Category: Reading

Mind is not what it seems: On the mental foundation of the world

Reading | Philosophy

A. A. Adedire, BS, BA | 2024-04-14

Philosophy over the centuries has grappled with the idea of accurately describing the world. What is the fundamental nature of the world? Why is the world the way it is? And how can we come to understand the foundations of reality? Consciousness itself seems so obvious that it cannot be denied, but how can we then extrapolate this feeling of personal consciousness to the world as it exists outside ourselves?

A common objection to idealism is that it is counter to our intuitions about an external world. The claim is that there is a shared reality that follows natural laws. This shared reality exists and persists uninterrupted. There is a natural order to things, which feels almost as self-evident as our own conscious awareness. Indeed, a physicalist may ask the following question: how can idealism discount the obvious permanence of natural laws and the continuity of reality? Is the world that persists not fundamentally different to my own individual mind, which feels chaotic and unreliable? These questions reflect an appeal to natural law: there is a natural order at the base of reality, which we can perceive. This natural order feels as self-evident as our own conscious awareness. But when we look inwardly, we find that the mind is chaotic, unreliable, and unsteady. So, how can a mental world exist out there that isn’t similarly chaotic, unreliable, and unsteady?

In what follows, I contend that the appeal to natural order can be refuted by the Hindu Vedantic tradition of self-inquiry, which also dismantles the notion of a personal self. The natural order objection posits that the mind is chaotic, unreliable, and unsteady, but I contend that it isn’t the mind that has these characters but the personal self, which is a fantasy of the mind.

Firstly, let’s establish that the personal self is what is meant in the objection. When pressed, those who make the appeal to natural order state that ‘mind’ is thoughts and emotional states, as they interact with the world or the other experiences supposedly produced by the brain, which then are synonymous with the story of the personal self: a tenacious sense of an ‘I’ hiding within the body, at the center of experience. The egoic ‘I’ of the mind is not as orderly as the foundation of reality—or so the objection claims. True enough, the personal self is indeed inherently prone to fragmentation, inconsistency, and illusion. It is subject to the whims of emotions, the flux of thoughts, and the biases of perception, rendering it unreliable and in direct opposition to natural laws, which are doggedly unbroken. But the personal self is not conscious awareness.

The Hindu Vedantic tradition of self-inquiry is a personal project of understanding the illusory nature of the personal self and the primacy of awareness. The process of self-inquiry is commonly associated with the Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi. Born Venkataraman Iyer, he was a revered spiritual teacher of the 20^th century, renowned for his teachings on self-inquiry and non-duality. In1896, at the age of 16, Maharshi had a spontaneous and acute awareness of death. He taught his practitioners to pay close attention to the stubborn sense of ‘I’ and instructed them to eliminate it through negation, a process known in Sanskrit as neti neti ( नेति नेति):

The gross body which is composed of the seven humours (dhatus), I am not; the five cognitive sense organs, viz., the senses of hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell, which apprehend their respective objects, viz. sound, touch, colour, taste and odour, I am not; the five conative sense organs, viz., the organs of speech, locomotion, grasping, excretion and procreation, which have as their respective functions, speaking, moving, grasping, excreting and enjoying, I am not; the five vital airs, prana, etc., which perform respectively the five functions of in-breathing, etc., I am not; even the mind which thinks, I am not; the nescience too, which is endowed only with the residual impressions of objects and in which there are no objects and no functionings, I am not. If I am none of these, then who am I? After negating all of the above mentioned as ‘not this’, ‘not this’, that Awareness which alone remains—that I am. (Ramana Maharshi, Who Am I? The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, 12-13, Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu: Sri Ramanasramam, 2010).

Self-inquiry starts with a fundamental question: who am I? Meaning, what is behind my thoughts, actions, and sense perceptions? In a word, what is behind this continuity of self? Deep self-inquiry then strips away thoughts, actions, and sense perceptions one by one, resulting in the realization that these cannot constitute the persistent ‘I’ due to their lack of continuity. The process of self-inquiry ends with the idea that the only continuity across all of experience is the very awareness of experience.

As such, the supposed appearance of the mind as chaotic, unreliable, and disorderly is an appearance of the personal self as chaotic, unreliable, and disorderly. Once the personal self is stripped away from the mind, the foundation of the mind reveals itself to be simply the awareness of our experiences, such as our thoughts, feelings, and sense perceptions. Thus, there is a continuous, unchanging, and reliable foundation to the mind, and that continuous foundation of core awareness is of the same kind as the continuous foundation of natural order or natural law. Therefore, the natural order objection against idealism reflects, in this sense, merely confusion about what the fundamental nature of mind is. If we define mind as the egoic self, then we see the mind as chaotic and disorderly; it is constantly being pulled by ever-changing emotions and the incessant flow of thoughts, clouding awareness. But if we define mind as core awareness, it follows that there is a reliable, steady, and continuous ‘no-thing’ that acts as the ‘container’ of thoughts, emotional states, and sense perceptions.

The Hindu Vedantic tradition of self-inquiry not only eliminates the illusion of the personal self, but also reveals the true nature of mind. The claim that mind is fundamental links the core awareness found through self-inquiry to the very foundation of reality itself; it extrapolates this core awareness beyond the container of ‘my thoughts,’ ‘my actions,’ or ‘my feelings.’

The appeal to natural order against idealism is a confusion of terms that is commonly seen in objections to idealism. Such objections reflect the misapplication of physicalist assumptions to idealistic concepts, as well as a need to anthropomorphize the central claims of idealism, which are then taken at face value to be absurd. Similarly, many physicalist objections have baked within them the conception that consciousness is an emergent epiphenomenon of matter. Physicalists often cannot conceive of any worldview where this conception of consciousness is not a first principle. Yet, to fairly engage with any philosophical position, one must do so on this position’s own terms. Understanding must precede refutation.

Meta-survival: on the incoherence of localized, countable subjectivity

Reading | Metaphysics

Ola Nilsson, MA | 2024-03-17

Introduction

Starting from a raw materialist worldview, this essay will take you to the border of something completely different. I use the term ‘self-experience’ as a collective term for everything that seems to make you who you are. This includes your consciousness, your personal identity, and other related features. Initially, I will adopt the stance that the brain plays a crucial role in self-experience, and that self-experience is a kind of process that arises from within a specific brain.

Two brains, one mind

Imagine that an arbitrarily small part of your brain is replaced with a tiny artificial device that maintains the same causality and function as the replaced biological part. It would then be difficult to claim that anything is lacking in your self-experience if, after the exchange, you moved, spoke, thought, and behaved as before. We could further imagine that all remaining parts of your brain are successively replaced with similar devices that maintain causality and function with the rest of the brain. In this scenario, your self-experience would have been transferred from a biological brain to what one might call an ‘artificial brain.’ After this exchange, parts of the artificial brain could be replaced with new units that maintain the causality and function in the artificial brain. The units that were left over in this process could be assembled into another brain, which would correspond to the first artificial brain in the example.

