Ambulatory Brain Surgery next

Begin forwarded message:

From: Halltennis@aol.com

Subject: Ambulatory Brain Surgery next

Date: June 30, 1997 at 17:30:05 EDT

To: WWTennis@aol.com, MTennis391@aol.com, joe@joe10.com, skt@vista.com, mcquaide@vista.com, Wmbruffin@aol.com, LMF99@aol.com, jimp@digitoy.com, BEATBARD@aol.com, TIFFHOOKS@aol.com, shwiller@fwb.gulf.net

Hey,
Having had to deal with a misfiring neurological system all my life, which
has given me intermittent fits of clarity from time to time, how that
system does it also claims my attention.
Here are some notes on one of my favorites, a condensation of pages and pages
of stiff prose–stiff to appreciate, that is. Some of it may fit if you try
it on.

Jaynes’ theory of human thought development has four separate theorems:

1. CONSCIOUSNESS IS BASED ON LANGUAGE. To clarify this thought requires a
long, difficult discussion.

2. THE BICAMERAL MIND. That is, preceeding consciousness, here was a
different mentality based on verbal hallucinations.

3. CONSCIOUSNESS WAS LEARNED ONLY AFTER THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL
MIND. Roughly about 1000 bce.

4. THE RIGHT BRAIN AND LEFT BRAIN HAVE (OFTEN?) DISCRETE OPERATIONS TO
PURSUE AND RELATED DIFFERENTLY IN THE BICAMERAL MIND PERIOD. The right
hemisphere processes information in manner that synthesizes, etc.

TO START THINKING ABOUT THIS, first distinguish between a) what is
introspectable and b) the other neural abilities we call cognition.

A GOOD PLACE TO START IS THIS QUESTION.
Question: I am perceiving you, looking at you. Are you trying to say I am
not conscious of you at this moment?

Answer: Yes. THAT IS WHAT I AM SAYING.
You are conscious of the rhetorical argument you are making, not of me. If
you turned away and looked at the wall, you might well be conscious of me as
you spoke (after you decided what you were going to say).

(Consciousness and perception are not the same thing.
Neither is cognition.)

Consciousness is not all language, though it is generated by language and
accessed by it.

GENERAL RULE: There is no operation in consciousness that did not occur in
behavior first. What are the operations in consciousness? Here:

In our (western) culture it (consciousness) has several important features:
1. Mind-space is a primary feature. It is the place where we sense our
introspecting to be going on.

2. The analog “I” is another feature.(Not the same as the bodily “I”) The
analog “I” moves about within the mind space, goes from place to place, does
analog things, has thoughts, makes speeches, senses past, present, future.

The test of consciousness is the analog “I” narratizing in a functional
mind-space. That is, introspecting. Exactly as described by Descartes,
Locke, and Hume.

Add two more:

3. Concentration. The analog of sensory attention.

4. Suppression. We desist from annoying thoughts. The analog of
repugnance, disgust, or turning-away-from.

Another tricky feature of consciousness is called conciliation or
compatibilization–call it conscilience (a new word). We do this most
frequently in dreams or in the creativity of art where we juxtapose the
unrelated (things that cannot possibly have anything to do with each other)
and come up with both of them making a new thing.

Consciousness is not simple. Think of having imaginary conversations,
imagining scenes, imagining action–jumping a fence, monitoring fatigue or
pain or hunger, or imagining music, or an idea for a painting.

THE OLD, PREHISTORIC HUMAN MIND WAS DIFFERENT.
The brain structure was, perhaps, a little different.
At least, it worked differently.
In times of stress, verbal hallucination brought into focus a response to the
problem.
A lot of people still do this:
“I talked with god. He said take up the Book. I did. It solved my
problem.”
There is some evidence of a genetic basis for humans to have and use
hallucinations.

There are two ways of seeing this:
1) People always had both kinds of mind because consciousness began as
language began and gradually consciousness won out over hallucination.
Introspection prevailed.
2)Theocratic agriculture fostered population explosions everywhere, and
population density fostered social complexity and social chaos. This made
hallucination an impossible mechanism for problem solving.

Number Two suggests a lot of social violence. We call it war. Remember?

Jaynes suggests a number of transitions, changes, as we developed
consciousness:

Mating became Mating & Sex.
Anger became Anger & Hate.
Excitement became Excitement & Joy.
Affiliation became Affiliation & Love.
Shame became Shame & Guilt.
Fear became Fear & Anxiety.

In Classical Greek, in the sixth and seventh centuries bce, they developed
these new words:

Gnosis, a knowing.
Genesis, a beginning.
Emphasis, a showing in.
Analysis, a loosening up.
Phronesis, an intellection, thinking, understanding, or consciousness.
Look for this in the Iliad in vain. Find it in the Oddessy.

