Reading "Mind and Nature: a Necessary Unity", by Gregory Bateson
I had intended to start a thread on Steps to an Ecology of mind, but I have diverted onto this book by the same author, that I think will be a more mature and coherent exposition of a topic that intrigues and confuses, and is of vital importance right now to the survival of the species:
https://monoskop.org/images/c/c3/Bateson_Gregory_Mind_and_Nature.pdf
Unfortunately, all the pdf versions I can find for free seem to be taken from the same poorly scanned hard copy. This means that the copy function does not work very well on some pages. But below is a clean version of the introduction and the first 2 chapters. Thereafter, we will have to rely on the above less than perfect version or spend actual money. :scream:
http://cat4chat.narod.ru/m_nature.htm
In the course of starting this thread, I was referred back to this old thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9585/incomplete-nature-reading-group/p1
Unfortunately, that discussion did not progress much beyond the first chapter, (or the second if you count chapter zero) and that might just be because readers could not make the necessary paradigm shift. This book is older, and Bateson was a seminal voice in the beginnings of the bio semiotic approach. He was also a consummate educator and communicator, so I am hopeful that this book will provide a more approachable introduction to the topic, and help anyone who is looking for some kind of reconciliation between the scientific and religious traditions that does justice to both. Some folk may notice a connection between Incomplete Nature and my previous thread Reading the Laws of Form. Nothing, absence, the unmarked state...
But this topic also relates to threads like The Mind Created World that are looking for that same reconciliation of science and religion, and also of idealism and realism.
The introduction is quite long, and there are interesting and provocative things therein, so don't pass it by. But I start this thread with the end of the introduction which has the form of a declaration of intent. And an intention is an imagined goal; a nothing which we hope will be realised in the linear future that is represented by the subsequent chapters. (books are linear, but biological processes are circular).
Here then, is the particular nothing that will guide the unfolding of the book - here is thought trying to express how it functions in relation to the world and the being to whom it occurs, expressing (no doubt in retrospect) why it was doing what the reader is about to see it doing. Expect this sort of instant and explicit reflexivity of language aware of itself as it speaks throughout :
In what is offered in this book, the hierarchic structure of thought, which Bertrand Russell called logical typing, will take the place of the hierarchic structure of the Great Chain of Being and an attempt will be made to propose a sacred unity of the biosphere that will contain fewer epistemological errors than the versions of that sacred unity which the various religions of history have offered. What is important is that, right or wrong, the epistemology shall be explicit. Equally explicit criticlsrn will then be possible.
So the immediate task of this book is to construct a picture of how the world is joined together in its mental aspects. How do ideas, information, steps of logical or pragmatic consistency and the like fit together? How is logic, the classical procedure for making chains of ideas, related to an outside world of things and creatures, parts and wholes? Do ideas really occur in chains, or is this lineal (see Glossary) structure imposed on them by scholars and philosophers? How is the world of logic, which eschews "circular argument," related to a world in which circular trains of causation are the rule rather than the exception?
[snip]
Throughout, the thesis will be that it is possible and worthwhile to think about many problems of order and disorder in the biological universe and that we have today a considerable supply of tools of thought which we do not use, partly because -professors and schoolboys alike- ]we are ignorant of many currently available insights and partly because we are unwilling to accept the necessities that follow from a clear view of the human dilemmas.
Prepare to relinquish that unwillingness.
Comments (42)
I warned some pages back that we would encounter emptiness, and indeed it is so. Mind is empty; it is nothing. It exists only in its ideas, and these again are no-things. Only the ideas are immanent, embodied in their examples. And the examples are, again, no-things. The claw, as an example, is not the Ding an sich; it is precisely not the "thing in itself." Rather, it is what mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other.[/quote]
How many threads would this little quote feel at home in? Anywhere that idealism and realism is an issue, or being and nothingness. But this comes out of a detailed and down to earth consideration of the relations between various life-forms. A whole thread just on this would not be amiss.
[quote=introduction]Professional linguists nowadays may know whats what, but children in school are still taught nonsense. They are told that a "noun" is the "name of a person, place, or thing," that a "verb" is "an action word," and so on. That is, they are taught at a tender age that the way to define something is by what it supposedly is in itself, not by its relation to other things.
Most of us can remember being told that a noun is "the name of a person, place, or thing." And we can remember the utter boredom of parsing or analyzing sentences. Today all that should be changed. Children could be told that a noun is a word having a certain relationship to a predicate. A verb has a certain relation to a noun, its subject. And so on. Relationship could be used as basis for definition, and any child could then see that there is something wrong with the sentence "Go is a verb."
I remember the boredom of analyzing sentences and the boredom later, at Cambridge, of learning comparative anatomy. Both subjects, as taught, were torturously unreal. We could have been told something about the pattern which connects: that all communication necessitates context, that without context, there is no meaning, and that contexts confer meaning because there is classification of contexts. The teacher could have argued that growth and differentiation must be controlled by communication. The shapes of animals and plants are transforms of messages. Language is itself a form of communication. The structure of the input must somehow be reflected as structure in the output. Anatomy must contain an analogue of grammar because all anatomy is a transform of message material, which must be contextually shaped. And finally, contextual shaping is only another term for grammar.[/quote]
Here again is a whole thread's worth of meat to pick over, and again I have left out the careful biological considerations that provoke and support the ideas. Children's (mis)education in grammar, is related to undergraduate education in anatomy and a pattern is displayed that relates them, and offers a better way of educating and a better way of thinking and a better way of looking at definitions an meanings - another topic that comes up here regularly.