Thereafter, the two artificial brains could be fed the same stimuli through electrodes connected to the places where the nerve fibers would normally have connected to the sensory organs. In this scenario, everything that one brain experiences would also be experienced by the other brain. Even though the brains are qualitatively identical, it is not as apparent that the self-experience of the brains is numerically distinct. Consider, for instance, if one unit from one artificial brain were exchanged with a unit from the other artificial brain; would the two brains then immediately lose their self-experience? Not if one believes what was mentioned above: that if the causality and function are maintained in the brain, there is no reason to believe that this brain’s self-experience would disappear.

If all units are exchanged between the two artificial brains, will the self-experience also switch places? What happens if, instead, half of the units are exchanged? Would such an exchange mean that the self-experience becomes evenly distributed between the two brains, i.e., with fifty percent in each brain?

Perhaps the answers to the questions above are not as intricate as they may initially seem. If one believes that a unit can be exchanged without affecting the self-experience, then there is no good reason to believe that the self-experience would disappear if more than one, or even all units, are successively exchanged. If it is irrelevant for the two artificial brains which specific units constitute the brain, then this should mean that the self-experience is not only qualitatively, but also numerically the same across the two artificial brains. This, in turn, means that, for a certain specific self-experience, it does not matter if there are thousands, or just one such artificial brain as described above [2]. These artificial brains are thus in ‘contact’ with the same self-experience. This means that you ultimately cannot be found in your brain.

So, if locality or specific matter is not fundamental for the self-experience, what about time? If we simulated the experience of eating a red apple in one of the brains, and then immediately stopped all processes in the brain for an arbitrary period, and then restarted them, would this brain have perceived this time gap? Since the gap is not registered in the brain, the length of this gap should be irrelevant. The specific self-experience would therefore perceive the eating of the apple as a continuous event, without interruption. One can further imagine a scenario where the simulated apple-eating process is looped, and where the brain’s causal pattern is reset to the initial state after each time the apple is eaten. For every new initiation of the process, the self-experience would interpret the event as unique, asserting that the eating of the apple is happening here and now for the very first time. This demonstrates that, regardless of whether there is a large time gap between two self-experienced events or if the self-experienced event is repeated after being reset to the initial state, the event would always be experienced as occurring here and now for the first time.

The specific self-experience thus appears not to be dependent on a particular set of matter or a spatiotemporal location. This self-experience would therefore remain numerically identical in all repeated instances, regardless of where and when it is instantiated. The instances all have an objective nature and history, but the subjective quality of the instances is something abstract, separate from all ‘objective’ contexts. If one accepts the outcomes of this thought experiment, it implies that a person can fundamentally be seen as an abstract object [3].

However, there is a ‘but’ to consider in this thought experiment. Normally, two cars would not be regarded as the same car, no matter how many parts were exchanged between them; They would still be two different cars. It’s conceivable that two exactly alike self-experiences could be numerically distinct, just as two exactly alike brains can be. The fact that we have ‘puzzled’ around with the parts of the two artificial brains does not necessarily mean that we have shown that the self-experience housed by both brains constitutes the same numerically identical self-experience. Perhaps the swapping between the brains only leads to the preservation of two numerically distinct self-experiences. This stance on self-experience, however, soon encounters difficulties. For what are we really referring to when we describe two brains?

The Identity of Indiscernibles

What distinguishes one object from being two objects? Two qualitatively identical books may be alike, but it’s clear that they are two copies of a book: one copy lies on the table in front of you, while the other is found in the bookshelf. These books do not constitute the same book, for if they did, the books, or rather the book, would be numerically identical, that is, identical with itself [4].

However, there are reasons to question whether these seemingly correct answers are valid under all conceivable scenarios. The “Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles,” hereinafter abbreviated as “PII,” is the metaphysical principle that stipulates that there cannot be two (or more) objects that share all properties [5]. An equivalent description of PII is that objects that are indistinguishable in every respect constitute the same object [6].

In the influential paper “The Identity of Indiscernibles,” British-American philosopher Max Black presents a thought experiment based on a radially symmetric universe. According to Black’s definition, a “radially symmetric universe” is a small universe with a center, where everything that exists and occurs at one place in the universe also exists and occurs at the diametrically opposite place in the universe. In such a universe, your right-handed qualitatively identical ‘twin’ will also be right-handed. An object set in motion on one side of the universe will have a ‘twin object’ simultaneously set in motion on the opposite side; a change in one object leads to the exact same simultaneous change in the other twin object.

Black asks the reader to imagine a radially symmetric universe where only two qualitatively identical spheres of chemically pure iron exist. These two spheres share the same qualitative and relational properties; what applies to one sphere also applies to the other, without exception. Black argues that PII is an obviously false principle, since a universe where only two exactly alike spheres exist, seems to be a possible universe [7]. However, I think Black is wrong about PII.

Another interpretation of PII

If one categorically claims that a sphere is a sphere and an apple is an apple, these objects are attributed properties they don’t necessarily possess. Consider the fruit described as an apple. Even though it looks like an apple, smells like an apple, and should be classified as an apple, it’s highly unclear if this object corresponds to a kind of Platonic form in a Platonic world of ideas, where objects such as spheres and apples are categorized. Indeed, there are significant advantages in our daily lives to categorizing and describing objects as spheres and apples, but it’s another question what metaphysical significance this categorization of objects holds. For example, we can name ‘two’ rivers differently, even though the rivers are interconnected. Then, these rivers can flow together into something we call ‘one’ lake. The lake can then connect to something we call ‘one’ sea. But can the boundaries of these various supposed water collections be attributed with metaphysical significance? [8] If not, shouldn’t the same apply to spheres? If one considers these supposed object configurations of rivers or spheres as independent and ‘cataloged’ entities, then there might be a reason to claim that Black’s two spheres refute PII, as one can then talk about rivers and spheres in plural, and PII can thereafter be judged as a trivially false principle. But one can also choose not to view these object configurations as independent entities. Instead, one can see the whole collection of water, or Black’s two spheres, as a unit, rather than a jumble of rivers or spheres.

