ART & ORGANISM
OVERVIEW of RESOURCES
& test-pages for A&O web
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INTRODUCTION to ART & ORGANISM
EACH TOPIC is connected to a collection of RESOURCES. These do not represent the entirety of CONTENT TO BE MASTERED.
THESE TOPICS TRANSFORM REGUARLY AS NEW CONTENT IN CONSTUTUENT FIELDS EMERGES.
Below, are collections of notes on topics and ideas that have emerged in recent years.
ART and SCIENCE [i] ART and SCIENCE are catchphrases for distinctive but overlapping configurations of cognitive functions. (localized and distributed coordinated processes in the brain and body that have more-or-less privileged connections with each other that make specific aspects of INPUT « INTEGRATION « OUTPUT more-or-less likely) ARTISTS and SCIENTISTS (and we are all more-or-less both) are highly motivated to make the contents of mind understandable (both to themselves and to others). (“All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.”–Federico Fellini, Italian film director. (1920-1993)
Our evolutionary biology has prioritized functions that support MEETING BIOLOGICAL NEEDS (including “to know and to be known.”) At the right time specific COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS are highly ADAPTIVE and contribute to direct and inclusive FITNESS.
INTRODUCTION (“The professor’s problem: “So, we have generations of teachers who can speak eloquently to concepts and their connections with each other, but are not particularly compelling in speaking to the connections between concepts and people. This not the process for which teachers are trained. Of course, people have to make these connections for themselves (and the best a professor can do is create an environment that encourages this), but that requires that people know themselves better, and that was not why they are taking this class. It is a challenge.”)
- GLOSSARIES:
- ART & ORGANISM
- DEEP ETHOLOGY
- Other glossaries: ART, NEUROETHOLOGY, NEUROPSYCHIATRIC ,PSYCHOLOGICAL TERMS
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Perspective on A&O: Read: Art and Science of Teaching
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A&O (like life itself) consists of nested collections of related fragments — see the uses of Aphorism
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- Your A&O DIARY
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CONNECTIONS CREATE “MEANING”
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- CONNECTIONS: https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-connections-01-26-2018/
- In seeming paradox, apparent OPPOSITES are CONNECTED: ENANTIODROMIA
- .Quotes about Connections; Plimpton interviews Doctorow (“how to get started”)
- CONNECTIONS in the BRAIN:
- CONNECTIONS between INDIVIDUALS–empathy, sympathy
- CONNECTIONS in COMPETITION In the brain, connectivity is determined at first by genetics of growth and apoptosis and then by competition.
- The “DARK SIDE” of CONNECTIONS POST we can have too many. (helps to have biological grounding in the development and dissolution of connections in the developing brain (see the READING on brain-development-and-the-role-of-experience)
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- EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY The real, not the ideal: “real people in their real environment” including Being; existence versus essence; individuation versus socialization.
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- Understanding each other: “language is integrated with, and in constant interplay with, an incredibly broad range of neural processes.” It structures and is structured by the brain (see Boroditsky’s brief editorial on Language and the Brain )
- KNOWLEDGE is generally validated by REASON–coherence and correspondence –but SAPIENCE is balanced with SENTIENCE: sensual delights that go beyond the necessity of mere reason are perceived as ART (and if you can communicate the experience well enough (know what I mean?) you are an ARTIST.
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- ADAPTIVE REFERS TO COPING WITH NEEDS:
- ADAPTATION—copes with change. An adaptation is a trait that contributes to fitness, BUT the term also refers to the process by which that trait has come about. “The processes by which organisms or groups of organisms maintain homeostasis in and among themselves in the face of both short-term environmental fluctuations and long-term changes in the composition and structure of their environments.” (Rappaport, 1971) Its several definitions are all unified by the idea of compensation for change, either short-term (such as a stimulus or life experience) or long term adaptations (such as Other (complementary) definitions are: “an adaptation is an anatomical, physiological, or behavioral trait that contributes to an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce (“fitness”) in competition with conspecifics in the environment in which it evolved” (Williams, G. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection Princeton). and “a regulatory or advantageous change in response to an environmental stress by an individual or by a species in the course of evolution”
- Coping strategies, of course, depend on context: what is the stressor, selection pressure, with which we must cope. In a given context we must ask WHAT IS NORMAL?
- when coping is inadequate, we can speak of DYSFUNCTION
- associated with changes indicated by differences from the NEUROTYPICAL brain BUT “NEUROATYPICAL” (and “NEURODIVERSE”) brains are not necessarily maladaptive other than conformity to conventions or social norms.
- Reading: Witty Ticcy Ray by Oliver Sacks
EXPERIENCE
REPRESENTING your EXPERIENCE: (this is what art and science are all about) perceptions, conceptions — ideas and states of mind in the concentric rings of their respective contexts [inviting the idea of recursion].
- MIND-MAP. The spider web (the matrix of interconnected meanings that defines the idea at the center of a mindmap looks like a spider web) (a coincidence? read The spider web of experience (then dive deeper: the thoughts of a spider web)
- Mind maps were discussed as a teaching/learning tool in a lecture presented at a conference in Virginia in 2020: “Personal and Shared Meaning”
- examples: SAND-by DB (A&O-2021)
ART (expressive and receptive)
ART can be the great facilitator of MEANING: Mark Johnson, whose writing is a great resource for understanding how our mind and body co-constitute understanding and meaning is… “following in the footsteps of John Dewey, who argued in Art as Experience (1934) that art matters because it provides heightened, intensified, and highly integrated experiences of meaning, using all of our ordinary resources of meaning-making. To discover how meaning works, we should turn first to gesture, social interaction, ritual, ritual, and art, and only later to linguistic communication.…” Johnson pursues “…Dewey’s insight that the arts are a primary means by which we grasp, criticize, and transform meanings. … [he ends up] with the idea that philosophy will matter to people only to the extent that it is built on a visceral connection to our world.” (Johnson 2007). [from A&O webnotes on CONNECTIONS]
For examples I tend to emphasize:
- ABSTRACT ART (selective emphases of elements of particular relevance to the artist or the viewer … distillations, unrecognizable unless they are linked by steps, consciously (or not) perceptible and more-or-less recognizable … and
- BIOMORPHIC ART is exemplary of the mutual influences of art and biology and their influence on generations of visual culture from art and architecture to design, fashion, jewelry, that continues today.
