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En-minding the Extended BodyEnactive engagement in conceptual shapeshifting and deep ecology- / - Introduction Sets of operational concepts in collective enterprises Sets of animal appendages Animal movement and conceptual exoskeletons Dynamic coordination of sets in movement Indigenous insights Animal locomotion: example of walking as a cognitive metaphor Shapeshifting Insights into shapeshifting from collective behaviour Conceptual endoskeleton vs Conceptual exoskeleton Identity, invariance and enactivism Unconscious models as beasts of the imagination Endangering species by rationalizing the environment Memetics as the under-explored analogue to genetics Memetic engineering: a Western discovery ? Memetic engineering: an Eastern practice ? Neurobiological clarification Memetic engineering: Western magical arts ? Conclusion References IntroductionThis is an exploration of the extent to which the phenomena of the perceived environment are effectively conceptual "coat hangers" on which individuals project dynamics that they are unable to encompass conceptually within accepted mindsets -- whether learnt or inculcated. Emphasis here is on various species of animals having been unconsciously "delegated" by humans to function as carriers for such projections. The contention is that, in a sense, the complex dynamics of living to which humans are exposed have, in part, been effectively "outsourced" to animals because of inability to handle many aspects of these dynamics. Once outsourced in this way, the mind effectively withdraws from full engagement with the environment. With loss of recognition that functions were delegated in this way, humans then deal with the environment in an instrumental manner without recognizing what they are doing to their own humanity -- and to the ecosystem on which they depend for their survival. This process is paralleled by the development of conceptual "models" through which humans then endeavour to describe and articulate strategies of human behaviour, whether individually or collectively. The relation between the anatomy and behaviour of animal species in the environment and the operation of such models is therefore considered here. The concern of what follows is given useful focus by the introduction to George Monbiot's critique of the prevailing social attitude with respect to the threat to humanity of climate change -- to which there is a collective refusal to respond rationally (With eyes wide shut. Guardian, 12 August 2003):
The concern here is not with the philosophy of deep ecology -- with which it has many sympathies -- but rather with the actual way in which non-human living species carry conceptual modalities that are essential to both human survival and thrival. One consequence of this perspective is that it indicates how the environment is a knowledge carrier -- as some indigenous peoples have emphasized -- which humans destroy at their peril (Darrell A. Posey. Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, 1999; David Abram. The Spell of the Sensuous: perception and language in a more-than-human world, 1997). Recovery of this connection is seen as a vital means of giving operational meaning and value to features of the environment that will otherwise continue to be degraded and destroyed in the name of safeguarding the human species. More particularly, the concern is with how any individual is sustained by "en-minding" the extended body that is their natural environment. This is seen as related to the cognitive concerns of enactivism outlined by Francesco Varela alone (Laying Down a Path in Walking, 1987) and with others (The Embodied Mind: cognitive science and human expression, 1991). Sets of operational concepts in collective enterprisesMany approaches to organizing human response to the challenges of the real world are now articulated through conceptual "models". These are increasingly copyrighted as intellectual property for the purpose of subsequent marketing and franchising (Future Coping Strategies: Beyond the constraints of proprietary metaphors. 1992). They are a prime feature of the offerings by management consultants to major corporations and to governmental enterprises and public services -- whether nationally or internationally. One challenge is that in a competitive environment the lifecycle of such models is usually measured in years, if not months -- rather the decades or centuries relevant to sustainable development. Their inability to provide operational mastery -- as the panacea's they are often claimed to be -- creates opportunities for the emergence of new models. But it also engenders a sense of disbelief that any such models will respond to the strategic and operational needs of collective enterprises -- or of individuals (cf Simon London. Why are the fads fading? Financial Times, 12 June 2003; Eileen Shapiro. Fad Surfing in the Boardroom; reclaiming the courage to manage in the age of instant answers, 1995). Typically such models derive