, positive and negative feedback, and limiting) among its constituent parts, maintains it identity in spite of environmental changes. I emphasize multiple stabilization, for as in any well-engineered complex system, there are many processes maintaining a state of consciousness: it would be too vulnerable to unadaptive disruption if there were only a few. Inducing the transition to a d-ASC is a three-step process, based on two psychological (and/or physiological) operations. The process is what happens internally; the operations are the particular things you do to yourself, or someone does to you, to make the induction process happen. In the following pages the steps of the process are described sequentially and the operations are described sequentially, but note that the same action may function as both kinds of induction operation simultaneously.

Induction Operations: Disruption and Patterning

The first induction operation is to disrupt the stabilization of your b-SoC, to interfere with the loading, positive and negative feedback, and limiting processes/structures that keep your psychological structures operating within their ordinary range. Several stabilization processes must be disrupted. If, for example, someone were to clap his hands loudly right now, while you are reading, you would be somewhat startled. Your level of activation would be increased; you might even jump. I doubt, however, that you would enter a d-ASC. Throwing a totally unexpected and intense stimulus into your own mind could cause a momentary shift within the pattern of your ordinary d-SoC but not a transition to a d-ASC. If you were drowsy it might totally disrupt one or two stabilization processes for a moment, but since multiple stabilization processes are ongoing on, this would not be sufficient to alter your state of consciousness.So the first operation in inducing a d-ASC is to disrupt enough stabilization process to a great enough extent that the baseline pattern of consciousness cannot maintain its integrity. If only some of the stabilization processes are disrupted, the remaining undisrupted ones may be sufficient to hold the system together; thus, an induction procedure can be carried out without actually inducing a d-ASC. Unfortunately, some investigators have equated the procedure of induction with the presence of a d-ASC, a methodological fallacy. Stabilization processes can be disrupted directly when they can be identified, or indirectly by pushing some psychological functions to and beyond their limits of functioning. Particular subsystems, for example, can be disrupted by overloading them with stimuli, depriving them of stimuli, or giving them anomalous stimuli that cannot processed in habitual ways. The functioning of a subsystem can be disrupted by withdrawing attention/awareness energy or other psychological energy from it, a gentle kind of disruption. If the operation of one subsystem is disrupted, it may alter the operation of a second subsystem via feedback paths, etc. Drugs can disrupt the functioning of the b-SoC, as can any intense physiological procedure, such as exhaustion or exercise. The second induction operation is to apply patterning forces, stimuli that then push disrupted psychological functioning toward the new pattern of the desired d-ASC. These patterning stimuli may also serve to disrupt the ordinary functioning of the b-SoC insofar as they are incongruent with the functioning of the b-SoC. Thus the same stimuli may serve as both disruptive and patterning forces. For example, viewing a diagram that makes little sense in the baseline state can be a mild disrupting force. But the same diagram, viewed in the altered state, may make sense or be esthetically pleasing and thus may become a mandala for meditation, a patterning force.

Steps in the Induction Process

Figure 7-1 sketches the steps of the induction process. The b-SoC is represented as blocks of various shapes and sizes (representing particular psychological structures) forming a system/construction (the state of consciousness) in a gravitational field (the environment). At the extreme left, a number of psychological structures are assembled into a stable construction, the b-SoC. The detached figures below the base of the construction represent psychological potentials not available in the b-SoC.

Disrupting (and patterning) forces, represented by the arrows, are applied to begin induction. The second figure from the left depicts this beginning and represents change within the b-SoC. The disruptive (and patterning) forces are being applied, and while the overall construction remains the same, some the relationships within it have changed. System change has about reached its limit: at the right and left ends of the construction, for example, things are close to falling apart. Particular psychological structures/subsystems have varied as far as they can while still maintaining the overall pattern of the system.

Also shown is the changing relationship of some of the latent potentials outside consciousness, changes we must postulate from this systems approach and our knowledge of the dynamic unconscious, but about which we have little empirical data.

