Intorno alla fine dell’Ottocento, in America, in uno dei numerosissimi cantieri realizzati per la costruzione dei binari delle ferrovie, un certo Gage, responsabile di un reparto di lavoratori, uomo misurato e accorto, fu coinvolto in un grosso incidente scatenato dall’esplosione inaspettata di una cassa di dinamite. La deflagrazione lanciò, contro la sua testa, una sbarra di metallo lunga un metro; questa si infilò sotto il mento, attraversò il palato, l’orbita oculare sinistra, il lobo occipitale sinistro, e uscì, sfondando il cranio, dalla fronte di Gage.

I suoi colleghi, calata la coltre fumosa che riempiva la scena del disastro, si trovarono di fronte un orrendo spettacolo: corpi dilaniati, volti irriconoscibili, e il signor Gage il quale, nonostante la sbarra che gli usciva dalla testa, era sorprendentemente vivo. Per pura formalità, lo portarono in un ospedale poco lontano (che a quei tempi era, con buona probabilità, una casetta lungo la strada principale di un villaggio di cow-boy). Lì, dopo che gli fu sfilata la traversina, Gage, tra lo stupore di tutti, riprese conoscenza. La sua convalescenza durò pochi mesi; perse, è vero, un occhio; e la lingua non era più quella di una volta, ma, a parte questi dettagli tutto sommato secondari – se paragonati alle dimensioni di una vita salvata – non era stata compromessa alcuna funzionalità intellettuale.

In realtà, qualcosa era cambiato. Gage, che fino ad allora era stato un uomo misurato e accorto, iniziò ad adottare uno stile di vita insensato: non era in grado di mantenere un lavoro per più di qualche settimana, cambiava città, amici, donne senza alcun criterio; il suo linguaggio, che prima era moderato e controllato, divenne sguaiato, volgare, offensivo. Fu coinvolto in alcune risse, perse al gioco tutti i soldi che possedeva, iniziò a bere. Alcuni medici si interessarono al suo caso; dopo averlo visitato, e aver constatato che dal punto di vista fisico era un uomo in piena salute, gli fecero alcuni test di intelligenza, che diedero tutti lo stesso risultato: Gage era un uomo intelligente, in grado di leggere, scrivere, eseguire calcoli, di avere un normale scambio di idee. Gli era anche chiaro, almeno a parole, cosa fosse giusto e cosa fosse sbagliato. Dal punto di vista intellettuale, quindi, l’incidente non aveva menomato alcuna sua capacità: eppure, tutti erano d’accordo che quell’uomo rumoroso e imprevedibile, non era più il Gage di una volta. Morì in una povertà quasi dickensiana, pochi anni dopo. Il suo cranio è tuttora conservato in qualche museo di medicina.

Si discute da anni, da secoli, da millenni, di che cosa sia, in concreto, il libero arbitrio; da un tempo solo di poco inferiore, di che cosa sia l’autocoscienza. I due temi si intersecano spesso, sconfinando nei reciproci territori. Gli strumenti con i quali sono stati affrontati questi argomenti sono i più diversi: del libero arbitrio e della autocoscienza si sono occupate, via via, la filosofia, la teologia, la neurologia, la psicologia, senza che comunque si sia riusciti ad arrivare da una conclusione definitiva, o comunque condivisa.

Da un punto di vista sintomatico, tuttavia, è difficile negare che una delle caratteristiche del libero arbitrio consiste nella facoltà, tutta umana, di riuscire a prendere decisioni sbagliate rispetto agli interessi tipici di un animale; interessi che in buona sostanza mirano alla conservazione del patrimonio genetico. Per fare un esempio banale, un cane, posto di fronte al fuoco, scappa perché sa (qui non ci interessa sapere in che modo) che non sarebbe conveniente venire in contatto con quel calore; un uomo, invece, potrebbe decidere di affrontare le fiamme per difendere l’onore della propria Patria, per dimostrare il proprio coraggio, per rendere immortale il proprio nome – tutte cose che, da un punto di vista evolutivo non hanno alcun significato. Il libero arbitrio, quindi, presuppone la capacità di elaborare pensieri astratti (Patria, reputazione, gloria) che si sovrappongono, o si oppongono, ad un nucleo più profondo di pensieri concreti, condivisi, in modo generico, con molti animali. Oltre a questo, il libero arbitrio interviene quando le situazioni da confrontare presentano, ciascuna pro e contro: meglio cento euro oggi o centocinquanta tra un mese? Meglio quella donna che ci attrae o quell’altra che ci dà sicurezza? Si potrebbe dire che c’è libero arbitrio ogni volta che né un computer né un animale saprebbero prendere una decisione al nostro posto.

Ma non basta. A questo fenomeno decisionale, si deve aggiungere, per ottenere quella cosa che chiamiamo “libero arbitrio”, una sensazione interna, difficilmente descrivibile e condivisibile, di consapevolezza nei confronti del risultato di questa attività mentale. In altre parole, se il processo legato all’elaborazione dei processi astratti fosse fuori dal nostro controllo, cioè oltre la nostra capacità di percepirlo, non distingueremmo le nostre autonome decisioni da quelle attività che invece chiamiamo “istintive”, come il togliere la mano dalla fiamma quando questa lambisce la nostra pelle. Personalmente, ritengo che l’autocoscienza sia, sostanzialmente, il riuscire a pensare ai propri pensieri, e al proprio atto del pensare; e da questo punto di vista, dunque, essa rappresenta un elemento propedeutico alla sensazione di possedere la capacità di prendere decisioni; e quindi, in un’ultima analisi, è fondamentale per l’esistenza di ciò che chiamiamo libero arbitrio.

A tutti è capitato che un trauma, o uno sforzo, rendano dolente un particolare muscolo: improvvisamente, e per la prima volta, ci rendiamo conto di quante volte quel muscolo viene usato, e in quante circostanze diverse. Le funzioni di un organo risultano perciò tanto più evidenti quanto più questo viene in qualche menomato. Nel caso di Gage, la menomazione di una particolare zona del suo cervello ha determinato una sostanziale modifica dei suoi processi decisionali. E se ammettiamo che la scelta di un lavoro piuttosto che un altro, di una dimora piuttosto che un’altra, di un’amicizia ben precisa, siano tipici frutti del libero arbitrio, si potrebbe arrivare a concludere che la zona occipitale sinistra sia, con una metafora piuttosto semplice, l’hardware necessario per avere il libero arbitrio: danneggiato il cervello, ovvia sede del pensiero, viene meno la capacità razionale di prendere decisioni. Questa considerazione, tuttavia, è facilmente confutabile: le facoltà intellettuali di Gage non erano compromesse in alcun modo; egli era sì in grado di prendere decisioni decisioni autonome, frutto di un’attività mentale cosciente, conseguenza di ragionamenti, ma queste decisioni apparivano sbagliate non solo dal punto di vista evolutivo ma anche da un punto di vista, diciamo così, sociale, di relazione: cioè sotto l’aspetto dell’elaborazione dei pensieri astratti che sta sotto il libero arbitrio. L’agire di Gage pareva essere caratterizzato da una sostanziale incapacità di valutare fino in fondo i contorni di una situazione; questa peculiarità della menomazione, tuttavia, risulta inconciliabile con un aspetto altrettanto rilevante, e cioè che Gage non aveva perso, da nessun punto di vista, la capacità di elaborare razionalmente sia il contesto nel quale agiva, sia le conseguenze (economiche, relazionali, ecc) dei suoi gesti. Ma allora, se la ragione non c’entra, quali sono le basi del libero arbitrio?

Le religioni hanno spesso dato il nome di “anima” a questo quid mancante: uno spirito incorporeo, di probabile origine divina, che consentirebbe all’uomo di scegliere tra il bene e il male, così come farebbe quel Dio che ci avrebbe creati. Questa soluzione, tuttavia, è vera solo per il fatto che non c’è modo di dimostrare che è falsa, perché basata su considerazioni che non hanno nulla di scientifico: si tratta, insomma, di una di quelle teorie “infalsificabili” nei confronti delle quali Popper invitava ad avere una forte dose di scetticismo. In ogni caso, pur ammettendo che esista un’anima che ci consente di prendere decisioni, si deve ammettere che la sbarra conficcata nella testa del povero Gage si è avvicinata molto, con la sua punta, a questa entità incorporea.

Il mistero di Gage si è ripresentato negli ultimi anni del ventesimo secolo ad un equipe di neurologi guidata da Antonio Damasio, portoghese trapiantato in America: a seguito della compressione esercitata da un meningioma benigno nei confronti dell’area occipitale sinistra (ancora lei), un uomo di trentacinque anni è caduto in una sindrome del tutto simile a quella patita da Gage. Quindi: capacità intellettuali invariate, capacità di prendere decisioni favorevoli per sé danneggiate.

Approfittando di questa menomazione, Damasio e la sua equipe hanno sottoposto l’uomo ad una serie di test per capire come mai un uomo misurato e accorto avesse perso la capacità di tenersi un lavoro, di valutare i pro e i contro di una situazione complessa, di trattenersi dall’esprimere il proprio sarcasmo nei confronti delle persone a lui care. Come per Gage, anche in questo caso si constatò che tutte le facoltà razionali erano rimaste intatte. Non era possibile trovare, cioè, una domanda alla quale l’uomo rispondesse in modo diverso da come avrebbe fatto una persona “normale”: eppure, niente nel suo comportamento era normale.

Durante i mesi di studio del caso, Damasio ha avuto modo di parlare spesso con il paziente; un po’ alla volta si è reso conto che ciò che gli mancava era, in buona sostanza, una sorta di “partecipazione emotiva” alle cose che accadevano. L’uomo, insomma, pareva complessivamente indifferente alle preoccupazioni, alle ambizioni, ai timori per il proprio futuro, alle simpatie o alle antipatie innate verso le altre persone. Il suo problema non era una carenza di razionalità, ma il fatto che sembrava essere rimasta solo quella.

Ma scavando ulteriormente, Damasio si è accorto che il paziente, sottoposto a situazioni di pericolo simulato, dimostrava reazioni di spavento del tutto naturali. Le emozioni, insomma, c’erano ancora tutte! Ma allora: cosa era stato danneggiato, nell’area occipitale sinistra? Quale facoltà?

Uno degli elementi che ha caratterizzato la cultura occidentale così come la conosciamo è stata il modello ideato da Cartesio per fondare la propria filosofia. Alla base del famoso “Cogito ergo sum” c’era, infatti, una visione fisiologica di come l’uomo fosse in grado di pensare: Cartesio immaginò una specie di omino contenuto dentro alla nostra testa (simile, per tanti aspetti, all’anima) che poteva agire in modo del tutto scollegato con il resto del mondo e, quindi, con il resto del corpo; con quest’ultimo, tuttavia, esisteva una sorta di canale di comunicazione, messo a disposizione dalla ghiandola pineale, grazie alla quale la mente, dittatrice, ordinava al corpo cosa fare.

Non è chiaro se Cartesio credesse davvero al modello che aveva proposto – studi sulla sua corrispondenza privata sembrano far intendere che la condanna comminata dalla Chiesa a Galileo Galilei lo spinsero verso una certa prudenza filosofica: il che aumenta ulteriormente le responsabilità della Chiesa nella mortificazione storica dell’intelligenza umana. In ogni caso, che ci credesse o no, tutti i filosofi dopo di lui ci hanno creduto. E, seppure non in modo così dicotomico, l’Occidente ci crede ancora: basterebbe considerare con quanta insistenza si continui a proporre un modello mente-cervello simile a quello sul quale si basa un PC, fatto da hardware e software.

I casi di Gage, e dell’uomo studiato da Damasio, dimostrano invece che il confine tra i due mondi – quello corporeo, composto da un sistema nervoso periferico e dai visceri in generale, e quello mentale, puro pensiero situato in un mondo ideale – è molto più esteso, e labile, di quanto Cartesio, e i suoi fin troppo zelanti seguaci, erano disposti a credere. Alla soluzione si è arrivati tramite l’ideazione di un test geniale che finalmente è riuscito a mettere le risposte di tutte le persone normali da una parte, e le risposte di quelle con una menomazione nell’area occipitale sinistra dall’altra, arrivando così ad individuare il meccanismo che sta alla base della capacità di prendere decisioni a noi favorevoli.

Il paziente viene posto di fronte a 4 mazzi di carte; ciascuna carta contiene l’indicazione di una vincita o di una perdita, in dollari. Due di questi mazzi, indicati con le lettere A e B, contengono carte con vincite elevate ma perdite mediamente superiori; gli altri due, C e D, presentano invece carte con vincite modeste, ma perdite quasi nulle. Al paziente viene dato un budget iniziale di mille dollari; quindi viene invitato a pescare le carte. Il giocatore non conosce le regole del gioco – non sa che i quattro mazzi sono diversi, e non sa neppure in che modo lo sono; mano a mano che estrae le carte, accumula un’esperienza, che usa per prendere le decisioni successive. Il gioco, e questa è l’ultima caratteristica che lo descrive, non ha una durata tale da consentire l’elaborazione di un modello razionale capace di descriverlo.

Il giocatore, mossa dopo mossa, viene invitato ad esercitare il proprio libero arbitrio. Il meccanismo emotivo del premio e della punizione spingono i giocatori verso un’elaborazione della propria strategia di gioco. Ed è proprio su questo gioco che, finalmente, il paziente di Damasio, e altre persone con lesioni simili, mostrano la loro diversità: i soggetti sani, in breve tempo, adottano una strategia prudente che li spinge a puntare sui mazzi che noi chiamiamo C e D, e che li porta, alla fine del gioco, a realizzare una piccola vincita; quelli menomati, invece, dirigono le loro scelte verso A e B, perdendo nel giro di poco tutto quello che avevano a disposizione.

Il test è stato ripetuto più volte; l’esperienza, quindi, ha continuato ad aumentare. Tuttavia, i risultati sono sempre stati gli stessi: il paziente malato, pur essendo in grado di valutare l’entità delle singole vincite e delle singole perdite, non sa dare il giusto peso emotivo alla vincita e alla perdita. Ma lui, come visto, è in grado di provare emozioni: e in effetti ogni vincita gli procura gioia, e ogni perdita lo fa dispiacere, eppure sembra non imparare nulla da queste sensazioni – che rimangono sempre a livello di emozioni, e non diventano mai sentimenti.

Per cercare di capirne di più, durante lo svolgimento del gioco sono state applicate delle sonde elettriche sulla pelle dei giocatori, per determinare eventuali differenze a livello fisico. Analizzando i tracciati così ottenuti, si è osservato che un attimo prima di prendere la decisione, nel sistema nervoso periferico dei giocatori sani c’è dell’attività elettrica, che invece è completamente assente nei pazienti malati. Siamo vicini alla soluzione del mistero. Ma prima facciamo un passo indietro.

Sebbene il cervello sia la nostra stanza dei bottoni, siamo consapevoli che esistono attività che non possono essere comandate; e non solo quelle regolate dal sistema simpatico, come la digestione o il battito del cuore, ma anche cose semplici come piangere, ridere con tutti i muscoli del viso, abbassare il diaframma come esso fa, autonomamente, nei momenti di ansia o tristezza. Ma questo è vero fino ad un certo punto – e qui sta l’errore di Cartesio: se è vero che il cervello non può comandare l’uscita delle lacrime, è altrettanto vero che richiamando alla mente situazioni spiacevoli siamo in grado di indurci il pianto. Oppure, possiamo piangere leggendo un libro – attività, quest’ultima, che avviene ricostruendo, all’interno della mente, una situazione del tutto inventata, nella quale non siamo coinvolti. La mente, in altre parole, non può colloquiare volontariamente con certe parti del corpo in modo diretto; ma il pensiero, attività tipicamente cartesiana, è in grado di provocare effetti concreti sul corpo. Viceversa, il corpo può influenzare i pensieri: una somministrazione elevata di caffeina produce una tachicardia che viene avvertita dal proprietario del cuore con ansia e agitazione; la meningite getta nel panico il soggetto malato; la vista di un ragno può scatenare una paura che si manifesta molto prima del pensiero associato. Questa comunicazione è continua ed incessante, e determina, di fatto, la sensazione di fondo che abbiamo di noi stessi: questo è un periodo felice, oppure oggi vedo tutto nero sono espressioni che non possono essere ricondotte ad una specifica situazione, ma descrivono una situazione molto più generale; analogamente, i mal di pancia che si presentano in un periodo particolarmente stressante rappresentano l’effetto dei pensieri sul corpo. E non è attraverso la ghiandola pineale che avviene questo scambio – molto più profondo di quanto immaginava Cartesio – ma tramite due porzioni di cervello: il tronco encefalico, detto anche “cervello rettiliano” perché condiviso con i rettili, e… l’area occipitale sinistra!