their originality from the operational dimensions they are able to encapsulate in a compact and memorable diagram. This tends to take the form of either a tabular/matrix structure (4x4, 5x5, 8x8, etc) or of a centrosymmetric structure divided into segments, often with concentric rings. Some religions also make use of such models, notably in the form of mandalas. Various uses of models have been explored in earlier papers (see New Paradigms via a Renewed Set of Prefixes: Dependence of international policy-making on an array of operational terms, 2003; Varieties of experience of past-present-future complexes, 2001) To be most useful, the insights and processes associated with the features of any such diagram (identified by the labelled cells in such a table), need to be intimately related to operations through which the enterprise manoeuvers through the environment. The different cells labelled in the model offer insights into the different conditions that may be encountered -- and that need to be skillfully balanced against each other. The task of strategic management is then to coordinate the enterprise through that framework -- through the set of functions identified by the model, which may be reflected in specific divisions on a corporate organization chart. Metaphorically, it might be compared to a combination of gear-shift, steering wheel, brake and accelerator -- with an emphasis on how they each have complementary functions that need to be played off against each other as appropriate. It is of course the case that models effectively identify meta-functions that have more to do with the subtler skills of driving the enterprise rather than with the tactical skills associated with particular operations. The latter may call for technical manuals focused on particular operations or on much more complex systems models. The challenge of the meta-functions may, by contrast, be embodied in superficially simpler models that are more of a reminder of appropriate sets of insights and modes of operating -- or, as in the case of mandalas, a focus of extended meditation. Curiously the term "management" is believed to derive from a combination of manus ("hand", notably as in handiness -- appropriate to the notion of "hands on") and the French term manège -- associated with handling of horses. In its limited sense of management of a horse, "management" in French has been displaced by manège; in its more general meaning, by "management". The origins of the term are also influenced by the French ménage, in the sense of administration of a household or farm. The latter connection gave rise to ménagerie as housing for domestic animals. This has been extended in English to include any collection of diverse and possibly exotic people or things, including wild animals as in a zoo. It has been further extended to include the collection of animals in a wilderness reservation. Management literature has cultivated the metaphorical connotations, as with B. S. Raghavan (Managerial menagerie, Financial Daily, 6 September 2000): "Functional and operational diversities apart, even sartorially and grooming-wise, the world of managers is a menagerie". (See also Saif Rahman. The Imaginary Menagerie). Given the argument of this paper, these influences suggest that management could be understood pejoratively as the care of a collection of uncontrolled "animal" needs and behaviours that characterize a human organization -- but more constructively understood as helping them to fulfil their respective potentials as a community. Sets of animal appendagesThe argument here is that it is useful to see the locomotion challenge of animals as involving a need, analogous to that in management, to coordinate the movement of a set of complementary ways of interacting with the environment. To survive an animal has to move its appendages, typically legs, in appropriate relation to one another and in response to challenges of the environment (whether topographical or other species). In effect the set of legs is like the set of complementary operational concepts embodied in any management model. In the case of an operational concept of management, the interesting difference however is that the animal's legs can be seen as a visible articulation of operational principles that may be interpreted as present within the model if appropriately understood. The operation of its legs by an animal is an exemplification of integrated operational requirements that the strategic model may -- or may not -- render comprehensible in the case of a collective enterprise. The model is an abstraction in the case of the enterprise, which is given dynamic operational form in the case of an animal's use of its appendages for locomotion. Most intriguing is the rich range of animal species -- each of which survives with a somewhat different "model" of appendage operation. Is there something to be learnt from this range that may be of relevance to the ways in which humans are able to respond to the many aspects of their environment?
