#23. Ontogenetic Development

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I called my previous post (#22) "The Other Half of Person" to stress the point that there's more to the mystery of our selves than our individual consciousness.

The focus of many of my earlier postings has been the evolutionary and neurological perspectives of contemporary science which allow us to see that our individual consciousness is not something separate from, but an integral part of, the evolving universe-- and that each of us, as an utter unique expression of the cosmos process, is called to make a personal contribution to it.

In each entry I've also tried to show how I see these scientific findings about ourselves as individuals converging with some of humanity's core religious values.

Now I want to expand the context to include the social, communal and relational aspects of the mystery which we are, the "other half" of our reality as persons.

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Some readers may feel that seeing ourselves in a cosmic and evolutionary context is already a big enough challenge.

But that immense transition in human self-understanding, which began at the end of the 19th century and is essentially a shift from the static worldview of past centuries to the evolutionary perspectives of modern science, also includes the shift from a personal and private to a social and communal self-understanding.

Just as the words "science" and "religion" mean something more nowadays than they once meant, so does the word "person." So I want to look now at another area within the Biogenetic Structuralism perspective, one which especially helps us to understand the social and communal aspects of ourselves: cultural anthropology.

When we see person in the broadest possible scientific perspectives of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution, the resulting communal and social aspects of our self-understanding allow us an even richer sense of the convergence of contemporary scientific perspectives with the insights of humanity's core religious insights than we have if we are looking only at the individual aspects of the mystery of person.

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But the findings of cultural anthropology are even less familiar to the general public than those coming from contemporary brain and nervous system studies.

I'm often asked, for example, by persons who know of my interest in evolution whether I think evolution is still going on in human beings. When I answer, "Yes; it's called culture," I usually get blank stares. So the transition I'm making now in these blog entries, from an neurological to an anthropological focus, may not be clear to readers.

The problem is that we're just not attuned to thinking in terms of culture, let alone thinking of humanity's cultural development as a continuation of the cosmic evolutionary process that produced stars, galaxies, plants, animals and ourselves. It's tough enough for many to grasp the fact that human consciousness has emerged from the cosmic process; seeing cultural development as also part of the cosmic process is even more challenging.

But as I said in the previous post, it's only when we can see that the social-relational nature of personal consciousness is also a part of evolution of the universe-- from the Big Bang and the formation of galaxies and stars to the emergence of life on Earth and the development of the primate brain-- that it becomes clear why culture is such an important concept in the converging perspectives of science and religion.

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In moving from an neurological to an anthropological focus we need to keep in mind the distinction between the primal emergence of conscious awareness among our animal ancestors several million years ago and the growth and development of individual consciousness as it takes place in every human being today.

That first kind of conscious emergence is called "phylogenetic." It's what happened in that group ("phylum," in a broad sense) of mammals out of which primates and eventually humans arose. It's the transition from the second to the third stage of complexity in the cosmic process as it takes place on Earth.

To make sense of phylogenesis we need to think about primate brain structures in terms of things like the cognitive extension of prehension and cognized environment, and I have talked about those concepts in many previous blog entries. The key idea is an understanding of the neurological structures of the primate brain which allow for the adaptation of the individual and the species to the external environment.

Biogenetic Structuralist researchers use words like "assimilation" and "accommodation" to describe what's happening in the brain of individuals as they take in and/or adjust to what's encountered in their world. And they note that it's always for the sake of survival.

The second kind of conscious emergence, which the Biogenetic Structuralists refer to as "ontogenetic" development, has to do with the normal pattern in the development of self-awareness in individual human beings. ("On" and "ens" are Greek and Latin for "being.") It's this ontogenetic development-- ontogenesis-- that's a principal focus of cultural anthropology.

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While the findings of neuro-physiology help us to understand the phylogenetic emergence of human consciousness, the perspectives of cultural anthropology help us to understand the emergence and growth of self-awareness as it occurs in every human being.

That phylogenetic emergence was a transition from the second to the third level of complexity in the cosmic process, which first happened, probably in Northeast Africa, about two and half million years ago. In contrast, the ontogenetic development of human consciousness begins with the embryological development of every human child and continues throughout the life of each of us.

Biogenetic Structuralism sees three distinct stages to the ontogenetic development of consciousness. And, as I've said earlier, it's here-- in our perception of the growth and development of the "other half of person"-- that the convergence of understandings from the human sciences and from global humanity's religious insights begins to take on an even richer and fuller sense than previously.

So my focus in the next few blog posts will be on cultural anthropology, especially on how the Biogenetic Structuralist researchers see the development of human consciousness in terms of social and communal relationships taking place in three separate stages.

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To get a good sense of our communal and relational aspects we need to see something of how personal consciousness develops in each individual, of what ontogenesis is all about.