Ecco, dunque, cosa accade ai giocatori del nostro test: ogni volta che devono prendere una decisione, cioè ogni volta che essi devono esercitare il loro libero arbitrio, essi pongono una sorta di domanda al corpo, una domanda che viene formulata tramite la riproduzione mentale di situazioni analoghe alla presente; una volta ricreata la situazione, il corpo presenta un’attività elettrica che si manifesta con un’impercettibile aumento del battito cardiaco, un’impercettibile dilatazione delle pupille, un’impercettibile variazione dell’elettricità sulla pelle (ecco spiegate le misure effettuate sui giocatori); queste impercettibili variazioni vengono raccolte nel tronco encefalico ed inviate all’area occipitale sinistra, dando così luogo a quel fenomeno che chiamiamo il nostro “libero arbitrio”: una decisione che ci appare come l’espressione di un nostro io profondo, ma che in realtà è il prodotto del complesso mente e corpo che valuta, e decide. Ciò che manca all’uomo con la menomazione all’area occipitale sinistra, e che mancava a Gage con il cranio sfondato, era la capacità di instaurare questo dialogo tra mente e corpo, di far colloquiare immagini mentali con il sistema periferico del corpo e viceversa: usare, in poche parole, le emozioni accumulate per decidere cosa era meglio fare. L’idea che sia la mente a prendere decisioni è quindi fondamentalmente errata: come nel Buddhismo, la mente non è altro che la sofisticatissima interfaccia del corpo verso il mondo esterno.

E’ chiaro a tutti, anche a chi sta compiendo gli studi descritti, che queste scoperte sono appena all’inizio; c’è ancora molto da capire, da verificare, da comprendere. Il problema è intrinsecamente complesso, e ha implicazioni molto più ampie di quanto queste minuscole comunicazioni elettriche tra parti diverse del corpo potrebbero far supporre. Ma la strada è quella giusta: ci stiamo avvicinando alla comprensione di quel mistero che è il libero arbitrio. Tra poco, sapremo quale meccanismo Dio, o la Natura, o il Caso, o la selezione, ha escogitato per consentirci di dire, come piccole divinità: be’, ragazzi, sono io a decidere.

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Gran parte dei concetti esposti in questo post derivano da due fonti: le chiacchierate con mio padre, e il bellissimo (e rigorosissimo) libro “L’errore di Cartesio”, di Antonio Damasio. Per comprarlo (consiglio vivamente): qui

           Cengiz Erdem’s Storefront

Fantezi Makinesinde Hakikat Sızıntısı (e-book) eBook: £1.20 “Fantezi Makinesinde Hakikat Sızıntısı” ironinin doruklarında gezen teorik bir anlatı olarak dünyadaki tüm televizyon ekranlarının yanı sıra daha başka ekran mekanizmalarının da bilinmeyen bir sebepten ötürü bir anda beyaza bürünmesi neticesinde gelişen düşündürücü ve bir o kadar da kaygı verici hadiseleri konu alıyor. Tekvin adındaki baş-karakterimiz yazılmış ama henüz yayımlanmamış kitabında tüm bu olanları öngörmüş bir bedbahttır. Televizyonsuz dünyadaki sistem hızlı bir biçimde çökerken, Tekvin de kitabıyla gerçek hayat arasındaki bu kaygı verici benzerliğin kaynağını araştırmak üzere Amsterdam şehrine doğru yola koyulur. Acaba Amsterdam’da neler olmuş, hangi doğa-üstü güçler işin içine bit yenikleri serpiştirmiştir?

The Life Death Drives (e-book) eBook: £1.50 It is only in and through a position of non-mortality within and without mortal life at the same time that the exploitation of mortality can be brought into the spotlight. It is only through such a subtraction of the absent presence of death within life that the productive interaction between Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, Foucault’s bio-politics, Badiou’s theory of infinity, and Kant’s reflective mode of judgement give birth to the immortal subject as the womb of a new thought, a new life, and a new mode of being, free of the exploitation of mortality and engagingly indifferent to this mortal, all too mortal life.

Excerpt from Cengiz Erdem’s Ph.D. thesis

1. Method

The nature of this study requires an interdisciplinary and a multi-methodological attitude which goes beyond the opposition between merely conceptual and merely empirical approaches. It is based on a mode of enquiry which takes its driving force from thought-experiments that open paths to a new field in which various perspectives interact and form an intra-subjective dimension of theoretical practice situating psychoanalysis, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy in the context of cultural and critical theory. For the emergence of a new truth out of the old knowledge one must pose new questions concerning the workings of the human mind. In the light of the recent developments in cognitive neuroscience, for instance, especially the works of Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman, Freud’s concepts of the life drive and the death drive, Klein’s concepts of introjection and projective identification, and Wilfred Bion’s affirmative recreation of Klein’s theories in the way of a theory of thinking become extremely relevant for the development of a universal cultural and critical theory.

Cognitive neuroscience proposes that the quality of an external object is always already projected onto that object by the neuronal activity of the brain. What cognitive neuroscience lacks is a historical context, likewise what cultural studies lacks is an organic basis. An interaction between psychoanalysis, linguistics, philosophy, cultural studies, and cognitive neuroscience can break out of the closure of the humanities and give birth to the link which has come to be considered missing, between nature and nurture, organic and inorganic, empirical and conceptual, epistemological and ontological, transcendental and immanent, the objective and the subjective.

Because of the dynamic and parallel nature of re-entry and because it is a process of higher-order selection, it is not easy to provide a metaphor that captures all the properties of re-entry. Try this: Imagine a peculiar (and even weird) string quartet, in which each player responds by improvisation to ideas and cues of his or her own, as well as to all kinds of sensory cues in the environment. Since there is no score, each player would provide his or her own characteristic tunes, but initially these various tunes would not be coordinated with those of the other players. Now imagine that the bodies of the players are connected to each other by myriad fine threads so that their actions and movements are rapidly conveyed back and forth through signals of changing thread tensions that act simultaneously to time each player’s actions. Signals that instantaneously connect the four players would lead to a correlation of their sounds; thus, new, more cohesive, and more integrated sounds would emerge out of the otherwise independent efforts of each player. This correlative process would alter the next action of each player, and by these means the process would be repeated but with new emergent tunes that were even more correlated. Although no conductor would instruct or coordinate the group and each player would still maintain his or her style and role, the player’s overall productions would lead to a kind of mutually coherent music that each one acting alone would not produce.[1]

The model of mind conceptualized by Gerald Edelman shows us that the mind is an embodied substance which has the ability to adapt to changes surrounding it. If we keep in mind that cinema, literature, art, and music show how the mind works at a particular moment in history, as well as the emotional state of that particular moment, it becomes clear why a mode of enquiry rather than a specific method is required for the analysis and critique of human consciousness and its relation to the environment surrounding it. In this context, the plot driven critique of the literary and filmic texts aims at distinguishing between the world of consciousness and the world of appearances. My claim is that it is only through looking at the mortal world of appearances with the eyes of an immortal consciousness that we can see that which is present as an absence in the predominant symbolic order. By looking at “what happens when” in a movie or a book as well as “how that thing happens,” I sustain the conditions of impossibility as the conditions of possibility for cont(r)action to take place and give birth to an immortal subject. Needless to say, this subject is also an object encountering and encountered by the unknown within the known, the chaos inherent in the order itself, that calls forth he who has died so many times and is yet to die again and be reborn many more times so as to live as dead again. The reader might be disappointed because I will not have pursued and incorporated Edelman’s neural Darwinism and further developed the idea of a context-bound cognitive neuroscience and a matter(brain) based cultural and critical theory. The reason for this is that I discovered Edelman’s work towards the end of writing my thesis, and then  rewrote the Introduction. As a matter of fact, after this discovery the whole thesis itself could have been rewritten. Just as the Law changes its object and is in turn changed by that object, my critical apparatus, too, changes and is changed by its objects, in this case cultural products, be they filmic, literary or philosophical texts. It is such that this theoretical narrative moves on in such a way as to cut itself from its own past and unite with its own future at the same time, that is, in one simultaneous movement in two directions at once.

Hence it becomes clear why I pay attention to “what happens when” and “how that thing happens,” at the same time. For this I am indebted to Edelman who shifted the perspective of cognitive neuroscience from “how the brain makes sense,” to “when the brain makes sense.” If one reads the writings on film and literature in this thesis with the conscious naivety of their plot based critique in mind, one can sense the underlying current of humour and the erratic undertone of irony, both of which knock down the serious tone of the critique based on a linear reproduction of a circular plot – as we see in the investigation of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive for instance.

In his Critique of Judgement, Kant distinguishes between the determinative and the reflective modes of judgement.

If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) is given, the judgement that subsumes the particular under it… is determinative. If, however, only the particular for which the universal is to be found is given, judgement is merely reflective.[2]

If we keep in mind that the reflective mode of judgement reflects on particulars in such a way as to produce universals to which they can be subjected, and that the determinative mode of judgement determines a particular by subjecting it to a universal, it becomes understandable why among these two I shall be using the reflective mode which splits as it unites the subject of enunciation and the enunciated subject. But it must be kept in mind that the subject of enunciation which refers to the universal is itself a constitutive illusion, or a regulatory idea necessary for the emergence of the immortal subject as the enunciated content. It is only in and through a position of non-mortality within and without mortal life at the same time that the exploitation of mortality can be brought into the spotlight. A critique of the exploitation of mortality inherent in particularly exemplary cultural products will be achieved through putting them in a perspective that analyzes the life death drives in such a way as to expose the exploitation of the fear of death as the driving force inherent in them. The point is that it is indeed necessary to fantasize being what one is not, in our case being non-mortal, to be able to become self-conscious of one’s self-reflexivity in the way of creating an order of signification not caught up in the rotary motion of drives locked in Klein’s projection-introjection mechanism,  but rather one which breaks this vicious cycle and at least attempts to subtract death from life in a counter-act to the post-structuralist idea of life as a process of dying and death as an absent presence in the midst of life. It is only through such a subtraction of the absent presence of death within life that the productive interaction between Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, Foucault’s bio-politics, Badiou’s theory of infinity, and Kant’s reflective mode of judgement give birth to the immortal subject as the womb of a new thought, a new life, and a new mode of being, free of the exploitation of mortality and engagingly indifferent to this mortal, all too mortal life.

Let us imagine a subject who finds himself in a certain situation which appears to have no escape route; a situation which nails him to a painful existence and brings him closer to extinction with every move he makes. What he needs is Bion’s theory of creative process and the emergence of new thought from within the dominant projection-introjection mechanism. In his Theory of Thinking Bion says that dismantling is as important in creative process as integration, that is, introjection and splitting are as necessary as projective identification and unification. Bion pays special attention to the process of introjection and projective identification and recreates Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position as a way of showing that it has two forms; one is healthy and the other is pathological. For Klein it was only with the attainment of the depressive position that the formless experience was given a form, the thoughts were invested with symbolic meanings. Bion sees introjection and projective identification as the two separate but contiguous halves and the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions as the complementary parts of one another in the creative process. Now, if, following Bion, we think about Klein’s introjection and projective identification in the context of Derrida’s technique of deconstructive reading, we see that deconstruction is a mobile and dynamic mode of critique which moves between fragmentation and integration of the meaning of a text. Although deconstruction, as practised by Derrida himself, adapts itself to the internal dynamics of the text as the object of critique, it still lacks the affirmative and immanent fluidity which is necessary to open up holes, or passages, through which a new truth in touch with the requirements of the present situation can slip. This is because Derrida’s practice of deconstruction is still a negating activity and a transcendence oriented practice, which remains within the confines of the antagonistic relationship between the life drive and the death drive. To become affirmative, deconstructive practice needs to produce and incorporate its own difference from itself, that is, it has to become immanent to itself and the text it interprets.

As a mode of thinking, deconstruction attempts to erase the gap between the life drive and the death drive, but always fails, and this failure eternally confines deconstructive practice to the domain of antagonism between the life drive and the death drive. And if we keep in mind that deconstruction as a mode of thinking has become the dominant way of being creative we can understand why a critique of deconstruction is a critique of contemporary culture.

In this thesis I try to expose the workings of the deconstructive practice in certain works of art, literature, and cinema, which, consciously or unconsciously, exploit the ambiguity of the relationship between the life drive and the death drive, hence oppressing the one or the other. Needless to say this oppression of the one or the other necessarily exploits the one or the other, for oppression of the one requires exploitation of the other. As a consequence of this dynamic inherent in contemporary nihilistic culture projected onto the subject, the reader/spectator is removed out into the transcendental world of unconscious drives, leading to an illusory sense of omniscience on behalf of the reader/spectator.

The difference between deconstruction and affirmative recreation is that in the former an interaction between the destruction of a structure based on metaphysics of presence and creation of an opening, production of a void within the meaning of the text based on logocentrism is at work, whereas what is at work in the latter is a simultaneous dismantling of meaning, opening up of a void in the context of the text, and sustenance of the conditions for the possibility of the meaning’s flow in and through this void and out into the outside of the dominant context.[3] Derrida’s well known proposition that “there is nothing outside the text” is not the basic assumption of affirmative recreation; quite the contrary, a hole is opened within the context, and the meaning of the text flows through this hole. The meaning of the text is made to move on progressively, not just left without any foundations on which to stand and consequently fall. Deconstruction is concerned with exposing the rigidity and the solidity of rigid structures and solid constructions as is clear from its name. In a nutshell this is what Derrida’s self-reflexive reading strategy called deconstruction does: the socially and historically constructed and generally accepted dominant meaning of the text is explicated. And then this meaning is shown to be self-contradictory through the opening of a gap between what the author intended to say and what he has actually said. In affirmative recreation what’s at stake is a melting of the meaning and its continuous reshaping like a sculpture. The text is turned from a solid state into something like lava or clay and kept hot for further and perpetual reshaping, not into another completed sculpture. For me sculptures are products of an attempt to freeze life and/but a frozen life is no different from death.    

 2. To What End Last Words? To What End Suffering…

Throughout this thesis I have tried to develop a mode of critique in and through which nothing is excluded and/or determined. This reflective mode of critique itself enabled me to situate myself in the middle of the reflective and the determinative modes of judgment. The critical mode employed in this thesis is still context-bound to a certain extent, and yet it tries to restrictively dissociate itself from the predetermined context, rather than freely associate within it. A new field is opened, the conditions are created for the possibility of a decision beyond the Law of Militarist Capitalism and the Welfare State driven by and driving the exploitation of mortality on a massive scale. There is this transcendental field that requires a non-mortal mode of being in the world, neither for nor against it, but indifferent to it in such a way as to turn its own alienation from mortality into its driving force in its attempt to demolish the faculty of finite judgment and create the conditions of possibility out of the conditions of impossibility for an infinite judgment to take place beyond the subject/object of a Law that is mortal, all too mortal.

