| "Come on, this is important. When the hydrogen
atoms first came together, squeezed down to form our sun, something brand new, different,
completely unexpected happened. Sunlight, the omnidirectional radiation from the solar
fusion explosion, appeared. Think of this as new information, OK."
"OK." She sips her coffee and leans back.
"If the sun had no planets, the light would just go off into
space. But when sunlight strikes the spinning planet in orbit around the sun it creates
night and day. But night and day are meaningful, have context, only to the planet and
things on it. There is no night and day from the standpoint of the sun."
"I know, it's always high noon on Sunday from the viewpoint of
the Sun. And?" She yawns.
"The interaction of sunlight with the elements of the planet,
and the alternate heating and cooling during night and day, created megazillions of
combinations and recombination of Earth's elements. Each new combination created new
information in the form of electromagnetic fields surrounding new kinds of molecules. In
turn, this newly created information changed other molecules - acted upon them.
Eventually, the formation and reformation of a replicating nest of
gigantic molecules created and recreated a whole new kind of information. We call the
replicating molecule DNA and we call the nest of molecules, bacteria. We call the new kind
of information produced by these nests of molecules mind.
"Mind is a new level of context, wholly different from any
preexisting condition: like sunlight is wholly different from darkness. Mind is based on
context recognition: an on/off digital perception/recognition/response match between
between a recorded set of conditions and a perceived set of conditions."
"What? Jesus, what are you babbling about? Slow down. Think it
through. You're not making sense."
"Yes I am!" I stop. Obviously I'm not communicating so
she's right, I'm not making sense. "OK, I'm not."
"OK" She agrees.
Stepwise. "We go in layers. First layer. We have to start
somewhere, so we start with me. I exist like I am now, OK?"
"Oh Christ," she giggles, "this is going to be good.
You really should go look at yourself in the mirror. Stark naked, your hair standing
straight up, this wild look in your eye..."
"Come ON!" She stifles her laugh and tries to look
serious. I close my eyes and start again.
Mind
is what awareness does
to change with change and thus survive.
Mind is perception, memory, reaction.
I jot down the phrases. "This is about awareness. About mind.
Awareness is the error of expectations. Mind is what awareness does. Mind is perception,
memory, response."
"I think we need some more coffee." She gets up.
"I'm just starting."
"Well cut the crap and get on with it. Come on."
I listen to the rain falling on the overhead, look around at the
disorder in the cabin. Sigh. OK. "First we black box the process. I look at a world
full of information. The world around me is made up of great quantities of information -
analogue waves of data in all intensities, sizes and shapes. I expect the world to stay
like I see it. Something changes in the pattern I observe - the octopus moves on the
otherwise frozen coral landscape - and the error of my expectation creates awareness. I
compare this awareness with my previous experiences, recorded in my memory, and react
accordingly. This sequence is what I call mind; perception-memory-response. OK?"
"Mind." She nods.
"Now, we look closer at the process. First, a vast, continuous
analogue assortment of radiation washes over a retina cell in my eye. The contextual
molecular net of the cell only detects a small portion of the spectrum of electromagnetic
radiation striking it. In addition, the molecular context net of various retina cells
detect very specific conditions. Some respond to abrupt changes in light and dark, some to
slow changes in light and dark, some to variations in color and so forth."
"How much of this are you making up?" Freddy asks.
"I read the mechanics in Scientific American, the pattern I'm
discussing is ad lib."
"Just wondered."
"Well it's hard to think, talk and get interrupted at the same
time."
"Sorry, go on, I'll be quiet."
"So, in here is a perceptor cell," I point to my eye,
"exposed to an analogue field of information - communications, really because the
radiation hits the cell with billions of shifts per second. The molecules of the cell form
a net to filter all this information. The chemical structure of the net is structured,
preset, ready for a certain condition. The steady stream of information flows right
through the net. Suddenly, there is a shift in the steady flow. A shadow passes over the
cell. The shift, the change in the expected, is caught in the molecular net and the cell
reacts by sending a digital signal.
"The signal passes along the retina cell's axon as a pulse of
electrical current. The cell has transformed the incoming analogue information field into
a digital pulse of information." I look at Freddy and she just looks back, deadpan. I
can't tell if she understands or not.