That we divide the scenario into two spheres is a choice we make in agreement with Black. One could just as well (albeit somewhat impractically) consider the scenario as one, involving a single object resembling two distinct spheres. Black’s spheres can be seen as a scenario involving a loosely assembled object. If another such loosely assembled object was added to Black’s universe, the scenario would necessarily become different compared to before. In this sense, the number of supposed rivers or spheres seems to lack metaphysical significance, regardless of whether they are claimed to be two, four, or thousand in number. The metaphysical significance is not determined by the alleged number of objects; the scenario is what it is.

Imagine Black’s universe with its ‘two’ qualitatively identical spheres. Now replace the spheres with ‘two’ qualitatively identical persons, face to face, five meters apart. These ‘two’ persons are positioned so that they share all relational properties with each other. Then, imagine that ‘one’ of these ‘two’ persons is instantaneously annihilated. The question is: which one has been annihilated? I believe that no person has been annihilated, and that no loss of a person has occurred. But, of course, the scenario has now changed. What took place before the annihilation was not two persons staring at each other, but rather a person looking at himself, just because ‘they’ constituted the same person (remember the earlier thought experiment with the two brains). This statement is supported also by the concept known as “indistinguishable particles” in modern physics. This means that if a complete particle exchange had occurred (counterfactually) between the two persons, the scenario would remain unchanged [9].

If it doesn’t matter which particles constitute a certain scenario, there is no reason to assume that the scenario involves two different persons. If the particles were reorganized between the ‘two’ persons, the scenario would still be the same. Nevertheless, with the annihilation the scenario has changed in both a physically and metaphysically significant way. The scenario after the annihilation is numerically identical to what follows, regardless of which of the ‘two’ persons was annihilated. From having been in a situation where the person saw himself, he is now in an empty universe. If it was instead the ‘other’ person who was annihilated, the following scenario would still be numerically identical to the ‘first’ described outcome. Thus, it is not two different scenarios that have been described, but the very same one.

Why we seem to survive annihilation after divergence

Imagine a duplicator device that creates a perfect copy of a person. The place where the copy appears is only a few meters away from where the original person is located. This duplicator also compensates for external relational properties such as the persons’ different distances to objects. This is done by modifying the surrounding environment around the persons during the duplication process itself. If we accept that the same numerical self-experience can occur in two distinct but qualitatively identical brains, this will mean that the self-experiences of these two persons after the duplication will constitute the same numerically identical self-experience. In a scenario where this duplicator is used, the arisen ‘copy’ will experience that she is the original person. Since the original and the ‘copy’ share the same numerical self-experience, and both are aware of the situation they are in, they realize that there is no reason to try to make a distinction between each other.

However, the notion of two persons sharing the same numerical self-experience only applies as long as neither of them diverges from the shared state in which they share all properties with each other. If they diverge from this state, perhaps by one of them scratching their nose with the right hand, while the other does it with the left, it can be argued that two different self-experiences arise. This is because, with such an event, each person starts to develop their own unique experiences that are unknown to the other person.

If one of the two persons were to be instantly annihilated while they are in the shared state, no person would die, since they are essentially the same person. But, if one of them is annihilated after they have begun to diverge from each other, the annihilated person seems to die. Or do they?

We can imagine that a person (Person A) steps into the duplicator device, and that her copy (Person B) comes into existence. But soon after, they diverge from the shared state as they go out into the world and start to develop their own experiences. Ten minutes later, Person A is told that she will be annihilated. However, Person A is offered an alternative to annihilation: the duplicator has an additional feature; it can not only copy, but also modify its user. If Person A wishes, she can step into the duplicator together with Person B, and be modified to the exact same state Person B is in. This modification would thus lead to a new shared state where Person A and Person B would share the same numerically identical self-experience. Person A is assured that the whole process can be carried out in a conscious state—why wouldn’t it be possible?—and that the whole thing will be over in a couple of minutes. Of course, Person A will lose the experiences and memories she has built up from the first shared state, which she and Person B were in together ten minutes ago. But she will not be annihilated. The offer sounds promising to Person A. She therefore heads to the duplicator, to which Person B has already arrived.

It is not uncommon for people to experience memory loss, nor is it unusual for rapid bodily changes to occur due to, for example, an accident. We would not claim that a person who has experienced a memory gap, or has sustained an injury, is not the same person as before. Similarly, it seems that only minor modifications are needed for Person A to match Person B’s state: a few memories need to be modified, and some minor bodily changes will also need to be made. The environment needs to be adjusted as well, ensuring it is identical for both Person A and Person B. Once these adjustments are made, they would once again share a state in which they have the same numerically identical self-experience.

Imagine that, instead of undergoing the modification process, Person A was annihilated and, thereafter, Person B underwent the duplication. The outcome would then be the same as if Person A had undergone the modification process because the numerically identical self-experience—in both scenarios—would have its origin in Person B. But in what way does it help the annihilated Person A, if Person B undergoes a duplication after the annihilation?

Imagine a scenario where Person A is faced with a task that requires two persons. She needs to pick a certain quantity of blueberries within a specific timeframe but realizes she cannot complete the task alone. Therefore, Person A goes to duplicator and creates a copy of himself. Afterward, the two persons leave the duplicator, diverge from the shared state, and complete the task of picking blueberries. After that, they are supposed to ‘reunite’ into a new shared state through the modification process. The lot to undergo the modification falls on Person A. However, instead of reuniting to a shared state through modification, there is another device which can immediately annihilate Person A. The question is whether there are any reasons for person A, in this scenario, to not use the annihilation device?

Conclusion

If one cannot provide a valid reason why an immediate annihilation of Person A would be a worse option than the modification process, which is carried out in a conscious state, one cannot credibly claim that person A would not survive through person B upon annihilation, even after Person A and B have diverged from each other, as in the case with the blueberry picking. That person A seems to survive trough person B could be summed up by the term ‘meta-survival.’

Bibliography

[1] Zuboff, Arnold. “One self: The logic of experience.” Inquiry 33.1 (1990): 39-68.

[2] Zuboff, Arnold. “Moment universals and personal identity.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Vol. 78. Aristotelian Society, Wiley, 1977

[3] Noonan, Harold and Ben Curtis. “Identity”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/identity/>.

[4] Forrest, Peter. “The Identity of Indiscernibles”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/identity-indiscernible/

[5] Wörner, David. “On making a difference: towards a minimally non-trivial version of the identity of indiscernibles.” Philosophical Studies 178.12 (2021): 4261-4278.

[6] Black, Max. “The identity of indiscernibles.” Mind 61.242 (1952): 153-164.

[7] Kolak, Daniel. I am you: The metaphysical foundations for global ethics. Vol. 325. Springer Science & Business Media, 2007.

[8] French, Steven. “Identity and Individuality in Quantum Theory”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/qt-idind/>

The Fall into the phenomenal: How idealism can help the Creation story converge with deep scientific truth

Reading | Theology

Androu Arsanious, BS, MBA | 2024-02-18

The Church bells tolled, and I felt it in my bones.

