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Ramsses II
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(10/25/05 7:17 pm)
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Cognition

Quote: Francisco Varela, a cognitive neuroscientist, wrote a wonderful little article that I think deserves mentioning here: Steps to a Science of Interbeing: Unfolding the Dharma Implicit in Modern Cognitive Science. In it, Varela posits four fundamental characteristics of cognition, one of which is especially pertinent. Here are the four characteristics:

* Cognition is enactively embodied (e.g., cognition is not in the head; inner/outer distinctions are co-determinative)
* Cognition is enactively emergent (e.g., the neural elements (local) and the cognitive subject (global) are co-determinative)
* Cognition is generatively enactive (e.g., Me and Other are co-determinative, meaning intersubjectivity is basic)
* Consciousness is ontologically complex (e.g., first- and third-person perspectives are co-determinative, meaning consciousness is a public affair)

The one I wanted to bring to the attention of participants on this thread is the first point, that cognition is enactively emergent. There is a lot to say about it, but the main thing I wanted to highlight has to do with the fundamental inseparability of cognition and affect or emotion. This is what Varela has to say:

"The second corollary of this principle is that, since mind is based on local to global emergence, there is nothing in the mind that you can separate into discrete, separate elements. In other words, phenomenologically our minds do not present a clear division of memory here, affect there, and vision over there. As a consequence, one of the most striking discoveries over the last few years is the understanding that affect or emotion is at the very foundation of what we do every day as coping with the world; that reason or reasoning is almost like the icing on the cake. Reason is what occurs at the very last stage of the moment-to-moment emergence of mind. Mind is fundamentally something that arises out of the affective tonality, which is embedded in the body. It takes about a fraction of a second for the whole thing to happen, over and over and over again. In the process of a momentary arising of a mental state, the early stages are rooted in the sensory motor surfaces near the spinal cord in the mid-brain, then they sweep upwards on to the so-called limbic system, into the so-called superior cortex, so this emotional tone changes transforming into categories and distinct elements and chains of reasoning, which are the classical unities description of mind. But reason and categories are literally the tips of the mountain which are sitting on affect, particularly affect and e-motion. In fact, e-motion is already intrinsically cognitive. "

Later, he writes, "Modern research in cognitive science gives ample evidence to the effect that all cognitive phenomena are also emotional-affective. That is, it has very naturally ended up considering the very ground of the genesis of mind as an affective-empathic phenomenon."

He says a lot more that is relevant here, but I just wanted to make this main point: that the idea that rationality and clear cognition have nothing to do with emotion or affectivity is scientifically insupportable.

His point also about the co-determination of Me and Other, and the basic "ground" of intersubjectivity, mitigates against any tendency to try to filter everything through either impersonal, "distancing" third-person language, or else exclusively through subjective lenses. To always speak of oneself in the third person, or to be incapable of taking a third-person perspective of oneself, are both failures of integral perspective.

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