"Analogue in, digital out. Perception," I say. No
response. "Well, thousands of retina cells send signals into a mosaic of vertical
columns of interconnected nerve cells in the brain. The digital signals from the field of
retinal cells combine to become an analogue field of information sent to millions of these
vertical columns.
"At the second stage, the columns of cells make up the context
net. They sift the analogue field of communications from the retina cells for specific
kinds of information. The second perceptual net compares the incoming analogue field of
communications from thousands of retina cells to traces of previous retina communications
recorded in the DNA or RNA of the column cells. Most of the data simply flows through the
net. But when a pattern matches a prerecorded one, the net snags it. The column cells
detect meaning, context, from the analogue field of information. This second level
analysis of the perceptual field of communications is part of what we call memory.
"Each level of analysis follows the same pattern. An existing
context net, woven by concepts, filters an analogue pattern of signals. When the net
catches any change, any difference in the incoming field of communication, awareness
awakens. Awareness sends digital signals to the next layer of brain cells. This results in
a hierarchy of classification moving from huge numbers of interactions to a higher class
of fewer interactions.
"At each stage, there is a shift in classes of information.
Retina cells deal with fields of pulsed electromagnetic signals flowing through them. The
column cells, deal with an incoming analogue field of digital/chemical signals from many
lower level neurons. They swap information with their peers to build up a larger class of
information about changes in motion over the whole retina.
"This creates a new set of digital signals passed on to the
next level of visual processing where the neurons examine the analogue field of many
incoming signals to determine how the moving lines and angles interact to form shapes.
Shape recognition causes this part of the brain to send out digital signals to a higher
stage where the neurons coordinate the analogue information to recognize how the shapes
interact with other shapes in the field of view.
"At each level, the signals are assembled into a new class of
information. The higher the level, the more complex the awareness of the final image. As
organisms evolve, as the brain gets bigger, new levels are layered onto this chain of
processing, each level gives the organism a whole new vista of understanding about what
goes on in front of its eyes.
"Finally, a section of the brain integrates the fields of
information from the auditory section, the touch section, the taste section, the smell
section. The integration level of the brain, probably located in the anterior temporal
cortex, works like all the other layers. It has a context net to compare the end-signals
from the different areas of the brain to memories of past patterns. Signals caught in the
context net create awareness. This results in a digital set of signals relayed to still
higher, perhaps conscious levels of the brain for response."
"How do the neurons compare signals to memory?" Freddy
asks.
"This whole thing is like a series of logic gates - preset by
trial and error either in the learning of the individual or at some point in the genetic
past. Pretty much the same as a parallel processing computer."
"A what?"
"A computer made up of lots of computers working in parallel.
Some of them learn and improve their own performance through a logical feedback.
"Memory, the context net, works in two, maybe three different
ways in the brain. Habits - perception, memory, response sequences repeated again and
again - are handled in a different way than processing information for the first time.
This is why you can drive a familiar route and have your mind busy working on something
entirely different. Habit, repeated exposure to a particular pattern of perception, makes
the gates easier to open and the signal flows quicker, gets recognized easier, and the
digital signal out of the cell cluster comes faster than an unrecognized signal pattern.
The first signal to reach the next level of brain architecture is the most
important."
"Oh, OK."
"I made that part up."
"That's OK, it sounds fine."
"Also, there are feedback systems in the brain. If a snake
makes a grab for a bird but the bird gets away, the bird will remember the snake next
time. Pain and fear associated with the image of the snake is produced by the release of
emotive chemicals from the deeper parts of the brain. These emotive chemicals alert the
whole brain system, 'Hey, this signal is important, record it!"'
"Yeah, how does it do that? Record it."
"Again, there must be at least two ways. Mechanical, a change
in form or architecture, and action, a change in the flow pattern of signals relayed to
higher centers. Some of the chemicals causing emotions make the neurons grow new
tentacles. This makes a permanent context net for the particular pattern. Highly important
signals probably increase the output of chemical translators at the neuron synapses.
"I don't want to get off the track. Lets go back to the shift
from analogue patterns of vast numbers of signals, recognized by memory traces or preset
architecture, followed by a digital signal out."
"Analogue/digital/analogue/digital," she sing-songs.
"Is this our sunday sermon?"