A truth comes into being through those subjects who maintain a resilient fidelity to the consequences of an event that took place in a situation but not of it. Fidelity, the commitment to truth, amounts to something like a disinterested enthusiasm, absorption in a compelling task or cause, a sense of elation, of being caught up in something that transcends all petty, private or material concerns.[4]

The immortal subject within and without the pre-dominant symbolic order is not only the cause, but also the effect of its own alienation from mortal life. This regulatory idea of immortality, which is also a constitutive illusion, is inspired by the post-structuralist theme of becoming non-identical as we see in Deleuze and Derrida. If one could become non-identical, why would one not also become non-mortal? If one could become alienated from one’s identity, why would one not also become alienated from one’s mortality?  Why not become immortal so as to become capable of criticizing the exploitations of this mortal, all too mortal life? But what motivated me to take immortality as a virtual mode of being was Badiou’s theory of infinity which aimed at secularizing the concept of truth. Badiou’s technique of secularizing the truth is inspired by the 19^th century mathematician Georg Cantor’s technique of secularizing the infinite. As Badio claims, the secularization of infinity started with Cantor who stated that there was not one, but many infinities varying in size and intensity. From then onwards it became possible to link Deleuze’s concepts of impersonal consciousness and transcendental empiricism with Badiou’s theory of infinity and Kant’s assertion that for reflective judgement to take place and turn the object into a subject a transcendental ground is necessary.  Now I can say that for me a transcendental ground is necessary only to the extent that it enables the subject to shake the foundation of its own mode of being and opens a field for immanent critique to take place. In other words, the untimely indifference of immortality is required in order to actively engage in an exposition of the exploitation of mortality in this time.

I don’t know if it is worth mentioning that in this time we are all slaves and yet some slaves dominate the others. Where time goes no one knows. There are necessary illusions in this life, some for life, some not. Both the extreme belief in civilized progress and barbaric regress are good for nothing. These two are now in the process of being left behind. A third possibility of developmental process is emerging in the form of a becoming-reconciled which is based on the recognition of the otherness of the other as it is, that is, prior to the additions and the subtractions imposed upon the self and the other, nature and culture, life and death. For a non-normative and progressive universality to work it is necessary for the participants to become capable of making distinctions between their natures and cultures, their cliniques and critiques. It is a matter of realizing that theory and practice are always already reconciled and yet the only way to actualise this reconciliation passes through carrying it out and across by introducing a split between the subject of statement (the enunciated) and the subject of enunciation.

It is indeed true that sometimes it takes a long journey to get there, where one eventually got at, and realise that one is other than one thinks itself to be. Apparently the numbers indeed start with zero and continue with two, but it takes time to realise this actuality and become capable of actualising this reality. Perhaps we should indeed know that absolute reconciliation is impossible and yet still strive to reconcile ourselves as much as we can to all the living and the dead.  

[2] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. James Creed Meredith (London: Wilder Publications, 2008), 13

[3] It is important to note that here context signifies the dominant projection-introjection mechanism. To go outside this projection-introjection mechanism requires what Bion calls “the binocular vision.” Binocular vision means that the subject is still within the dominant context and yet he is also in touch with another mode of being which he is able to project onto the present and future. Binocular vision is the first step towards creating a new situation out of the present situation. Wilfred Bion,  A Theory of Thinking, Second Thoughts, (London: Karnac Books, 1984).

[4] Peter Hallward, “Introduction” in Alain Badiou, Ethics (London: Verso, 2002), x

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Bion, Wifred. Learning From Experience (London: Karnac, 1962)
 
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Butler, Judith. Psychic Life of Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997)

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Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense, transl. Mark Lester (London: Athlone, 1990)

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 2002)

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(c) CengizErdem, 2009.

zizek

Durante estas últimas semanas estive atento às campanhas dos candidatos à presidência do Sport Lisboa e Benfica. Não só às vergonhosas campanhas como aos vergonhosos candidatos. Logo para começar este post, já repararam que não apoio nem Bruno Carvalho nem Luis Filipe Vieira. Não me inspiram confiança, não tem perfil para ocupar o segundo posto mais desejado em Portugal, visto que considero o cargo de primeiro-ministro o top dos “tachos” em solo Português. O cargo de presidente do Benfica é tão desejado, que o próprio clube vira “circo”. Truques manhosos próprios de ilusionismo, macacadas em directo nas televisões e palhaços que ajudam à festa. “Novos ricos” pelo caminho (Bruno Carvalho) onde anunciou a sua candidatura a bordo do “Eagle One”, parecendo uma personagem acabadinha de ganhar o EuroMilhões.  Por outro lado temos um Luis Filipe Vieira que cada vez mais transmite que o clube é dele, só dele e não dos sócios.

Tentei procurar saber um pouco mais sobre Bruno Carvalho, mas a única situação profissional que lhe conheço é director geral do Porto Canal. Um canal fraco, sem conteúdos e ainda por cima regional. Bruno Carvalho é o típico homem (Benfiquista?) que quer protagonismo “à força toda”. O homem que disse que Jorge Jesus iria ser o treinador com menos tempo ao serviço do Glorioso e que o próximo técnico seria o Azenha. Mas o que é isto? Mas ele pensa que chega ao maior clube Português assim? Desta forma? Que quanto sei, até eu sou mais velho do que ele em termos de associado ao clube. Ahh, e tambem sou do Porto. É preciso ter paciência para aturar esta criatura. Não sei não, mas já me passou um flash sobre a cabeça onde consegui visualizar Bruno Carvalho e Vale e Azevedo numa só cara.

Por outro lado, o “orelhas” conseguiu definir uma estratégia altamente estudada e eficaz. Um estratégia nada democrática e contou com a ajuda do “bêbado” Manuel Vilarinho. Luis Filipe Vieira ao executar este golpe, não se deparou na responsabilidade que lhe vai cair em cima. Reparem se este senhor ganhar estas eleições da forma como ganha, imaginando que o Benfica mais uma época sem ganhar nada, nadinha. Como acham que os sócios vão reagir? Uma coisa é certa, Vilarinho e LFV estão numa cruzada bastante perigosa. A minha ideia é que Vilarinho, como presidente da mesa AG, deveria cancelar estas eleições e adiar para Outubro, mas certo, certo, é que Vieira não ganhava e isso já não interessava. Pois é… Esta jogada é tão suja, como as viagens do Calheiro para o México pagas pelo senhor Pinto da Costa.

Outra situação em que LFV mostrou quem é, foram as declarações que teve em relação a dívidas de Manuel Damásio Mas acham que Damásio não pagou dívidas do Brito e de outros? Ir para as televisões com este discurso, faz dele um homem santo? Deus me livre… Mas que homem tão baixo… é simplesmente o homem que irá gerir o Benfica!

É triste ver o meu clube assim, não vejo alternativas, não vou votar. Pensei deslocar-me à casa do Benfica em Famalicão mas não vou. O meu voto não irá decidir nada, pois não acredito nem um nem no outro. São dois homens que calcam tudo e todos para atingirem os seus fins. São dois homens tristes e que não irão fazer nada para que o Benfica tenha sucesso no futuro, ou seja, títulos no departamento de futebol sénior.

Quanto aos jogadores, técnico e gestão futebolística, vou-me guardar para outro post.

PS: É mais uma vez, VERGONHOSO o que se passou com Nuno Gomes. O Nuninho lá se vergou às condições do Benfica e aceitou a merda que lhe ofereceram, se não tínhamos outro Petit que se foi embora porque o Benfica não lhe deu valor! E já agora paguem-lhe todos os prémios que estão atrasados!

© 35n 2009

“Den har aldrig levet, som klog på det er blevet, han først ej havde kær.” – N.F.S. Grundtvig

To commemorate a great Danish thinker within education – Knud Illeris – and his retirement from a position as a university professor at the Danish University of Pedagogy (DPU), the university created a small conference/ceremony about Knud Illeris and his thoughts. Here is a link to a speech given by Knud himself towards the end of the ceremony. I highly recommend listening to it. It highlights six major philosophical thoughts that influence a persons ability to learn. The six thinkers are N.F.S. Grundtvig, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Jean Lave and Antonio Damasio. Number seven for those who are counting, is of course Knud Illeris himself. And yes, it’s in English.

Be aware that the video is on DPU’s website and the link here will open the video in a media player on your computer.

Ed Young posts on recent experiments in brain stimulation that produced something of the illusion of a freedom of will, or at least the solicitation of the desire to act in a particular way: Electrical stimulation produces feelings of free will (found through Speculative Heresy) The original journal article ,“Movement Intention After Parietal Cortex Stimulation in Humans”, tells of how stimulation of the Posterior Parietal Cortex in patients produced not only the distinct feeling that they wanted to move parts of their body, but when the stimulation increased also the belief that they actually had completed the action, though they had not. Ed Young provides an excellently concise summation of the findings, and even makes mention of Cartesian Dualism.

The Flying Stone of Free Will

I am not one for feeling that scientific observation usually resolves long-standing philosophical issues which are born of conceptual and terminological circuits, but this does seem to be something of a a check on the Spinoza side of the ledger (perhaps to be added to the several entered by Damasio). As Spinoza saw the issue of the freedom of the will, the sense that we are freely acting was merely the awareness of an appetite to action combined with an ignorance of the causes that determined that appetite, bringing it into being. We, like a hypothetical thinking stone that is flying through the air, only imagine that we are freely acting, while we have been “thrown” by any number of external (and internal) forces.

The core of this position is found in his letter 62/58 to Schaller (October, 1674), which I quote at length because he presents his vision so compactly. It is interesting that some of Spinoza’s most revelatory position passages come from his letters:

I, therefore, pass on to that definition of liberty, which he says is my own; but I know not whence he has taken it. I say that a thing is free, which exists and acts solely by the necessity of its own nature. Thus also God understands Himself and all things freely, because it follows solely from the necessity of His nature, that He should understand all things. You see I do not place freedom in free decision, but in free necessity. However, let us descend to created things, which are all determined by external causes to exist and operate in a given determinate manner. In order that this may be clearly understood, let us conceive a very simple thing. For instance, a stone receives from the impulsion of an external cause, a certain quantity of motion, by virtue of which it continues to move after the impulsion given by the external cause has ceased. The permanence of the stone’s motion is constrained, not necessary, because it must be defined by the impulsion of an external cause. What is true of the stone is true of any individual, however complicated its nature, or varied its functions, inasmuch as every individual thing is necessarily determined by some external cause to exist and operate in a fixed and determinate manner.

Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavouring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavour and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined. Thus an infant believes that it desires milk freely; an angry child thinks he wishes freely for vengeance, a timid child thinks he wishes freely to run away. Again, a drunken man thinks, that from the free decision of his mind he speaks words, which afterwards, when sober, he would like to have left unsaid. So the delirious, the garrulous, and others of the same sort think that they act from the free decision of their mind, not that they are carried away by impulse. As this misconception is innate in all men, it is not easily conquered.

The Moving of Lips

How amenable is this non-dualistic framework to the conditions that Ed Young reports, wherein the motor action was able to be parsed from the mere feeling of intention, so much so that subjects even could be caused to hold the belief that they had not only a volition, but also had acted upon it,

Desmurget, on the other hand, could only ever produce the illusion of movement by focusing on the parietal cortex. And his patients’ descriptions of their experiences made it very clear that they were feeling some sort of internal intention to move, rather than feeling compelled by an external force. Without any prompting from the researchers, they all described their feelings with words such as “will”, “desire” or “wanting to”. One of the patients said, “I felt a desire to lick my lips”, after a low burst of current. With more stimulation, he said “I moved my mouth. I talked. What did I say?”

More than ever we get the sense that Spinoza hit upon something significant when he qualified the ideas we have about the world as really ideas we have of our body being in a certain state or other. And even more so, we get a glimpse into the finesse behind Spinoza’s denial of the freedom of the will, a “freedom” that resided under the veil of our ignorance (all the while still asserting a rigorous ethics). It was no mere abstract imposition of determinism for the sake of determinism. Nothing is more tiresome than the well-worn arguments of the freedom of the will, it seems. But what this study suggests is that if we look at the materiality of our freedoms, the means by which we experience our intentions as free, perhaps another kind of freedom is available, that of knowledge of causes a path of freedom advocated by Spinoza.

Further, our experiences and beliefs about the factuality of our actions, our very autonomic natures, seem to be fundamentally tied to our experiences of our appetites as such. It is not simply the case that we can ask, “Was that movement freely willed?” but also must ask, “Did we actually do what we thought we wanted to?” Our very desires, if strong enough, are part of the perception of action itself, suggesting that the understanding and appreciation for our actions, or intentions, may spring from an understanding of desire and appetite itself, just as Spinoza thought.

Of course, once we start untangling the weave of free intentions, the consolidation of a pure human “subject” also begins to unspool.

Científicos de la University of Southern California, dirigidos por el Dr. Antonio Damasio, realizaron una investigación donde concluyeron, entre otras cosas, que la rapidez de los medios digitales no deja tiempo al cerebro para procesar sentimientos como la admiración o la compasión ante el sufrimiento psicológico ajeno.

El estudio, publicado en la edición digital de “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”, fue realizado con trece voluntarios a los cuales se les pretendió inducir un sentimiento de admiración ante una virtud o habilidad o de compasión ante un sufrimiento físico o moral basándose en historias reales convincentes.

Los investigadores concluyeron que los seres humanos pueden procesar la información muy rápido, respondiendo en fracciones de segundo a signos de dolor físico en los demás, pero la admiración y la compasión, dos de las emociones que definen a la humanidad, requieren mucho más tiempo.

El grado de emoción fue verificado a través de una serie de entrevistas antes y después de tomar imágenes del cerebro.

Estas imágenes mostraron que los voluntarios necesitaron entre seis y ocho segundos para reaccionar plenamente a las historias sobre virtud o sufrimiento moral.

Sin embargo, una vez despertada esta emoción, la respuesta duró mucho más que las reacciones suscitadas por las historias que se centraron en el dolor físico.

En opinión de Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, el estudio tiene relevancia para la enseñanza. La culpa no la tienen los medios digitales, sino “cómo se utilizan esos instrumentos”, subraya.

Según el sociólogo español Manuel Castells, “en una cultura de medios en la que la violencia y el sufrimiento se convierten en un espectáculo sin fin… se instala gradualmente la indiferencia ante la visión del sufrimiento humano”.

Pero Castells señaló que le preocupan menos los espacios sociales por Internet, algunos de los cuales pueden brindar oportunidades para la reflexión, que “la rapidez de la televisión o los juegos virtuales”.

El estudio es el primero que investiga las bases nerviosas de la admiración y que se centra en la compasión en un contexto más amplio que el del dolor físico.

“De hecho separamos el bien del mal en parte gracias al sentimiento de admiración”, señaló Antonio Damasio.

Los científicos también observaron que estas emociones están firmemente enraizadas en el cerebro y los sentidos, y afectan a sistemas nerviosos primordiales que regulan la química sanguínea, el sistema digestivo y otras partes del organismo.

El ejemplo más claro, según Immordino-yang, es el “corazón roto” del que hablan los poetas. “Estas emociones son viscerales, en el sentido más literal son la expresión biológica del ‘haz a los demás lo que quieres que te hagan a ti”, dijo.

(Vediamo se ho capito…)
Leggendo la seconda parte dell’Etica, che si occupa della Natura e origine della mente, si ha come l’impressione di restare a bocca asciutta proprio per quanto concerne la risposta alla domanda sottesa: ma che cos’è davvero la mente? Certo, Spinoza non può porsi questa domanda alla stregua dei neuroscienziati, il suo resta un punto di vista strettamente filosofico e, oltretutto, immerso nelle concezioni del suo tempo. Ma chissà che questo non finisca per essere un vantaggio…

D’altra parte proprio “la mente” dovrebbe essere l’oggetto primo di ogni attenzione e considerazione fondativa di un discorso sensato: che senso ha parlare di un’ontologia, ad esempio, o di un’etica (che sono poi le due operazioni simultanee condotte da Spinoza) se non si ha ben chiaro lo strumento attraverso cui tutto procede? Ogni ontologia presuppone la domanda “che cos’è la mente?” e non può non presupporla, perché l’ente pensato – l’idea – è sempre ciò che è attraverso la mente, che dunque ne è filtro, se non presupposto. Dunque, anche se vogliamo pensare che non è il soggetto a porre l’oggetto (come vogliono gli idealisti o i nominalisti e compagnia bella), e nemmeno l’oggetto a fondare il soggetto (come preferiscono i realisti, gli empiristi e compagnia cantante) – la mente rimane pur sempre la sede delle relazioni e del loro eventuale groviglio.

