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What is the dao of an ant

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piero scaruffi
piero scaruffi

1. The document discusses the nature of perception and consciousness. It argues that reality is constructed by the perceiver and different perceivers, like humans and ants, perceive different realities based on their cognitive abilities. 2. Living beings are defined by their ability to process energy and information to interact with their environments. Brains evolved to perform fast simulations to predict the future behavior of nonlinear systems. 3. Human consciousness uniquely evolved through tools, language, culture and civilization. Religions, art, science emerged from human capacities for reasoning, creativity and questioning authority.

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1 What is the Dao of an Ant A collage of Cognitive Science 25 slides Piero Scaruffi 2009 www.scaruffi.com “Trfg# fd%hsk er@et wn*nnf” (loose transliteration of a traditional ant adage)
2 Piero Scaruffi • Cultural Historian • Cognitive Scientist • Software Designer • Poet • www.scaruffi.com
3 Enter the Perceiver • The world is always and only perceived. • Neither the tree nor the forest exist if no conscious being is perceiving them • “Matter” without a conscious perceiver “is” only a shapeless, colorless, soundless amalgam of particles, waves, fields... • It is the perceiver who creates the world of trees, forests and sounds. Berkeley, George: "The Principles of Human Knowledge" (1710)
4 Enter the Perceiver • We carefully separate the human mind from Nature, but Nature is an illusion of the human mind and the human mind is a product of Nature. • Both Relativity and Quantum Physics assign a key role to the observer: reality is relative to the observer, and the observer creates it. • The world of a perceiver is the world that the perceiver’s mind created John Von Neumann: “Mathematical Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics” (1932)
5 Enter the Perceiver • The interaction of organisms with their environment is about picking up information from the environment. • Perceiving is actually "recognizing", which in turn is the essence of reasoning, which in turn entails action. • They (perceiving, reasoning, acting) are all facets of the same process, which is, ultimately, living. Gibson, James-Jerome : “The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception” (1979)
6 Enter the Dao • The Dao is the way of the world, the inherent harmony of nature. • However, that is the world of the perceiver. Varela, Francisco: “Principles Of Biological Autonomy” (1979)
7 What is a Living Being • Brains are, first and foremost, alive • Many definitions of life: reproduction, metabolism, evolution… • Richard Dawkins: living beings have to work to keep from eventually merging into their surroundings Dawkins, Richard: "The Blind Watchmaker" (1987) • The identity of a living being is defined by a “membrane”: self/non- self boundary • Extended phenotype
8 What is a Living Being • Biological systems are about the flow and transduction of energy • Ecosystems are networks of energy flows • Organization emerges spontaneously whenever energy flows • Life is the property of an ecological system, not of a single isolated organism • Equilibrium is death Morowitz, Harold: "Energy Flow In Biology" (1968)
9 What is a Living Being • The identity of a living being is defined by its interaction with the environment: input and output • Feedback Wiener, Norbert: "Cybernetics" (1948)
10 What is a Living Being • Representation – No representation: pure behaviorism impossible because there must be a translation from the format/energy of the sensory input to the format/energy of the motor output – Linear representation: the “knowledge-based” approach (rules, frames, networks) – Nonlinear representation: neural nets Searle John: "The Rediscovery Of The Mind" (1992)
11 What is a Thinking Being • Nonlinear Representation (Simulation) – A key property of life is the ability to predict the future – World situations are described by non-linear systems – The dynamics of nonlinear systems is such that it is virtually impossible to predict their behavior other than by simulating it – Simulation has to be very fast in order to be useful – The nervous system is precisely such a tool to perform fast simulations of nonlinear systems – Plausible reasoning (not precise logic) Fox, Ronald: "Energy And The Evolution Of Life" (1988)
12 What is a Thinking Being • Nonlinear Representation (Simulation) – Note: The simulation of a non-linear world produces a largely linear world (the everyday world of objects) that obeys the linear laws of common sense Kuipers, Benjamin: “Qualitative Reasoning” (1994)
13 What is a Brain • John Young: The brain is a homeostat ("the most important thing of living beings is that they remain alive“) • Francisco Mora: Brains regulate their bodies' temperature. A brain is a whole system of thermostats. Gisolfi, Carl & Mora, Francisco: The Hot Brain (2000)