Animal movement and conceptual exoskeletonsThe question of how animals move has been a focus of multidisciplinary research in recent years that has now been comprehensively reviewed (Michael H. Dickinson, et al. How Animals Move: An Integrative View. Science, 7 April 2000). As with the relevance of bird movement to development of airplanes, a major reason for this interest is the relevance to robotics. Science is finding that mimicking living systems to produce robots is about understanding biology, not physics. And, according to Tim Wallace, there are lessons here for the way human corporations are run (Mind of the company. Boss Financial Review. July 2003). Similar lessons have been sought by the corporate world through such metaphorical explorations as Strategy of the Dolphin (1988) by Dudley Lynch and Paul Kordis which blends the latest findings in psychology, physics, sociology and business strategy to contrast the subtleties of thinking/acting like a dolphin with that of carps (prey) and of sharks (predators). The concern in the exploration here is however much less with how the complexities of animal movement can be reflected in tangible artefacts -- but much more with how they can be reflected in the dynamics interrelating the cultural artefacts that are human systems of categories in use to frame perceived reality. The question is what are the cognitive insights to be derived from understanding of how animals handle the dynamic challenges to their movement. An aspect of robotics involves the design of more flexible exoskeletons to enhance the human capacity of the "wearer" -- whether the framework is worn physically or virtually (possibly requiring "implants" in the future for more intimate integration with the nervous system, as with cyborgs). The concern here is whether insights into animal movement suggest ways of elaborating "cognitive exoskeletons" that would enable other kinds of ordered movement in knowledge space. This was discussed in an earlier paper (Judge, 2003) as being not only a framework through which the world is observed and "read" (a grille de lecture) but as effectively a conceptual (if not an existential) "exoskeleton" that empowers and enhances capacities to interact with "reality". Such exoskeletal augmentation of human intellect was articulated in a classic text by Douglas Engelbart prefiguring computer-enhanced work groups (Douglas Engelbart. Augmenting Human Intellect; a conceptual framework, 1962) Good examples of such exoskeletons are the "models" provided for the corporate environment by Edward de Bono in discussing operacy -- as explored through two books: Six Thinking Hats (1987) and Six Action Shoes (1991). Operacy is the skill of action, of getting things done and making things happen -- which he equates with literacy and numeracy. These books build on a well-publicized series of his earlier books dealing with creative approaches to problem-solving, notably in corporate policy-making environments. He argues that, to get a well-rounded view, a committee needs to look at issues wearing a succession of colour-coded "hats" (or "shoes"), corresponding to different styles of thought (or action). This enhanced ability to navigate reality might be usefully discussed as a conceptual analogue to proprioception, itself currently of great interest in the physical fitness industry:
Proprioception may be understood as an automatic sensitivity mechanism in the body that sends messages through the central nervous system. Unconscious initially, human beings can "train" for proprioception in the quest for efficient everyday movements. Through conscious appreciation and cognitive processing of the body's position in space, the central nervous system and sensory receptors can be conditioned to be more responsive to length and tension in the muscles and tendons. [more] The array of concepts in a model may then be understood as a system of operations and operators for defining, processing and consuming reality -- and for farming, mining and exploiting it (as with any animal species). As such it can be "played", like an organ or any other complex musical instrument. This is the skill deployed by experienced negotiators. Some of the implications of this have been explored in an earlier paper (Navigating Alternative Conceptual Realities: clues to the dynamics of enacting new paradigms through movement, 2002) The latter paper explores a range of traditional conceptual "exoskeletons", notably based on the plus-or-minus 8-fold models favoured in discussion of virtues and vices -- and perhaps better described as "ethical exoskeletons" (however much it is hoped that the set of virtues may become innate, following appropriate guidance). The question here is then five-fold:
Dynamic coordination of sets in movementTo focus thinking on the cognitive analogue to animal movement, two quite distinct approaches could be taken:
These two approaches are explored successively below. Indigenous insightsThe importance of this neglected perspective is well summarized in a paper by L Jan Slikkerveer (Ethnosicence, 'TEK' and its application to conservation) in the collection of papers edited by Darrell Posey (Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity, 1999) cited above:
Slikkerveer points out that perhaps the best way to think of this traditional knowledge borne of experience is that native people lived their lives as though the lives of other organisms mattered. Natives experienced other creatures in their role as parents, as offspring, and ultimately as persons within a shared community -- as part of what amounts to an "extended family". But he points to a fundamental mistake in mainstream understanding:
This conflict of views results from a failure to realize that native people do not identify with and anthropomorphize animals, but instead recognize that the lives of animals and plants exist on their own terms, and have value independent of any that human beings place on them. By contrast, Europeans often identify with the prey in an extremely anthropocentric and psychological sense, and react as if their loved ones were being taken for food. This leads to an unrealistic hostility towards all predators, leading to a belief that wolves, cougars and bears are creatures of evil, capable of 'slaughter of helpless prey'. Darrell Posey's collection of papers goes beyond the point made above regarding relationships with particular species to demonstrate that the environment as a whole is indeed held by many indigenous peoples to be a carrier for their collective identity and awareness. Hence the importance of the title Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity -- which he introduces with a chapter on Culture and nature: the inextricable link, recalling Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature: a necessary unity (1979) and his concern with the destruction of the "pattern that connects". Posey makes the point that:
In discussing the unhelpful assumptions in descriptions of the knowledge systems of Native Americans, Ron Eglash (Computation, Complexity and Coding in Native American Knowledge Systems, 2002) argues that
This perspective has been given a powerful articulation by the novelist Ian Watson (The Embedding, 1973), which in describing the cognitive universe of an Amazonian tribe, is notable for being one of the first science-fictional explorations of modern linguistic and anthropological theories [as explained by Pamela Sargent]. Previous science fiction had dealt with the possible problems human beings might have in communicating with aliens. According to Michael Bishop:
Animal locomotion: example of walking as a cognitive metaphorAn earlier paper explored one form of physical movement in relation to transdicisplinarity (Transdisplinarity-3 as the Emergence of Patterned Experience: Transcending duality as the conceptual equivalent of learning to walk, 1994) Polarities as limbs: Following the above arguments, polarities can be used like limbs to support a body of awareness. To understand experientially what is a limb in this context, there may be merit in exploring the evolutionary origin of limbs -- on the understanding that "psychogeny" may replicate ontogeny. And a form of psychogeny may be replicated during daily life. The simpler forms of integrative experience can be considered amoeboid or amorphous. For example, sleepily stretching out an arm from bed in the morning to turn off an alarm clock bears more resemblance to extruding a reabsorbable pseudopod than using a limb. There may well be stages to patterned experience equivalent to the emergence of true opposing limbs, passing though those of an insectoid nature. How many limbs does one need to support one's current body of awareness? Such conceptual limbs can be used for locomotion through a more paradoxical space. As is already evident, they can be used as weapons in attack and struggle. One pole of any polarity is always a useful weapon to attack another (objectivity vs subjectivity, head vs heart, abstract vs concrete, left vs right, etc). Other kinds of struggle become possible when the use of both limbs can be coordinated. Polarities as limbs can also be used for mutual support: in a wind, on a cliff, when intoxicated, etc. Other kinds of support may be possible when use of both limbs can be coordinated. There is a need to be attentive to efforts to handicap collective awareness by effectively cutting off a limb to repress one polar alternative. This leads to conditions analogous to paraplegia, where locomotion is only possible by limping or hopping, if at all. Reluctance to challenge, formulate reservations and use negatives has become a new form of social disease, notably in North America. Our civilization may yet sink under the weight of upbeat reporting and the inability to face up to challenges. Polyhedral organization and "limb responsibility": The above arguments point to the importance of configuring polarities as a way of creating transcendent frameworks (Judge, 1994). In such configurations of categories, there would need to be concern for the health of the extremes -- a form of "limb responsibility", if the configuration of categories is expected to support a new body of awareness. Whether in the case of a conceptual framework or a social group, the process of configuration may variously be compared to the construction of a body, a walking frame or a house. It is a form of conceptual scaffolding. [For further discussion of polarization and polyhedra, see Evoking Authenticity: through polyhedral global configuration of local paradoxes, 2003] The coordinated movement of limbs focuses the strategic challenge of governance endeavouring to reconcile dilemmas articulated through opposing political parties. In practice, there may be a number of such parties that configure in different ways in response to different circumstances. The alternation between parties in governance in moving the country forward