Tuttavia, allontanandoci da Spinoza solo per un momento, la risposta neuroscientifica e riduzionista che vorrebbe leggere la mente come un corpo è a mio giudizio insoddisfacente (anche perché i neuroscienziati dovrebbero spiegare che cos’è un corpo o anche che cos’è la materia, e non è detto che ci riescano). La mente non è per definizione un oggetto come gli altri (del resto non è che esistano solo gli oggetti tangibili, come il cervello o questa tastiera, bisognerebbe ormai saperlo bene), che non vuol dire che stia in una dimensione sovramateriale, spirituale o metafisica. La mente è piuttosto concepibile come la sede delle relazioni, un punto virtuale del nostro corpo individuale (una parte del corpo che non è corpo: dunque, daccapo, cos’è?), che però non è semplice speculum e duplicazione degli oggetti, ma istitutrice e creatrice di nuove serie di relazioni.
E’ un po’ come dire che il già da sempre (l’essere immersi nell’essere indifferenziato, tanto per usare un po’ di gergo filosofico) emerge in un ordine relazionale e la mente tesse quel già-da-sempre (aggrovigliato) in un ordine dotato di senso (per lei, non in sé), mettendo in luce le relazioni tra i corpi (a partire dal corpo proprio cui essa è inscindibilmente legata), e creandone e producendone di nuove. Questo vale anche per la scienza: per poter leggere nel gran libro del mondo che è scritto in linguaggio matematico, si deve possedere una mente calcolante, altrimenti come vi si potrebbe accedere? (D’altra parte si corre qui il rischio del vizio ontologico: la mente è quantitativa perché è quantitativo il mondo o il mondo si fa leggere dalla mente secondo schemi quantitativi, che però sono solo uno degli infiniti modi possibili di essere?). E comunque che cosa vuol dire calcolare se non stabilire relazioni?

Per definire approssimativamente la modalità “creativa”, d’altro canto, potremmo utilizzare l’arte come esempio: se noi trasponiamo l’immagine della luna su una tela o connettiamo i suoni in un ordine finalizzato a comporre una sinfonia, il già-da-sempre indistinto si costituisce in un nuovo ente, determinato da nuove relazioni. La mente, dunque, non si limita a registrare le relazioni esistenti, a rispecchiarle, ma anche a produrle. Non si tratta di una creazione ex-nihilo, ma di una connessione inedita di enti già tutti esistenti. Affinché ciò avvenga, la mente deve penetrare il mondo, immergervisi e conoscerlo dall’interno, esserne parte e renderlo parte di sé.

Ma torniamo a Spinoza. E proviamo a vedere se nell’intrico barocco di proposizioni, scolii e corollari vi sia qualche elemento che ci aiuti a progredire nella questione:

“L’oggetto dell’idea costituente la Mente umana è il Corpo, ossia un certo modo dell’Estensione, esistente in atto, e nient’altro. – dove quel nient’altro è espressione cruciale [...] Ne deriva che l’uomo consta di Mente e di Corpo, e che il Corpo umano, così come lo sentiamo, esiste.“
[...] “La Mente non conosce se stessa se non in quanto percepisce le idee delle affezioni del Corpo” - e poi, specificando meglio: “La Mente umana non percepisce alcun corpo esterno come esistente in atto se non mediante le idee delle affezioni del suo Corpo”.
Questa concezione del rapporto tra mente e corpo viene poi ribadita nella Terza parte dell’Etica: “la prima cosa che costituisce l’essenza della Mente è l’idea del corpo esistente in atto, il primo e precipuo sforzo della nostra Mente è quello di affermare l’esistenza del nostro Corpo“.

Sembra quindi che lo sforzo maggiore di Spinoza sia qui non tanto quello di dare una definizione di “mente” (di per sé chiara), ma di connetterne costantemente l’attività con quella del corpo. Spinoza trova semmai più problematico il fronte corporeo, al punto da arrivare a dire : “In effetti, che cosa propriamente possa il Corpo, nessuno l’ha ancora determinato”. Su quel “possa” (che non è propriamente un sia) Deleuze ha costruito un intero ciclo di lezioni che sono poi diventate un libro e una precisa linea interpretativa del pensiero spinoziano: Cosa può un corpo? – questa sembra essere la domanda cruciale. Si è in quanto si può: l’essenza delle cose sta tutta nella loro potenza materiale, corporea, immanente, cioè nei modi, nelle forze e nelle infinite relazioni attraverso cui la sostanza si esprime sensibilmente.
In realtà non può non essere cruciale anche la questione del rapporto tra mente e corpo, ed è forse qui il nodo: dal modo in cui si intende quel rapporto deriva tutto il resto. Il pensiero e l’estensione non sono per Spinoza due sostanze (la sostanza è una soltanto), ma, in gergo scolastico, due attributi, ovvero due nomi di Dio, due qualità o proprietà per definire la stessa cosa, l’infinita sostanza. Se si riconduce alla sfera umana tale concezione, mente e corpo non possono che essere la medesima cosa, solo visti sotto due differenti punti di vista: la mente è sempre la mente di un corpo e il corpo è sempre il corpo pensato da una mente. Ciò che uno fa l’altra pensa, ciò che uno sente l’altra desidera o vuole (secondo Spinoza non esiste una differenza sostanziale tra volontà e desiderio: lo sforzo vitale che si riferisce alla mente – che è tutt’uno con l’affermare o il negare intellettuale – è Volontà, ma si chiama Appetito se si riferisce insieme alla mente e al corpo – e ciò è l’essenza stessa dell’uomo; ma su tutto questo dovremo tornare in una prossima “lezione”).
Vi è insomma secondo Spinoza, e ben diversamente da Cartesio, una convergenza dell’elemento mentale e di quello corporeo: non solo non si tratta di sostanze o essenze diverse, ma nemmeno si può parlare di un parallelismo (come voleva l’occasionalismo, volto però soprattutto a garantire l’intervento divino e ad allontanare lo spettro materialistico); si tratta semmai di una reciproca influenza, di un essere avvinghiati l’uno all’altro: la potenza di un corpo dipende da quella della sua mente, e viceversa. Spinoza dimostra che “la Mente è unita al Corpo perché appunto il Corpo è oggetto della Mente” – e sembra non essere preoccupato dall’eventuale obiezione che gli si può muovere circa la confusione tra l’”essere uniti” di due entità ed il loro “essere oggetto” l’una dell’altra.
L’unità viene costantemente ribadita: “la Mente e il Corpo sono una sola e medesima cosa che viene concepita ora sotto l’attributo del Pensiero ora sotto quello dell’Estensione” – si tratterebbe dunque di una distinzione puramente concettuale, senonché a farla dovrà pur essere qualcosa come una mente, e di nuovo non ci si può non chiedere: ma che cos’è la mente?
Sembra quasi che Spinoza ondeggi (e noi con lui) su questo alternarsi della domanda: una volta è chiaro che cosa sia la mente e più confusa l’idea di corpo, altra volta sembra valere il viceversa. Ma su una cosa non si deve mai cedere, quando cioè si tratta di liberarci dalle favole dell’immaginazione e dalle sciocchezze metafisiche proliferanti intorno a questi concetti: “quando gli uomini dicono che questa o quella azione del Corpo è originata dalla Mente, la quale ha dominio sul Corpo, non sanno quello che dicono” – e allora compito del filosofo è quello di fare chiarezza, dimostrare e “considerare le azioni e i desideri umani come se si trattasse di linee, di superfici e di corpi”. Ad ogni modo la direzione rimane tracciata: l’idea di simultaneità di mente e corpo è sempre ribadita: “tanto il decreto della Mente, come l’appetito e la determinazione del Corpo, sono per natura simultanei, o meglio, sono una sola e medesima cosa che, quando è considerata e spiegata sotto l’attributo del Pensiero chiamiamo decisione, e quando è considerata sotto l’attributo dell’Estensione ed è dedotta dalle leggi del moto e della quiete chiamiamo determinazione”.

Insomma, Spinoza ha anticipato tutte le discussioni tardo-novecentesche tra neuroscienziati e filosofi della mente circa la questione del rapporto tra pensiero, coscienza e corpo. Ma si è già posto in una posizione a mio parere più avanzata rispetto alle soluzioni (riduzionistiche e non) proposte: computazionalismo, funzionalismo (Putnam), naturalismo biologico (Searle), darwinismo neurale (Edelman)… Certo, la scommessa – assolutamente spinozista – è quella di non ridurre la mente alla materia (cerebrale), ma di spiegarla in termini materiali; che è come dire che non c’è alcun bisogno di trascendere o di transimmaginare, e che le spiegazioni sono tutte qui, immanenti, pronte ad essere apprese ed utilizzate.
Intuizione ripresa dal neurologo portoghese Antonio Damasio, che proprio a Spinoza dedica uno studio (che non mancherò di leggere a breve) intitolato Alla ricerca di Spinoza. Emozioni, sentimenti, cervello. Non è solo la dicotomia cartesiana (che è poi quella di sempre tra anima e corpo) a dover essere superata, ma anche quella che riducendo la mente al cervello finisce comunque per contrapporre a questo la corporeità e il complesso emotivo-passionale (così magistralmente analizzato da Spinoza): mente e corpo sono inseparabili, “tagliati dalla stessa stoffa”.
La domanda, allora, diventa inevitabilmente: che cos’è il complesso mentale-corporeo da cui siamo costituiti? che è un po’ come chiedersi, tanto per cambiare, che cosa siamo?
Spinoza non ha difficoltà a rispondere che siamo insiemi corporei (corpi costituiti da numerosi altri corpi, o meglio da “numerosissimi individui di diversa natura ognuno dei quali è assai complesso”), dotati di intelletto, e, in ultima analisi, composizioni o modi di essere della sostanza – cioè di Dio cioè della natura – sive! – modi diversi di designare la stessa cosa, ma da punti di vista diversi. E dal punto di vista della sostanza non siamo niente di speciale, siamo enti tra gli altri – umani, vegetali, pietre, fiumi, zecche, concetti… Corpi che perseverano nel loro essere corpi finché una causa esterna non li scompone e distrugge.
Meglio quindi eliminare dalla domanda di prima ogni traccia essenzialistica, riformulandola in altro modo: come siamo fatti? come funzioniamo? in che rapporto stiamo col mondo?

« Comme la vue est un sens trompeur, un corps humain, même aimé, comme était celui d’Albertine, nous semble, à quelques mètres, à quelques centimètres, distant de nous. Et l’âme qui est à lui de même. Seulement, que quelque chose change violemment la place de cette âme par rapport à nous, nous montre qu’elle aime d’autres êtres et pas nous, alors, aux battements de notre cœur disloqué, nous sentons que c’est, non pas à quelques pas de nous, mais en nous, qu’était la créature chérie. En nous, dans des régions plus ou moins superficielles. »

Extrait du récit Sodome et Gomorrhe de Marcel Proust, quatrième volume du roman À la recherche du temps perdu.

La dichotomie entre la rationalité et les émotions

À mon avis, l’opposition traditionnelle entre la pensée cartésienne et pascalienne ne permet pas de bien saisir la nature humaine dans toute sa complexité. La dualité entre le « corps et l’esprit » est galvaudée et surfaite. Cette dualité est souvent décrite comme étant un choix délibéré qui s’offre à nous entre la voie de la réflexion et celle de la spontanéité.

L’être humain est en mesure de produire une réflexion rationnelle sans qu’il en ait réellement conscience. La « cognition rapide », terme inventé par le journaliste et auteur populaire Malcolm Gladwell dans son ouvrage Blink, facilite un traitement rapide de l’information afin de nous fournir des conclusions sur la façon dont il faut conduire nos actions, et ce, avec le peu de connaissances en notre possession.

Un urgentologue qui se doit de décider lequel parmi ses patients est dans une situation critique et doit être opéré en priorité, un policier qui se retrouve dans une situation où l’utilisation de son arme à feu semble justifiée et tout individu qui rencontre quelqu’un pour la première fois, sont des exemples où la cognition rapide est sollicitée. Si l’être humain était dépourvu de sa faculté de « cognition rapide », il lui serait impossible d’agir lorsque la situation demande une réponse quasi-instantanée.

Le cas célèbre de Phineas P. Gage, contremaître des chemins de fer, mérite d’être mentionné. Le 13 septembre 1848, Gage travaille au dynamitage de rochers lorsqu’une barre de fer lui traverse le crâne et provoque des dommages aux lobes frontaux de son cerveau. Phineas survit à ce traumatisme crânien, mais la partie émotionnelle de son cerveau est affectée, causant dès lors des effets négatifs sur son comportement social et personnel et le laissant dans un état instable et asocial.

Si l’état post-traumatique de Gage démontre que le rôle des émotions chez l’Homme va au-delà d’une simple réaction à des stimuli de l’environnement immédiat, un individu qui subit un traumatisme crânien causant des lésions à son cortex cérébral, section de notre cerveau qui affecte la rationalité, subira différents troubles neurologiques qui auront des effets tout autant dévastateurs que ceux ressentis par Gage. Notons simplement qu’une des formes courantes de dégénérescence des cellules neurales est celle de la maladie d’alzheimer où l’on observe une diminution des capacités cognitives du sujet.

Selon Antonio Damasio, spécialiste en neurologie, l’être humain ne peut pas prendre une décision sans le « module » émotionnel de son cerveau. Aux yeux de René Descartes, penseur qui a ouvert la grande aventure de la pensée moderne, l’Homme peut atteindre la vérité à condition qu’il utilise sa raison et les préceptes avancés par la philosophie cartésienne du doute méthodique. Dans son ouvrage L’Erreur de Descartes, Damasio va à l’encontre de l’idée cartésienne du dualisme entre raison et émotions en présentant plutôt ses deux identités comme étant interreliées.

Il existe néanmoins une dualité qui est rarement abordée dans les discussions, soit celle qui a lieu dans notre esprit entre la mémoire volontaire et la mémoire involontaire.

La mémoire de l’intelligence

« Regardez la réalité : qui parle d’âme ou de profondeur psychologique aujourd’hui? Le XXe siècle, c’est le triomphe d’une explication scientifique du monde, le triomphe d’une ontologie matérialiste et du déterminisme local. Dorénavant, pour expliquer un comportement humain, on dresse la liste d’un certain nombre de paramètres numériques : hormones, neuromédiateurs… et puis voilà. »

Extrait d’une entrevue accordée en 1998 par Michel Houellebecq au magazine Lire.

Considéré comme le père de la sociologie, Auguste Comte est surtout reconnu en tant que fondateur du positivisme et partisan du triomphe de la raison sur les autres facultés de l’esprit humain. Philosophie qui s’appuie sur les sciences dites positives, aujourd’hui appelées sciences exactes, le positivisme postule que le scientifique doit renoncer à la question du « pourquoi » et se limiter au « comment » afin que la progression des connaissances humaines ne soit pas tributaire des croyances théologiques et des explications métaphysiques.

Les partisans de cette philosophie estiment que pour expliquer la réalité des faits, il faut utiliser les méthodes scientifiques que sont notamment l’observation et l’expérimentation. Aujourd’hui, le néopositivisme n’a conservé des théories de Comte que le recours aux faits. Une idée qui n’est pas basée sur des faits et réductible à un processus de réflexion rationnelle doit être rejetée.

Michel Houellebecq est l’un des écrivains dont la pensée positiviste influence les écrits et c’est notamment le cas dans l’ouvrage Les particules élémentaires où nous retrouvons plusieurs citations d’Auguste Comte placées en exergue en début de chapitre. Houellebecq – qui me semble être un partisan du scientisme, théorie selon laquelle la connaissance scientifique permettrait d’échapper à l’ignorance dans tous les domaines – est d’avis que le roman doit constituer un témoignage sur la condition psychologique de l’Homme contemporain. L’écrivain se doit alors d’intégrer l’état actuel des connaissances humaines afin d’éviter que l’art romanesque devienne purement et simplement un processus de « l’écriture pour l’écriture ».

Pour ce faire, il doit s’affranchir d’une écriture personnelle et éviter une ligne directrice en fonction de ses désirs intimes. L’art romanesque, selon Houellebecq, ne doit plus se limiter à un rôle de simple divertissement. Le roman doit avoir une fonction informationnelle au même titre qu’un ouvrage scientifique. En lisant les ouvrages de cet écrivain français, on se rend compte que la science, la technologie et l’histoire se côtoient et que leur amalgame tend à vouloir créer une vision objective de la réalité.