14 What is a Brain • Jason Brown: Mental process recapitulates evolutionary process • Paul MacLean: Three brains (reptilian, mammal and neocortex), each brain corresponding to a different stage of evolution MacLean, Paul: The Triune Brain In Evolution (1990)
15 The Mirror Brain • The brain of primates uses "mirror" neurons to represent what others are doing. • Mirror neurons fire both when the action is performed and when the action is observed in other individuals. • My mirror neurons represent what you are feeling • The brain is prewired for understanding motives • Human brains continuously build theories of other minds Rizzolati, Giacomo: Mirrors in the Brain (2008)
16 The Factory of Illusions • Christof Koch: we are not aware of most of what our brain does. • Rodolfo Llinas: the brain is always working independently of our will. • Michael Gazzaniga: the brain acts before we are conscious of its action. • Tor Norretranders: our brain knows more than our consciousness does. Norretranders, Tor: “The User Illusion” (1998)
17 The Factory of Illusions • Michael Gazzaniga: many minds coexist in a confederation. • Robert Ornstein: a mind is made of many competing minds. • Daniel Dennett: multiple drafts coexist in a mind. • William Calvin: mental Darwinism selects thoughts. Calvin, William: “How Brains Think” (1996)
18 The Factory of Illusions • The brain is a nonlinear computing system to simulate the environment • That "simulation" becomes the mind's perceived world • Each being lives inside the simulation it computes • Different kinds of brain create different kinds of worlds. Deutsch, David: The Fabric Of Reality (1997)
19 The Factory of Illusions • The brain creates reality: we see what our mind can see (and expects to see) • The “harmony” of Nature is a harmony created by our brain • Other brains “see” a different harmony • The ant perceives a different Dao • (Is there a Dao of all Daos?) Humberto Maturana: “Autopoiesis And Cognition” (1980)
20 The Cognitive Closure • There is a limit to what a brain can represent and can infer from its representations • There is a limit to what a human brain can do Colin McGinn: “The Problem Of Consciousness” (1991) 3-dimensional space, visible light spectrum, human biological clocks, etc
21 Consciousness • Lucretius: "every creature with senses is made only of particles without senses” • Supervenience (Jaegwon Kim, David Chalmers): inherently flawed because it refers to our conscious perception of a phenomenon • “Design without a designer", “Emergence", “Self- organization“: properties may appear when a system reorganizes itself due to external constraints David Chalmers: “The Conscious Mind” (1996)
22 Panpsychism • Alfred Whitehead: every particle in the universe must be an event having both an objective aspect of matter and a subjective aspect of experience • Thomas Nagel: "proto-mental properties" must be present in all matter • Niels Bohr: the quantum wave function of matter represents its mental aspect Thomas Nagel: “Mortal Questions” (1979)
23 Panpsychism • Everything is conscious to some extent • We don’t wonder why we are made of electrons: everything is made of electrons, therefore no wonder that my body too is made of electrons. • We wonder why we are conscious because we made the assumption that only some things (us) are conscious • Consciousness is a general property of matter Whitehead Alfred: “Modes Of Thought” (1938)
24 Panpsychism • Mourning chimps National Geographic, October 2009
25 Human Consciousness • The history of consciousness is the history of the parallel and interacting evolution of: tools, language, memes, emotions and the brain itself. • Consciousness is a product of having nothing better to do with our brain. Terrence Deacon: "The Symbolic Species" (1998)
26 Civilization • What do ants do? Build ant-nests • The brain of an ant creates ant-nests • What do humans do? Build civilizations • The human brain creates civilizations
27 Civilization • Civilizations destroy the Dao (the harmony of Nature)
28 Civilization • Humans like to explore • Humans like to invent • Humans like to discover • Humans like to create • Art and science are forms of exploration • Exploration of the Dao • … for the purpose of destroying the Dao
29 Cognitive Enablers • What brain function enables tools? • Self/non-self awareness? • The “I” and the “You”? • Societies? • Reptilian brain: Emotions and spirituality? • Neo-cortex: Reasoning, language, civilizations
30 Human Consciousness • Religion – Religion is widespread across cultures – Emotions are common to mammals and birds – Spirituality is common to mammals and birds – Spirituality + Reason = Organized religion of the human race
31 Creativity • Human children are the only children in nature that try to live a different life from their parents’ life • Humans are genetically programmed to break the rules and question authority from a very young age, which contrasts sharply with the behavior of other animals
32 Human Consciousness • Art – When did art become Art? – Earliest art was not Art, just representation – Earliest buildings were not Art, just buildings – Is a spider-web Art?