"And finally, contextual shaping is only another term for grammar."
And this is the tertiary pattern of the pattern that connects.
Do you think Bateson was talking about what we now know as "Information", in a broader philosophical sense than Shannon's narrow engineering useage? Ecology (the logic of Nature) is all about interconnections. Also the "hierarchic structure of thought" seems to be another reference to Logos in human conception.
His writings seem to assume a "Great Chain of Being" ontology, which is denied by most evolutionists, who see no logical connection between one link and another in evolution : e.g. random bush vs linear tree analogies. The interconnections are indeed complex, but without logical links, Evolution would not make sense, and couldn't be "approached in words". :smile:
What is Information Pattern? :
An information pattern is a structure of information units like e.g. a vector or matrix of numbers, a stream of video frames, or a distribution of probabilities.
https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/information-pattern/14438
Note --- It's a logical structure, not a material substance.
There is a sense in which all deductive thought is circular in that conclusions must be "contained" in premises, even if some considerable degree of unpacking is involved in deriving the former from the latter. Speaking less rigorously premises must at least be consistent with one another and with conclusions, so there is always an inherent "circling back" involved in chains of ideas.
The impression I have is that his conception of pattern would be closer to information redundancy and thus compressibility. I say that because he talks about symmetry and serial repetition and such.
But in information terms he already wants to include the way that the development of an organism produces new information, both in the way particularly recursive definitions can produce complexity from simplicity, and practically in the way tree rings record the weather.
My understanding of Shannon is that his notion of information is distinguished from 'noise' by a 'receiver'. Here, the organism as receiver is trying always to detect a message in the environment, and the pattern recognised is the message understood. But the receiver is also part of the pattern.
[quote-Mind and Nature 2:13]When the sequences of cause and effect become circular (or more complex than circular), then the description or mapping of those sequences onto timeless logic becomes self-contradictory. Paradoxes are generated that pure logic cannot tolerate. An ordinary buzzer circuit will serve as an example, a single instance of the apparent paradoxes generated in a million cases of homeostasis throughout biology. The buzzer circuit (see Figure 3) is so rigged that current will pass around the circuit when the armature makes contact with the electrode at A . But the passage of current activates the electromagnet that will draw the armature away , breaking the contact at A . The current will then cease to pass around the circuit, the electromagnet will become inactive, and the
armature will return ro make contact at A and
If we spell out this cycle onto a causal sequence, we get the fol-
lowing:
If contact is made at A, then the magnet is activated.
If the magnet is activated, then contact at A is broken.
If contact at A is broken, then the magnet is inactivated.
If magnet is inactivated, than contact is made.
This sequence is perfectly satisfactory provided it is clearly understood that the if . . . then junctures are causal. But the bad pun that would move the ifs and thens over into the world of logic will create havoc:
If the contact is made, then the contact is broken. If P, then not P.
The if . . . then of causality contains time, but the if . . . then of logic is timeless. It follows that logic is an incomplete model of causality .[/quote]
This then links back to @Gnomon's point about information. The information 'implicit' in the axioms of Euclid unfolds into a whole book of elements consisting of theorems. But in practice, they don't do it by themselves, Euclid has to do it. Thus the algorithm for calculating pi does not contain the value of pi any more than a cake recipe contains a cake. You have to do the math, or the cookery, in time.
On another note, do you agree with @Gnomon that Bateson's' thought "seems to assume a "Great Chain of Being" ontology"? I'm not seeing it, but then Gnomon didn't explain why he thinks that.
[quote= 3:7]At the bacterial level and even among protozoa and some fungi and algae, the gametes remain superficially identical; but in all metazoa and plants above the fungal level, the sexes of the gametes are distinguishable one from the other.
The binary differentiation of gametes, usually one sessile and one mobile, comes first. Following this comes the differentiation into two kinds of the multicellular individuals who are the producers of the two kinds of gametes.[/quote]
It is usually translated as "creative" and "receptive", but "mobile' and "sessile" is possibly more accurate. But the accuracy of the 6,000 year old I Ching is indicative, I think, of a deep and necessary unity of thought and biology all on its own.
Yes, he is close to Hume. I discovered further on, that he even mentions George Spencer-Brown, and in his book that I've been discussing, there is an exact parallel use of time. Euclid takes time to unfold his geometry, and we take time to read through and understand. Nevertheless, the geometry is static and timeless, and so are most logics. It is not envisaged that 2 + 2 will ever attain to 5. Whereas in time ignorant can become knowing, life can become lifeless, or reproduce and; x can become not x and x again.
Quoting Janus
He is at some pains to be explicit about his assumptions. God and angels will not be playing a major role in this. But he is looking at what has been thrown out with the bathwater of religion, There is a passage in the introduction that talks about The Great Chain of Being, that ends thus:
[quote=Intro]In what is offered in this book, the hierarchic structure of thought, which Bertrand Russell called logical typing, will take the place of the hierarchic structure of the Great Chain of Being and an attempt will be made to propose a sacred unity of the biosphere that will contain fewer epistemological errors that the versions of that sacred unity which the various religions of history have offered. What is important is that, right or wrong, the epistemology shall be explicit. Equally explicit criticism will then be possible.[/quote]
The next 2 chapters examine the various underlying assumptions that modern scientific thought makes, and criticises some of the misconceptions as he sees it, and lays outhit own assumptions and the pragmatic reasons for holding them - again echoing Hume in observing that causation is assumed, persistence is assumed and so on.