Les procédés littéraires employés par Umberto Eco ont des similitudes avec celles d’Houellebecq. On retrouve dans les romans d’Eco, notamment Le Nom de la rose et Le Pendule de Foucault, une multitude de références philosophiques et historiques et à partir desquelles le lecteur n’est pas toujours en mesure de départager la fiction de la réalité et l’opinion de l’auteur des faits historiques établis. Les deux auteurs s’interrogent sur la démarche scientifique de leur monde immédiat et si l’on peut considérer la « méthode houellebecquienne » comme étant moralisatrice, l’érudition d’Eco – il est notamment spécialiste en sémiologie et en esthétique médiévale tout en ayant une formation académique en philosophie – vise à « débusquer du sens là où on serait porté à ne voir que des faits ».

La similarité épistémologique que nous retrouvons entre les écrivains Auguste Comte, Michel Houellebecq et Umberto Eco se situe au niveau de leur perception des connaissances humaines, emmagasinées grâce à la mémoire de l’intelligence, qui seraient en mesure de restituer la réalité humaine dans son intégralité.

La mémoire des choses – ou la mémoire volontaire de l’intelligence - s’apparente à la photographie, à savoir qu’elle est figée dans le temps et qu’elle ne donne qu’une parcelle de la réalité, unilatérale et momentanée. Grâce à notre intelligence, nous pouvons nous rappeler une sélection d’événements passés, mais ceux-ci demeureront toujours fragmentés.

Une analyse exhaustive de l’oeuvre d’un écrivain et une reconstitution du passé d’un être humain seront toujours inachevées. Nous ne sommes pas uniquement la somme de nos expériences; nous ne sommes pas la somme de ce que nous écrivons. Il y a une « chose » qui demeure insaisissable à notre intellect et que la mémoire volontaire ne sera jamais à même de décrire. Marcel Proust, dont la philosophie bergsonienne a influencé sa pensée, a fait de cette « chose » la thématique principale de l’oeuvre de sa vie.

La réminiscence des souvenirs

« J’ai vraiment perdu la notion du temps. Si on n’a plus de centre émotionnel… elle s’interrompit, fit un effort, et reprit d’une voix rauque …c’est ce qui arrive. Des éternités… des fractions de secondes… ça revient au même. On n’a plus le sens ordinaire des mesures. »

Extrait du récit Le Jour enseveli de Rosamond Lehmann.

Dans ce XIXe siècle marqué par la théorie positiviste d’Auguste Comte et la prééminence de la raison en tant que seul instrument valable de la connaissance humaine, une voix dissidente émerge. Henri Bergson sera le premier à remettre en question la philosophie positiviste en démontrant qu’il y a une « chose » qui échappe à la science et qui ne peut être saisie par la mémoire de l’intelligence. Cette « chose », c’est l’esprit humain au prise avec sa conscience du temps. Pour Bergson, la durée du temps mesurée par le scientifique n’est pas la même chose que le temps vécu par chaque être humain ayant leur propre individualité.

La thématique du temps au sein de la philosophie bergsonienne a profondément influencé Marcel Proust. À la recherche du temps perdu est une réflexion majeure sur l’existence même du temps, sur sa relativité et sur l’incapacité de le saisir au temps présent. La méthode positiviste de Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, critique littéraire et écrivain français, où seule l’intelligence humaine serait en mesure de découvrir les intentions qui se cachent derrière l’oeuvre d’un auteur, est remise en question par Marcel Proust dans son ouvrage Contre Sainte-Beuve.

Dans l’univers proustien, l’édifice immense du souvenir est fréquemment ébranlé par les réveils involontaires de la mémoire. Cette mémoire échappe à l’intelligence et elle ne se cache pas dans les intentions de l’auteur; elle est nulle part et partout, hors et en nous; elle peut être retrouvée, ressaisie, mais elle part et revient sans préavis.

En consultant les cahiers de rédaction de Proust, nous apprenons que le premier titre envisagé était « les intermittences du cœur ». Bien que Proust ait finalement intitulé son œuvre « à la recherche du temps perdu », cette métaphore nous permet de saisir le sens de cette quête du « moi profond » à travers le temps perdu. « L’intermittence du cœur », c’est la temporalité discontinue qui existe entre le moment où notre sensibilité est vécue et celui où nous la reconstruisons et que nous comprenons sa signification.

Les réveils imprévisibles de la mémoire

« Aux troubles de la mémoire sont liées les intermittences du coeur.

C’est sans doute l’existence de notre corps, semblable pour nous à un vase où notre spiritualité serait enclose, qui nous induit à supposer que tous nos biens intérieurs, nos joies passées, toutes nos douleurs sont perpétuellement en notre possession. Peut-être est-il aussi inexact de croire qu’elles s’échappent ou reviennent.

En tout cas, si elles restent en nous c’est, la plupart du temps, dans un domaine inconnu où elles ne sont de nul service pour nous, et où même les plus usuelles sont refoulées par des souvenirs d’ordre différent et qui excluent toute simultanéité avec elles dans la conscience. Mais si le cadre de sensations où elles sont conservées est ressaisi, elles ont à leur tour ce même pouvoir d’expulser tout ce qui leur est incompatible, d’installer seul en nous, le moi qui les vécut. »

Extrait du récit Sodome et Gomorrhe de Marcel Proust, quatrième volume du roman À la recherche du temps perdu.

Dans l’ouvrage À la recherche du temps perdu, un des thèmes évoqués est l’opposition entre la mémoire volontaire (celle de l’intelligence) et les réminiscences de la mémoire involontaire (celle du subconscient). Une odeur, un bruit, et tout le décor passé peut être retrouvé. Cette mémoire nous submerge comme la vague. Il est impossible de la saisir par la voie de la raison et d’arriver à la reconstruire dans sa totalité. Cependant, elle retrouve en quelque sorte une part de vécu, fait de sensations éprouvées dans le passé. Une mémoire vivante en soi, et ce, même après de longues périodes d’hibernation.

Tout ce qui fait parti du subconscient ne peut pas être retrouvé dans les écrits d’un romancier. « L’homme qui fait des vers et qui cause dans un salon n’est pas la même personne » nous rappelle Proust. Mais les réveils imprévus de la mémoire nous permettent de ressentir à nouveau cette sensibilité que l’on croyait perdue à jamais.

Vos photographies, vos écrits et toutes autres formes de traces concrètes d’intelligence volontaire ne pourront pas résumer dans sa totalité votre passage sur cette Terre. S’il vous était possible de reconstruire votre existence à partir de fragments du passé, votre création ne représenterait pas le reflet de votre vie puisque, en définitive, le réel ne sera jamais en mesure de transcender « les intermittences du cœur ».

Heading: Emotional Healing.

Subheading: Af-x Release Therapy.

What first attracted me to Af-x Release Therapy©, was the notion of respect for our own mind’s ability to heal ourselves, inherent within its philosophy. Here, it seemed, was a process that put the onus on self-responsibility, instead of the almighty therapist. Having tried numerous therapies, I now have a greater respect for anything that puts me in touch with my own wisdom, rather than something that makes me dependent on someone or something else. It intrigued me, too, when I was told there would be only three sessions and I would not be required to speak much in any of them. This was definitely like no counselling I’d had before.

A Zen-like flavour pervaded my encounter with Af-x’s founding practitioner, Ian White, with few words on my part and from him a confidence in my ability to “right my own mental and emotional cart.” The silence growing within me was a welcome change from the usual chatter as I listened to him outlining the coming sessions. Why was I here? I suppose you could call it mild depression. I was also interested in experiencing this therapy. Closing my eyes and sitting back in my chair, I opened my mind to the words being spoken to me.

Af-x Release Therapy© is based on the work of the School of Affectology, developed by Australian psychotherapist, Ian White. Its roots are in studies are in studies of early childhood and the discovery that we develop a subtle emotional sense well before we begin to think conceptually. In the period of birth to 18 months, we’re developing our feeling selves long before we learn words and how to think in a narrative way. We learn what feeling responses work for us and this is the basis of the development of our emotions. This information is stored by the limbic brain, there to be called on when we require an emotional response. The process is referred to as neuro-encoding. Many of the scientific studies of this early learning period are covered in books by Goleman, Damasio, LeDoux and others.

“Of course, our affect -meaning emotional reactions, are immediate and don’t allow us to think about them because they are happening at a subconscious level – the reactions defy our rational selves,” says Ian. “Through this we build a habit of feeling,  that eventually grows into our own unconscious sense of self.” Af-x Release Therapy© predicates that these first learning’s have a powerful influence on how we react emotionally throughout our life, often without realising why. As these feelings are experienced pre-verbally, it is, Ian’s view, ineffective for the client to attempt to “talk it out.” “What is important is to allow the client to focus on, and safely reach, that inner feeling space, and it’s only through silence and a quietening of the mind’s chatter that this is possible,” says Ian. “Once there, the subconscious mind’s own sophisticated self-correcting gear is available to a simple ‘reminder like’ suggestion.”

“So isn’t this just hypnotherapy?” I put to Ian. “I prefer to use the term ‘assisted self attention’, or ‘focus  on feelings’, as it’s not necessary for the client to be in any particular state for the process to work, and the term ’self attention’ also describes the meditative state, which I think is a closer fit for this work,” responds Ian. “Also, what is integral to understand here is that, unlike hypnotherapists and all other counsellors and psychotherapists, we are not responding to a particular complaint voiced by the client, because of course the client has not said anything. The Af-x practitioner is appealing to the client’s own innate ability as a perfect being to make the necessary adjustments to their emotional self.”

As I hear these words and ruminate on being a ‘perfect being,’ memories of my own spiritual journey filter into consciousness. I remember being told stories by my spiritual ‘master’ about how insanity was dealt with in the East, in the time of Lao Tzu; how the suffere would be locked in a cell in complete darkness with no contact with any other person, meals being slipped under the door. It sounded barbaric but, apparently, it was often a quick cure as the inflamed mental state was not pandered to and an encounter with the”original face or self” was hard to avoid. The strict adherence of the client to the no-speaking approach in Af-x therapy and the self-attention consciousness of the meditative state ring a few bells for me, so I am not surprised to learn that Ian White trained as a Zen Bukkyo monk in his earlier years.

“Yes, I sat in Zasen in black hakama robes, being whacked on the back with an oak walking stick by the senior monk and scrubbing a sterile, perfectly clean floor over and over again, and all that other exciting stuff, but I never really took to it because it didn’t deal with my impatience about helping bring peace to my fellow person,” says White.

It is perhaps that focus that has led Ian to a life devoted to assisting in the healing of thousands through the development and refinement of Af-x Release Therapy©. Through the School of Affectology, Ian White has trained Af-x practitioners in Australia, the US and Europe. He and those who are using the therapy in their work have had particular success in dealing with those apparently suffering from the many forms of depression, as well as a host of other mental-emotional problems. Ian says, “One of the most important aspects of the Af-x approach is that we do not consider that ongoing psychotherapy is productive in changes for the better. In fact, ongoing therapy actually gets in the way of people making the mental and emotional change choices that bring about success.”

“How do you monitor whether three sessions are enough or are effective at all?” I ask.

“Over the past 10 years, every Af-x client has been asked to participate in a feedback system,” Ian ventures. “Questionnaires are sent out guaranteeing that the client’s responses will remain confidential and anonymous. We just get the pure data and so we know in the majority of cases that it is working.”

Many ex-clients have come forward to volunteer their personal stories about their experiences with Af-x. It’s through this process that I am able to read through testimonials from clients who have visited an Af-x practitioner. Although these people range widely in age and circumstance, there’s a common theme, which runs through their experiences. In nearly all cases, they were previously informed by health professionals that they were suffering from depression, panic attacks or stress and required medication. One testimonial in particular caught my attention – “Lisa’s Story.” I think it was because, being a teenager, Lisa (not her real name) conveyed her situation with that rawness and emotional honesty often seen in her age group.

Lisa’s Story (age 17)

“For many years I suffered from what is known as clinical depression, a diagnosis I received from psychiatrists and doctors. From the early days of my problem, I was prescribed various antidepressants. I also suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. During this time, I thought about suicide on many occasions. Life seemed to be of no use, no purpose, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of it living in the big black hole I seemed to exist in. I felt lost and alone. No one knew how to help me. Of course, many people tried to help, but for a long while I suffered alone, thinking I was beyond help; just willing myself to die. On more than one occasion, I attempted to take my life, never thinking I could find any solutions to getting any better than just coping from day to day, taking drugs and lashing out at everyone and everything around me.

“My friends and family were desperate for my recovery. Endless visits to the school counsellor seemed to make no difference. I spent many months ‘in therapy’ with a psychiatrist. Same outcome. Those many years of taking antidepressants and even alternative natural medication resulted in no answer. In fact, things were getting steadily worse. Quite apart from my depressive sickness, there was a steadily increasing pressure on me to get better. Pressure that people who had no idea of the loneliness of me applied. I know they had the best intentions, but they didn’t know they were adding incredibly to my burden.

“Then my parents heard about Ian White and his work, which he called Af-x therapy. My parents had no idea how it worked and, quite incorrectly, translated it to me as being ‘hypnotherapy.’ This, of course, didn’t help my expectations and I was opposed to the idea of seeing him from the start. In fact, I was very sceptical about the idea, I thought it would be another case of crazy person with crazy antics claiming to have all the answers. For this reason, I refused the treatment.

“After months of my family pleading with me to ‘give it a go’, I reluctantly agreed. In all honesty, that was merely to stop the pleading and give me an excuse to say to them, ‘See, this didn’t work, either!’ I walked into his rooms, making it very obvious that I didn’t want to be there and I was only there to ’shut everybody up’.  Of course, I was determined to derail anything he was going to try with me. As a result of my many visits to other counsellors and therapists, I was certain I knew how to handle him to my own ends.

“But I was very surprised at his approach. Now, in hindsight, I would say I was pleasantly surprised. Ian was lovely and considerate of the fact that I had been pressured to undergo treatment. He talked about that pressure right from the outset and gave the impression that he knew all about how I felt about ‘everybody trying to tell me what’s best for me’.  He made me feel very comfortable and relaxed and told me I was ‘the boss’. In other words, he did not do or say anything I was uncomfortable with and I was given no reason to oppose the idea of going ahead with helping myself out of the dilemma.

“He explained the procedures of Af-x very clearly, removing any idea that there was ‘a mystery’ about what he had to offer. Ian explained he didn’t want me to talk unless I wanted to ask a general question about the treatment. He explained why it was important for me not to try to put my problems into words. That was a great relief, because I had been trying unsuccessfully to put my problems into words for years. I had always left counsellors’ offices wondering whether I had really explained things in a truthful way.

“After my third session I thanked Ian for his time and walked away wondering when and if I would notice any change. In some ways, even though I had enjoyed my time in the therapy, I still couldn’t see how it could help to ’say nothing’ and ‘take notice of my self’. I did what Ian suggested and tried not to analyse what we had done in therapy. As a matter of fact, I tended to forget I had gone to see him.

“About a month later, I stated to feel very strong, physically and emotionally, and I decided to stop taking medication for my depression. I had depended on that medication for such a long time, that there was a part of me that seemed to be saying, ‘Well, I’ll stop taking it and that’ll prove that I can do without it.’ But that didn’t happen. I started to notice that my energy levels were gradually rising and my desire for sleep was declining. I also started to notice I had a calmer and less aggressive approach to negative situations. My friends, my family and my teachers all noticed and commented on this change. I no longer felt a need to resolve my problems with violence, verbal or otherwise, and for the first time in my life I felt happy. Although I did not understand how the therapy worked, I remember on many occasions, the things he said and explained came back to me in those moments when I once would have become depressed or lost my temper.

“Today, eight months after my therapy, I am still not taking medication, I’m attending the gym three times a week and I seem to not react to things as I used to- angrily. I receive compliments all the time on how much I have improved in all areas of my life. At times, these comments are about changes that I think are obvious, but sometimes I’m surprised that people have noticed some of the more gentle changes to who I am. I feel like I have eventually found myself, and found the person inside that I once used to be, and found the person I can be.”