I grew up in a religious household. We’d attend church twice or thrice weekly: sports, youth group, and Sunday school. Every Easter liturgy, they’d ring the Church bells at 10:30 pm to mark the Resurrection of Christ. Incense filled the Nave as deacons sang at the top of their voices, and then we’d process around the packed church three times, holding crosses and icons. It was a surreal experience for 10-year-old me. We didn’t just accept the stories propositionally, we performed them. That’s because religious stories describe what is beyond the world in terms of the world. Good stories aren’t just heard or read. They’re felt.

Scientists tell stories too. They call them theories. Like any good story, a valid theory doesn’t just describe the past but helps us understand the present and prepare for the future. The most foundational theories in science use mathematics, a language that wasn’t invented as much as it was discovered. After all, math will remain true well beyond the heat death of the universe. As such, scientific theories are religious stories turned inside out because they describe the world in terms that are beyond the world.

No one tried harmonizing theory and story more than St. Augustine. Born in the 4th century, the Berber Bishop was a prodigal son of the Church. Raised by a Christian mother, he rejected religion as fictional absurdities in his youth and chose to walk “the streets of Babylon, in whose filth I was rolled, as if in cinnamon and precious ointments.” After moving to Italy for a teaching post, he discovered the teachings of St. Ambrose of Milan, whose biblical exegesis gave him a new purchase on his mother’s faith. St. Augustine recounts the moment he converted “under a certain fig tree, giving free course to my tears, and the streams of my eyes gushed out.” He felt a story and was reborn a saint.

A towering figure in Western thinking, St. Augustine emphasized the oneness of Truth as revealed in the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. He urges the faithful to “let the Bible be a book for you so that you may hear it. Let the sphere of the world be also a book for you. So that you may see it”. For St. Augustine, perception and interpretation had to be guided by rationality and revelation. In the Venn Diagram of religious stories and scientific theories, the most profound truths lay in the area that encircled both.

In the 1600 years since his death, the Book of Nature has seen a few updates. Today, it is full of theories spanning biology and physics that would be foreign to the North African Saint. Is the Augustinian project redeemable, or has the plot in the Book of Nature hopelessly strayed from that of the Book of Scripture?

 

The Paradox of Perception

If there were an opening chapter in the Book of Nature, it would be on Evolution. The Darwinian theory has much to say about human perceptions. Different life forms evolved diverse ways of sensing and responding to their respective environments. Bats use sound to see. Bees see UV light to sniff out their flowers. Nematodes don’t “see” but “sniff” out sugar using chemical receptors on the surface of their body. Life is the process of figuring out how to live, perceive, and respond to the environment through the senses.

Life forms use short stories—cheat codes—to survive. Male jewel beetles track their female mates using the cheat code ‘smooth, glossy surfaces = female’ to find mates. Yet, when humans started throwing out their shiny, glossy beer bottles, the male beetles started getting funky with the empty beer bottles. It nearly drove the species to extinction.

Natural selection hadn’t ‘cared’ whether the smooth, glossy surfaces were females. The cheat code had been sufficiently reliable to help the males pass their genes onto the next generation. None of the beetles needed to understand the game; they just needed to learn how to cheat.

What about our perceptual senses?

We can answer this question with mathematical precision. In evolution, game theory predicts how a population changes over time if competing for limited resources and—importantly for our purposes—how its sensory systems would have to evolve to compete effectively. A population is more likely to outcompete another population if its sensory systems are superior. But there’s a trade-off. A population can’t have the perfect cheat codes while also being attuned to the objective world. In the words of Donald Hoffman, “In evolution, where the race is often to the swift, a quick and dirty category can easily trump one more complex and veridical.”

Perceptions do not provide a window into the objective world if natural selection is valid. Instead, they’ve evolved to interfaces that maximize our fitness. Critically, the Interface Theory of Perception posits that this interface diverges from Reality.

Think of the relationship between a computer screen and its motherboard. Screens are helpful insofar as they help us manipulate electrons to ‘increase our fitness.’ Fitness in this context could mean completing a bank transaction or writing an essay. The pixels on our screen tell us nearly nothing about the nature of the motherboard. They’re not designed to help us ‘understand’ semiconductors.

Theoretically, you could open the back of your computer to tinker around with the switches in the semiconductors to write an essay or send a bank transfer, ignoring the ‘illusion’ of icons on a screen. But this red pill is a hard one to swallow. Even though screens tell you nearly nothing about how the computer works, they’re virtually essential to any task.

Likewise, our screen of perception maximizes our ability to get things done, yet conveys precisely nothing about the nature of the world. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t take what we see seriously. Walk in front of a bus, and you might not walk again. Drag that Word Document icon into your screen’s trash bin, and you will lose all your hard work. Bernardo Kastrup goes at length to stress how our perceptions don’t tell us what the world is, only how it behaves. Scientific theory quantifies these behaviors.

The ‘Fitness Beats Truth’ theory illustrates a wider conflict between real truth and desired outcomes that isn’t exclusive to evolutionary biology. Social media is a distortion field that warps online personas to maximize the shareability or likeability of their content, regardless of its underlying truth or authenticity. How often have people lied to move ahead in their careers or fibbed about their physical height to up their profile on a dating app? Consider the psychological aspects of playing sports, where pure skill and athleticism may not be enough to win a match. Or the art of the bluff in poker. Behaviors that maximize fitness are more valuable yet less veridical. Systems often disincentivize ‘truthful’ behavior.

If natural selection is true, then objects in space-time don’t have stand-alone existence in the way we think they do. Instead, our senses build an interface, a story that allows us to organize our lives. This odd conclusion is one physicists have likewise converged on.

On the quantum level, energy and matter are pixelated or ‘quantized’ as discrete bits. These quantized chunks behave in ways that defy all commonsense notions of spacetime. They influence each other’s behavior instantaneously, seemingly defying both Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and our commonsense intuitions of the world. Quantum objects exist in a superposition of states, and only take on defined characteristics once measured. Such irreconcilable differences have forced many physicists to explore alternative models for understanding the cosmos.

In other words, at a fundamental level in physics and biology, our best scientific theories conclude that Reality is not what we experience it to be. Yet, because we logically cannot experience the un-experienceable, we cannot experience Reality as it truly is.

Philosophers were onto this idea centuries ago. Writing 2,500 years ago, Plato analogized the human relationship with Reality to prisoners chained in a cave, mistaking the silhouettes and shadows on its walls for Reality. To the Greek philosopher, the physical world is an illusion we can only break out of through contemplation. Immanuel Kant distinguished between the noumenal, things in themselves, and the phenomenal, things as they appear. The German philosopher proposed that, while the phenomenal world operates via cause and effect, the Noumenal world is the arena for human agency, will, and spirit. This dualistic framework for understanding our relationship with the cosmos is central to religious stories, as we will soon see.