Hello unenlightened!
If the reference of two things are dual then either reference would be impossible without the other, it would therefore be something outside of the sphere of either concepts which could be a conceivable ground for disputing whether either mind or nature were not a necessary unity, and that would contradict the correspondence between the reference and referents.
Therefore mind and nature are necessarily united.
Also, the concept of necessity is derived empirically (it is actually the most derivative concept we have disjunction->negation->possibility->necessity), and can hardly even be applied transcendentally to metaphysics for that reason. That is, if the necessity of their unity concerns the condition for the existence of anything at all as opposed to us in particular then the concept of necessity were applied transcendentally even though it were derived at bottom from sensations.
I am suspicious of the contents within a book spouting an obvious tautology in its title, but I will read more up on Bateson and believe I am justified in commenting what I commented here without having read any further into him given the nature of my response.
I got that impression from reading Mind and Nature many years ago. He interpreted Evolution as a directional progression, generally from simplicity (elements) to complexity (organisms). Criticism of that ancient notion is primarily concerned with the implication of a natural hierarchy, with humans at the top of the animal kingdom, and white humans at the top of a racial hierarchy. I don't know if Bateson was a racist, but I doubt that race was a primary concern. :smile:
Bateson's Process Ontology :
The work of Gregory Bateson offers a metaphysical basis for a process psychology, that is, a view of psychological practice and research guided by an ontology of becomingidentifying change, difference, and relationship as the basic elements of a foundational metaphysics. This article explores the relevance of Bateson's recursive epistemology, his re-conception of the Great Chain of Being, a first-principles approach to defining the nature of mind, and understandings of interaction and difference, pattern and symmetry, interpretation and context.
https://philarchive.org/rec/TEMBPO
Looking at it that way, I agree with the distinction between logic and physical process.
That makes sense, he is replacing the Great Chain of Being, with a natural and logical hierarchy as God, archangels and angels have no place in his immanentistic, wholistic vison of nature, of "a sacred unity of the biosphere".
Yes. That's why the article I linked above referred to his theory as a "reconception of the Great Chain of Being". In the link below, The Information Philosopher discusses mainly Bateson's notions of Cybernetics (feedback systems), Semantics (meaningful patterns), and Holism (integrated systems). He also mentions that "He variously identified this system as Mind or God, a sort of panpsychism. The supreme system he thought was a whole, not divisible into parts".
I'm guessing that his Panpsychism is similar to Spinoza's "deus sive natura". Definitely not referring to the Bible God. Yet, he still views Evolution as a progressive, perhaps teleological, process. His "chain of being" metaphor looks forward to developments in Quantum, Cybernetic Systems (computers), and Information theories, instead of backward to ancient notions of a divinely-ordained order in nature. :smile:
In his 1972 book, Mind and Nature : A Necessary Unity, [i]Bateson defined his panpsychic and monist view :
Mind is an aggregate of interacting parts or components. (his supreme cybernetic system)
The interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference. (messaging depends on differences > information)
Mental process requires collateral energy. (Bateson appreciated free energy, with negative entropy)
Mental process requires circular (or more complex) chains of determination. (Bateson was a determinist)
In mental process the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (that is, coded versions) of the difference which preceded them. (he describes causal chains)
The description and classification of these processes of transformation discloses a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena.[/i]
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/bateson/
See here for example for a claim that he "... consistently opposed determinism." https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783231?typeAccessWorkflow=login# (no special access required for the quote)
Also the "Science never proves anything" section pretty much rules it out.
Thanks for the info. I also questioned that attribution. But There are several types of Determinism : Hard ; Pre- ; Biological ; Logical ; Causal ; etc. And, I am not an expert on Bateson's philosophy. So, I let it slide. :smile:
If I'm going to be convinced about Bateson's purported panpsychism or deism, I'd want to see quotes from his own work not from some interpreter of it. It's a long time since I read Mind and Nature so even if I don't remember getting the impression that Bateson was panpsychist that might down to my failure to notice it or remember noticing it.
Spinoza is often framed (and I think misinterpreted) as a panpsychist, but he was undoubtedly a deist.
Here's a link to an article that touches on your distinction between Panpsychism and Deism. It includes quotes from another of Bateson's books.
Deism does postulate some kind of Universal Mind, while Spinoza's Nature God seems to be primarily the source of Causation in the world. The quotes below appear to be making the same distinction, between Causation & Consciousness, that I do in my Information-based thesis : Causation (e.g Energy) is universal & eternal, while Consciousness (Sentient Mind) is a late emergent phenomenon after billions of years of Evolution & Enforming.
Bateson denies that "atomies" are conscious --- as some interpret Panpsychism --- and implies that it's "complex relationships" --- such as the neural networks of a brain --- that generate subjective Consciousness, not the material components themselves. Although, Bateson might accept the notion that Matter --- as embodied energy --- may contain the Potential for Mind (i.e Immanent).
Hylonoism is a technical term, similar to Aristotle's Hylomorphism, referring to a combination of Matter & Mind. It appears to be used primarily by Panpsychists. Again, it seems to imply that Conscious Mind is primary, but I tend to view Creative Causation (i.e. First Cause) as the principal Source of everything in the world : both Mind and Matter.