If the disrupting forces are successful in finally breaking down the organization of the b-SoC, the second step of the induction process occurs, the construction/state of consciousness comes apart, and a transitional period occurs. In Figure 7-1 this is depicted as the scattering of parts of the construction, without clear-cut relationships to one another or perhaps with momentary dissociated relationships as with the small square, the circle, and the hexagon on the left side of the transition diagram. The disrupting forces are now represented by the light arrow, as they are not as important now that the disruption has actually occurred; the now more important patterning forces are represented by the heavy arrows. The patterning stimuli/forces must now push the isolated psychological structures into a new construction, the third and final step of the processes in which a new, self-stabilized structure, the d-ASC, forms. Some of the psychological structures/functions present in the b-SoC, such as those represented by the squares, trapezoids, circles, and small hexagon, may not be available in this new state of consciousness; other psychological functions not available in the b-SoC have now become available. Some functions available in the b-SoC may be available at the same or at an altered level of functioning in the d-ASC. There is a change in both the selection of human potentials used and the manner in which they are constructed into a working system.

Figure 7-1 also indicates that the patterning and disrupting forces may have to continue to be present, perhaps in attenuated form, in order for this new state to be stable. The d-ASC may not have enough internal stabilization at first to hold up against internal or environmental change, and artificial props may be needed. For example, a person may at first have to be hypnotized in a very quiet, supportive environment in order to make the transition into hypnosis, but after he has been hypnotized a few times, the d-ASC is stable enough so that he can remain hypnotized under noisy, chaotic conditions.

In following this example you probably thought of going from your ordinary state to some more exotic d-ASC, but this theoretical sequence applies for transition from any d-SoC to any other d-SoC. Indeed, this is also the deinduction process, the process of going from a d-ASC back to the b-SoC. Disrupting forces are applied to destabilize the altered state, and patterning forces to reinstate the baseline state; a transitional period ensues, and the baseline state re-forms. Since it is generally much easier to get back into our ordinary state, we usually pay little attention to the deinduction process, although it is just as complex in principle as the induction process.

It may be that some d-SoCs cannot be reached directly from another particular d-SoC; some intermediary d-SoC has to be traversed. The process is like crossing a stream that is too wide to leap over directly: you have to leap onto one or more stepping stones in sequence to get to the other side. Each stepping stone is a stable place in itself, but they are transitional with respect to the beginning and end points of the process. Some of the jhana states of Buddhist meditation may be of this nature. This kind of stable transitional state should not be confused with the inherently unstable transitional periods discussed above, and we should be careful in our use of the words state and period.

il tocco imperiale del Tao

Vladimir Ashkenazy, third movement "Rondo"

Beethoven´s Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor".

London´s Royal Festival Hall 1974.

London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink.

il lascito del 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.

il tocco allegro del Tao

Vladimir Horowitz

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

The Orchestra of La Scala, Director:Carlo Maria Giulini

Sepoltura nella tomba della famiglia Toscanini, suo suocero Arturo Toscanini.
Cimitero Monumentale, Milano

The Horowitz Website

Tao co-emergente senza Sé

© Igor Morski

L'assenza del Sé rivelata dall'analisi Abhidhamma dei cinque aggregati dell'esperienza soggettiva, con le sue conseguenze per le scienze cognitive, pone la questione di come questa possa essere interpretata sulla base di una mente senza Sé.

Gli autori iniziano questa discussione nel contesto di tre esempi: il modello della società di agenti proposto da Marvin Minsky - paradigma dell'Intelligenza Artificiale -,  la teoria delle relazioni oggettuali, proposta in psicoanalisi da William Fairbairn e sviluppata dal lavoro di Melanie Klein, e l'idea di emergenza codipendente, derivata dalle tradizioni orientali:

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)."

© Elena Cinguino Illustrations

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?