I glare at her, because I now know it is Thursday. She subsides. "The final output from the brain is a series of digital signals pulsing down the
axons to the muscle cells. These digital signals move the whole creature in a smooth
analogue way."
"What happened to context?" Freddy asks. "I thought
this was all about context."
"Before you can understand context you've got to understand
about this analogue/digital/analogue/digital shift and how at each level the error of
expectation creates awareness."
"Why?"
"Because context is the filtering of the analogue field of
communications into discrete, similar chunks of information. Mind creates context,
creates meaning, creates a story, from the environment. Context is the readiness of the
singularity, the concept, to split a continuous bombardment of diverse information into Ah
ha! recognition of analogies.
"Context is an ability. The underlying structure - the net of
memories - is learned. The parallel architecture of the brain allows both the highest,
most evolved decision making parts of the brain, and the oldest, least evolved part of the
brain - the brain stem controlling emotions, joint control in forming context nets.
"At each level of organization, the context, the meaning of
experience, changes. What might be on/off data to the retina cell becomes a quick moving
shadow to the column modules in the cortex becomes the vision of a striking snake in the
decision making sections of the brain. The context changes significantly with each
increase in levels of awareness and so does the ability to respond."
"But if the top level does not know anything about snakes,
there is no response." Freddy notes. "Like the birds on Guam just sat there and
got gobbled up by the Philippine Tree snakes some idiot imported."
"Correct. But stay with me one more minute, OK? I'm getting
there. A scientist, trained by university knowledge, is researching evolution. The need
for food and shelter alerts the scientist from one end of the brain. The conscious link
with other scientists alerts the scientist from the other end of the brain. The context
net is woven with lots of patterns of evolutionary evidence. The scientist tunes out most
of the flow of information from the environment, but when a pattern of information snags
in the context net prepared by the scientist, the Ah Ha! goes off. The scientist
sends off a series of digital signals - writing - to the greater body of science. These
signals pass through columns of other scientists in the next section of data processing.
They compare the incoming signal with what they already have experienced. They might file
the incoming signal as inconsequential or they might also say, 'Ah Ha!' and route it to a
much wider audience. If passed on, the pattern goes out with most of the original
information plus a digital add-on note. Scientific bodies of greater and greater influence
and knowledge review the pattern and respond accordingly.
"From there the concept enters the mainstream of mankind's
thinking and may even result in changing the direction of movement of the whole immense
population of hominids." I grin. "See, it works on all levels."
"What about a single cell?" Freddy asks.
"Well, a single cell is not really single. It's a committee of
bacteria, a concept made by a huge population of molecules. It works with a molecular
awareness system. First there must be a way to detect differences in the analogue field
surrounding the organism. This means a cell wall with breaks in it of some kind."
"Why? Why not a nice spherical cell wall with no breaks?" Freddy interrupts.
"Because without some kind of break there is no way to
distinguish differences. Even a virus, with its limited amount of DNA and protein shell,
has angles or edges to its protective wall."
"But why?"
"Look. You can be on the right or left side of a point, a
corner, and there is a difference between the two positions. But you can't be on the right
or left side of a perfect sphere. That's why, for example, a spherical egg divides along
the meridian where the sperm enters the egg. The sprem entry point gives the spherical
shape of the egg a point of difference and enables the egg to decide right from
left."
"What about amoebas they don't have any definite shape?"
"Well, like most single celled animals, amoebas have complex
protein molecules floating in their cell walls. These are the sense perceptors and are
asymmetrical. They detect food molecules over on this side but not over on the other side
and send Ah Ha! digital signals into the interior of the amoeba. This is transmitted via a
web of intracellular proteins to the nucleus where DNA keeps memories of past Ah Ha's. DNA
is the basic context net. Like all such nets, it is made of the knots of molecular
linkages but it can't do anything by itself. A critter called a ribosome and a molecule
called transcriptase need to interact with the DNA. Transcriptase acts like a spider on
the DNA context web. Awareness awakens, Transcriptase responds, when the net vibrates with
an incoming pattern recognition. It unzips the key part of the DNA molecule 'reads' the
code, generates second order formation of messenger RNA that takes the DNA memory pattern
to the ribosomes where the pattern is used to replicate new proteins.
