Future of the Mind

Jack Huber

Description

A historical and biological tour of the human-mind-in-its-environment

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Philosophy of mind
• Popular science
• Cognitive science

Informations

• Publié par: Triarchy Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909470095
• Langue: English

Extrait

Published in this first edition in 2013 by: Triarchy Press Station Offices Axminster Devon EX13 5PF United Kingdom
[phone] [e-mail] www.triarchypress.com
Jack Huber, 2013
The right of Jack Huber to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including photocopying, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-909470-07-1 Hardback ISBN: 978-1-909470-08-8 ePub ISBN: 978-1-909470-09-5
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of Don Michael, a dear friend who encouraged me during my early work on this book and insisted I address changes in the mind itself.
Forewarned is Forearmed
The basic premise underlying this book, the behavior of complex adaptive systems, does not seem to be logical-at least not logical by the commonly accepted norms of logic. Cause and effect don t seem to apply; they have little, if any, meaning. The premise is not subject to easy analysis-at least not to analysis supported by conventional mathematics; its non-linear nature is unpredictable and its consequences have been described as chaotic. It requires us to revise our ideas of the self and the ego and diminishes their importance. In so doing, it undermines some psychological ideas and principles that underpin our whole way of thinking about ourselves-at least in the Western world. It seems to defy the basic laws of physics-relationships reach across domains and dimensions. It is philosophically confusing to those on both sides of the Descartes issue . It does not recognize divisions of study into disciplines of expertise-except that of its own.
In short, the basic premise requires the re-perception of just about all we know about the world and ourselves and the surrender of self to constant re-mashing. If you enjoy that kind of challenge, then I hope you will find the book thought-provoking.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Setting the Stage
Complexity and Environment
Part One
Pattern Recognition
Perception
Metaphors We Live by: Emotions
Sight
The Brain
Part Two
Vision and Emergence
Vision
Voice and Language
The Emergence of Mind and Self
Part Three
Interfaces, Post-Birth Development, and Augmentation
The Sensuous Interfaces
Post-Birth Development and Culture
Visual Thinking and Visual Language
Post-Birth Development and Cyberous Culture
Part Four
The Future of the Mind: a Re-Perception
Our Increasingly Unknowable Mind
An Absentee Mind
The Transcendent Mind
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
It would have been impossible to write this book without the work of numerous other writers in the diverse fields covered in this book. I am grateful for their work. A few are mentioned in the text, some in the notes at the end of each chapter and many more in the bibliography. The Global Business Network was generous in the working space and in the intellectual stimulation it provided at various times while I was writing this book. I particularly want to thank them for hosting the talk by George Lakoff and Francisco Varela on the subject of embedded knowledge-the talk that started my work on this book.
Robert Horn offered several helpful suggestions on portions of the book. I am particularly indebted to him for the questioning nature of the book. I am grateful for the support of Jay Ogilvy, who, throughout the years of my research and writing, provided thought-provoking and supportive discussions of the mind, complexity theory, and emergence.
Very special thanks must go to Napier Collyns. From the beginning, Napier encouraged me, supporting my interests, reading drafts, suggesting approaches, introducing me to people with related interests, and providing a context for writing and editing. Without Napier, this book would not have been completed. I am also grateful to Napier for the friendship he forged between Don Michael and myself-the inspiration for the focus of this book on the mind.
Last, I am very grateful to my editor, Andrew Carey. His probing questions, indefatigable reading and re-reading, and his inexhaustible patience led to a far more readable book than I brought to him initially.
Finally, no one is to blame for the result except me.
Jack Huber June 2013
Introduction
Why this Book?
Wherever people discuss the intense connectivity and interaction of the digital age, a profound sense of unease can usually be found. In news accounts and analyses, whether in print or online, in journals, books, blogs and social networks in whatever flavor of interaction you choose, discussions arise about how we are changing. Whether the focus is on the preoccupation of our children with remote access and digital media, the unrelenting pace of change and competition in work, the increasing digitalization of leisure time, the embrace of ever more remote social life, or even collaborations in science-there is anxiety about what is going on. Not about the modes or the media of interaction we use, but to ourselves. We are concerned about our children. We worry over the pace and intensity. We question changes in the world around us. But underneath all this is the question: what is happening to us? What is happening to our minds? What is happening to our very concept of mind? Have we lost control? Did we ever have control?
Preoccupied with our new gadgets and our new connections, distracted by reports of what we can access and how we can participate what are we missing? At every step our species is actively creating an environment that is, in turn, influencing our own evolution. But perhaps something even more profound than that is happening. Has this interaction of our nervous systems with cyberous systems gone beyond the simple augmentation of our senses? Have we and our cyberous environment become so integrated that we are as one? Is this intense interaction and cyberous augmentation stimulating the emergence of a new mind? Some scientists are beginning to believe that mind now extends beyond the flesh of self, beyond me. Is this possible?
Why Me?
Ideally, someone competent in many pertinent fields of knowledge would be required to explore these questions. But that would mean leaving the task undone. As Steven Pinker observed in How the Mind Works , At this high altitude there is little difference between a specialist and a thoughtful layperson because nowadays we specialists cannot be more than laypeople in most of our own disciplines, let alone neighboring ones. It is unlikely that I have included all of the most persuasive material here. Nevertheless, it is a beginning.
For me, it began with a small group of people gathered at Global Business Network in Emeryville, California in February, 1994. George Lakoff, Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Francisco Varela, Director of Research at the Institute of Neurosciences, cole Polytechnique, Paris, were discussing perception, categorization, and how the mind acquires and uses knowledge. Lakoff was interested in how the mind uses what it knows to move into abstract thinking through the use of metaphors. Varela focused on the relationship of the body to the mind. Both were interested in how the mind learns from the external world, how the body learns with the environment.
I was surrounded by people actively bringing us into the high-tech, interactive world. An idea bubbled to the surface. With all the hype about the Internet, the use of computer graphics in the presentation of information, graphical interfaces, interactivity, and virtual reality, were we missing something much more profound? Was all the talk about access, education, and learning missing the point? I read Lakoff s Fire, Women, and Dangerous Things and (with Mark Johnson) Metaphors We Live By . I read The Embodied Mind by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch. I became convinced we were missing a profound change that was seeping through humanity.
Some questions were answered and many more provoked by the work of William Calvin, theoretical neurophysiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. In a series of books, Calvin explores how environmental changes can influence the evolution of the mind. Furthermore, Calvin believes the changes leading to the future of the mind will be found in the trajectories of changes that reach forward from the past. How has the mind changed? What are those trajectories? How do they operate? How are they linked to changes in the environment? Is each mind changing its environment as it collaborates with it-and consequently changing itself?
Theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher Stuart Kauffman, in a provocative talk at The Santa Fe Institute, introduced me to emergent properties. Could the self-organization of complex adaptive systems and their emergent properties in some way account for the mind s relationship to the central nervous system and the environment? If so, how long has this relationship been in progress? What are the driving forces in this relationship? Where are they going in the future? What is the future of mind?
That is what this book is all about. Three trajectories of change have been identified and projected into the future of the mind. They are pattern recognition, vision, and post-birth development. That future rests on the continuing co-evolution, self-organization, and collaboration of body and environment, and a mind which emerges from the collaboration of the two. The future of the mind will emerge from the sensual embodiment of the environment now influenced by the mind s own design of that environment. In addition, features which challenge our current u