Screens glitch and this Interface is no different. It is in these glitchy moments that we can appreciate this metaphor.

 

The Apocryphal Sciences

For the better part of 150 years, scientists have documented psi phenomena. Everything we think we know is confounded by psi, which include precognition, paranormal experiences, near-death experiences, and miracles. Psi phenomena are important “because they provide examples of human behavioral capacities that seem extremely difficult or impossible to account for in terms of presently recognized computational, biological, or physical principles.” There is an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence documented across thousands of cases.

Take the curious case of “The Twins,” described by famous neuroscientist Oliver Sacks in the 1970s. The two brothers couldn’t perform basic arithmetic calculations and had been institutionalized for the better part of 20 years, being “variously diagnosed as autistic, psychotic, or severely retarded.” However, during one consult, Sacks found them riffing prime numbers to each other, sometimes over 20 digits long. This would’ve been an impossible feat for the most powerful computer at the time, let alone for anyone without arithmetic skills.

There are documented reports of people who can be hypnotized into thinking their skin is burning, only to have their skin spontaneously blister shortly afterward. Then there are apparitions and documented cases suggesting premonitions of death. Near-death experiences have turned skeptics into advocates for alternatives to conventional materialism. Faith healing cases defy conventional explanations. Inert substances with no clinical effects can ‘elicit’ a state of mind that instills positive clinical effects.

The glitches happen constantly, yet the scientific theories we tell ourselves simply cannot explain this data away. But religion might…

 

The Fall into Evolution

With each page turn in the Book of Nature, the world has gotten stranger. Evolution and physics conclude that the world as we experience it is not the world as it truly is, and psi breakout experiences appear to vindicate this claim.

It is here where religious stories pick up the mantle. Recall that religious stories describe what is beyond the world in terms of the world. We’ll enlist the help of the third-century Church Father Origen of Alexandria to guide our brief tour. A pioneer of Biblical exegesis, it is on Origen’s shoulders that Augustine stood when he proclaimed the oneness of Truth. Origen comes as close to recognizing the duality of the created order—in terms of the noumenal and the phenomenal—as the most viable interpretation of the Judeo-Christian Creation account in Genesis.

Origen notes this in his commentary on Genesis 1:6, when God creates the firmament or sky. That God first creates the light and darkness on Day 1, then the sky on Day 2, suggested to Origen the need for an alternative, allegorical interpretation. He writes, “The first heaven … which we said is spiritual, is our mind, which is also itself spirit … sees and perceives God. But that corporeal heaven called the firmament is our outer man, which looks at things in a corporeal way.” For Origen, God created a spiritual and ‘corporeal,’ or physical, world.

At the end of the first chapter, God crowns his creation, with humans famously formed in His image and likeness. But not the material image, writes Origen: “For the form of the body does not contain the image of God, nor is the corporeal man said to be ‘made,’ but ‘formed.’”

In Genesis 2, God creates man in his Image by molding a “wet clod” of soil and blasting his breath into it. Humans have a unique relationship with their Creator, according to Origen, who observes that “it is our inner man, invisible, incorporeal, incorruptible, and immortal, which is made according to the image of God … But if anyone supposes that this man … is made of flesh, he will appear to represent God himself as made of flesh and in human form. It is most clearly impious to think this about God.”

Why does Origen think God needed to create a corporeal and spiritual world?

God places him in Paradise, the Garden of Eden. The root word for garden is “ganan” in Hebrew, which means “to defend, cover, or surround.” In every other use, it describes the defense of a city, as if in battle. God then creates a helper, often better translated as a ‘rescuer’: a woman from the Man’s rib who lives in shameless nudity with the Man.

Among the shrubbery of the Garden are the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. God explicitly tells the couple not to eat the latter’s fruit lest they “surely die.” Here, we see a hint of the trade-off between having the ‘cheat codes’ to knowledge, courtesy of the first tree, and participating in everlasting life, courtesy of the second tree.

A Serpent resides in Eden. It asks the Woman what God had commanded for the Tree of Knowledge, and she responds by saying God told them not to eat or touch its fruit. By adding to God’s words, Eve opens the door for the Serpent to twist God’s words further. He replies that, to the contrary, her eyes would be opened and that she and her husband would become gods.

Serpents play an evolutionary role in our history, for only creatures with acute vision and quick reflexes could avoid the tree-dwelling reptiles. Sure enough, the serpent’s words opened her mind, and she “took of its fruit and ate.”

But in their attempt to raise their consciousness, the fated couple is brought lower than the dirt. The “original sin” is one that all humanity partakes in, and for Origen, the events precipitate a fall of humanity into the safety net of the corporeal order. Adam and Eve’s eyes opened to the material realities that would forever consume their descendants. God had anticipated this fall and engineered the corporeal world to accommodate their eventual self-destruction. This, for Origen, is why God created the corporeal world.

The fall sparks a sense of self-awareness that sheds light on the couple’s corporeal vulnerability. The Tree of Knowledge opens their eyes up to the possibility of death. Overcome with fear, Adam and his wife cover themselves in fig leaves and fearfully cower as though hunted like wild beasts, for instinct has taken over.

In Kantian terms, the ordeal of Eden is the human fall out of the noumenal and into the phenomenal place. Adam and Eve lose the blissful truths of paradise and must now face the nasty, brutish existence awaiting them in the corporeal world. Fitness is of primary concern now. True to the Serpents’ words, their eyes ‘see’ and fall into the corporeal world, yet are also blinded to the noumenal, ‘spiritual’ place they once inhabited. Eden was cloistered and gated because the noumenal world could not be accessed from the phenomenal world. And once you fall into the phenomenal world, you cannot return to the noumenal place.

The story of the fall is, therefore, a tale of exile into Plato’s Cave. Origen writes that “this sinking results in us taking on bodies” and warns that “all rational creatures who are incorporeal and invisible, if they become negligent, gradually sink to a lower level and take to themselves bodies suitable to the regions into which they descend.”

As a result, the embodied souls of Adam and Eve become ensouled bodies. Material corporeal concerns take center stage for man, woman, and beast. Fitness is the new name of the game, and God reluctantly pronounces its accursed rules.

The Serpent will slither on its belly and, as a symbol for all animal life, enmity erupts between it and humankind, telling it that humans “shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise its heel.” The interface between humans and beasts is created.