No analysing?

The idea that we can undergo change without analysing it, talking it through and even intellectually understanding that change is baffling for many people. In many of the volunteered stories I read the most common response was: “I don’t know how this thing worked but it did.” Ian White talks about ‘re-education’, that the work of Af-x Release Therapy© is all about re-educating our early emotional selves. This is subtle stuff and it doesn’t employ any high tech gadgetry….well, except, that is, for the most sophisticated gadget of all, the human mind. Perhaps as we evolve further we will learn to value the finer workings of the human brain. At present, our models of our own consciousness are computers, which in truth are terribly inadequate.

For many people, the whole purpose of their visit to a counsellor is to pour out their problems, so this ban on words can be a major deterrent. Ian explains it’s absolutely vital to the success of the therapy: “As soon as you listen to their story you are complicit in their world paradigm – the half truths, the snippets of pseudo self-help theories they’ve picked up and applied to their own situation; and you are caught in their web with them. The Af-x practitioner comes clean to the table and bypasses all this completely, working directly with the subconscious emotional mind.” White likens this process to the Zen therapeutic approach of “holding the mirror firmly.”

After speaking with Ian for many hours about his past training and personal experiences, I begin to get a picture of how this therapy has come into being. The development of Affectology has been a constant evolution of a work that began with a desire to understand the qualities of consciousness. Having at its core a profound respect for the ‘perfection’ of humankind, it’s a therapy for a conscious age. Also, at that core seems to be a deep concern for the way society believes many of the damaging myths about our mental and emotional wellbeing.

How was it for me? I experienced an upsurge of self-belief immediately after the sessions, which I had over a three week period. My self esteem, which had been low, due to a failed relationship that had ended some 16 months before, felt markedly stronger at the conclusion of the sessions. While I was suffering only a low level of depression, the results were gentle and subtle, yet definite. As for curing ‘the human condition’, Ian White maintains strongly that our human condition is already perfect but needs some guidance for reflective emotional and mental healing. That’s the nature of Af-x Release Therapy©.

There are now a number of practitioners who have been trained by the School of Affectology in Australia, the US and Sweden. Ian White is currently in Greece, training practitioners in Athens.

©Sudha Hamilton

Appeared in WellBeing Magazine.

Eco Living Magazine

Midas Word

Michael S. Gazzaniga [1] argued that our beliefs about the world and the nature of human experience are merely tendentious and our memories fallible. Therefore we should rely not on “the ubiquitous personal belief systems held by billions of people (which he describes as akin to believing in Santa Claus (Gazzaniga 2005:163) but on modern science to seek out, understand and define our universal ethics grounded in the natural order (Gazzaniga 2005:178). From his viewpoint great religions of the world were conceived by ill-informed humans (not received from the Divine) who lacked competing data about the essence of the natural world (Gazzaniga 2005:162). He explains religious experiences as Temporary Lobe Epilepsy (TLE). He compares the conception of a fetus to the “conception” of a house at Home Depot. When is a fetus a person? When is a house a house? Gazzaniga believes that a fertilized egg is hardly deserving of the same moral status we confer on the newborn child or the functioning adult (Gazzaniga 2005:17-8). He also argued that the aging brain’s level of consciousness should be assessed by scientific means and euthanasia considered as an option (Gazzaniga 2005:33). His reasoning is not robust and appears to be directed to those already converted to his belief system.

However, it is his argument for brain enhancement through genetic intervention that causes a shiver of repugnance:

“Perhaps we should be free to try whatever we can think to try- this is the nature of scientific inquiry. Let an innate moral-ethics system assert itself and stop us from going too far. We have never annihilated ourselves; we have managed to stop short of doing that so far. I am confident that we will always understand what is ultimately good for the species and what is not (Gazzaniga 2005:54).”

One wonders on what planet he has been living.

We are currently listening to political debates around the clock as two nations head to the polls. Different value systems clash as “facts” are presented on each side of debates over contentious issues. We live in a time when scientific facts themselves are challenged as informed readers inquire about motivation and agendas of scientific researchers. Who finances the research? We are all too aware of the ease with which policy makers and decision makers choose comfortable truths over the uncomfortable.

Gazzaniga oversimplifies the awe-inspiring mind-soul-spirit by reducing humans to the chemical brain. He grossly underestimates followers of religions capable of making ethical decisions by considering both scientific information and their religious principles.

He argued that universal ethics are social, contextualized, influenced by emotions and natural survival-instincts. Whether your guide in life is simply “received wisdom” or “the confluence of neuroscientific data, historical data, and other information illuminating our past” he claim s we all share the same hard-wired moral networks and systems and therefore respond in similar ways to similar issues. He further claims that social systems explain individual feelings which are institutionalized into social structure (Gazzaniga 2005:162).”

According to his logic philosophers involved in neuroethics[2] should “use understandings of the brain’s hard-wiring to contextualize and debate gut instincts that serve the greatest good- or the most logical solutions- given specific contexts (Gazzaniga 2005:178).”

“Neuroscience reads brains, not minds. The mind, while completely enabled by the brain, is a totally different beast (Gazzaniga 2005:119).”

Gazzaniga (2005:iv-v) describes neuroethics as a spin-off of bioethics [which] was developed and defined to take medical ethics further, as scientific findings became more advanced and needed more specialized philosophers thinking about what is acceptable and unacceptable in areas like genetic engineering, reproductive science, defining brain death, and so on. [. . . Neuroethics are involved] whenever a bioethical issue involves the brain or central nervous system (2005: v).”

“We now step into the world of neuroethics. This is the field of philosophy that discusses the rights and wrongs of the treatment of, or enhancement of, the human brain.” “Was the medical team acting ethically, putting the patients’ interests first, or was it influenced by the humanitarian prospect of the advancement of specific knowledge about the brain — or by the attraction of the world fame and professional prestige that would follow a high achievement?” “Not just neurosurgeons but other brain scientists are thinking long and hard about the morality (right or wrong) and the ethics (fair or unfair) of what such breakthroughs as genomics, molecular imaging and pharmaceuticals will make it possible for them to do.” “In the treatment or cure of brain disease or disability, the public tends to support neuroscience’s needs for closely controlled and informed experimentation. But in the enhancement of the brain’s ability to learn or remember, or to be cheerful at home or attentive in school, many of the scientists are not so quick to embrace mood-manipulating drugs or a mindless race to enhance the mind (Safire 2003-07-10).”

“The brain’s ethical sense may run deeper than we think. ”The essence of ethical behavior,” writes the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in Looking for Spinoza, his newest book, ”does not begin with humans.” Ravens and vampire bats ”can detect cheaters among the food gatherers in their group and punish them accordingly.” Though human altruism is much further evolved, in one experiment ”monkeys abstained from pulling a chain that would deliver food to them if pulling the chain caused another monkey to receive an electric shock. Damasio does not believe that there is a gene for ethical behavior or that we are likely to find a moral center in the brain. But we may one day understand the ”natural and automatic devices of homeostasis” — the brain’s system that balances appetites and controls emotions, much as a constitution and a system of laws regulates and governs a nation (Safire 2003-07-10).”

“[Brain] scientists . . . debate going beyond the cure of disease to the possibilities of meddling with memory or implanting a happy demeanor (Safire 2003-07-10).”

“Maybe the human brain has a self-defense mechanism that causes brain scientists to pause before they improve on the healthy brain. Would we feel guilty about discovering the chemistry of conscience (Safire 2003-07-10)?”

Folksonomy, taxonomy, tags, key words, classification, semantic web

cognitive neuroscience: moral and ethical aspects, ethics, Damasio, science and religion, chemical conscience, meddling with memory, permalink,

Health

Notes

1. Michael S. Gazzaniga is President of the American Psychology Society, and director of the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College.
2. According to Gazzaniga it was William Safire who coined the term neuroethics to describe the field of philosophy that discusses the rights and wrongs of the treatment of, or enhancement of, the human brain.”
3. The Dana Foundation: “The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropy with principal interests in brain science, immunology, and arts education. Charles A. Dana, a New York State legislator, industrialist and philanthropist, was president of the Dana Foundation from 1950 to 1966 and actively shaped its programs and principles until his death in 1975.”
4. Some of these bibliographic entries were inserted using Zotero’s capacity to let “users choose a citation format, such as Chicago, MLA, APA, or others. To add a source from Zotero, a user simply drags that source into an application such as Microsoft Word or Google Docs [and WordPress!!!!], and a properly formatted citation is inserted. Zotero also generates a bibliography of all the sources included in a paper.” I did not choose my preferred citation format or generate the bibliography in the proper Zotero mode yet. This needs tweeking on my part but it was successful.

Citations from Antes, Geertz and Warne (2004).

4. “Body, Emotion, and Consciousness: The Portuguese born neurologist at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Antonio R. Damasio, has argued in a number of books that studies of the brain, cognition and consciousness are seriously hampered because neuroscientists traditionally ignore the role of functions and emotions in the brain. 47 He claims that “it is possible that feelings are poised at the threshold that separates being from knowing and thus have a privileged connection to consciousness” (Damasio 1999:43). Emotions are at a fairly high level of life regulation, and when they are sensed, that is when one has ‘feelings,’ the threshold of consciousness has been crossed. Emotions are part of homeostasis, which is the automatic regulation of temperature, oxygen contentration or pH in the body by the autonomatic nervous system, the endrocrine system and the immune system. According to Damasio, homeostasis is the key to consciousness (Damasio 1999:40). Damasio defined consciousness as constructing knowledge about two facts: “that the organism is involved in relating to some object, and that the object in the relation causes a change in the organism” (Damasio 1999:20). Understanding the biology of consciousness becomes, then, a matter of discovering “how the brain can map both the two players and the relationship they hold” (Damasio 1999:20). The interesting thing is that the brain holds a model of the whole thing, and this may be the key to understanding the underpinnings of consciousness (Antes, Geertz, Warne 2004:365).”

“[Damasio's] explanation for this enigma is precisely as follows: “I have come to the conclusion that the organism, as represented inside its own brain, is a likely biological forerunner for what eventually becomes the elusive sense of self. The deep roots for the self, including the elaborate self which encompasses identity and personhood, are to be found in the ensemble of brain devices which continuously and nonconsciously maintain the body state within the narrow range and relative stability required for survival. These devices continually represent, nonconsciously, the state of the living body, along its many dimensions. I call the state of activity within the ensemble of such devices the proto-self, the nonconscious forerunner for the levels of self which appear in our minds as the conscious protagonists of consciousness: core self and autobiographical self.” (Damasio 1999:20) cited in (Antes, Geertz, Warne 2004:365).”

“This is, indeed, a radical embodiment theory and should be of interest to scholars of religion involved in studies of central religious concepts such as personalities, personhood, selves and souls. The very fact of plurality of selves in Damasio’s model should prove useful to the study of religions that deal with multiple selves and souls (Antes, Geertz, Warne 2004:365).”

Webliography and Bibliography

Antes, Peter; Geertz, Armin W.; Warne, Randi R. 2004. Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Religion. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin/New York.

Anthony Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (New York: Harcourt, 1999).

“Brain-Based Education – Summary Principles of Brain-Based Research, Critiques of Brain-Based Education,”

Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Ethical Brain (New York: Dana Press, 2005).

Henry T. Greely, “Prediction, Litigation, Privacy, and Property: Some Possible Legal and Social Implications of Advances in Neuroscience,” in Neuroscience and the Law: Brain, Mind, and the Scales of Justice . Dana Press.

Safire, William. 2003-07-10. “The Risk that Failed.” New York Times.

Educause, “7 Things You Should Know About Geolocation,” 2008,

Ciencia, jazz y sentimientos.

El otro día acudí al congreso de la ESOF, la sociedad científica europea, en Barcelona. Fui con un firme propósito de reafirmacion, convencido aún de que las fronteras son difusas; de que las diferencias, que las hay, no las vuelven excluyentes; harto como siempre de la definición, de las elecciones forzadas, de las ciencias o las letras. No quiero hacer hoy un resumen o un juicio de lo que vi. No sé tampoco si quiero hablar de la necesidad del lenguaje en la ciencia, de la comunicación, esos lugares que creía comunes. Sí sé que hoy quiero hablar de la ciencia y el jazz.

En Copenhague existe un Instituto para la divulgación científica, el Danish Science Communication. En él colabora un neurocientífico llamado Peter Vuust. La peculiaridad es que además Peter Vuust es, al parecer, un reputado violoncellista. Su investigación se basa, de hecho, en estudiar las diferencias en el comportamiento cerebral que muestran al escuchar una obra musical los músicos profesionales respecto a aquéllos que no lo son. Durante la charla, uno de los responsables del instituto iba mostrando una partitura a medida que sonaba un tema del Miles Davis Quintet (donde también estaban John Coltrane y Herbie Hancock). Después demostró cómo, durante la escucha activa, las áreas cerebrales se “iluminaban” de forma diferente en los músicos profesionales y en los individuos control. En éstos, las zonas más activas eran las esperadas, es decir, aquellas que correspondían al lóbulo temporal, el responsable de la gestión auditiva. En cambio, en los músicos profesionales se activaban también otras áreas aparte de éstas; la sorpresa vino con su identificación: ¿cuáles eran? Pues eran áreas muy cercanas a aquellas que correspondían al lenguaje. Es decir, se puede decir que los músicos, literalmente, “hablan” al tocar.

(Yo entonces pienso en aquellas clases agotadoras de solfeo. Pero sobre todo pienso en que uno de los profesores a veces nos ponía audiciones. Recuerdo cómo montaba ilusionado el equipo de música y cómo disfrutaba anunciándonos pasajes, hablándonos del fraseo, de las “conversaciones” entre los instrumentos.

Pienso ahora también que me entusiasmaban las audiciones porque la música era explicada, imaginada, verbalizada.

Lo dejé antes de acabar.)

Me pregunto, aunque sea con vocación estética, si los resultados pueden ser extensibles a los físicos, los matemáticos, los bailarines, los escultores.

Al fin y al cabo la ciencia, muchas veces, lo que hace es explicar y ahondar en nuestras intuiciones.

Para ello es necesario seguir el hilo.

Si ahora sigo el hilo recuerdo que estoy leyendo “En busca de Spinoza”, de Antonio Damasio, un neurólogo portugués. Y recuerdo sobre todo una teoría que sostiene: que las emociones, los sentimientos, son el fondo una representación corporal. Que, por tanto, no es posible la felicidad ni la tristeza sin sensación. Escojo fragmentos: 

“Con el fin de dejar que siga este experimento mental, permita el lector que le ofrezca algunas sugerencias: piense que está tendido en la arena; el sol del final del día calienta ligeramente su piel, el océano chapotea a sus pies, y oye un murmullo de hojas de pino en algún punto situado detrás de él; además, sopla una suave brisa estival, la temperatura ambiente es de 26ºC y no hay una sola nube en el cielo. Tómese el lector su tiempo y saboree la experiencia. Voy a suponer que no se aburre como una ostra y que, en cambio, se siente muy bien, extraordinariamente bien, como le gusta decir a un amigo mío; y la pregunta es: ¿en qué consiste este “sentirse bien”? He aquí algunas pistas: quizá la calidez de su piel era confortable. Su respiración era fácil, inspirar y expirar, sin ningún impedimento por parte de ninguna resistencia en el pecho o en la garganta. Sus músculos estaban tan relajados que no podía sentir ninguna tensión en las articulaciones. El cuerpo se sentía ligero, tumbado sobre el suelo pero etéreo. El lector podía supervisar el organismo como un todo y notar que su maquinaria funcionaba de manera uniforme, sin fallos, ni dolor: la simple perfección. Tenía la energía necesaria para moverse, pero de alguna manera prefirió permanecer quieto, una combinación paradójica de la capacidad y la inclinación para actuar. (…)

 (…) Había adoptado un modo de pensar en el que las imágenes estaban claramente enfocadas y fluían de manera abundante y sin esfuerzo.(…) 

(…) Aparecía nítido el núcleo del sentimiento. Su contenido consistía en la representación de un estado particular del cuerpo. Los sentimientos surgen de cualquier conjunto de reacciones homeostáticas, no únicamente de las emociones propiamente dichas.(…)

 (…) ¿Qué hace que los pensamientos sean felices? Si no experimentamos un determinado estado corporal con una cierta calidad que llamamos placer y que encontramos “bueno” y “positivo” en el marco de la vida, no tenemos ninguna razón para considerar que ningún pensamiento sea feliz. O triste.