points to the value of considering how development relates to alternation between opposing perspectives (see Policy Alternation for Development, 1984). ShapeshiftingCuriously the archaic belief in shapeshifting characteristic of Celtic myth [more] is presented as a feature of the education of King Arthur by Merlin in T H White's classic novel The Once and Future King (1966). Through its many links to shamanism, cognitive shapeshifting has now become a theme of popular workshops [more | more] and is also a feature of role playing and other games valuable to imaginal education. Explanations of shapeshifting have also been related to multiple personality disorder [more]. As explored in an earlier paper (Being the Universe, 1999), there is a case for seeing oneself at any one moment as conforming to dynamics of any of a wide spectrum of species, from all levels of the evolutionary diaspora. There is a way in which one can be an amoebic blob, a spider, a snake, a bird, a wolf, etc -- or labelled as such. To what degree are we all behavioural shapeshifters? Should shapeshifting be a part of our education (as Merlin purportedly offered the young Arthur and as in totemic education in many tribes)? How are we constrained in adopting particular behavioural patterns? When is there a case for experiencing reality as an amoeba? A (couch) potato? A doormouse? A tiger? What ecosystems do we then require in order to survive and thrive in that shape? How do we relate to others through such patterns? An imaginative stimulus for such investigation is provided by a science fiction scenario explored by a number of writers. It focuses on the challenge of comprehending high degrees of complexity calling for decision-making under operational conditions (as is the case in global management). The fictional problem is that of piloting or navigating a vessel through "hyperspace" or "sub-space", as imagined in the light of recent advances in theoretical physics and mathematics. Because of the inherent complexity of such environments, writers have explored the possibility that pilots and navigators might choose appropriate metaphors through which to perceive and order their task in relation to qualitative features of that complexity -- for example, flying like a bird, windsurfing, swimming like a fish, tunneling like a mole, etc. The mass of data input derived from various arrays of sensors, and otherwise completely unmanageable, is then channelled to the pilot in the form of appropriate sensory inputs to the nerve synapses corresponding to s/his "wings" or s/his "fins". Perception through the chosen metaphor is assisted by artificial intelligence software and appropriate graphic displays. The pilot switches between metaphors according to the nature of the hyperspace terrain. Such speculations serve to stimulate imagination concerning a possible marriage between metaphor and artificial intelligence in relation to governance. As a provocative follow-up to his study of shapeshifting, John Perkins (Shapeshifting: Shamanic Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation) presents a later text under the title: The Shape of Things To Come: Shapeshifting. Insights into shapeshifting from collective behaviourGiven the focus on bridging between animal movement and "models" of collective behaviour, it is worth considering the degree to which animal movement is emulated by groups and teams of people. Much has been made of the early skill of human groups to work as a team to attack larger animals -- still to be seen in the hunting skills of animal packs (dogs, wolves, lions, etc). Most striking is the capacity of the team (whether human or animal) to reconfigure in response to the prey. This is an example of collective shapeshifting that is now most evident and valued in human team sports. At the simplest level, two humans can collaborate as a one "four-footed, four-handed" entity to lift and carry an object. This skill can be flexibly extended in the collaboration of many more to carry a heavy log -- as a "centipede" ! Humans may choose to shift into ordered configurations when moving together -- into a line as in a trekking party, clustered as in a tour group.. Other configurations are used for gangs operations and military action. Much attention is given to such configurations and their transmutation in team ball sports (especially rugby and football). Conceptual endoskeleton vs Conceptual exoskeletonThe introduction above of the notion of a conceptual "exoskeleton" is consistent with behaviours in which individuals switch between academic disciplines or computer interfaces. As noted above, Edward de Bono describes the process of shifting between "thinking hats" or "shoes". On the other hand it might be said that the whole process of conventional education is designed to inculcate a mindset that an individual is not expected to be able to "doff" at will. The "skeleton" is then effectively an "endoskeletal" framework into which the individual is "locked" -- or around which the individual's sense of identity has been "built" through enculturation processes. The framework is internalized through these processes. Substance abuse -- and heavy beat music -- might be seen as an effort to unlock such a framework when it is sensed to be claustrophobic. Such unlocking is also a preoccupation in "deprogramming" those that have been incorporated into the belief systems of certain cults and sects -- although in contemporary society the distinction