For Eve, her toil will be in labor and the accursed state of yearning after her husband. The helper has become helpless because the corporeal world is now too dangerous for her to fend for herself. Indeed, Adam’s first act after their exile from Eden is to name his wife Eve, a ‘power move’ symbolizing the rule of man over woman. The interface between man and woman—patriarchy—is born.

Adam fairs no better, for the soil he once tilled is now cursed and must be tilled in toil. The Earth will wage war on him, using every thorn and thistle. The thing he was created from will now entomb him: “From dust you came, and to dust, ye shall return.” The interface between humanity and the cosmos boots up.

God’s parting gift is to knit tunics out of “mortal skin” for the couple. Origen observed that “heir being clothed with tunics of skins, contain a certain secret and mystical doctrine far transcending that of Plato of the souls losing its wings, and being borne downwards to the earth until it can lay hold of some stable resting-place.” The interface is sealed with mortality, and the world as we experience it is now here for good.

The Bible blossoms when stripped of materialistic presuppositions, and the Augustinian project of reconciling the Book of Nature with the Book of Scripture takes on new life. But we must abandon the idea that Reality is ontologically a physical place. As new chapters in the Book of Nature are written, we should footnote religious texts to catalog the ultimate Oneness of Truth. Only then can we synthesize and harmonize truth between science and religion.

 

Bibliography

1. St. Augustine, Confessions Book II, Chapter 3 (8). Available at: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110102.htm#:~:text=Behold%20with%20what%20companions%20I,me%2C%20I%20being%20easily%20seduced. Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
2. St. Augustine, Confessions Book VIII, Chapter 12. Available at: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf101.vi.VIII.XII.html Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
3. Male Jewel Beetles. Available at: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/06/19/193493225/the-love-that-dared-not-speak-its-name-of-a-beetle-for-a-beer-bottle Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
4. Hoffman D, The Interface Theory of Perception: Natural Selection Drives Truth Perception to Swift Extinction. Available at: https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/interface.pdf Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
5. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/#Bib Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
6. Sacks, O. The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
7. Hallson, P. (2016). ‘Ghosts and Apparitions in Psi Research (Overview)’. Psi Encyclopedia. London: The Society for Psychical Research. <https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/ghosts-and-apparitions-psi-research-overview>. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
8. All quotes from the Bible are from NKJV, available at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1&version=NKJV  Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
9. Origen Homilies on Genesis 1.2.
10. Paulsen, David L. “Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses.” The Harvard Theological Review, vol. 83, no. 2, 1990, pp. 105–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509938. Accessed 15 Jan. 2024.
11. Blue Letter Bible, Strong’s Reference: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h1598/kjv/wlc/0-1/
12. McGrew, W.C. Snakes as hazards: modelling risk by chasing chimpanzees. Primates 56, 107–111 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-015-0456-4
13. Contra Celsus Chapter 40. Available at: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04164.htm

Metabolism is what the ‘unconscious’ mind looks like

Reading | Philosophy

Dr. Ludwig Sachs | 2024-02-04

From the idealist point of view—which entails a psychic or spiritual foundation of being—a fascinating puzzle arises: how do the myriad aspects of our world, from human consciousness and matter to time, space, and life, originate from this foundation?

In a previous article¹, I already discussed the three orders of structural psychoanalysis (the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real), a development of Freud’s conception of the psychic apparatus by the French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan². I further discussed how the dissociation or splitting of the subject leads to a lack of being, as well as how the subject repeatedly tries in vain to find itself. In the language of systems theory, these repeated attempts to ‘return to oneself’ are self-referential processes. I already pointed out the phenomena of complex systems that arise through self-referentiality in connection with the language-like structures of the Symbolic, as well as its iterative referential structure: fractal geometries characterized by self-similar patterns that we can find everywhere in nature.

The concept of self-similarity could potentially be a key to understanding deeper connections in our reality. When we apply this principle to mental and physical processes, an exciting question arises: is there a self-similar relationship between the unconscious processes that govern our mental life and the genetic mechanisms that regulate our bodily functions? This consideration leads us to a deeper examination of structural psychoanalysis and biological processes.

Before we proceed, it is extremely important to emphasize that the ‘subject’ discussed here is not understood as a human individual in the everyday sense. As I outlined in the previous article, our everyday consciousness is predominantly under an Imaginary perspective, entailing that the world presents itself to us from the dissociated perspective of an imaginary ‘I.’ However, we overlook the linkage with the Symbolic and Real orders as a split subject.

Therefore, when I speak of the subject in the present essay, it is in the sense of an archetypal Anthropos, Schelling’s ‘World Spirit,’ which unfolds in time and space and manifests itself in the diversity of all living things—not only as a human. The considerations refer to the topological structures of this subject in the Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary orders.

 

The chain of signifiers

In the context of structural psychoanalysis, the concept of the ‘chain of signifiers’ is central to understanding the Symbolic and the language-like structures of the unconscious. This chain is best visualized by considering everyday signifiers that we regularly and consciously deal with: sounds, words, sentences. These elements of language are connected in a temporal sequence, known as diachronic chaining.

The meaning of a statement—the signified—emerges from the linking of these signifiers in their specific order. A change in this order can considerably alter the meaning, as illustrated by the statement ‘Idealism is better than Materialism,’ when compared to ‘Materialism is better than Idealism.’

However, the chain of signifiers is not limited to a horizontal, diachronic (temporal) chaining. At each point in this chain, one can imagine a vertical, synchronic chain or ‘plane’ that adds further levels of meaning. This vertical linking of signifiers is understood in structural psychoanalysis as metaphor, as opposed to horizontal metonymy. Here, it is emphasized that meanings always refer to other meanings and never directly to ‘the thing itself.’ The combination of signifiers creates a kind of barrier that prevents direct access to the signified, or the meaning. An analogy for this is the experience of looking up the meaning of a word in a dictionary: one is often led from one term to the next, never reaching a final clarification.

Therefore, the generation of meaning in a chain of signifiers is a dynamic process in which the signified changes with every added element—the signified ‘slides under the signifiers,’ so to speak. In structural psychoanalysis, the meaning (the signified) of a sentence is determined not solely by the individual signifiers (words), but significantly by their overall sequence. An important phenomenon in this context is the retroactive determination of the signified of a chain of signifiers, highlighting how the meaning of a sentence is fixed by the end of the chain.

Consider this example: the sentence ‘I love you’ conveys a very different meaning than ‘I do not love you.’ This illustrates how each added signifier changes the overall meaning of a sentence. Also, ‘I do not love you’ suggests a different context than ‘I do not love you anymore.’ And this, in turn, changes once again if ‘as much as her’ is added, to form ‘I do not love you as much as her anymore.’ In this case, the words ‘as her’ retroactively influence and fix the meaning of the entire sentence.