This subject matter is hard to talk about because of the confusions arising
from polysemy, and from the other homonymic or multireferential associations
of memory.

Questions like this: “Are we not confusing here the concept of consciousness
with consciousness itself?”
Jaynes’ answer is that we are fusing them, not confusing them. They are the
same. “Mention” and “use” can be identical. The concept of baseball and
baseball are the same thing, he says. When you talk of money, you are
talking about money. Or law, or good, or evil. –he says, Or Jaynes’
concept, he says.

THE ORIGINAL STORY OF OEDIPUS, REX.

He slew his father and unwittingly wed his mother, they had several children,
discovered the taboo incest, felt badly about it, recovered and lived happily
ever after as King and Queen of Thebes.

THE REWRITE (what consciousness can do)

Four hundred years later, Sophocles rewrote the story and had Oedipus punish
himself blind and have a miserable death at Colonus.

Another tale of dealing with shame, and guilt (the product of introspection
and guilt–consciousness):
Herodotus tells the story: Phrynicus staged the first Greek, Classical
Tragedy: “The Fall of Miletus.” The play decribed the destruction of that
Ionian city by the Persians the year before, in 494 bce. The people of
Athens were so shocked, they could not function for days. The city came to a
standstill. Phrynicus was banished in perpetual disgrace. The play was
burnt. (The messenger was punished.)
6/3/97

OTHER READINGS AVAILABLE–IN PRINT NOW

THE INVENTION OF MEMORY
The Invention of Memory, a new view of the brain, Israel Resenfield, Basic
Books, NY.

Reviewed by J. W. Lance, Prof of Neurology, Univ of New South Wales,
Sydney, Aust.

The author buys “Neural Darwinism” (see propounder Gerald Edelman, Rockfeller
Univ. In NY, Nobel Prize in
physiology or Medicine ’72): “In sleep, when the neuronal maps are released
from the restraint of sensory order, memory traces combine in fragments to
form dreams.”

…Cannot determine precisely where and how memories are stored.

Registration of memory is localized, the recall of past events is not. We
are far from understanding the mechanics of memory.

UNSTABLE IDEAS, temperament, cognition, and self, Jerome Kagan, Harvard Univ
Press, Cambridge.

The reviewer is R. M. Restak, author of THE BRAIN and THE MIND.

He says: In order to illustrate the difficulties presented by commonly
employed yet deeply ambiguous words, Mr. Kagan takes up “self” and
consciousness–two prominent and “unstable” ideas that hinder rather than
promote dialogue and communication. “Although each of us may feel that our
consciousness is among our most significant characteristics and the most
importqant determinant of our behavior, such an assumption is neither
empirically proven nor logically commanding,” Mr. Kagan says provocatively.

Consciousness plays its most useful role in mental life during times of deep
uncertainty about how to proceed, he believes, when an event occurs that
cannot be handled by one’s usual behavioral repertory. But these occasions
are exceptional. For the most part, in his view, “consciousness can be
likened to the staff of a fire department. Most of the time, it is quietly
playing pinochle in the back room; it performs when the alarm sounds.”
What is meant by self is even more difficult.

The belief that anger, jealousy, competitiveness, violence, incest are the
inevitable remnant of animal heritage conflicts with the logic which says
that the structure and philosophy of society are the source.

Emphasizing biology gives us an easy “out.”

MORE MORE MORE

COPY OF SOME NOTES FROM REREADING JAYNES, SECOND EDITION:

First hypothesis:
Consciousness is based on language.
Consciousness is not the same as cognition.
Consciousness is not the same as perception.

(Consciousness is our
perception of cognition plus our cognition of perception.)

‘I'(make an arrow)(I see a table).

There is no operation in consciousness that did not occur in behavior first.

Analogy deals with similarity between relationships.

The bodily I (self) moves through physical space.
The analog “I” moves through mind-space.

P. 450:
“…we narratize the analogic simulation of actual behavior, an…(aspect of
consciousness)….”

The basic connotative definition of consciousness is thus the analog “I”
narratizing in a functional mind space. The denotative definition is, as it
was for Descartes, Locke, Hume, what is introspectable.

Concentration (arrow) analog of sensory attention.
Supprerssion (arrow) analog of repugnance, disgust, or turning away from.

Conciliation (arrow) concilience:
making things compatible with each other.
–most important in dreaming.

Modes of conscios narratization: (p. 452) Perceptual, verbal, behavioral,
psychological, musical, imagining.

File it for a while.
L–h.