Fundamental Matter ; Prime Mind ; First Cause ? It's a nit-picky distinction that would be, literally & figuratively, immaterial to those who think of Matter as the fundamental element of Reality. Yet if so, then emergent Consciousness must be immanent in matter --- but in what form? Could it be . . . I don't know . . . maybe . . . incorporeal Energy . . . or EnFormAction : the power to transform? :smile:
Bateson versus Panpsychism :
[i]Still, Bateson does not endorse a full-fledged panpsychism. The only exceptions for him
are the fundamental atomic particles ('atomies').[/i]
Quotes from Steps to an Ecology of Mind :
[i]This view is very close in spirit to hylonoism, which sees mind in all [b]interactive
exchanges of energy[/b]. I concluded that, therefore, mind must exist in hierarchic form
throughout all levels of being; Bateson reaches the same conclusion:
we know that within Mind in the widest sense there will be a hierarchy of subsystems, any one of
which we can call an individual mind (ibid). It is not just universal Mind, but [b]mind at
all levels of existence true pluralistic panpsychism[/b]". . . .
"It means that I now localize something which I am calling "Mind"
immanent in the large biological system the ecosystem. Or, if I draw the
system boundaries at a different level, then [b]mind is immanent in the total
evolution structure[/b]". . . .
"The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent
also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind
of which the individual mind is only a subsystem. This larger Mind is still
immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology." . . . .
"I do not agree with Samuel Butler, Whitehead, or Teilhard de Chardin that it
follows from this mental character of the macroscopic world [b]that the single
atomies must have mental character or potentiality. I see the mental as a
function only of complex relationship.[/b][/i]
https://people.bath.ac.uk/mnspwr/doc_theses_links/pdf/dt_ds_chapter7.pdf
I remember Whitehead defining himself as a "pan-experientialist" rather than a panpsychist, and he also asserts that most experience is not conscious. So, I guess the question is as to whether panpsychism postulates consciousness, as defined above, at all levels.
Noticing the repetition of iterations is not the same as saying what they are.
That is very much the feeling i have too; both for the academic world at large, and in my own understanding.
[quote=P. 117]Watching this sequence of cat behavior and the sequence of my reading of it (because the system we are talking about is, in the end, not Just cat but man-cat and perhaps should be considered more complexly than that, as man-watching-man's-watching-cat-watching-man), there is a hierarchy of contextual components as well as a hierarchy concealed within the enormous number of signals given by the cat about herself.[/quote]
Here is a small example of one particular shift that is about the identity of the observer. Whenever what is going on is an interaction between living beings, all the sense of both are involved in a communication that affects both, and this communication is not distinct from the 'internal' communication that constitutes each being's own awareness. Man and cat merge in mutual observation.
With this in mind, I can suggest that when we mutually understand each other, we are in that moment literally 'of one mind' in regards to that which we mutually understand, And this contrasts with the all too common case where I do not understand myself, and project that misunderstanding onto the other, recreating my own cognitive dissonance in the relationship.
I make the same distinction in my Enformationism thesis. Based on my personal understanding of Quantum Physics and Information Theory, I have concluded that Consciousness is emergent, not fundamental. That notion began with physicist John A. Wheeler's postulation that "its" (material things) are derived from "bits" (elements of Information*1). In that essential distinction, Information (the power to enform) is more like Energy than Ideas (E=MC^2).
Also, in physics, Information has been associated with Causal Energy, not with Sentient (experiential) Consciousness. So, I doubt that sub-atomic particles --- which exchange physical Energy --- actually know what is happening to them. Unfortunately, the term "to experience" has ambiguous meanings : A> practical physical interaction, and B> mental metaphysical communication. For an Electron, we call it an exchange of abstract energetic Charge, not of imaginative meaningful Ideas.
Therefore, I infer that Primordial Causation (Plato's First Cause) was not Actual immanent Energy, but Potential relationship*2 Energy . But that's a complex technical topic, not appropriate for a forum post. I imagine that the Actual products of energetic causation range from sub-atomic particles, to human-scale matter, and on up to the most recent developments of Evolution : the emergence of sentient Minds, only a few million years ago. I suppose that primitive Life (e.g. plants & bacteria) is an example of "implicit" awareness, while Animal Life (mammals) is the beginning of "explicit" Consciousness, and human Self-Consciousness is the current apex of Information Evolution. Maybe (speculation), Artificial Intelligence will eventually develop an even higher form of Causal & Conscious Information.
Because I view Consciousness as Emergent, instead of Elemental, I don't agree with the "pan-experiential" form of Pan-Psychism (all mind). Yet, I can agree with a similar notion of Pan-Potential (Platonic Form). If these abbreviated comments are difficult to follow though, I can elaborate in response to specific questions. :smile:
*1. Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics its called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology its called "Conflict".
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
*2. Relationship :
Mathematical Ratios (e.g 1/2) or Einsteinian Relativity (comparison of this to that).
Example --- thermal energy is experienced as a statistical ratio such as Hot to Cold : 50% = neutral ; 70% = warm.
Note --- The Bergsonian "difference" is a ratio between two values --- either numerical or meaningful --- which can be expressed as a percentage or a feeling.