"The combined field of digital messages from the perceptor
molecules become an analogue interior potential indicating where the food is. This field
of information, exposed to changes in protein and enzyme conditions, alters the binding of
the phospholipid molecules in the cell wall, making it soften on the side closest to the
food. Protoplasm streams into the softened area to form a pseudopod. The amoeba moves in a
nice smooth analog glide towards its prey."
"Ok, Enough! I get it. It works on all levels. Didn't we go
through something like this with Yves? All this analogue/digital stuff?"
"Sure. With logic systems, classification systems, feedback
controls. It works with everything, that's why it's important."
"I don't see why it's important." She says.
"Because it's what mind is. How it works. Perception, memory,
response. It's the creation of awareness. It's the same pattern throughout everything at
all levels, jumping from analogue patterns into context nets and generating the digital
responses of awareness. It's the process of leaping from quantitative to qualitative, from
concepts to context, from numbers to quality, from the individual to the whole. It's the
answer to the mystery of evolution.
"It solves the old paradox about the individual versus the
community, don't you see? The individual and the community are part of this same sequence
of information flow: they are both manifestations of awareness as it develops through
stages of perception, memory and reaction. Both the individual and the community are the
physical result of mind. WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?"
"Oh ha, ha, ha, ha" she gets up and grabs me by the arm
and drags me into the forward head. I look in the mirror and burst out laughing too. There
we are, not a stitch of clothing, me with hair standing straight out to the side, eyes
wide and earnest and slightly crazy. Oh well, what the hell.
A sheaf of air ten thousand meters thick, hundreds of miles wide,
crosses the ten mile gap between Fiji and Malololailai. Sea, in the lagoon, ripples under
the impact of the massive churning gasses, wave crests snap into white foam. The wind
smacks the coconut trees on the island, roars over the hill and plunges into the
anchorage. Moira weathervanes to present the least surface area to the blast of air. I
look out the porthole, past the little rain gems, and see the windswept yacht rookery
rotate past. My eyes reflect back at me and I wonder if I'll ever get out of the gray
confusion of my mind.
Creativity feeds upon the random. The essence of epigenesis is
predictable repetition. But never completely predictable. The essence of learning is the
change in change. Explanation is the process of mapping presumed cyclic epigenetic beliefs
onto ever changing new coordinates.
My mind chews endlessly on context and concepts as I help Freddy
straighten up the disarray on Moira. When we finish I'll go out and take my daily coral
photographs.
Olympus
"Wow! Hey, look at this, look at this!" I wave the letter
at Freddy.
"What? Let's see?" She takes the letter from Olympus and
reads while I dance around the cabin. Olympus has agreed to my proposal and is sending me
all the camera gear I need, including another OM2n, a 250 film back, magazines, ring
flash, 16-mm lens, and on and on.
There are also two boxes of developed slides. I open them and go
through the images. Super fantastic terrific. The shots of the coral tip, taken each day,
are razor sharp. Beautiful. I can see the changes in the coral cups between every 4
frames. Slight, but they are there. It works! The soft coral photos are stunning, really
stunning. I look at each slide in the hand held viewer and pass it to Freddy who oooohs
and aaaaaahs until I grab it back for the next one.
I put another slide in the viewer and peer into it. Oh, this is the
absolute best of the best soft coral shot. The definitive ultra shot. The light goes out
in the viewer and the image vanishes.
"What?" Freddy's hand reaches for the now dead viewer.
"Bulb went out. I'll put in another one." I get up to find
my jar of light bulbs, but my mind is still on the vanishing image of the soft coral.
I had a dream last night. I can't remember what the dream was about
but I woke up suddenly and saw the dream vanish. It was like the bulb going out on the
slide viewer: quick, surprising, final. The dream didn't just vanish. I saw the
dream withdraw to where it came from. It was like seeing the communication web of the
dream and it reminds me of a vague idea I had about the communication web of the soft
coral out on the reef the other day.
I look through the electric locker for a new light bulb. I look over
the idea of the dream as a creature, a concept, an animal tracing its behavior into the
sea of my mind.
 The
vanishing dream looked like a cross section of the tips of a soft coral
bush. A two-dimensional section viewed as a slice across the ends of
the animal's branches.