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- ART and SCIENCE quotes from Constable and Zola and the great Claude Bernard: “ART is I, SCIENCE is WE” (quoted in Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. IV 1928)
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- ART and SCALE … temporal and spatial (from still-life to ikebana)
ART DEFINED:
- ART is primarily an act of communication (and implicit communion). WE EXPRESS (create)–WE COMMUNICATE (by means of a medium)–WE RECEIVE (our first acts of communication are always with ourselves) [see: COMMUNICATION – within and between levels of organization].
- ATTRIBUTES of ART / AESTHETICS – elements of art
- ATTRIBUTES of ART–Mathematics
- ART exists in time as well as space: Scale is a key as it manifests or implies Level of organization (“Time implies change and movement; movement implies the passage of time. Movement and time, whether actual or an illusion, are crucial elements in art although we may not be aware of it. … An art work may incorporate actual motion; that is, the artwork itself moves in some way. Or it may incorporate the illusion of, or implied movement.” (Lucy Lamp for SOPHIA)
- see A&O-TIME notes; “The Ambiguity of Artworks…” by Gregor Hayn-Leichsenring. The author attempts a set of guidelines for research into empirical aesthetics)
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- “FOUND” art. Notes from the Tate Discussed at A&O: ART & ARTIFACT
The cultural and social context of art
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- ETHOLOGY of ART (art can be considered as a process, the product of which is an artifact. It is a behavioral pattern which –like all behavioral patterns– is manifest by an organism (or population) because it is to their advantage to do so. And like all behavioral patterns, art is more fully understood when reviewed in terms of the DEEP perspectives of ethology, thus considering simultaneously its origins and future possibilities.) (from A&O web notes on ART and ARTIFACT
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- PATTERNS –their creation and recognition are significant elements in aesthetic experience
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- READING about Scholar Stones from Christie’s auction website (are these “found art?”)
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- READING Empirical Genetics (introduction to a symposium)
READING Dissanayake on “ART” meaning “making special” (“selective attention”)
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- UNITY in DIVERSITY e pluribus unum?
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- TRUTH and BEAUTY — ART is a LIE
- ART and TRUTH; TRUTH and LOVE
- Harold Pinter on Art and Truth from his 2005 Nobel acceptance speech
- Class Notes on Radical Doubt (Descartes got the ball rolling, but the DUALISM he developed is under intense critical scrutiny for some pernicious side effects)
- TRUTH and BEAUTY — ART is a LIE
- BEAUTY
- As often the case we can gain unique insight into the meanings of words by looking at their seeming opposites: Read “The History of Ugliness …” by Gretchen E Henderson (2018). Can you experience too much beauty? Look in on STENDHAL SYNDROME.
- Beauty = Truth in Science by Dennis Overbye (NYT 2002) (“The beauty of math is seductive; the origin of the Dirac equation is amazing”)
- TRUTH is BEAUTY? MAYBE NOT: look at Daniel Cossins on the failure to meet high aesthetic standards of physicists in New Scientist, 28 February 2018: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731670-600-truth-before-beauty-our-universe-is-uglier-than-we-thought/
- NEUROAESTHETICS of BEAUTY: To be studied objectively, “beauty” needs an agreed-upon definition. Beauty differently defined activates different parts of the brain: Look at a meta-analysis of brain imaging studies that indicate two distinctive kinds of beauty: “Seeking the “Beauty Center” in the Brain: A Meta-Analysis of fMRI Studies of Beautiful Human Faces and Visual Art” Hu Chuan-Peng et al. (2020)
- Keep going into nature and nurture in what is found beautiful: They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But whether the beholder’s opinion is a product of one’s genes or one’s environment has long been a question for scientists. Although some research suggests that a preference for certain physical traits, such as height or muscular build, may be encoded in our genes, a new study finds it’s our individual life experiences that lead us to find one face more attractive than another. [i] based on PNAS article[ii]
Beauty in art and mathematics activate same areas of brain : “Mathematicians have long likened the experience of mathematical beauty to that of visual and musical beauty. Now scientists in England and Scotland have determined that despite the abstract nature of mathematics, mathematical beauty is linked to activity in the same region of the brain as beauty from sensory sources.” (Article Figures & SI Info & Metrics PDF)
[i] a new study finds it’s our individual life experiences that lead us to find one face more attractive than another. To get some closure on the nature versus nurture debate in human aesthetics, researchers asked 547 pairs of identical twins and 214 pairs of same-gender fraternal twins to view 200 faces and rate them on a scale of one to seven, with one being the least attractive and seven the most attractive. A group of 660 nontwins then completed the same survey. If genes were more involved in facial preference, identical twins would have had similar ratings; if the influence of a familial environment carried more weight, fraternal twins would have also answered similarly. However, most twins’ scores were quite different from one another, suggesting that something else was at play. The researchers suspect that it’s an individual’s life experiences that guide our opinions of attractiveness. The findings, reported today in Current Biology, build on earlier work by the same team that shows the ability to recognize faces is largely a genetic trait. The research is ongoing, and you can participate, too. Just complete the facial preference survey through the researchers’ website at: www.TestMyBrain.org. Posted in: Brain & Behavior doi:10.1126/science.aad4653
[ii] RESEARCH ARTICLE: Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable Jeremy B. Wilmer, Laura Germine, Christopher F. Chabris, Garga Chatterjee, Mark Williams, Eric Loken, Ken Nakayama, and Bradley Duchaine PNAS March 16, 2010 107 (11) 5238-5241; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0913053107 Related Articles A strong role for nature in face recognition – Mar 08, 2010e
- Keep going into nature and nurture in what is found beautiful: They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But whether the beholder’s opinion is a product of one’s genes or one’s environment has long been a question for scientists. Although some research suggests that a preference for certain physical traits, such as height or muscular build, may be encoded in our genes, a new study finds it’s our individual life experiences that lead us to find one face more attractive than another. [i] based on PNAS article[ii]
- As often the case we can gain unique insight into the meanings of words by looking at their seeming opposites: Read “The History of Ugliness …” by Gretchen E Henderson (2018). Can you experience too much beauty? Look in on STENDHAL SYNDROME.