 ————————

Por tirar del hilo: a falta de playa y murmullos de hojas de pino, uno puede relajarse poniendo un poco de música. Y por qué no jazz. Al fin y al cabo la felicidad igual está en un disco del Miles Davis Quintet. En relajarse mientras tocan. O mientras nos hablan.

Ada banyak hal dalam hidup ini yang tidak bisa saya mengerti. Saya sepertinya tidak diberkahi otak yang encer; raport SD saya banyak merahnya, tidak diterima di SMP negeri, di STM lebih sering main musik ketimbang belajar, dan lolos ujian masuk di IAIN pun karena kebetulan saja atau mungkin kesalahan administratif! Entahlah.

Jujur, saya tidak mengerti logika teori evolusi, apalagi teori relativitas yang dimaksud Einstein. Saya juga tidak begitu paham teori ekonominya Adam Smith atau Marx. Bukunya Stiglizt dan Sach pernah saya baca, tapi saya tidak pernah ngeh apa yang mereka katakan. Mungkin karena tidak begitu interes dan apa yang saya baca, jadinya tidak pernah nyambung. Entahlah. Sekalipun saya berusaha keras untuk menjamah pikiran-pikiran para filsuf, ilmuwan dan esais kenamaan tentang hidup, politik, agama dll., tetap saja kosan saya terasa sesak, sempit dan tidak masuk akal. Apakah saya bodoh? Apakah IQ saya di bawah rata-rata? Atau, jangan-jangan, saya memang tidak mau mengerti saja? Anda pasti bosan karena saya terus bilang “entahlah”. Klise, tapi saya tak punya pilihan lain.

Dan Anda pasti menganggap saya baru saja membuat prolog yang sangat buruk dan menyedihkan untuk sebuah tulisan yang hendak mengumbar protes dan mengangkat masalah berat seperti “kemanusiaan”. Ah, biarlah. Ini katarsis, kok. Saya ingin benar-benar jujur dalam menulis entri ini. Karena entri ini memang berangkat dari pengalaman eksistensial saya; kebuntuan saya dalam menalar bagaimana-dan-mengapa kita hidup. Apa yang saya tulis adalah gagasan yang bersifat sporadis dan spontan. Tidak ada sistematika, hanya kata-kata yang dialirkan, dilepaskan seperti hasrat bercinta, buang air besar dll.

Misteri Hidup dan Kesadaran
Hidup itu sebuah enigma. Tidak ada jawaban tunggal untuk setiap pertanyaan yang dilontarkan. Dan hidup itu jauh dari jangkauan persamaan matematis, menurut saya. Bukan karena semesta itu sangat luas dan tua seperti yang dibilang para ilmuwan; tapi karena kesadaran yang sepertinya hadir melampaui tubuh; kesadaran yang sepertinya bebas melakukan apa saja; kesadaran yang sepertinya adalah jati diri kita sesungguhnya! Anda tidak perlu membaca antologi filsafat modern atau buku daras neurologi untuk mengenali kesadaran itu. Saya mengandaikan Anda seperti saya, jadi saya yakin Anda pernah setidaknya sekalilah dalam hidup Anda tersentak oleh hadirnya kesadaran Anda, yakni saat ketika Anda yakin bahwa pilihan-pilihan hidup Anda adalah murni produk otoritas/kebebasan kesadaran Anda sebagai Anda, bukan sebagai manusia yang dengan dinginnya disebut binatang dalam ilmu biologi, tetapi sebagai subyek; subyek yang, sekali lagi saya tegaskan, melampaui tubuh.

Misalnya, ketika Anda hendak memutuskan pacar Anda, atau ketika Anda memutuskan berhenti bekerja. Saat itu kesadaran Anda muncul dalam bentuk kehendak dan tindakan yang bebas, bukan? Sekalipun saya bodoh dan tidak mengerti banyak hal, saya mengagungkan kesadaran saya untuk memilih dengan bebas. Kebebasan itulah yang mendefinisikan kemanusiaan saya. Di sini saya mengemansipasikan dan meninggikan diri saya sebagai Subyek. Kesadaran dan kemanusiaan, pendeknya, adalah manifestasi subyek-subyek, yakni saya dan Anda yang menulis dan membaca postingan ini.

Tantangan Determinisme dan Naturalisme
Saya tidak tahu banyak tentang ilmu alam. Jika ada kesempatan saya akan membaca The Selfish Gene dan The Blindwatchmaker karya Richard Dawkins dan Descrates’ Error karya Damasio lebih serius lagi. Tiga-tiganya sudah saya taruh kembali di lemari; capek bacanya. Yang jelas, saya merasakan adanya ancaman terhadap kemanusiaan saya. Dalam perspektif sains, kesadaran yang saya uraikan di atas mungkin tidak ada; tidak lebih dari omong kosong atau kesalahan dalam penalaran. Pendeknya, saya dibohongi dan tidak menangkap apa yang sesungguhnya terjadi di kepala kita; yang secara empiris bisa dibuktikan sebagai pusat kesadaran. Dingin memang, suara hati pun dalam paradigma sains tidak berasal dari bagian dalam dada Anda, tapi dari kepala, dari otak. Ini tentu membuat ekspresi “lihatlah ke dalam hati Anda” menjadi sangat tidak masuk akal karena tidak ada itu yang namanya “hati” atau “kalbu”. Hati, seperti juga jiwa, bisa jadi cuma ilusi saja. Karena, dalam pandangan kausalistik sains, segala sesuatu, termasuk kesadaran Anda adalah produk dari apa yang terjadi sebelumnya; logikanya sama sama dengan bola yang Anda tendang.

Nah, saya menentang paham ini. Karena jelas, pandangan sains semacam ini akan melenyapkan kekebasan sang subyek, kebebasan saya dalam memilih. Well, sebenarnya bukan hanya kebebasan saya saja sih, tetapi kesadaran otonom saya juga dilenyapkan, karena bisa jadi sel yang secara kasat mata hidup dalam tubuh saya itu adalah oknum-oknum yang menggerakan tubuh dan mengendalikan pikiran saya. Ketika saya membaca The Selfish Gene, saya agak bingung: siapa yang lebih berkuasa, tubuh atau pikiran/kesadaran? Apakah kesadaran itu produk dari tubuh yang dikendalikan oleh gen yang katanya egois? Apakah jiwa yang mengendalikan tubuh sebagai mesin? Ataukah tubuh sebagai mesin yang memanipulasi “jiwa” atau “kesadaran” kita untuk kelangsungan hidupnya? Jangan-jangan kesadaran yang saya agung-agungkan itu hanya tipuan belaka dari gen-egois kecil brengsek yang hanya ingin bertahan hidup. Bah! Pikiran apa pula ini!? Ironisnya, saya bertanya-tanya, apakah gen-egois itu sadar bahwa hidup itu hampa? Mengapa mereka mau bertahan hidup? Untuk kebahagiaankah?

Saya tentu tidak berpretensi untuk membuktikan secara ilmiah bahwa naturalisme itu salah. Adalah kekonyolan yang luar biasa untuk membuktikan bahwa ada sesuatu di balik tubuh; bahwa dunia nyata itu sebenarnya tidak nyata dengan cara-cara ilmiah. Karena, itu akan sangat sulit! Saya juga tentu tidak menyetujui cara-cara manipulatif yang dilakukan oleh sekelompok Muslim dan Kristen yang untuk membuktikan klaim mereka bahwa evolusi itu salah. Saya bingung mengapa filsafat dikawinkan dengan sains; padahal keduanya berbeda. Betul, sains bukan filsafat. Filsafat bisa saja mengklaim bahwa sains itu “anaknya”, tapi jangan lupa sains diam-diam mencurigai filsafat dan bisa menikamnya dari belakang kapan saja. Bisa jadi, kata para ilmuwan, filsafat hanya produk dari evolusi organisme saja. Jadi, tidak ada yang agung dari filsafat dan tidak perlulah dihormati secara berlebihan. Toh, filsafat sama banalnya dengan rumah berang-berang!

Saya menentang naturalisme dengan kekuatan saya satu-satunya; kebebasan saya sebagai subyek! Kesadaran saya yang bebas untuk memilih pandangan hidup dan menolak paham naturalisme dan penyerahan diri terhadap sains sebagai pewarta tunggal kebenaran/pengetahuan. Saya menggunakan kehendak bebas saya untuk mendakwa sains yang pongah itu, yang mencibir kasih sayang seorang ibu kepada anaknya, rindu-dendam seorang kekasih pada pasangannya, kesalihan seorang abid kepada Tuhannya.

Masa depan mungkin hanya kekosongan yang absurd. Naturalisme bisa jadi benar dan saya pun mungkin hanya korban manipulasi entitas-entitas organik dalam tubuh saya dan juga alam semesta. Saya sebagai Subyek mungkin hanya ilusi belaka. Si penulis blog ini mungkin hanya boneka — survival machines, dalam istllah Dawkins – yang sedang meneriaki kekosongan. Saya tidak tahu. Saya hanya bisa percaya. Setelah pos ini dipublikasikan, saya masih akan terus dihantui pertanyaan apakah gadis kecil, dekil, polos, manis yang menghampiri saya sembari mengadahkan tangan mungilnya di perempatan Plaza Senayan kemarin itu menderita tanpa alasan; sama seperti tikus-tikus yang mati terlindas di tengah jalan?

Disclaimer:

Saya bukannya anti sains. Saya tidak melarang siapapun untuk menemukan “holy grail” atau pusat dari struktur kehidupan lewat sains. Saya hanya menyampaikan pendapat saya saja. Kali aja ada yang berpikiran sama, atau berbeda dan punya keinginan menyanggah atau mengubah pandangan saya.

Saya tidak mengklaim pikiran saya original. Saya hanya malas mengutip para pemikir yang pemikirannya mungkin mempengaruhi saya. Karena, saya pikir itu tidak penting dan belum tentu juga saya memahami pemikiran para pemikir itu dengan benar.

Ich hatte heute vor der Arbeit noch etwas Zeit und war in einem Bücherantiquariat. Zum erstenmal übrigens.

Normalerweise kenne ich diese Bücherkisten vor den Geschäften, in denen Sonderangebote zu niedrigen Preisen vertickt werden, Bücher, die mich nicht interessieren. Meist sind das Kochbücher, quasi-esoterische schwurbelige Lebensberater oder Bücher mit Titeln wie “Die schönsten Bahnstrecken in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern” oder ähnlich überflüssiges.

In diesem Antiquariat wars anders, zwar sind die Bücher etwas älter und zum Teil schon gelblich angefärbt, aber inhaltlich eine eigene Liga.

Hier ist was ich gekauft habe (für nur 10 Euro insgesamt):

Kant, Werke, Band 7: Schriften zur Ethik und Religionsphilosophie (wenn mir das zu schwer oder zu trocken ist verschenk ichs einfach oder brings zurück)

Hermann Hesse: Kunst des Müßiggangs (Diese Kunst würde ich gerne können…)

Friedrich Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra (Wahnsinn aus erster Hand?)

Tor zu den Sternen, SF-Erstveröffentlichungen von Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein und Co. (Kurzgeschichten für zwischendurch, mit Bildchen dabei)

Jiddu Krishnamurti: Einbruch in die Freiheit (hab früher schon was von K. gelesen, nicht uninteressant)

Salman Rushdie: Scham und Schande (habe noch nie was von Rushdie gelesen, bin gespannt)

Michael Lukas Moeller: Die Wahrheit beginnt zu zweit (kenn ich auch aus früheren Tagen schon, könnte was zu meiner Beziehung beitragen. Zumindest schadets mal nicht)

Stanislaw Lem: Die Astronauten

Stanislaw Lem: Die Technologie-Falle

Stanislaw Lem: Der futurologische Kongress (hab ich vor etlichen Jahren schonmal gelesen, ist gut soweit ich mich erinnere)

Ob ich alle diese Bücher tatsächlich wirklich echt ganz lese ist allerdings wieder ein anderes Thema, aber für den Preis…

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Ich habe auch ein paar Bücher, die ich voller Enthusiasmus angeschafft habe, aber bei denens irgendwie nicht richtig “flutscht”:

Hier der Bücherberg, meine angelesenen Bücher mit denen ich irgendwie nicht weiterkomme:

Die “Goldene Kompass”-Trilogie, 2 Scheibenweltromane, Damasio “Ich fühle also bin ich”, Jared Diamonds “Kollaps” (die letzten 2 Bücher habe ich bis zur Hälfte), Der elektrische Mönch von D. Adams, Lem “Der Schnupfen”…vielleicht hab ich jetzt auch was vergessen.

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Natürlich habe ich auch Bücher ganz gelesen, dafür gibts aber dann einen Extra-Eintrag irgendwann

Aqui no Mundo47, a jornalista  Fabrícia Prado fez um belo texto sobre o show de Bárbara Damásio, que rolou no último domingo no Teatro Municipal de Itajaí. Agora vou postar o link do blog de Guilherme Meneghelli, que clicou imagens fantásticas do show da cantora de Itajaí. Confira!

A jovem cantora Bárbara Damásio, 21 anos, de Itajaí, subiu ao palco do Teatro Municipal na noite deste domingo para mais uma edição do seu “Bárbara canta Chico”. Quem esteve no Municipal teve a chance de ouvir uma das mais belas vozes da região, que com o tempo e trabalho pode ser destaque em todo país.

Se no repertório de Chico Buarque sobram composições espetaculares e populares que facilitam a escolha do repertório para uma homenagem com garantia de sucesso, certamente não é qualquer artista que consegue interpretá-las com a qualidade que Bárbara o fez.

Além disso, a cantora resolveu fugir das mais convencionais, e claro, não menos brilhantes composições de Chico. Bárbara foi extremamente feliz na escolha das canções. Quem já teve a oportunidade de vê-la cantando há algum tempo e assistiu ao show deste domingo, certamente percebeu o amadurecimento da cantora, que aos poucos vai abandonado o esteriótipo “gritante” das jovens cantoras da MPB – que mais parecem cópias em série de Elis Regina – e assumindo um estilo próprio, “gastando” sua voz na medida certa, o que como uma mera ouvinte de MPB considero raro e o mais difícil de se ouvir.

Os convidados também foram uma escolha acertadíssima. Com uma irreverência e com um estilo mais do que próprio de interpretar a passagem de Chico Preto pelo palco foi veloz, mas marcante. Não só pela interpretação irreverente e divertidíssima em “Biscate”, mas também porque livrou Bárbara do nervosismo aparente do início da apresentação. O mesmo aconteceu com a entrada de Giana Cervi no palco. Giana – que dispensa qualquer comentário – tem uma presença de palco contagiante o que mais uma vez contribuiu para que Bárbara relaxasse.

O que faltou? Na minha visão faltou direção e comunicação com a platéia. As canções poderiam ser melhores distribuídas. Houve uma seqüência relativamente longa de canções mais densas de Chico criando um clima intimista ao extremo em certos momentos e a diversão – com exceção da participação de Chico Preto logo no início –  ficou reservada mais para o final da festa.

Se a voz de Bárbara “dá e sobra” para cerca de uma hora e meia de Chico Buarque – que ressalto mais uma vez ser um mérito para qualquer intérprete de renome, ainda mais para uma artista tão jovem – faltou comunicação, com o público e com a própria banda.

A platéia queria Bárbara, pedia por ela, mas a menina pouco falou. Fora alguns tímidos “obrigada”, Bárbara deixou para o final uma fala rápida de agradecimentos, algo mais burocrático, parecia estar temendo uma platéia que – ao menos ao meu redor – era só elogios, mas pedia um pouco mais de atenção. Mas não foi somente a falta de diálogo, o corpo também precisa falar e o de Bárbara estava meio quieto, inseguro, coisas que só o tempo é capa de trazer.