between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" cult mindsets remains to be clarified. The suggestions from shamanism regarding shapeshifting imply a much greater degree of identification with any alternative cognitive pattern -- but in the expectation that the individual will eventually return to the pattern of origin. Clearly the existential discipline here is of a different order than with "donning" a conceptual exoskeleton. The challenge of "doffing" is much more closely associated with the meditative processes of "detachment" from form as widely discussed in Buddhism. It is skills in detachment which enable endoskeletons to be "doffed". Identity, invariance and enactivismIn contrast to the abstraction implied above in selecting an animal cognitive form to be "donned", a particular concern here is the cognitive challenge of relating to the variety of animal forms encountered at any moment in daily life -- the environment of the moment. Earlier this was introduced in terms of the tendency to "outsource", cognitively, the dynamics of the environment. In this way the mind then effectively withdraws from full engagement with the environment. With loss of recognition that functions were delegated in this way, humans then deal with the environment in an instrumental manner -- without recognizing what they are doing to their own humanity -- and to the ecosystem on which they depend for their survival. Metaphorically the "sap" is withdrawn from the branches of the living tree of knowledge and these are then judged to be "dead" by the individual at their origin. Reified in this way, they can then be cut off with little concern, especially if they can be exploited as a resource. Any existential bonding with the experienced environment may be most simply described in terms of empathy. Indeed the simplest form of cognitive shapeshifting can be associated with the capacity to identify empathetically with features of the environment. In the case of another person, it may described as being able to "get into their skin" -- to see the world in their terms. Deep ecology extends this empathy -- even to what has been termed (and disparaged) as a mystical level of identification with a whole wilderness. The concern here however is to look for a form of "marriage" between the overt forms (from which one is normally dissociated) and the implicate, mystical form into which personal identity may be subsumed. How is identity to be understood and experienced in this context -- and by whom? Who indeed is the experiencer? To what extent is there a form of invariant identity underlying cognitive shapeshifting -- accepting that for some, such invariance is a matter of long-standing philosophical debate? In the discussion of the "tree of knowledge" by Maturana and Varela (The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, 1992) an individual's "reality" is constructed from his or her (or its) perceptions. These perceptions are interactive with the environment. The authors use the analogy of a raindrop which falls on a mountainside and, as it courses downward, both affects and is affected by the slope down which it rolls. That raindrop's experience is its incontrovertible truth, though rain falling on an opposite slope finds quite a different path and is differently affected. Thus, our "reality" is interactive. Moreover, our reality is mutually constructed. Our commonly agreed-upon view of reality is in fact a shared set of assumptions/perceptions. Together, humans bring forth the world they experience as objective reality. It becomes dangerous to scorn alternative views, having their own validity -- for without them the larger understanding of "reality" is incomplete. As noted earlier, this raises the question of how definition of the environment can then be enacted. This is seen as related to the cognitive concerns of enactivism outlined by Francesco Varela alone (Laying Down a Path in Walking, 1987) and with others (The Embodied Mind: cognitive science and human expression, 1991). More particularly, the concern is with how any individual is sustained by "en-minding" the extended body that is their natural environment and the implications for the quality of a community so engaged. Unconscious models as beasts of the imaginationThe term "en-minding" could be understood to imply a sustained endeavour to consciously control the environment -- to the point of effectively "invading" the environment through the mind, whether by academic disciplines, by some mental disciplines focusing on the human body, or by acquisition of skills in controlling human relationships. This invasive en-minding might be usefully compared to the colonial enterprise through which "America" is "discovered", "conquered" and "occupied" by an extension of the "European" mindset. As in this analogy, the fact that "America" had long existed prior to such discovery -- and been long inhabited by peoples with other mindsets and dynamics -- is considered irrelevant. But "en-minding" can be more fruitfully understood through recognition of a degree of mutuality with the environment -- a continent to be explored with attitudes and intentions that were poorly cultivated in the colonial enterprise. On the other hand, when "America" is not recognized -- in the light of the flat earth perspective of earlier times -- the mindsets active there may be understood as playing out into awareness in various ways:
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