[quote=P.149]We face, then, two great stochastic systems that are partly in interaction and partly isolated from each other. One system is within the individual and is called learning,· the other is immanent in heredity and in populations and is called evolution. One is a matter of the single life time; the other is a matter of multiple generations of many individuals.
The task of this chapter is to show how these two stochastic systems, working at different levels of logical typing, fit together into a single ongoing biosphere that could not endure if either somatic or genetic change were fundamentally different from what it is. The unity of the combined system is necessary.[/quote]
Thinking of Whitehead, I understand him to view consciousness as emergent, it is experience he sees as elemental. His concept of experience is broad, so he would say that, for example, "the cliffs experience the erosive effects of the wind and rain", which is analogous to the way our sentient bodies are precognitively affected by photons, sound waves, scent molecules and so on. These affects result in us seeing, hearing, smelling etc., a world of things, but we cannot be conscious of that process of affection except perhaps after the fact and then it is a defeasible analysis that yields propositional belief, not unmediated knowledge.
This seems rather problematic to me. I suggest that the cliffs experience erosion the way I experience being operated on under general anaesthetic; which is hopefully not at all. Consciousness returns afterwards and I experience the after-effects of the wound and the healing thereof. In this regard there is a very clear distinction between stuff that happens to me and stuff I experience, and to equivocate between them is to confuse oneself. My toenails grow, but I am not conscious of their growth as they grow, though I may notice that they have grown when I cannot get my shoes on.
I am interested here in looking at what Bateson is saying. And one of the things he is saying is that consciousness - he doesn't actually use the word much - so let us say that what is sensed is not ever the thing in the world, but always news of a difference. So the eye vibrates very slightly, and the vibration produces a strong change at the edges of objects in the field of vision. This edge detection is how we see and separate one thing from another. Always he is talking about relationships and layers of relationships between relationships. And patterns of coding. Edges are not things in the world as such, but the vibration produces a flashing at the edges that informs the organism about the environment in ways that matter to it, like telling friend from foe. In this way mind is simply 'more life', and it is all process and all networks of active relations.
Cliffs don't have eyes or noses or nervous systems, so there is no 'news' generated by anything that happens to them, and thus no experience.
Back to the beginning.
[quote=Introduction]... there is a single knowing which characterizes evolution as well as aggregates of humans, even though committees and nations may seem stupid to two-legged geniuses like you and me.
I was transcending that line which is sometimes supposed to enclose the human being. In other words, as I was writing, mind became, for me, a reflection of large parts and many parts of the natural world outside the thinker.
On the whole, it was not the most crudest, the simplest, the most animalistic and primitive aspects of the human species that were reflected in the natural phenomena. It was, rather, the more complex, the aesthetic, the intricate, and the elegant aspects of people that reflected nature. It was not my greed, my purposiveness, my so-called "animal," so-called "instincts," and so forth that I was recognizing on the other side of that mirror, over there in "nature." Rather, I was seeing there the roots of human symmetry, beauty and ugliness, aesthetics, the human beings very aliveness and little bit of wisdom. His wisdom, his bodily grace, and even his habit of making beautiful objects are just as "animal" as his cruelty. After all, the very word "animal" means "endowed with mind or spirit (animus)."
Against this background, those theories of man that start from the most animalistic and maladapted psychology turn out to be improbable first premises from which to approach the psalmists question: "Lord, What is man?"[/quote]
The above are Bateson's words, Bateson's thoughts, and you and I can entertain them, attempt to understand them, and conceivably adopt them to some extent.
So necessarily, a cell, any living cell, has to know how to live, and how to reproduce. Necessarily, a committee has to know how to make a decision. Necessarily, a philosopher has to know how to think about thinking. And in each case there is an abstract pattern that informs and directs a circular relation of influences that constitutes a complex system.
"A cell knows how to divide" does not seem to mean that I know how to divide; my cells know things that I do not. Likewise, committees often seem to know less than their members know.
I know how to direct my fingers to the keys to make sentences, but I cannot explain that knowhow to you, any more than the planning department can handle a spade, but only how to commission a workforce. Have a play in your own mind with what knowing is going on in and around you; have a look at some of the examples in this book. Do you think a post through first and then dictate/copy it through your fingers, or does each phrase somehow suggest the next one, in concert with some overall vague scheme?
Read a little beyond what I have quoted, and you will find a suggestion that we moderns have formed a distorted conception of ourselves as angel/devils or soulless machine masters of the universe. It is in how we understand the 'human condition' that I think a paradigm shift is being proposed. A psychological shift that reunites human with nature, and mind with body. Quick as you like please, because the soulless machine masters are killing us all.
If anything, I want to raise the status of cliffs and rivers, as well as animals and humans and even the lowly machine, but not claim they are all equal.
Quoting unenlightened
I would say that when the rain streams down the cliffs and the wind howls against them, there are changes and that changes are "news", at least potentially. I'm not claiming the cliffs, the rain and the wind are conscious.
We are completely unconscious of the processes by which our senses are affected, we are (possibly) conscious only of the end result; of those things we come to notice and care about.
Quoting unenlightened
This is an important point; we are bedeviled by polemics. the battle between the "too otherworldly" and the "too this-worldly". On account of this state of conflict and confusion we are killing ourselves or at least allowing ourselves to be killed.
:100:
They are changes that make a difference to a seagull that nests in the cliff.