As I woke up, the glowing vibrant colors of the dream retreated down
the branches like a light moving back to its source. I saw the plane of awareness - the field
of awareness - snap back from layer to layer.
At each layer it had fewer and fewer branches right down until it
reached the single trunk of the creature, the bright beginning, the small larval thought
who settled on the reef of my mind some time during the night.
"I don't have a 3-volt bulb. I'll have to rig it up for 12
volts so we can just plug it in to Moira's batteries." I pull out a 12-volt bulb and
select some wire and a plug to modify the viewer.
It's almost the reverse of the pattern I worked out about how mind
works from perception to conscious response. In the dream, the visual array of light,
color and sound was touched off by my own brain, not the inflow of sensory information
from my environment. The dream started as an idea and webbed out to excite all the context
nets of all levels of my brain.
The final dream image was made up of tiny little glowing dots of
color the way the dies of my slides make up an image on film. Each dot is a collection of
millions and billions of tiny memories .... both in the film where the emulsion records
differences in light intensity and in my mind where the image is recorded in differences
in the chemistry of my neurons. The film/neuron memory is a latent image developed by
context of light passing through the emulsion and then, through a system of lenses,
focusing on the retina of my eye. The image of the soft coral does not 'appear' until the
recorded memory pattern is illuminated by light/awareness and observed by the next highest
link in the chain of mind.
But the other parallels between the soft coral and the dream are
what excite me. The larval concept (either of a soft coral or a dream) lands on the
substrate of my mind, finding conditions just right there.
It begins as a complex little concept, an idea with a life of its
own. It spreads its context net to capture nourishment from the oceans of my thoughts.
Currents of memories eddy past and the context net selects the ones corresponding with the
needs of the growing dream. It divides and grows and expands, branching out, building into
a story about a soft coral growing in my dreams.
There is a fundamental and highly important difference here. When
sense perceptions form a mental image, the pyramid of information flow comes from outside
the system and is captured by context nets at one stage after another until a peak of
conscious awareness is reached. In the dream formation, however, the flow goes the other
way and a small concept matches the existing context nets at all levels, exciting
awareness and the construction of a mental image controlling the whole population of
entities in the system. Not any idea will work. The idea must excite recognition in the
context nets.
Put another way, concepts from the higher levels of mind can be
pre-adapted to environmental context nets and make them work to spread and develop the
idea.
This is part of the feedback loop in mind. The dream acts as
reinforcement. It refreshes and rehearses the context nets. It amplifies the importance of
certain aspects of the context nets and ties the whole system together. But, on another
scale, the dream can grow from a very small concept to a highly successful mode of
behavior. The way a good idea can meet economic needs and generate a whole industry
modifying the behavior of nations or the whole world. Electricity, for example.
"You want to turn on the plugs?" I ask Freddy and she
does. I plug in the newly installed cord to the slide viewer and it lights up nice and
bright. "Success!"
She sits down next to me again and we continue looking at the
slides. How I can get the ideas about mental images into the context of the fantastically
beautiful red and white, glowing image of the soft coral I see in the viewer? I pass it to
Freddy. Her eye looks at the image of the soft coral. Her mind, her context net, does not
perceive the link between the development of thought and the form displayed by the soft
coral or the image encoding process in the color film.
At each level of growth of a thought, there is (for that level) a
complete concept. Just as there is a complete soft coral when it is a fertilized egg and
at all stages of growth. Just as my retina cell is a complete entity and I am a complete
entity. And at every level, the entities existing there have a different context net and
therefore are aware of different aspects of the incoming signals. The retina cell is aware
of changes in light intensity or particular wave lengths. My consciousness sees moving
images and lots of colors.
She passes me the viewer and I put in another slide. All of these
images of the soft coral are completely obsolete from the standpoint of the real soft
coral sitting out there on the reef. But by becoming color slides through Man's technology
of cameras and film and processing, the images take on new potential in a larger mind
system. When published and viewed by many people, the images will generate an even bigger
concept than the tiny little soft coral on the reef. Just as the retina cell generates
part of a larger consciousness in me through the biologically grown technology of my mind.
"Hey, you stuck in there?" Freddy pulls the viewer out of
my hand. "Ohhh, a beauty."