 

The quilting point

This dynamic of meaning formation can be topologically represented by the concept of the ‘point de capiton,’ or quilting point, a concept derived from Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics. Saussure’s model assumes that the signifier and signified correspond point by point and together form a ‘sign,’ an assumption critiqued by structural psychoanalysis. It emphasizes that the signified of a sentence is its overall meaning, which does not simply result from the addition of the meanings of individual words but is retroactively fixed by the end of the chain. The quilting point in this context represents the function of specific signifiers (so-called ‘master signifiers’), which intervene in the chaotic signified, fixing and simultaneously altering it.

 

The signified: The desire modified by the signifier

In the context of structural psychoanalysis, the signified is viewed as a form of human want that is influenced and transformed by the signifier. This transformation of need by the signifier is referred to as ‘desire.’ However, desire is not to be understood solely in biological or physiological terms: it is structured by the signifier and thus acquires a special dynamic.

The desires are not only transformed by the signifier, but their transformation is also associated with a loss—structurally speaking, a lack. The entirety of the effects of the signified produced by the signifier is this lack. Thus, the imprinting of the signifier into the subject leads to the emergence of the signified, which can also be understood as a lack and is associated with the dissociation/splitting of the subject, as I discussed in my previous article.

Therefore, the signified in its entirety is not only the result of the effect of the signifier, but also an expression of the lack and the dissociation/splitting of the subject that arises from this effect.

 

The graph of desire

In structural psychoanalysis, the ‘graph of desire’³ (see below) is used to illustrate the concept of the quilting point and the relationships between signifiers and signifieds. This graphical representation includes two main lines forming an arc, each representing different aspects of language. The line running from S (linguistic sign) to S’ (linguistic meaning) symbolizes the chain of signifiers—i.e., the sequence of words and sentences we use in everyday life on a conscious, Imaginary level. This is called the ‘signifying chain.’ The other line, from Δ (the pre-linguistic subject) to $ (the barred subject) and forming a horseshoe shape, represents the chain of signifieds—i.e., what is generated in terms of meaning and sense by the signifiers. This second line is called the ‘vector of desire.’

In different words, the vector of desire represents subjective intentions arising from needs, the deliberate pursuit of the fulfillment of these needs. The signifying chain, in turn, represents sentences such as ‘Give me something to eat!’ Need and speech are linked by the two intersection points, symbolizing the interaction between signifiers and signifieds.

The first intersection point on the right is labeled ‘A’ for the French ‘Autre’ (‘Other’). It stands for the language code and vocabulary used by the subject. The capitalization indicates that it pertains to the Symbolic order. The interaction at this point shows how the vocabulary imprints itself in the subject and alters its intentions, influencing its need structures. Desire is thus heavily dependent on the relationship to the Other. ‘Desire is the desire of the Other’ is the formula of structural psychoanalysis for this entanglement. It primarily refers not to being desired by the Other, but desiring as the Other. What we think of as our own desires often consist of the wishes and messages of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., most of which are unconscious.

Therefore, to be satisfied, the need must pass through the grid of language. It must be expressed in claims or symbolically articulated demands. To be understood, these claims must be expressed in a predetermined code.

The left intersection point is labeled ‘M’ for ‘message’: communication, message, news. Like the chains of signifiers on the conscious level, those of the unconscious also have a message, a meaning, a signified. The aim of psychoanalytic practice is to bring to light the messages of the unconscious: the meaning of dreams, symptoms, parapraxes, etc.

The graph represents how need is captured by language and how this, in turn, is connected to the formation of the ‘I.’ This ‘I’ ideal is not only made up of signifiers, but is also a modification of the drive structure, since it acts back on the need. The symbol $—a crossed-out S—stands for the subject shaped by language and therefore excluded from the unconscious, the seat of desire.

This is to remind us that needs have always already passed through these stations and been shaped by language; that the assumption of a whole, unsplit subject as the bearer of a pre-linguistic need is thus a mythical construction based on the desire for imaginary wholeness. As discussed in the previous article, the split is constitutive for the subject. It is what makes the subject possible.

 

The master signifier

The I(-ideal) must be seen in connection with what structural psychoanalysis refers to as the ‘master signifier’: a signifier that seems to have an absolute meaning, but in an illusory way. For instance, the ‘I’—with which the speaker refers to themselves—is a master signifier. It forms the basis of the myth of the ideal I. In this myth, the I appears as an entity that is identical to itself. Self-identity—the absoluteness of meaning—is thus illusory because signifiers only function differentially. The master signifier, therefore, relies on an illusory blocking of the differential nature of the signifier. And since meaning is based on the difference of signifiers, the master signifier is without meaning.

Master signifiers are about identification; more precisely, a certain form of identification: the one whose result is called the I-ideal. When one seeks to clarify the meaning of a signifier, one is referred from signifier to signifier, and thus the meaning shifts anew. So how can it be that spoken words are still understandable? This is the function of the aforementioned master signifiers. They have no meaning themselves and are limited to the function of bringing the movement of referring from meaning to meaning to a halt. In this way, they sort of sew the signifiers with the signifieds. Signifiers that realize this stop function are the master signifiers or quilting points (as above) of structural psychoanalysis: they prevent the signified from constantly slipping under the signifier.

If one focuses on the functioning of sentences, the meaning—which shifts with every added word—is stabilized by the end of the sentence; the signifier in quilting-point function is, in a sense, the period.

 

The phantasm

Another important aspect in this context is the concept of the phantasm, already described in the previous article. The phantasm allows the subject to locate itself in the context of its desires. In the phantasm, the split subject ($) relates to an object in which it projects what it has lost by entering the world of language. The subject, attempting to grasp itself in its desire, can initially only grasp itself in what it desires. And here, again, the I or I-ideal at the end of the vector of desire plays a central role, as it causes the split subject to locate itself as an object and to fix itself in an illusory manner.

 

Self-similarity in biology and psychoanalysis: Discoveries at the intersection of protein biosynthesis and the unconscious

Protein biosynthesis—a central biological process in which proteins are synthesized from amino acids according to the template of genetic information in DNA and RNA—is surprisingly analogous the concepts of the unconscious in structural psychoanalysis.

At the heart of protein biosynthesis is messenger RNA (mRNA), which acts as a messenger transporting genetic information from the DNA code in the cell nucleus to the ribosomes, the sites of protein production. There, the sequence of the mRNA is translated into a specific amino acid chain that folds into a functional protein. This process involves several steps: transcription, translation, and folding. The mRNA plays a key role by translating the ‘language’ of DNA into a form that can be ‘read’ by the ribosomes and translated into proteins via tRNA.