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- REAL versus IDEAL
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- Real and ideal; (e.g., philosophy behund Milan Kundera’s 1984 book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
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- KNOWLEDGE is validated by REASON but sensual delights that go beyond the necessity of mere reason are perceived as ART (and if you can communicate the experience well enough (“know what I mean?”) you are an ARTIST.
- TRANSFORMATIVE KNOWLEDGE (The “transformative learning experience“) “Have you been TRANSFORMED? (even a little?)” read A&O notes on the extraordinary experiences of artists – spiritual – mystical – transformative. (linked to extraordinary experiences of artists in their own words) then read what Joseph Campbell said about “aesthetic arrest”
- KNOWLEDGE is validated by REASON but sensual delights that go beyond the necessity of mere reason are perceived as ART (and if you can communicate the experience well enough (“know what I mean?”) you are an ARTIST.
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- CONFABULATION, often emerges to rationalizes a (clinical) “lack of insight” as a disorder (e.g., Anosognosia)
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- To EXPERIENCE ART is to go beyond the immediate needs of biology: to take something which has become (or been made) “special” (Dissanyake).
- The cognitive implications are huge: to the extent we appreciate a specific work of art we have found a sort of communion with an artist (“The antennae of our race”—Ezra Pound called artists) and likely to see things beyond the bounds of mere habit. In this sense, an artist is also the canary in the coal mine: early warning systems for movements into potentially dangerous territory. (Danger and Beauty together can evoke the “sublime“.) It also implies possessing the resources, such as leisure, to explore and can thus be seen as a potentially attractive trait in sexual selection. This MAY be an element in the many species that work to manifest their value as a reproductive partner: bower birds to peacocks. Observations that tend to validate the evolutionary argument for the emergence of art are at the A&O Page: NEEDS MET BY ART. (arguably, needs when met ultimately serve inclusive fitness, most conspicuously when they are therapeutic)
- To EXPERIENCE ART is to go beyond the immediate needs of biology: to take something which has become (or been made) “special” (Dissanyake).
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- To EXPRESS ART
- A&O Notes on vision, including a case study: The Mona Lisa.
- Tracking Gaze THE ORDER in which elements of an art work are perceived can profoundly alter the viewer’s perception.
- Therapeutic “art therapy”
- To EXPRESS ART
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- QUALITIES of the EXPERIENCE of ART (=
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- SCHOOLS of ART?
PARABLE- Two Monks Saw Some Goldfish “how do I know?” …
- READING: “In the River of Consciousness” by Oliver Sacks (2004). ( William James and Henri Bergson may have intuited correctly that “the brain mechanisms that give coherence to perception and consciousness somehow analogous to motion picture cameras and projectors? Does the eye/brain actually “take” perceptual stills and somehow fuse them to give a sense of continuity and motion? No clear answer was forthcoming during their lifetimes.”)
- What the brain diseased can reveal about the normal brain: https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-reading-fractures-and-bindings-of-consciousness-holmes-tucker-2011/
- DEEP ETHOLOGY of CONSCIOUSNESS (A Beginning)
- Hobbes on Consciousness quote
- Artist’s visualization of consciousness-related parts of brain
- Consciousness Reading: what may be revealed by dysfunction
- PALEO-psychology: DEEP-evolution-paleolithic-neandertal-art/ and Review A&O READING ON PALEOLITHIC ART. This topic is also much in the news recently since a recent AAAS meeting and The SCIENCE cover article (23 February) suggesting Neandertal cognitive competence for symbolic behavior. (see Tim Appenzeller’s “In Depth” article with highlights of the research and continuing controversy).
- The SELF : is self-knowledge important? How important? Does creation or appreciation of art help us know ourselves? How might that work?
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- DEVELOPMENT
- INDIVIDUATION and SOCIALIZATION;
- KNOW THYSELF: “Know Thyself” and “The Sea of Beauty”
- SELF in the CLASSROOM: “going beyond one’s self in pursuit of the “transformative experience” — the process whereby mere knowing becomes realizing.
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- EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE
- Extraordinary experiences of creative artists
- Poets Taking Dictation: reading: First Vancouver Lecture by Jack Spicer [connected to LISTENING ANGELS ?]
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- Spontaneity is a an aspect of authenticity (authority and spirituality):
- AUTHENTICITY
- Parable of the Rothko date
- Useful WORDS emphasizing spiritual connections: espontaneo, Ole, Duende. And the experience of THE SUBLIME
- A surprising link between imagination and memory
- READ about Kenko’s philosophy, “Follow the Brush”
- Spontaneity is a an aspect of authenticity (authority and spirituality):
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- ART and EMOTION affecting expression, perception, understanding: often an expression of autonomic reflexes evoked by stress. including ambivalent emotions and why sad art is pleasing
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- There are clues from descriptive language that indicate the emotional effect of different art forms is variable: “Artful terms: A study on aesthetic word usage for visual art versus film and music.” By Augustin &, Carbon & Wagemans J. (2012)
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- Parable of The French Philosophers From “knowing” to “realizing”
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- The Parable of Cynthia’s Tears including examples of overflowing emotion at Rothko Chapel and Chauvet Cave.