But the soft coral doesn't know Freddy is looking at its image. Just
as I might be reading something by Bertrand Russell about logical typing but he's dead. He
doesn't know I'm reading his ideas. He was like a retina cell, forming concepts and
feeding them into the consciousness of Man by digital marks on paper. Those marks became
analogue fields of understanding over a longer interval of awareness. They are now fields
of understanding shifting the behavior of great masses of hominids: most of them never
knowing how or why their behavior is shifting. To them, the coordinated movement of
mankind is a mysterious, unpredictable destiny.
All this keys in nicely with evolution. Creatures, individual
beings, adjust their context nets according to their abilities and the signals from the
environment. Their awareness invents/selects a new way to respond to survive in a
difficult situation. If the new behavior works, if they do survive, their offspring are
the digital messages passed into longer intervals of awareness. The whole population of
individuals creates an analog field of behavior within the larger being of the ecosystem.
The new field of behavior is a concept with its own context net to relay signals into the
ecosystem.
The concept (a species), and its ecosystem context, interact to form
an actual visual arrangement of individuals on the surface of the planet. A reality-scape,
not a dream scape.
Like a dream, the larval concept of the species is an actual change
in behavior of individual organisms. The new behavior excites already existing context
nets of the ecosystem. It's spread alters the reality-scape, changing context nets to its
own advantage and thus shaping how future generations must behave.
From the chaos of vast numbers of possible genetic possibilities,
only the ones conforming to the context nets at all levels of the mind-scape survive. This
is true of ideas, behavior systems, and genetic memories.
The evolutionary tree looks like a soft coral because it grew like
one. The behavioral concept (species) went through a series of stages of interaction with
the environment: new forms of behavior, new arrangements of dancing cells, new context
nets.
Each new layer in each stage of development remains in the existing
reality scape. Like the cross sectional view of the branching bush of soft coral or the
developing mind image or the growth of science is layered with still existing patterns of
behavior. At any interval of awareness, the observed section of the reality-scape reveals
a pattern of dispersion, an image of being. The image moves, changes, evolves as our
awareness filters the myriad little points of information into a vision.
From an evolutionary view, the variations of DNA encode the
developing awareness of life. How do these variations happen? Catastrophic environmental
events, from cosmic rays to chemical damage, cause a few. But most of the variation is the
sorting and resorting of existing combinations of `genes' until they form behavior
patterns matching existing context nets in the environment.
Gene isn't a bad word, actually, it comes from a greek word meaning "to become" as in "to appear" or "to be born". But what is
appearing? What is becoming? Genes are interactive concepts, memories of how to behave,
context nets monitored by the composite community of the cell. Genes don't become anything
by themselves. They are manifested only when taken in context as part of a story made by
the myriad other members of the cellular concept.
An organism can't change its own DNA codes. Just as it can't change
the way it perceives. Just as it can't alter the digital/analogue/digital/analogue shifts
in building mind. What we - either we collectively or singularly - do is SELECT from
myriad environmental events. And based on our selections, the dream blooms into a
wonderful full color reality or dissipates. We survive, or we die.
If a life form is too rigid in its behavior - makes exactly the same
selection over and over again - it is unable to adjust when the environment changes. If it
is too flexible - selecting loosely, taking hold of everything - there is rapid change:
uncontrolled change, cancerous change, insane change. It's a question of style, quality,
skill.
Evolution is the composite story of the mental process of
perceiving, recognizing, reacting to select the correct components of chaos so as to have
coordinated change. It is a judgmental process.
Judgements are made at each level of mind, based on the traditions
and customs of past knowledge. Cells make judgements, organisms make judgements, societies
make judgements.
The kinds of behavior life selects at one level are signals to the
next largest layer of mind, and are also behavior and control systems to the smaller
layers.
Hominids map dreams onto the surface of the planet the way eyes map
visions onto the cortex. Not in a metaphysical sense, but in a three-dimensional
encrustation of roads and buildings and forests and farms. The changes our behavior make
in the physical structure of our planet are memory traces of our passage. We call these
memories culture and tradition and they control the pathways of our children.
"Not bad, they're looking good." Freddy gets up and
stretches.
"You went through all the slides without me?" I look up at
her surprised.
"You, sweetheart, were gone somewhere, so I just went ahead.
When do you think the olympus stuff will arrive?"
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