They are differences that make a difference to a seagull that nests in the cliff.
The seagull has a mental map of its home, and the change in the cliff is news to the seagull that makes a difference to its map. It might also make a difference to the map of a local fisherman.
But at least on Bateson's map of mapping, if it doesn't make a difference to a life-form it is a difference that makes no difference.
If a rock falls from a cliff and no one is around to notice, it doesn't make a difference that makes a difference, but if a tree falls in the forest, the whole forest knows about it in all sorts of ways, especially the tree itself if it is still alive.
So changes are potential news, only to life that can be affected in some way. News is not events, but the communication of events.
Example: a human zygote has DNAprogramming that begins something like "repeat n, [divide, stick together]. if endometrium, then implant." If this goes wrong, there might result an ectopic pregnancy, or a clump of cells going down the pan. But if all goes well, on implantation a communication begins between mother and embryo that eventually results in another little unenlightened, or Bateson, or someone.
So to make a human, all you need is around 700mb of DNA ...
... and a fully functioning female human and supportive environment and about 9 months construction time.
Notice the recursion in the recipe, as if Delia were to say, "to make a cake, start with a cake, and then..."
And someone is going to ask, "Which came first, the human or the human genome?" as if there was a beginning to the circle of life.
Likewise, all the algorithm for the decimal iteration of pi needs is a computer and energy and time to produce a decimal string vastly larger than the algorithm.
So much for computers and little biological machines. Now what are the ingredients and recipe for thinking all this stuff? A bunch of humans, a supportive environment, communication...
Indeed.
It gets very interesting when one who has been ignorant of their own false belief becomes aware of exactly what they once believed.
Farmers mistaking sheets for sheeps. People believing that broken clocks are working ones. Etc.
Either some belief is not equivalent to propositional attitude or no one ever looks at a broken clock and presupposes that it's not broken. That's exactly what happens when one of us believes that a broken clock is working. S will not agree to "that broken clock is working" at the time they trust it. The farmer certainly would not assent to the claim that that sheet is a sheep, but they most certainly take that sheet to be a sheep. They believe that a sheet is a sheep. They will not state it at the time. That's due to our inability to knowingly believe a falsehood.
Nice thread!
You did, but I think you are not quite right in a small but important way. The potentiality is in the observer, not the changes.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310223120
I see the potentiality as being in both, and the actuality as being in the interaction. I think the changes are real and independent of the observer, although the ways in which they are perceived and understood are obviously not. I was trying to get away from the notion that reality is entirely constructed by the mind, and I don't think that Bateson thought it was either. I don't have the impression that he was an idealist.
Quoting unenlightened
Cheers, will have a look.
Yes, that's about right.
This seems to be pointing to the religions mentioned in the previous sentence, the critique being that such religions od not possess explicit epistemologies. Making claims without being able to explain how you know, or at least believe, the claim is warranted. Claiming authority of scripture or church is not explicit epistemology because if the question "why believe authority or scripture" is asked, the only possible answers seem to be either "because it feels right to me" or "because the authority or scripture tells me to believe it". The first seems reasonable enough for the individual believer but cannot constitute a cogent argument for why others should believe likewise.
Patterns do connect and they form the basis of taxonomy in science. Seeing the ways patterns relate to one another also enables the unfolding of the story of evolution. Similarities of morphology are things we can all recognize and generally do not need to be argued for because making oneself familiar enough with the morphologies should be sufficient to bring about seeing the connections. Among other things this seems prescient of chaos theory; commonalities of pattern at all levels of being and organization.
I'm thinking Bateson means that such examples are "no-things"_ in the sense that similarities and differences are not objects of the senses in the way things are. And yet we do perceive these "no-things" and without such perception no-thing coherent at all would be perceived.
The "claw" in that quote may refer to a cooked crab's claw, which Bergson used as an object lesson for the difference between living matter and dead matter. He didn't use the term in this case, but I think the "pattern that connects" is what we now call Holism. :smile:
Excerpt from Mind and Nature :
"I was prepared for that. I had two paper bags, and the first of these I opened, producing a freshly cooked crab, which I placed on the table. I then challenged the class somewhat as follows: "I want you to produce arguments which will convince me that this object is the remains of a living thing. . . . ."
Holism :
the theory that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts. Holism is often applied to mental states, language, and ecology. ___Oxford Dictionary
The wiki page has sections on mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, as well as arthropods, and a nice picture of a beetle claw. They leave out the claw hammer, the clawed foot bath and other furniture, and that thing on the end of cranes with 3 great hooks for picking up logs and boulders etc, or in the case of those arcade machines usually, to not quite pick up the prize.
Bateson is not referring to a thing, but to this pattern, this family resemblance that connects. In the end, he is saying, what one can think about and talk about is always the abstraction, and never the particular, and that mind is 'made of' these patterns that we name.
To make sense of the world is to find the patterns, which is to say the regularities; this, that and the other can all be claws, but 'the claw' is none of them in particular. And this pattern of making sense of the patterns of the world is the meta-pattern, that Bateson is drawing attention to. This is philosophy, because philosophy above all is its own meta.
It all seems rather Kantian, but with 'substance' dropping out of the conversation altogether like a Wittgenstein beetle, leaving a monism of form and process. There's a point later on where he describes an electrical switch in its functional existence as either a gap in a circuit when off, or nothing at all, not even a gap when on.