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- ART and EMOTION affecting expression, perception, understanding: often an expression of autonomic reflexes evoked by stress. including ambivalent emotions and why sad art is pleasing
- SPIRITUAL Dimension of Art and look in on transcendent aspects of CREATIVITY
- STIMULI, Perception, Conception, Expression
- A&O-ABSTRACTION
- ART is also an EXPERIENCE and “All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves…”–Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book 1)[ii] –these are distinct kinds of things: Aristotle distinguishes “things that are good in themselves” from “useful things.” (Nicomachean Ethics 1:6)
[…”The relation, then, between epistêmê and technê in ancient philosophy offers an interesting contrast with our own notions about theory (pure knowledge) and (experience-based) practice. (Stanford Encyclopedia Philosophy)]
- HOW have stimuli come to have their power over us: look at Evolution and ADAPTATION and then “RITUALIZATION” (an evolutionary process most conspicuous when driven by sexual selection)
- Evolution of Behavior
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The evolution of cognitive competencies may be inferred by our beliefs about the “state of mind” of an artist (including yourself at your most creative or inspired). What can we infer about PALEOLITHIC ART? Read an essay by Ewen Callaway in Nature, last December 11th (“Is this cave painting humanity’s oldest story? Indonesian rock art dated to 44,000 years old seems to show mythological figures in a hunting scene”).
COMMUNICATION (as, for example from artist to audience) can utilize any medium we have the sensory capacity to detect.
- IS OUR ART an expression of the “extra-somatory self” — an “extended phenotype” ?
MEDIA: Potential media for artistic expression are indexed by Wikipedia; beyond the traditional media of familiar art forms (painting, music, dance, language), consider AIR, EARTH, FIRE, and WATER (ATYPICAL MEDIA)
SELF as a medium of art (performance)
Nature and Earthworks
- Self-representation
- (Land Art comments from Tate Gallery) (PBS on “The Case for Landart”)
- Andy Goldsworthy examples of work; Goldsworthy at work.
- Dietmar Voorwold examples of work
- volcanic lava
- Clouds
- Fire
- Water water represented in art
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- (great fountains are obvious, but new ideas and technologies go far beyond (whirlpool–waterfall in shopping mall)
COLLABORATIONS with LIVING NATURE: Nature is always a raw material for inspiration and execution, but some artists develop a deep understanding of natural processes (e.g., Earthworks or Land art, above). Understanding the lives and behavior of other species, however, goes further ….
- Working with bees: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/09/honeybee-artworks-ava-roth/
- Collaborating with the caddis fly: READING on a collaboration with Caddis worms
AURAL – AUDITORY stimuli —
RESONANCE notes – the evocative power of stimuli can exp;oit unexpected connections and take us far beyond the mere workings of sound and music work — it is also a powerful metaphor for things that must be connected but it is not clear how.
VISUAL stimuli
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- NON-VERBAL Communications
- “We Know How You Feel”: Raffi Khatchadourian (2015) excerpt about nonverbal communication and Artificial Intelligence.
- Communicating with the eyes. (Reading on EYE CONTACT)
- NON-VERBAL Communications
“ENTOPIC STIMULI”
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- Hallucinations
- PHOSPHENES excerpts from an interesting “Amateur Scientist” review
- WORDS and CAN WORDS BE LOGICAL?
- (including JARGON, Foreign or rare terms)
- Words and their emotional meanings; Words for feelings – enriching our vocabulary: untranslatable emotions; The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows including beautiful and useful words or phrases such as sonder, lacheism, moment of tangency
- GLOSSARY – emphasizes the sometimes rare meaning of a term that is emphasized in A&O
- Asemic Art. notes on Asemic Art – What is communicated when we write words without semantic meaning?
- marina-abramovic-at-moma-in-2010 non-verbal but heavy on eye contact (go to reading from the British Psychological Society)
AMBIGUITY. (Apophenia, pareidolia)
SIMPLICITY – realizing seems easier than knowing … hallmark of validity??
BIOLOGY
- SCIENCE [iii]
Facts and theories[iv], now and then
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- The best story you can tell with the best facts you have
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- SCIENCE is an engine of MYSTERY
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- The aesthetics of hypotheses
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- “Beautiful” math
- Experiments, Natural and artificial
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- The aesthetics of hypotheses
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- Biology[v] and Metaphysics
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- What does it mean to be alive? …to be phenomenal? Noumena and Phenomena
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- How do we KNOW? …what can we REALIZE? [see BELIEF—TRUTH ]
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- Time, time’s arrow, cause and effect.
- The beginning and end of TIME: A&O-TIME notes;
- Zen view of time: Alan Watts
- Science and Spirituality: Syllabus from ORICL
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- Biology[v] and Metaphysics
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- NEEDS and MOTIVATION considering needs, evolutionary and physiological thinkings is particularly relevant.
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- Physiology, the proximate need –in the aggregate regarded as HEALTH.
- At the “base” of a hierarchy of needs is PHYSIOLOGY: The core need for any organism is its machinery for extracting energy from the environment and channeling it in ways that serve its life–
- Dynamic balance, homeostasis. Needs that are or may be compromised can evoke a stress response
- POST on health-enhancing effects of art
- Physiology,
- STRESS … involving the real or perceived possibility of not being able to meet a real or perceived need. Stress energizes the processes that might act to mitigate it.
- Physiology, the proximate need –in the aggregate regarded as HEALTH.
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- Safety
- The more-or-less NATURAL ENVIRONMENT and the implications of being in nature for health.
- Play
- Art
- Experiments Natural and Artificial
- Safety
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- Sociality
- socialization and individuation
- SOCIALIZATION is a BIOLOGICAL NEED (loneliness affects health, but lonliness and solitude are not the same)
- LISTENING ANGELS
- READING: The History of Loneliness
- Sociality
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- Esteem
- Distinction, arete
- Uniqueness
- Esteem
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- Self-actualization, the ultimate need — is this connected to WISDOM?