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What is the dao of an ant

  • 1. 1 What is the Dao of an Ant A collage of Cognitive Science 25 slides Piero Scaruffi 2009 www.scaruffi.com “Trfg# fd%hsk er@et wn*nnf” (loose transliteration of a traditional ant adage)
  • 2. 2 Piero Scaruffi • Cultural Historian • Cognitive Scientist • Software Designer • Poet • www.scaruffi.com
  • 3. 3 Enter the Perceiver • The world is always and only perceived. • Neither the tree nor the forest exist if no conscious being is perceiving them • “Matter” without a conscious perceiver “is” only a shapeless, colorless, soundless amalgam of particles, waves, fields... • It is the perceiver who creates the world of trees, forests and sounds. Berkeley, George: "The Principles of Human Knowledge" (1710)
  • 4. 4 Enter the Perceiver • We carefully separate the human mind from Nature, but Nature is an illusion of the human mind and the human mind is a product of Nature. • Both Relativity and Quantum Physics assign a key role to the observer: reality is relative to the observer, and the observer creates it. • The world of a perceiver is the world that the perceiver’s mind created John Von Neumann: “Mathematical Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics” (1932)
  • 5. 5 Enter the Perceiver • The interaction of organisms with their environment is about picking up information from the environment. • Perceiving is actually "recognizing", which in turn is the essence of reasoning, which in turn entails action. • They (perceiving, reasoning, acting) are all facets of the same process, which is, ultimately, living. Gibson, James-Jerome : “The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception” (1979)
  • 6. 6 Enter the Dao • The Dao is the way of the world, the inherent harmony of nature. • However, that is the world of the perceiver. Varela, Francisco: “Principles Of Biological Autonomy” (1979)
  • 7. 7 What is a Living Being • Brains are, first and foremost, alive • Many definitions of life: reproduction, metabolism, evolution… • Richard Dawkins: living beings have to work to keep from eventually merging into their surroundings Dawkins, Richard: "The Blind Watchmaker" (1987) • The identity of a living being is defined by a “membrane”: self/non- self boundary • Extended phenotype
  • 8. 8 What is a Living Being • Biological systems are about the flow and transduction of energy • Ecosystems are networks of energy flows • Organization emerges spontaneously whenever energy flows • Life is the property of an ecological system, not of a single isolated organism • Equilibrium is death Morowitz, Harold: "Energy Flow In Biology" (1968)
  • 9. 9 What is a Living Being • The identity of a living being is defined by its interaction with the environment: input and output • Feedback Wiener, Norbert: "Cybernetics" (1948)
  • 10. 10 What is a Living Being • Representation – No representation: pure behaviorism impossible because there must be a translation from the format/energy of the sensory input to the format/energy of the motor output – Linear representation: the “knowledge-based” approach (rules, frames, networks) – Nonlinear representation: neural nets Searle John: "The Rediscovery Of The Mind" (1992)
  • 11. 11 What is a Thinking Being • Nonlinear Representation (Simulation) – A key property of life is the ability to predict the future – World situations are described by non-linear systems – The dynamics of nonlinear systems is such that it is virtually impossible to predict their behavior other than by simulating it – Simulation has to be very fast in order to be useful – The nervous system is precisely such a tool to perform fast simulations of nonlinear systems – Plausible reasoning (not precise logic) Fox, Ronald: "Energy And The Evolution Of Life" (1988)
  • 12. 12 What is a Thinking Being • Nonlinear Representation (Simulation) – Note: The simulation of a non-linear world produces a largely linear world (the everyday world of objects) that obeys the linear laws of common sense Kuipers, Benjamin: “Qualitative Reasoning” (1994)
  • 13. 13 What is a Brain • John Young: The brain is a homeostat ("the most important thing of living beings is that they remain alive“) • Francisco Mora: Brains regulate their bodies' temperature. A brain is a whole system of thermostats. Gisolfi, Carl & Mora, Francisco: The Hot Brain (2000)
  • 14. 14 What is a Brain • Jason Brown: Mental process recapitulates evolutionary process • Paul MacLean: Three brains (reptilian, mammal and neocortex), each brain corresponding to a different stage of evolution MacLean, Paul: The Triune Brain In Evolution (1990)