In Figure 4, let A represent the class or set of components of the aggregate of information obtained from some first source (e.g. , the right eye) , and let B represent the class of components of the information ob tained from some second source (e.g. , the left eye). Then AB will represent the class of components referred to by information from both eyes.
AB must either contain members or be empty.
If there exist real members of AB, then the information from the second source has imposed a sub-classification upon A that was previously impossible (ie , has provided , in combination with A , a logical type of information of which the first source alone was incapable).[/quote]
The explanation of the functioning of human vision is worth reading in its entirety, but here is just the punchline, that illustrates the principle that a double description allows, through comparison, a second order description of information that is not present in either description alone, the difference makes all the difference. Stereoscopic vision enables depth perception.
[This description of the value of double description will be given a second description in my next post.]
The comparing of these phenomena (comparing thought with evolution and epigenesis with both) is the manner ofsearch of the science called "epistemology."
Or, in the phrasing of this chapter, we may say that epistemology is the bonus from combining insights from all these separate genetic sciences.
But epistemology is always and inevitably personal.[/quote]
[The text, as indicated here, gives many examples, in this chapter, but rather than go through line by line writing that is already more eloquent than I can manage, I skip gaily forward.]
[quote=P.118]The Pavlovian case is very famous, but my interpretation of it is different from the standard interpretation, and this difference consists precisely in my insistence on the relevance of context to meaning, which relevance is an example of one set of messages meta-communicative to another. The paradigm for experimental neurosis is as follows: A dog (commonly a male) is trained to respond differentially to two alternative "conditioned stimuli," for instance, a circle or an ellipse. In response to X, he is to do A; in response to Y, he is to do B. Ifin his responses, the dog exhibits this differentiation, he is said to discriminate between the two stimuli and he is positively reinforced or, in Pavlovian language, given an "unconditioned stimulus" offood. When the dog is able to discriminate, the task is made somewhat more difficult by the experimenter, who will either make the ellipse somewhat fatter or make the circle somewhat flatter so that the contrast between the two stimulus ob jects becomes less. At this point, the dog will have to put out extra effort to discriminate between them. But when the dog succeeds in doing this, the experimenter will again make things more difficult by a similar change. By such a series of steps, the dog is led to a situation in which finally he cannot discriminate between the objects. At this point, if the experiment has been performed with sufficient rigor, the dog will exhibit various symptoms. He may bite his keeper, he may refuse food, he may become disobedient, he may become comatose, and so on. Which set of symptoms the dog exhibits depends, it is claimed, upon the "temperament" of the dog, excitable dogs choosing one set of symptoms and lethargic dogs choosing another.
Now, from the point of view of the present chapter, we have to examine the difference between two verbal forms contained in the ortho dox explanation of this sequence. One verbal form is "the dog discrimi nates between the two stimuli"; the other is "the dog's discrimination breaks down." In this jump, the scientist has moved from a statement about a particular incident or incidents which can be seen to a generalization that is hooked up to an abstraction-"discrimination"-located beyond vision perhaps inside the dog. It is this jump in logical type that is the theorist's error. I can, in a sense, see the dog discriminate. but I can not possibly see his "discrimination. " There is a jump here from particular to general, from member to class. It seems to me that a better way of saying it would depend upon asking: "What has the dog learned in his training that makes him unable toaccept failure at the end?" And the answer to this question would seem to be: The dog has learned that this is a context/or discrimination . That is , that he " should" look for two stimuli and "should" look for the possibility of acting on a difference between them.
For the dog, this is the "task" which has been set-the context in which success will be rewarded.'*'
Obviously, a context in which there is no perceptible difference between the two stimuli is not one for discrimination. I am sure the ex perimenter could induce neurosis by using a single object repeatedly and tossing a coin each time to decide whether this single object should be interpreted as an X or as a Y. In other words, an appropriate response for the dog would be to take out a coin, toss it, and use the fall of the coin to decide his action. Unfortunately, the dog has no pocket in which to carry coins and has been very carefully trained in what has now become a lie; that is, the dog has been trained to expect a context for discrimination. He now imposes this interpretation on a context that is not a context for discrimination. He has been taught not to discriminate between two classes of contexts. He is in that state from which the experimenter started: unable to distinguish contexts.
From the dog's point of view (consciously or unconsciously), to learn context is different from learning what to do when X is presented and what to do when Y is presented. There is a discontinuous jump from the one sort of learning to the other.
In passing, the reader may be interested to know some of the supporting data that would favor the interpretation I am offering.
First, the dog did not show psychotic or neurotic behavior at the beginning of the experiment when he did not know how to discrimi nate, did not discriminate, and made frequent errors. This did not "break down his discrimination" because he had none, JUSt as at the end the discrimination could not be "broken down" because discrimination was not in fact being asked for.