Por isso, considero que apesar da falta desta direção, “Bárbara canta Chico”, foi um espetáculo muito bom, pois no final, a interpretação das canções superou estas falhas e fez com que o público saísse satisfeito e muita gente comentando que ainda queria mais.

Acredito que o mais importante a se falar é que quando Bárbara subiu ao palco neste domingo ela assumiu um compromisso com a platéia. O compromisso de melhorar cada vez mais suas interpretações, de seguir na escolha de um bom repertório e de interagir melhor com o público que tanto a admira. E isto é simplesmente fantástico. Nas raras produções regionais que se vê ultimamente com clássicos da MPB a grande vontade é mesmo de ir para casa e dormir, algo que certamente não aconteceu neste domingo.

“You can’t create artificial intelligence; machines can’t feel.”

People have been yelling this at proponents of AI for a long time. And now, Cognitive Science seems to be catching up on this.

Traditional AI has always sought to create intelligent systems through creating algorithms that mimic human behaviour. And you can only do this for the surface thought patterns that you can observe in humans, the so called “conscious mind” where all the rational, logical thinking is said to happen.

Emotions have always been a subject of mystery. The main reason being that emotions are part of the “subconscious” or “unconscious” mind – that part in our mind that we have not yet learnt to observe – at least not in clear, quantitative values – you know, meter reading.

Cognitive Science was born out of the idea that the mind is like a computer. Ignoring the part of the mind which does not behave like a computer, scientists looked at our conscious thinking patterns and tried to build them electronically. Could this be because the idea of a rationally thinking mind which executed precise algorithms was so appealing to those scientists, rather than because they had good reasons to ignore a big part of our psyche? Well, if that is the case, that’s human behaviour for you.

Over and over we have been told that rational thinking is the way to go. Emotions were for idiots, we were taught. People who could think without using emotions in their decisions were much more intelligent and superior. After all, women are dumb because they get emotional, right? ( For the less intelligent of you, notice that I’m being sarcastic… )

Yet then the question arises as to why emotions exist in the first place. And areas of Psychology which have tapped into this black box called the unconscious mind know that it is much, much larger than the conscious mind. There are other areas on Psychology that make it clear that the unconscious mind was a powerhouse where so much processing happened and that we used the results obtained through this processing to guide our everyday decisions. There are so many wonderful findings in this field, but this is not the place to talk about them.

If emotions only crippled our intelligence, then why is such a large part of our mind keep creating these emotions which dumb us down? Was dear mother nature not sober when she designed that part of the mind?

But finally, through the work of researches such as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California, we are seeing that people who do not have emotions do not become better thinkers – in fact, these poor souls are sometimes terrible at making even everyday decisions. Damasio worked with patients that could not perceive feelings due to brain injuries. These people often made terrible decisions, some spent hours thinking over irrelevant details.

Well, the wonderful Damasio is my new hero. At least for the next 5 minutes.

Does this mean that we cannot build algorithms to demonstrate intelligent behaviour?

Not at all, I think. It is simply that we are only beginning to develop mechanisms to observe the processes regarding emotions to know what algorithms the unconscious mind executes. And doing this will turn out to be an easy task. But at least, Cognitive Science, in my extremely humble and valueless opinion, is on a better track than before.

Homepage : Antonio Damasio, USC

En clase de Historia de la Filosofía he hecho referencia a dos tipos interesantes.  Sobre el primero, un hombre que confundía a su mujer con un sombrero, se puede leer el primer capítulo del libro del neurólogo Oliver Sacks.  Sobre el segundo, Phineas Gage, el primer capítulo del libro de Antonio Damasio titulado reveladoramente “El error de Descartes”.

El caso del hombre que confundía a su mujer con su sombrero interesa a la epistemología.  El de Gage, a la ética.

Illustration 3D cerveau humain - Source : Wellcome Images

Une des questions les plus fascinantes à laquelle les neurosciences tentent de répondre depuis leur début dans les années 1970, dans leur quête du fonctionnement de l’esprit humain, est celle de la conscience. En particulier comment expliquer le sentiment de je ou la conscience de soi? Longtemps réservé au domaine de la philosophie, ce phénomène s’étudie maintenant en laboratoire grâce à des techniques diverses dont l’imagerie cérébrale et sur les observations de la pathologie clinique. Les résultats expérimentaux de cet immense champ d’exploration commencent à livrer leurs premiers modèles et théories sur le fonctionnement de la conscience au travers de ses multiples manifestations et ses perturbations.

J’ai découvert un dossier brillant intitulé ‘La conscience vue par les neurosciences’ par Jean-Paul Baquiast et Christophe Jacquemin à ce sujet. Les auteurs ont réussi le tour de force de présenter de manière succinte un récapitulatif des théories de la conscience et du moi conscient sur la base de leurs notes de lectures d’ouvrages de scientifiques comme Gerald Edelman [1], Antonio Damasio [2], [3] [4] , Chris Frith [5], Lionel Naccache [6], etc. Je vous laisse découvrir le contenu de leur site http://www.automatesintelligents.com/echanges/2008/dec/conscience.html.

Afin de pouvoir évoquer dans  des billets ultérieurs d’éventuels rapprochements entre les neurosciences et le Vedanta, et en précisant à l’avance que leurs domaines premiers d’investigations sont distincts, je vous propose de commencer par exposer ce que le Vedanta dit de la relation entre le soi ‘védantique’ (sujet que n’aborderait jamais un scientique) et l’esprit humain et la définition qu’il donne de l’ego ou du sentiment de soi (sujet abordé par les neurosciences et le Vedanta). Le texte qui suit est une traduction personnelle en français d’extraits d’un article de Swami Dayananda Saraswati intitulé ‘The psychology in Vedanta‘ [7].

Question : Pourriez-vous décrire la relation entre le soi (self) et l’esprit (mind) et définir pour nous de quelle manière ces termes sont compris dans le Vedanta?

Swamiji: Dans le Vedanta, nous avons des mots comme  indriyâni, manah, buddhi, cittam, et ahankârah. Je vous propose de commencer par ces termes puis à partir de là, d’en venir à ce que nous comprenons par esprit, etc. Les cinq sens de la perception (indriyâ ou indriyâni) sont l’ouie, le vue, l’odorat, le goût, et le toucher qui est distribué sur tout le corps.

Nous avons ensuite la faculté de pensée qui est derrière ces cinq sens. Cette faculté de pensée est sous la forme de modifications de pensée ou de cognition, que nous appelons vrtti. Vrtti est une pensée, des pensées, des cognitions ou des formes de pensée. Nous définissons plus en avant vrtti par ces trois catégories ou types, bien qu’il y en ait de nombreux autres. Le premier est mana, puis buddhi, et le dernier est citta. Nous définissons ainsi les vrttis sous la forme de leurs trois manifestations. Mana désigne généralement le mental (mind).  Les émotions, désirs, doutes, et les oscillations et vacillations de la pensée entrent dans la catégorie de mana. Il y a ensuite un autre type de pensées qui inclut une réflexion volontaire ou délibérée. Quand il y a de la résolution, volonté, ou une décision, nous appelons cela buddhi. Les processus de raisonnement et d’inférence, etc. entrent tous dans cette catégorie. Il y a ensuite la mémoire et la capacité d’extraire les données de la mémoire que nous appelons citta.

Ainsi, ces trois ensemble – mana, buddhi, et citta – portent le nom d’antakarana (littéralement ‘instrument interne’) ou, en général, l’esprit. Celui qui possède l’esprit est l’ego ou le ‘je’ (aham). Aham est l’individu-la pensée de ‘je’ ou celui qui emploie l’esprit. Par conséquent, l’ego est le sentiment de ‘je’ (ahankâra), le sentiment d’être un individu. Tout sentiment d’appartenance, d’être un sujet connaissant, un sujet expérimentant ou jouissant, un sujet agissant ou un acteur appartiennent tous à aham.

Nous voyons l’ego par l’intermédiaire de l’esprit (mind), la buddhi, citta et le corps ou les sens. Quand vous êtes en relation avec le monde extérieur, votre vision de vous-même est que  “Je suis le fils de… ; je suis la fille de …; je suis un mari ou je suis une épouse”. Quand vous vous regardez d’un point de vue extérieur, c’est l’ego. Nous donnons une définition de l’ego seulement à partir de différents points de vue.

Le Vedanta ne voit pas l’ego comme une entité indépendante qui serait dénuée d’identification avec d’autres objets relationnels comme le corps physique, la respiration (prâna), les cinq organes des sens, le mental (mana), l’intellect (buddhi), et la mémoire (citta). Où est l’ego sans identification avec l’un de ces objets? L’ego doit s’appuyer sur une chose ou une autre. L’ego lui-même consiste en la somme des mémoires ou expériences du passé (samskâras), de nos tendances individueles ou prédilections, etc. qui, prises ensemble, constituent une personne différente de toutes les autres. Il est également variable et ne reste jamais le même. A cet instant c’est un ego heureux, puis un ego confus, ou un ego avec une certaine clarté. Et en référence à certains faits, l’ego est lucide et clair mais en référence à d’autres, il n’est pas aussi clair. Il est aussi parfois conditionné par l’inconscient personnel (kasâya). Notre vie émotionelle tout particulièrement, et parfois la réponse de l’ego au monde dépend de son inconscient ou kasâya. Cela inclut ses connaissances, ses souvenirs, son éducation et aussi la culure, la société, et ainsi de suite. Cet ego inclut tous ces élements.

[Question : Qu'en est-il de la relation entre l'ego et le soi (védantique)?]

Swamiji: L’ego (ahankâra) est donc ce qui semble être nous-même ou le soi. Le Vedanta examine plus en avant si cet ego peut être réellement le soi, car dans le sommeil profond, vous n’avez pas de sentiment de soi, d’ego. Mais pourtant, vous vous rendez compte que vous êtes bien là. Cela veut dire que vous êtes capable de faire la relation entre ce sommeil et de dire ‘mon sommeil’ lorsque vous dites au réveil, “J’ai dormi comme une souche”, etc. Vous étiez là dans le sommeil profond, n’est ce pas vrai?

Ainsi, j’étais là avant le sommeil, je suis là après, et aussi pendant le sommeil. C’est là une manière de le dire. D’une autre manière, vous pouvez aussi dire,  “J’étais conscient de mon sommeil .” “Je dormais” est une expérience. “Je dormais bien” est une expérience. Le fait que “Je n’ai rien vu de particulier pendant que je dormais profondément” est aussi une expérience. Donc, dans le sommeil profond, j’étais là. Dans un moment de joie, je suis là. L’ego que je connais-l’individu, le ‘je’, le soi avec lequel je suis familier -lui n’est pas là.

Par conséquent, de divers points de vue, quand vous examinez ce que le soi est, le Vedanta dit , “L’ ego est le soi, le soi n’est pas l’ego”. Le soi est ce qui est invariable dans toutes les situations[8]. Que vous ayiez des doutes ou que vous éprouviez une émotion, que vous réfléchissiez à un sujet ou ayiez une pensée délibérée ou preniez une décision, que vous vous rappeliez des évènements du passé, c’est le soi qui est invariable dans toutes vos expériences. Dans toutes les situations, une chose est présente, et cette chose est que vous êtes présent. “Je suis” est présent car ce sont là toutes des expériences qui sont insérées, contenues dans le soi. Le soi qui est présent dans toutes ces expériences est le soi intemporel, éternel [9].

Le Vedanta dit que le soi est conscience en tant que telle, ou ‘pure’ conscience. Alors que l’ego est conscience, la conscience apparaît comme étant variable dans l’ego. Ce que l’ego est, et ce dont l’ego est conscient de, sont tous deux le même soi. Ainsi l’esprit est le soi. Le mental est conscience. Chaque pensée est conscience. La pensée de “je” ou l’ego aussi est conscience. La cognition de tout objet est conscience. Quand l’esprit pense à un arbre, la pensée de  l’arbre est conscience. La conscience est donc invariable et elle est le soi[10].

Cette conscience qui n’est autre que le soi a-t’elle une relation avec l’esprit? Et quelle est la nature de cette relation? En réalité, elle n’est pas reliée à l’esprit ou à la pensée. L’esprit est relié au soi seulement dans le sens où l’esprit est le soi;  l’esprit n’a pas d’existence indépendante ou séparée du soi. Mais le soi n’est pas l’esprit.Tout comme cette table est purement et simplement bois et n’est jamais séparée du bois, tandis le bois n’est pas simplement la table.  Le bois continuera à exister même quand la table cessera d’exister. C’est là la relation entre ce qui est et ce qui semble être[11].

Notes

[1] Notes de lecture http://www.automatesintelligents.com/biblionet/2004/aout/edelman.html

Plus vaste que le ciel. Une nouvelle théorie générale du cerveau, Gerald M. Edelman, Odile Jacob sciences 2004
Traduction française (Jean-Luc Fidel) de Wider than the sky, The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness,
Yale university Press, 2004

[2] [3] Notes de lecture http://www.automatesintelligents.com/biblionet/2000/nov/A_Damasio.html

-L’erreur de Descartes, Antonio Damasio, Editions Odile Jacob 1995 – Traduction française de “Descartes’ Error Emotion, reason and the human brain” – Putnam and sons 1994

-Le sentiment même de soi, Antonio Damasio, Editions Odile Jacob 1999
Traduction française de “The feeling of what happens. Body and emotion in the making of conciousness” -Harcourt 1999

[4] Notes de lecture http://www.automatesintelligents.com/biblionet/2003/sep/damasio.html

Spinoza avait raison, Antonio Damasio, Odile Jacob 2003 – Traduit de Looking for Spinoza (Harcourt Ed.)

[5] Notes de lecture http://www.automatesintelligents.com/biblionet/2007/juil/frith.html

Making up the mind, How the Brain Creates our Mental World, Christopher D. Frith – Blackwell Publishing 2007

[6] Notes de lecture http://www.automatesintelligents.com/biblionet/2007/jan/naccache.html

Le nouvel inconscient – Freud, Christophe Colomb des neurosciences, Lionel Naccache,  Odile Jacob 2006

[7]Télécharger l’article complet en anglais en pdf  Psychology in Vedanta

[8] On aura compris que la conscience dont le Vedanta parle n’est pas l’équivalent de la conscience des neurosciences. Elle n’est pas la conscience de l’état de veille, du rêve ou du sommeil profond;  elle n’est pas la conscience primaire ou la conscience supérieure. Elle n’est pas non plus l’absence de conscience. Elle n’est pas le résultat d’un processus neuro-physiologique mais est ce qui est invariablement présent au sein même de tout le fonctionnement de l’esprit. La conscience est pour le Vedanta ce qui est la nature essentielle de ce qui est conscient ou inanimé, du temps et de l’espace, et de tout ce qui est dans l’univers. La conscience n’est donc pas une entité ou un processus confiné dans le corps ou le cerveau. Les mots employés dans les Upanishads en sanskrit pour désigner cette conscience sont chit (dans sat chit ananda) ou jnânam (dans satyam jnânam anantam). L’emploi du mot  ‘conscience’ peut ainsi dérouter l’étudiant. Ce qu’il faut saisir ici, c’est que le Vedanta n’a pas d’autre choix que d’utiliser des mots connus tels que conscience (chit, jnanam) et existence (sat, satyam). Mais son intention est de nous faire voir quelque chose au delà du sens littéral que nous attribuons au mot conscience et existence. Dans ce but, le Vedanta écarte le caractère limité dans le temps et l’espace qu’évoquent pour nous ces mots, existence ou conscience, par des négations. Dans le même temps, il suggère, pointe vers le sens implicite des mots, pour révéler ce qui est la réalité illimitée (anantam ou ananda) de toute chose. Voir à ce sujet dans le site une explication détaillée du rôle de l’enseignant et de la méthodologie d’enseignement

[9] Télécharger depuis le site parent du blog l’article en pdf, Définition de la conscience par Swami Dayananda

[10] Pour en savoir plus, voir L’équation Tu es cela et La nature du soi dans le site parent du blog

[11] Pour en savoir plus sur cette relation , voir La clé du vedanta, satyam et mithya dans le site parent du blog