  • 15. 15 The Mirror Brain • The brain of primates uses "mirror" neurons to represent what others are doing. • Mirror neurons fire both when the action is performed and when the action is observed in other individuals. • My mirror neurons represent what you are feeling • The brain is prewired for understanding motives • Human brains continuously build theories of other minds Rizzolati, Giacomo: Mirrors in the Brain (2008)
  • 16. 16 The Factory of Illusions • Christof Koch: we are not aware of most of what our brain does. • Rodolfo Llinas: the brain is always working independently of our will. • Michael Gazzaniga: the brain acts before we are conscious of its action. • Tor Norretranders: our brain knows more than our consciousness does. Norretranders, Tor: “The User Illusion” (1998)
  • 17. 17 The Factory of Illusions • Michael Gazzaniga: many minds coexist in a confederation. • Robert Ornstein: a mind is made of many competing minds. • Daniel Dennett: multiple drafts coexist in a mind. • William Calvin: mental Darwinism selects thoughts. Calvin, William: “How Brains Think” (1996)
  • 18. 18 The Factory of Illusions • The brain is a nonlinear computing system to simulate the environment • That "simulation" becomes the mind's perceived world • Each being lives inside the simulation it computes • Different kinds of brain create different kinds of worlds. Deutsch, David: The Fabric Of Reality (1997)
  • 19. 19 The Factory of Illusions • The brain creates reality: we see what our mind can see (and expects to see) • The “harmony” of Nature is a harmony created by our brain • Other brains “see” a different harmony • The ant perceives a different Dao • (Is there a Dao of all Daos?) Humberto Maturana: “Autopoiesis And Cognition” (1980)
  • 20. 20 The Cognitive Closure • There is a limit to what a brain can represent and can infer from its representations • There is a limit to what a human brain can do Colin McGinn: “The Problem Of Consciousness” (1991) 3-dimensional space, visible light spectrum, human biological clocks, etc
  • 21. 21 Consciousness • Lucretius: "every creature with senses is made only of particles without senses” • Supervenience (Jaegwon Kim, David Chalmers): inherently flawed because it refers to our conscious perception of a phenomenon • “Design without a designer", “Emergence", “Self- organization“: properties may appear when a system reorganizes itself due to external constraints David Chalmers: “The Conscious Mind” (1996)
  • 22. 22 Panpsychism • Alfred Whitehead: every particle in the universe must be an event having both an objective aspect of matter and a subjective aspect of experience • Thomas Nagel: "proto-mental properties" must be present in all matter • Niels Bohr: the quantum wave function of matter represents its mental aspect Thomas Nagel: “Mortal Questions” (1979)
  • 23. 23 Panpsychism • Everything is conscious to some extent • We don’t wonder why we are made of electrons: everything is made of electrons, therefore no wonder that my body too is made of electrons. • We wonder why we are conscious because we made the assumption that only some things (us) are conscious • Consciousness is a general property of matter Whitehead Alfred: “Modes Of Thought” (1938)
  • 25. 25 Human Consciousness • The history of consciousness is the history of the parallel and interacting evolution of: tools, language, memes, emotions and the brain itself. • Consciousness is a product of having nothing better to do with our brain. Terrence Deacon: "The Symbolic Species" (1998)
  • 26. 26 Civilization • What do ants do? Build ant-nests • The brain of an ant creates ant-nests • What do humans do? Build civilizations • The human brain creates civilizations
  • 27. 27 Civilization • Civilizations destroy the Dao (the harmony of Nature)
  • 28. 28 Civilization • Humans like to explore • Humans like to invent • Humans like to discover • Humans like to create • Art and science are forms of exploration • Exploration of the Dao • … for the purpose of destroying the Dao
  • 29. 29 Cognitive Enablers • What brain function enables tools? • Self/non-self awareness? • The “I” and the “You”? • Societies? • Reptilian brain: Emotions and spirituality? • Neo-cortex: Reasoning, language, civilizations
  • 30. 30 Human Consciousness • Religion – Religion is widespread across cultures – Emotions are common to mammals and birds – Spirituality is common to mammals and birds – Spirituality + Reason = Organized religion of the human race
  • 31. 31 Creativity • Human children are the only children in nature that try to live a different life from their parents’ life • Humans are genetically programmed to break the rules and question authority from a very young age, which contrasts sharply with the behavior of other animals
  • 32. 32 Human Consciousness • Art – When did art become Art? – Earliest art was not Art, just representation – Earliest buildings were not Art, just buildings – Is a spider-web Art?