Second, a naive dog, offered repeated situations in which some X sometimes means that he is to exhibit behavior A and at other times means that he should exhibit behavior B , will settle down to guessing. The naive dog has not been taught not to guess; that is, he has not been taught that the contexts of life are such that guessing is inappropriate. Such a dog will settle down to reflecting the approximate frequencies of appropriate response. That is, if the stimulus object in 30 percent of cases means A and in 70 percent means B, then the dog will settle down o exhibiting A in 30 percent of the cases and B in 70 percent. (He will not do what a good gambler would do, namely, exhibit B in all cases.) Third, if the animals are taken away outside the lab, and if the reinforcements and stimuli are administered from a distance-in the form, for example, of electric shocks carried by long wires lowered from booms (borrowed from Hollywood)--they do not develop symptoms. The shocks, after all, are only of the magnitude of pain that any animal might experience on pushing through a small briar patch; they do not become coercive except in the context of the lab, in which other details of the lab (its smell, the experimental stand on which the animal is supported, and so on) become ancillary stimuli that mean to the animal that this is a context in which it must continue to be "right." That the animal learns about the nature of laboratory experiment is certainly true, and the same may be said of the graduate student. The experimental subject, whether human or animal, is in the presence of a barrage of context markers o exhibiting A in 30 percent of the cases and B in 70 percent. (He will not do what a good gambler would do, namely, exhibit B in all cases.) Third, if the animals are taken away outside the lab, and if the reinforcements and stimuli are administered from a distance-in the form, for example, of electric shocks carried by long wires lowered from booms (borrowed from Hollywood)--they do not develop symptoms. The shocks , after all , are only of the magnitude of pain that any animal might experience on pushing through a small briar patch; they do not become coercive except in the context of the lab, in which other details of the lab (its smell, the experimental stand on which the animal is sup ported, and so on) become ancillary stimuli that mean to the animal that this is a context in which it must continue to be "right." That the animal learns about the nature of laboratory experiment is certainly true, and the same may be said of the graduate student. The experimental subject, whether human or animal, is in the presence of a barrage of context markers .
[/quote]
Sorry for the very long quote. Bateson does here what the behaviourist refuses to do, which is to consider the dog's view of things. By comparing the empathically analysed and imagined dog's description of the experiment, to the experimenter's description, the double description gives us a new understanding. The induction of neurosis in the dog is shown to be a complex relationship of mutual learning and meta-learning that places the dog in a bind that he cannot resolve, and this understanding feeds into Trauma theory which I have discussed elsewhere. Punishment is worse than pain because it it is understood to be intentional, just as reward is understood to be. These are communications between beings, not mere events.
Dogs and humans are social beings, with a high sensitivity to the emotional condition of their significant others; a child needs to be able to make their parent happy and vice versa, and the inability to do so is traumatising and tends to neurosis.
I began to think about such matters a long time ago, and here are two notions that I developed before World War II, when I was working out what I called the "dynamics" or "mechanics" of Iatmul cul ture on the Sepik River in New Guinea.
One notion was that the unit of interaction and the unit of characterological learning (not just acquiring the so-called "response" when the buzzer sounds, but the becoming ready for such automatisms) are the same. Learning the contexts of life is a matter that has to be discussed, not internally, but as a matter of the external relationship between two creatures. And relationship is always a product of double description .
It is correct (and a great improvement) to begin to think of the two parties to the interaction as two eyes, each giving a monocular view of what goes on and, together, giving a binocular view in depth. This double view is the relationship.
Relationship is not internal to the single person. It is nonsense to talk about "dependency" or "aggressiveness" or "pride," and so on. All such words have their roots in what happens between persons, not in some something-or-other inside a person.
No doubt there is a learning in the more particular sense. There are changes in A and changes in B which correspond to the dependency succorance of the relationship. But the relationship comes first; it pre cedes .
Only if you hold on tight to the primacy and priority of relationship can you avoid dormitive explanations. The opium does not contain a dormitive principle, and the man does not contain an aggressive instinct.
The New Guinea material and much that has come later, taught me that I will get nowhere by explaining prideful behavior, for example, by referring to an individual's "pride." Nor can you explain aggression by referring to instinctive (or even learned) "aggressiveness."* Such an explanation, which shifts attention from the interpersonal field to a facti tious inner tendency, principle, instinct, or whatnot, is, I suggest, very great nonsense which only hides the real questions.
If you want to talk about, say, "pride," you must talk about two persons or two groups and what happens between them. A is admired by B; B's admiration is conditional and may turn to contempt. And so on. You can then define a particular species of pride by reference to a particular pattern of interaction.[/quote]
[quote=J. Krishnamurti]You only exist in relationship.[/quote]
Is this a learning by which you might be changed? Are the relationships you have on this site ever such as your ideas about yourself are changed? I affirm from my own experience that it happens not every day, one is not a gadfly but now and then, And I know others here that have affirmed a change of mind.
The book has always been preparing for, and from the very beginning engaging in, a transformative relationship intended to be liberating. We already knew, mind, that teaching is a matter of inspiration, and a mutual affair, but here it is laid out how exactly we are responsible for each other and for the world. One becomes respectable by being respected, just as one becomes violent by being violated. we make or break each other by our identifications. In calling you a terrorist I'm claiming to be terrorised on my own behalf or on behalf of another.
Alice Miller's The Drama of the gifted child in a single paragraph, and a simple model of the making of antisocial behaviour. The important learning is the contextual learning, which is learning how to be and who one is socially. If one learns early on that others are the enemy, one will be alone forever. And if such a one has children, they will be toys, trophies and eventually rivals. Hell is the inability to change.
One sees more and more in the media persons who ignore interrupt and override the interviewer, in order to recite their own version of reality. There is no dialogue, but a monologue, and therefore there can be no contextual learning, and the speaker makes themself into a non-person, a mere mechanical recording that fails to communicate at all. Such is teaching without learning; sound and fury, signifying nothing.