- To maximize inclusive fitness; natural selection and sexual selection.
- Is this why men love existential threats? War? (e.g., A&O READING: “WHY MEN LOVE WAR” by Broyes (1984))
- Self-actualization, the ultimate need — is this connected to WISDOM?
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- Transcendence and art
- How NEEDS and STRESS are related [A real-or-perceived challenge to meeting a real-or-perceived NEED evokes more-or-less of stress response (which “energizes” organism’s resources (motivational systems) to cope with challenge and restore homeostasis] (Exemplified in the health consequences of LONELINESS)
- NEED to KNOW; Aristotle, infovory
- But in our pusuit of NEEDS, we must know ourselves and do nothing in excess.
- “Knowledge is Power.” “All of us have felt the pleasure of acquiring information—a view of a dramatic landscape, a conversation with a friend, or even a good magazine article, can all be profoundly gratifying. But why is this so? What makes these experiences so pleasurable? // We believe that the enjoyment of such experiences is deeply connected to an innate hunger for information: Human beings are designed to be “infovores.” It’s a craving that begins with a simple preference for certain types of stimuli, then proceeds to more sophisticated levels of perception and cognition that draw on associations the brain makes with previous experiences. When the hunger becomes even moderately starved, boredom sets in.” (Biederman, Irving & Vessel, Edward A. 2006) Key Word: INFOVORE
- NEED for ART: including Maslow
- Transcendence and art
DEEP ETHOLOGY The INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY of BEHAVIOR involves the coordinated activities of four broad areas (as biologists study them): DEVELOPMENT, ECOLOGY, EVOLUTION, and PHYSIOLOGY and how they are brought to bear on BEHAVIOR (“DEEP ETHOLOGY”)
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- Development.
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- Ecology
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- Evolution
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- Physiology
- NATURE-NURTURE – Excerpts from Barlow and Pinker The questions about the relative importance of nature and nurture–congenital and acquired biases, tendencies, traits–in the determination of manifest behavior illuminate every aspect of the continuous processes of evolutionary and developmental change– phenomena that virtually define life itself.
Experimentation: natural and artificial; Ethologically Informed Design
- DESCRIBE Before we interpret or analyze our experience of behavior (our own or that of others) we must DESCRIBE it … using your “scaffolding” of art and science to describe has the extraordinary–and sometimes surprising effect of conveying insight and understanding,
WE tend to apply the DEEP perspective at the level of manifest behavioral patterns, but it applies at ALL LEVELS of ORGANIZATION: proximate causes and consequences, (mainly physiology) ultimate causes and consequences (mainly evolutionary biology), always manifest in more-or-less intimate internal and external environments (mainly ecology) and in constant flux (mainly development)
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- DEVELOPMENT:CHANGE IN INDIVIDUALS co-determined by genetic program and experience
- CHANGE; (open- and closed- genetic programs; Proximate and ultimate CHANGE)
- BRAIN DEVELOPMENT affects and is affected by experience … its processes are powerful metaphors to anchor our scaffolds and webs: Development of the lattice and tuning by the environment.
- NEUROPLASTICITY
- CNS DEVELOPMENT and SYNAPTIC OVERGROWTH and PRUNING
- Read about the epileptic violinist
- Read “The Widening Gyrus” — musicians as models for neuroplasticity
- LEARNING and Acquired Change: DEEP ethology of LEARNING
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Change involves creating and dissolving of connections: CONNECTIONS CREATE, CONNECTIONS CHANGE know about NEUROPLASTICITY.
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every connection changes the dynamics and meaning and every subsequent connection
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THE TEACHABLE MOMENT might connect to EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE
- ALL moments are “teachable,” ANY experience can be “extraordinary.”
- DEVELOPMENT:CHANGE IN INDIVIDUALS co-determined by genetic program and experience
THE TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE
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- Artful Scribbles by Howard Gardner (Gardner’s reflections, decades later) Review by Wilson & Wilson 1981
- PARABLE of Kazantzakis’ Butterfly interaction with the environment … the struggle
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- ECOLOGY
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- Abiotic: climate, geology
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- Biotic: symbiotes, predators, prey, conspecifics
- homeostasis–an idea from PHYSIOLOGY about the dynamic balance of multiple interacting elements–has been applied in ECOLOGY also. (see HOMEOSTASIS)
- ECOSYSTEMS
- Ecosystems within ecosystems: READING-we are holobionts
- COMMUNICATION – within and between levels of organization
- ARTISTS COMMUNICATE with THEMSELVES and with THEIR AUDIENCE … and therein may be an ethical issue
- All communication involves some measure of TRANSLATION
- The cultural and social context of art
- COMMUNICATION is collaborative –– recalling a magician and audience
- METAPHORS for the UNKNOWABLE
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- INFORMATION is what we pursue (recall, We are INFOVORES) and communicate the information acquired (we wish to know and to be known):
- THE ORIGINS of INFORMATION: a PERURBATION in ENTROPY?
- ECOLOGY
- EVOLUTION
- Evolution and ADAPTATION.
- Evolution of signals: “RITUALIZATION” (we need a good sense of how stimuli and percepts come to influence us. Ritualization is an evolutionary process most conspiculous when driven by sexual selection…
- Evolution of Behavior
- EVOLUTIONARY IMPROVISATION and Bricolage
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The evolution of cognitive competencies may be inferred by our beliefs of the “state of mind” of an artist (including yourself at your most creative or inspired). What can we infer about PALEOLITHIC ART? Read an essay by Ewen Callaway in Nature, last December 11th (“Is this cave painting humanity’s oldest story? Indonesian rock art dated to 44,000 years old seems to show mythological figures in a hunting scene”).