The attentive reader will have already noticed the similarity here. The processes of the unconscious are conveyed to us (as a dissociated ‘part’ of the split subject) in a parable-like manner in the form of protein biosynthesis. Put in different words, the processes of the unconscious appear to us as protein biosynthesis from a dissociated (imaginary spatiotemporal) perspective.

The words and sentences in the signifying chain (S to S’ in the graph of desire above) can be easily identified with the molecular chain in messenger RNA, the element that transmits the genetic message. Thus, from a topological perspective, mRNA may correspond to a chain of signifiers in the unconscious. If this is the case, one would expect that the synthesized protein emerges from the vector of desire; that the signified corresponds to the protein.

The embodiment of the subject—the biological organism—is shaped by proteins. From the perspective of structural psychoanalysis, the subject is split, dissociated, or excluded, which is represented by $ in the graph of desire. The crossing out of the S symbolizes that the subject is marked by the signifiers. This marking results in the subject being excluded from a part of itself, a part that constitutes it and is referred to as the unconscious.

Such a split is also reflected in our body, which is ‘marked’—among other things—by the language of DNA: processes within our body that are not directly accessible to us. As such, we are also physically ‘split’ between the part to which we have access (our Imaginary body surface) and the inner part from which we are both psychologically and physically excluded because we are ‘barred outside.’

 

The ribosomal quilting point

As discussed, in the graph of desire two intersection points arise between the signifying chain and the vector of desire, which we labeled as ‘A’ for Other and ‘M’ for Message. This means that the satisfaction of need is subjected to a code in language (A) and tied to the formation of a message (M). Let’s compare this with the processes at the ribosome.

At the so-called A-site of the ribosome, the tRNA loaded with an amino acid binds—through its anticodon—to the corresponding codon of the mRNA. What does this so-called codon recognition represent? Or, in J. W. v. Goethe’s words, how does it present itself to the “contemplative power of judgment”? For the process of protein biosynthesis to make sense, it must submit to the rules of a code. This submission takes place at the A-site of the ribosome, which we can therefore topologically align with the intersection point A of the graph of desire.

At the intersection point ‘M’ of the graph of desire, the signified is formed. Where can we locate this in the ribosome? As already discussed, the signified corresponds to the synthesized protein. The site of this synthesis, where the elongating protein emerges, is the P-site. Thus, we find the two topological intersection points in a self-similar manner at the corresponding positions in the ribosome.

Another connection is equally clear: we mentioned the so-called master signifiers, which are necessary to finalize the stitching of the chain of signifiers (in this case, the mRNA) with the signified (the protein biosynthesis) in the form of a quilting point. These master signifiers have no meaning themselves. They are limited to the function of bringing the movement of referring from meaning to meaning to a halt. Now, what brings the translation—the reference movements of the ribosome from which the protein (the meaning, the signified) emerges—to a halt? The so-called stop codon! And for this stop codon—also called ‘non-sense (!) codon’—there is no corresponding tRNA, so it remains empty; it has no meaning itself, just as the master signifier itself has no meaning.

From the perspective of the quilting point, the role of the tRNAs, which represent adaptors in the sense of code biology⁴—i.e., those molecules that establish a relationship between two different types of molecules—also becomes clear: the adaptors (the tRNAs) execute the quilting point by sewing the signifiers with the signified. It’s probably no coincidence that the structure of this ‘quilting point tRNA’ is referred to as a hairpin structure: the needle with which the quilting point is executed.

 

The Levinthal Paradox

In connection with the quilting point, there is another remarkable analogy: the so-called Levinthal Paradox. The molecular biologist Cyrus Levinthal came upon this paradox while elucidating the process by which a chain of amino acids quickly achieves its folded state as a protein. The paradox is that the combinatorial multitude of possible foldings increases exponentially with the length of the amino acid chain and should require immense time. Yet, protein folding happens rather quickly in the body.

Can we better understand this paradox with the help of the self-similar structures of the unconscious? We have already discussed the retroactive determination of the signified of a chain of signifiers by the end of the chain: the signifier also intervenes in the signified on the diachronic level—i.e., in the temporal succession of the chain of signifiers. Here, the last element of a chain—somewhat like the period in a sentence—retroactively determines the meaning of the entire sentence. There is a feedback loop from the last element of the chain to the signified of the entire chain.

Protein biosynthesis similarly involves the creation of a signified, which is precisely brought into its overall desired form—i.e., folded configuration—by the last element of the chain of signifiers, just as the meaning of a sentence is retroactively determined by its end.

 

Hidden messages: the unconscious as the discourse of the Other in psychoanalysis and biology

In structural psychoanalysis, the unconscious is understood as the ‘discourse of the Other.’ This means that the unconscious is more than just a collection of signifiers; it is an ongoing discourse, a form of communication consisting of prohibitions, instructions, and rules. The author of these messages is not the subject itself, but the ‘Other’ in its symbolic function. This ‘Other’ represents the Symbolic order that sets limits for the subject.

The subject must persistently repeat the misunderstood part of the discourse of the Other, which is inherently fraught with lack, manifesting in symptoms and transferences. The unconscious manifests itself in this repetition, in the symptoms and transferences.

Similarly, our bodies, our cells, speak within us persistently, without our consciousness. In constant repetition, organisms emerge from their ancestors and their genetic messages, to reproduce and carry forward the messages. These consist of misunderstood codes, of rulebooks, of prohibitions and commands. And these messages act within us, whether we want them to or not. They speak incessantly and are exchanged in a network of organisms.

We do not understand this language, these messages; they are not conscious to us. And because we do not understand them, we are forced to repeat them constantly. In doing so, we produce symptoms. One of these ‘symptoms’ is our body, which also speaks without our understanding the messages.

Therefore, embodied organisms themselves can be understood as quilting points, as repeated attempts of the subject to sew itself together, to find itself as a self, and finally come to a halt. In this process, new signifieds, meanings, proteins, organisms continually emerge, seen from an Imaginary perspective as an evolutionary process in time and space, from plants to animals and up to the human ‘I.’

 

References

1. https://www.essentiafoundation.org/the-subject-beyond-the-i-on-structural-psychoanalysis/reading/
2. https://www.lacanonline.com/ or https://lacan-entziffern.de/ (German)
3. https://www.lacanonline.com/2020/04/a-tour-of-the-graph-of-desire/
4. Barbieri M. What is code biology? Biosystems. 2018 Feb;164:1-10. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2017.10.005. Epub 2017 Oct 6. PMID: 28993248.

The science of consciousness after death

Reading | Metaphysics

Laleh K. Quinn, PhD | 2024-01-21