- PHYSIOLOGY
- the BRAIN is at the center of our interests–it seems like a single organ, but it is more a MOBILE of many carefully balanced functional units that are integrated with each other at several different levels of organization: A very broad and compelling sense of the interaction of multiple units working together comes from considering the two hemispheres of the brain, understood after they are separated from each other: Read Wolman’s news article from the journal NATURE (it includes a good account of split brain research that provided these insights)… (including comments by a split brain patient and an old (1970’s) short video of early research nicely explained–and not much has changed)
- COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE: collection of excerpts that focus on how this is understood
- Brain development involves both highly programmed (“closed genetic program”) change and flexibility: neuroplasticity, generally in response to situational and environmental influences
- CIRCUITS and CENTERS that orchestrate specific behavioral patterns are a primary target of the physiological ethologist–indeed, anyone seeking to understand the proximate causes and consequences of behavior (the physiology part)? Any behavioral patterns sufficiently well described (the ethology emphasis) becomes the basis for search for its causes and consequences. AS AN EXAMPLE, PARENTAL BEHAVIOR. (in the DEEP ETHOLOGY – BRAIN notes)
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- PARTS of the BRAIN and their CONNECTIONS (optogenetics & connectome project)
- BUT behavior (including consciousness) is NOT the brain alone: this is explored by philosophers and researchers that speak of EMBODIED COGNITION –the integration of the BODY and the BRAIN in creating MEANING.
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- Ethology and Artificial Intelligence
- NEUROETHOLOGY (Glossary)
Research in the behavioral and neural foundations of aesthetic experience – Research underway at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics: the overviews of research areas and articles (and their introductions) provide a rapid, accessible, introduction to the diversity of interdisciplinary activities undertaken
§ neurofiction essay (Gary Marcus recent essay, “Neuroscience Fiction,” in the New Yorker (Dec 2, 2012)
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- Affect, Emotion (and see ART and EMOTION including The Parable of Cynthia’s Tears (and Rothko Chapel and Chauvet Cave)
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- Frisson autonomic attributes of pleasurable stress; emotional connection to beauty
- Pleasure is a hallmark of movement towards meeting a need
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- Problem solving evokes pleasure for INFOVORES
- Creating ART activates brain circuits associated with pleasure (Kaimai et al 2017) But does the creative combining of threads of new information: Biederman & Vessel, Edward A. (2006) Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain. American Scientist. 94(3), 247-253. [PDF] http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/2006/3/perceptual-pleasure-and-the-brain/1 A neurobehavioral elaboration of Aristotle: “All men by nature desire to know.” (Metaphysics, Book 1)
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- Affect, Emotion (and see ART and EMOTION including The Parable of Cynthia’s Tears (and Rothko Chapel and Chauvet Cave)
- OUTSIDER ART and PATHOLOGY as a window on “normality” (“outsiders” are “outliers” — is there something we can learn from them about creativity? about the functions of expression and the limits of expressive capacity?) READING: “In Their Own Worlds by Sanford Schwartz in NYRB 7 June 2018
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DEEP COGNITION
- INPUT—INTEGRATION—OUTPUT
- nervous system& endocrine & somatic connectivity and coordination: Feedback, feedforward, error-detection. Arousal, Attention, Action.
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- SELECTIVE ATTENTION
- MINDFULNESS (is not without problems: “mindfulness promotes itself as value-neutral but it is loaded with (troubling) assumptions about the self and the cosmos” see short essay by Sahanika Ratnayake (2019)
- BIASES – congenital and acquired, including WEIRD …
- narrative bias: the strong disposition to create order–coherence–out of disorder, to finding meaning in stimuli by connecting them.
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- nervous system& endocrine & somatic connectivity and coordination: Feedback, feedforward, error-detection. Arousal, Attention, Action.
Language itself creates bias: read Language and the Brain: Lera Boroditsky’s brief editorial for SCIENCE (2019)
- COGNITION
- COGNITIVE DISSONANCE and error detection
- BELIEF—TRUTH | KNOWLEDGE—REALIZING (why we may believe in things we cannot personally experience; extrapolation, interpolation, coherence and correspondence)
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- TRUTH and its TESTS
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- Correspondence/coherence
- Validity, internal and external
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- TRUTH and its TESTS
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- States of knowing: AGNOSIA, HYPERGNOSIA, ANOSOGNOSIA
- Empiricism/sensory | affect/emotion
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- Rationalism/cognitive | reason/logic
- HOLISM and REDUCTIONISM. (involves aforementioned JANUSIAN THINKING and Integrative and Reductionist Perspective)
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- Reductionism and Holism: Two Sides of the Perception of Reality By Varadaraja Raman (July 15, 2005)
- Holism in the arts READING: QI: https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-reading-qi-in-the-arts-excerpt-from-huan-rose-2001/
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- Dialectic
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- MEMORY (MEMORY is the essence of INTELLIGENCE (but can you have memory (or be intelligent) without a brain?)
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- THE NATURE OF MEMORY (brief account)
- No current accounting of fundamentals of memory is better than Daniel Schacter’s: (Implicit Memory, Constructive Memory, and Imagining the Future: A Career Perspective. in Perspectives on Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618803640)
- Memory is always reforming itself. It is recursive: “new” memories are perpetually rebuilt on scaffolds built by old memories, developing as we develop: READING on the nature of memory from Oliver Sacks’ The River of Consciousness.
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- MEMORY and IMAGINATION
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- CNS: A Surprising Connection Between Memory and Imagination.
- “USELESS ATTRACTOR” is a nickname for a focus which in itself has no particular meaning and with no previously obvious connections that suddenly triggers a redintegrative cascade of otherwise apparently unconnected and otherwise useless snips of knowledge. The cascade (and we can here apply the metaphor “angle of repose“–particularly as it applies to an avalanche) may have had a coherent outcome suddenly glimpsed or intuited.
- (Attractor [xv] is a convenient but not precise metaphor). The coherence may only be apparent OR TOT (“tip of the tongue phenomenon”) OR FOK (“feeling of knowing phenomenon”). I often feel that a very important solution to a problem is (as Franz Wright put it once, a “Radiantly obvious thing I need to say, though quite what that might be escapes me at the moment, as it always has, and always will.”)
- Synecdoche and redintegration—trigger experience, the attractor of hidden dreams, infusing previous experience with new meaning and putting it in the service of coherence, validating a new realization[xii]—all things are connected—
- “not quite memory(?): tip-of-tongue—Feeling of Knowing– INTUITION Intuition presentation
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- GOOD STORIES:
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- NARRATIVE: is one’s SELF “the best story you can tell with the best facts you have”
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- FILLING IN: extrapolation[xiii] and interpolation
- Excerpt on brain processes of filling in
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- INPUT—INTEGRATION—OUTPUT
- [OUTPUT/ to memory or action]
A&O ANECDOTES
A&O QUOTES
- The spider web of experience
- Quotes about Connections;
- Constable and Zola on Art & Science
- Hobbes on Consciousness
- Whitman on all truths
A&O VIGNETTES
Position not yet determined:
· RULES
· USELESS KNOWLEDGE. All the consequences of a specific trait may never be known, but the prodigal diversity of consequences is revealed and open to further thought with the support of systems such as DEEP ethology. For example, The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge [xiv] Not only have extraordinary breakthroughs emerged from what seemed like idle curiosity but there are multiple CONNECTIONS.
· Both the PROCESS and the PRODUCT of CURIOSITY move the human race forward [hopefully the urge to CONTROL and EXPLOIT will be better coordinated with the urge to PROTECT and RESPECT or we will be swept away in the failed trophic cascade.] Just as paranoia might be adaptive at a battle front and devastating other places, our adversarial urges towards nature were adaptive for the small populations of ancestors in hostile environments, but not in contemporary environments.
· DYSFUNCTION; PATHOLOGY – informed by Aristotle’s Golden Mean: the nearer the endpoints along a continuum of a trait, the more likelihood its expression would be dysfunctional. A trait such as curiosity may be populated by individuals who perform different functions in society and may be valued to the extent that is appreciated. Occasionally—depending on the stresses of a given environment—populations may seem to need protection: “pure” (as opposed to applied) artists and scientists.
Example. compare to the tension between INDIVIDUATION and SOCIALIZATION—in that each is vital at one level of the NEED HIERARCHY and devastating at others. (see Listening Angels and A&O notes on Uniqueness) then read about the difference between loneliness and solitude (then look in on loneliness and longing)(reading on the History of Loneliness)
· Perception and hallucination: “Instead of relaying every detail up the chain, the brain combines the noisy signals coming in with prior experiences to generate a prediction of what’s happening. If you hear the opening notes of a familiar tune, you expect the rest of the song to follow. That prediction passes back to lower regions, where it is compared to the actual input, and to the frontal lobes, which perform a kind of reality check, before it pops up into our consciousness. Only if a prediction is wrong does a signal get passed back to higher areas, which adjust subsequent predictions.” Read https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230980-400-you-are-hallucinating-right-now-to-make-sense-of-the-world/ And http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/04/04/hallucinators-among-us/
HALLUCINATIONS essay in CEREBRUM with readable history of research into hallucinations: https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-reading-hallucinations-and-vision-essay-in-cerebrum-jan-2002/
[i] Art is I: Science is We.
[i] “scientific abstraction liberates us from the slavery of facts” (Walter Kaufmann. 1958:93. Critique of Religion and Philosophy. Harper & Brothers Chapter 32 (Common Sense)
[ii] Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, 980a.21. 350 BC http://www.classicallibrary.org/aristotle/metaphysics/index.htm
[iii] Science consists of facts and theories. Facts and theories are born in different ways and are judged by different standards. Facts are supposed to be true or false. They are discovered by observers or experimenters. A scientist who claims to have discovered a fact that turns out to be wrong is judged harshly. One wrong fact is enough to ruin a career.
Theories have an entirely different status. They are free creations of the human mind, intended to connect facts and thereby provide an understanding of nature. Since our understanding is incomplete, theories are provisional. Theories are tools of understanding, and a tool does not need to be precisely true in order to be useful–they are more-or-less true, with plenty of room for disagreement. A scientist who invents a theory that turns out to be wrong is judged leniently. Mistakes are tolerated, so long as the culprit is willing to correct them when nature proves them wrong. (Freeman Dyson’s review of Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein—Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe by Mario Livio. NYRB Mar 6 2014:4-8)
[iv] “Physicists have come to see that all their theories of natural phenomena, including the ‘laws’ they describe, are creations of the human mind; properties of our conceptual map of reality, rather than of reality itself. This conceptual scheme is necessarily limited and approximate, as are all the scientific theories and ‘laws of nature’ it contains. All natural phenomena are ultimately interconnected, and in order to explain any one of them we need to understand all the others, which is obviously impossible. What makes science so successful is the discovery that approximations are possible. . . . This is the scientific method; all scientific theories and models are approximations of the true nature of things, but the error involved in the approximation is often small enough to make such an approach meaningful.” (Fritjof Capra 1975 in The Tao of Physics, p. 287).
[v] Biology occupies a position among the sciences at once marginal and central. Marginal because‑‑the living world constituting but a tiny and very “special” part of the universe‑‑it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I believe, to clarify man’s relationship to the universe, then biology must be accorded a central position.” (Jacques Monod Chance and Necessity Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1971, p xi.)
[vi] Infovory. Biederman, Irving & Vessel, Edward A. (2006) Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain. American Scientist. 94(3), 247-253. [PDF] http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/2006/3/perceptual-pleasure-and-the-brain/1 A neurobehavioral elaboration of Aristotle: “All men by nature desire to know.” (Metaphysics, Book 1)
[vii] “Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”—W.H. Auden,1963)[vii]
[viii] “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” (Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1973, in the American Biology Teacher, volume 35, pages 125-129. (Dobzhansky first published the title statement in a 1964 article in American Zoologist, “Biology, Molecular and Organismic”, to assert the importance of organismic biology in response to the challenge of the rising field of molecular biology” – Wikepedia
[ix] ADAPTATION—copes with change. An adaptation is a trait that contributes to fitness, BUT the term also refers to the process by which that trait has come about. “The processes by which organisms or groups of organisms maintain homeostasis in and among themselves in the face of both short-term environmental fluctuations and long-term changes in the composition and structure of their environments.” (Rappaport, 1971) Its several definitions are all unified by the idea of compensation for change, either short-term (such as a stimulus or life experience) or long term adaptations (such as Other (complementary) definitions are: “an adaptation is an anatomical, physiological, or behavioral trait that contributes to an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce (“fitness”) in competition with conspecifics in the environment in which it evolved” (Williams, G. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection Princeton). and “a regulatory or advantageous change in response to an environmental stress by an individual or by a species in the course of evolution”
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- BIG QUESTION: as information trickles from our senses (or memories) through our brain, at what point is information transformed into consciousness? [I like comparing ice to water to mist and clouds]
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- How does the MATERIALITY of the brain—its cells and tissues—become IMMATERIAL CONSCIOUSNESS? Colin McGinn spoke of turning the water of objective neural activity into the wine of subjective conscious experience? (From Ananthaswamy’s review of Susan Greenfield’s book, A Day in the Life of the Brain” (NS 29 Oct 2016)
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- Susan Greenfield speaks of the “collective activity of brain cells that expand or diminish from one moment to the next to accommodate varying depths of consciousness.” (quoted by Ananthaswamy – and in his terms, transient assemblies, size, and duration determined by external stimuli, levels of neurotransmitters and hormones in brain and body.)
- (Bullock 1977) sensory adaptation is when receptors are less responsive to stimuli after long term exposure to them –e.g., the smell of food or the feel of clothes. and see exaptation (from A&O Glossary) compare to habituation
[xi] Sensory Bias: (pitch to the most responsive system in your audience (or avoid the systems of your adversaries) – in the sense of “know your demographic” …”know your sense organs” ) (The sensory bias hypothesis (in mate selection) states that the preference for a trait evolves in a non-mating context and is then exploited by one sex in order to obtain more mating opportunities. The competitive sex evolves traits that exploit a pre-existing bias that the choosy sex already possesses.)
[xii] “Redintegration” is “the process of reconstructing an entire complex memory after observing or remembering only a part of it.” Sometimes, only a tiny fragment of new information will suffice: “It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance …” (Thoreau, Journal 8:44)
[xiii] There is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves and transfer to every object those qualities with which they are intimately acquainted and of which they are intimately conscious (David Hume, 1757) [When faced with ambiguity or ignorance, we extrapolate from the next nearest phenomenon . . . as with anthropomorphism] origin of ToM –they think like I do?
[xiv] http://www.nature.com/articles/s41570-016-0001 : “Abraham Flexner, the founding Secretary General of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, penned in November 1939 a most readable essay on fundamental research1. The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge described, in Flexner’s fluid prose, how apparently random experimentation eventually leads to the most important discoveries. He argued vehemently against the need for utility in the promotion of research and the allocation of funding. Instead, Flexner delivered a rousing plea for the “freeing of the human spirit”. His article is an eloquent discourse on the benefits and virtues of freedom in fundamental research. Flexner’s words are music to the ears of scientists who pursue science because they are curious and, in the venerable words of Friedrich Schiller, do not live off science but, above all, for science. Although Flexner’s essay appeared more than 75 years ago, it is still one of the most compelling pieces on the vital role of fundamental research — extolling not only its cultural value, but also its benefit to mankind in general.”
[xv] An attractor is defined as the smallest unit which cannot be itself decomposed into two or more attractors with distinct basins of attraction. This restriction is necessary since a dynamical system may have multiple attractors, each with its own basin of attraction. Attractor — from Wolfram MathWorld i.e., http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Attractor.html
An attractor is a set of states (points in the phase space), invariant under the dynamics, towards which neighboring states in a given basin of attraction asymptotically approach in the course of dynamic evolution. An attractor is defined as the smallest unit which cannot be itself decomposed into two or more attractors with distinct basins of attraction. This restriction is necessary since a dynamical system may have multiple attractors, each with its own basin of attraction.
Conservative systems do not have attractors, since the motion is periodic. For dissipative dynamical systems, however, volumes shrink exponentially so attractors have 0 volume in n-dimensional phase space.
A stable fixed point surrounded by a dissipative region is an attractor known as a map sink. Regular attractors (corresponding to 0 Lyapunov characteristic exponents) act as limit cycles, in which trajectories circle around a limiting trajectory which they asymptotically approach, but never reach. Strange attractors are bounded regions of phase space (corresponding to positiveLyapunov characteristic exponents) having zero measure in the embedding phase space and a fractal dimension. Trajectories within a strange attractor appear to skip around randomly.
Also, nicely stated at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor And further developed in a way accommodating to mathophobes at http://schwitzsplintersunderblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/brief-introduction-to-dynamic-systems.html (“The simplest example of an attractor is an attractor point, such as the lowest point in the middle of a pendulum swing. The flow of this simple dynamic system is continually drawn to this central attractor point, and after a time period determined by a variety of factors (the force of the push, the length of the string, the friction of the air etc.) eventually settles there. A slightly more complex system would settle into not just an attractor point but an attractor basin. i.e. a set of points that describes a region of that space.”) When many of these guys say evolution they just mean change.