As I've said, the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective sees it taking place in three stages. And even from the brief descriptions of these stages which follow it becomes immediately apparent that they are of great significance in terms of global humanity's religious perspectives.

It might be better to call the stages "phases" since, while they are sequential, there's also a great deal of overlap.

And of course, as with everything connected with Biogenetic Structuralism-- or indeed with any specialized branch of science-- there's a lot of jargon to deal with. "Ontogenesis," as a term for the growth and development of personal consciousness, is a good example. And you may remember from earlier postings that these researchers like to use the Greek term, gnosis, for consciousness itself. They also use the term neuro-gnosis to emphasize that it's the structures and functions of the nerve cells in the brain which are the basis for our conscious gnosis.

So our topic here is ontogenetic neuro-gnosis-- or even neuro-gnostic ontogenesis. (It's no wonder these scientific findings haven't filtered down to the popular level!)

And even finding simple and clear names for the three stages seems to have been a problem.

Biogenetic Structuralists refer to the first phase of ontogenetic development as "received gnosis" but they also talk about it as "beliefs." The second stage of personal conscious development is simply called "experience" or "personal experience." And the third phase is referred to as "transpersonal" or "contemplative" experience.

Needless to say, that word "contemplative" will rings bells for anyone interested in religion and spirituality. I hope it can serve for now as a hint, at least, of the extent of the convergence of the perspectives which I think can be found in Biogenetic Structuralism's understanding of cultural anthropology and humanity's religious traditions.

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I will describe those stages or phases in the ontogenetic development of our personal self-awareness within the cultural context in the next few posts.

Meanwhile, I want to step back a moment to emphasize that we need to keep in mind that we're trying to see that ontogenetic development of each human individual in the very largest context possible: nothing less than the entire cosmic process as it takes place at three levels of increasing complexity.

I spelled out that long view in post #8 (Background to Biogenetic Structuralism) and more specifically in post #16 (Our Own Inner World). Here's a quick review.

The first level is that of matter: from the Big Bang and the evolution of galaxies, stars and planets. The second level is that of life: the emergence of life on Earth several billion years ago and the development by way of fish, reptiles and mammals, of the primate brain. And the third level of complexity is that of mind: the emergence of personal self-awareness several million years ago.

As I've said above and stressed in the previous blog entry, we also have to take into account the fact that there's an "other half of person," what we call it "culture"-- our social, communal and relational side.

And we need to keep in mind that, from the anthropological perspective, "culture" means whatever humans do that's not controlled by our genes and instincts.

It includes anything and everything that needs to be "passed on" from more experienced persons to the younger and less experienced for the survival of life: all the learning, skills and information which need to be passed on precisely because they are not part of our instinctual or genetically-based behavior.

My purpose in reviewing this "largest possible context" for human cultural development is to make the point that it's only when we can see ourselves in this very large cultural context that we can understand our place in the scheme of things specifically in terms of dealing with our contemporary concerns. I have in mind things such as equality, peace and justice issues and environmental problems.

The issue is still life's survival, just as it was in the original phylogenetic emergence of consciousness several million years ago.

When Al Gore acknowledged the Nobel Peace Prize, he observed that the ecological crisis is a spiritual issue. "It is," as he said, "a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

I couldn't find a better example of the need for an understanding of the contemporary convergence of scientific findings and humanity's core religious insights.

sam@macspeno.com

#16. Our Own Inner World

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One of the most fascinating findings uncovered for us by contemporary neurological studies is the fact that we each have our own inner world. That's what this posting is about.

As I mentioned in the previous post (#15. Pre-view and Re-view), it's something we experience all the time but rarely give any attention to.

It has to do with how we are related to the rest of the universe, to what I've called in that posting (#15) the anthropos-cosmos relationship, so it has a number of significant religious implications. It's worthy of our attention.

And of course it's challenging, as are so many of these ideas that deal with the convergence of science and religion.

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It isn't easy, for example, to identify the most personal and private aspect of ourselves with the scientific jargon term "cognized environment." But from the point of view of brain and nervous system studies, we indeed are the external world "cognized" (internalized), "the world become conscious of itself."

This same concept is also the basis for understanding that each of us has our own inner world. You might like to look back at post #13 where I tried to spell out the concept of "cognized environment" in some detail.

In previous centuries our spiritual nature was expressed by terms such as interiority and subjectivity. Today, thanks to the modern evolutionary worldview, we can have an even better understanding of personal consciousness.

We know that there are three levels of complexity to the cosmic process-- matter, life and mind-- and that at the level of mind, via the workings of the most complex thing we know (the human brain), the world is doubled back on itself, resulting in personal self-awareness.

Understanding this reflexive process also helps us to understand that each of us has our own inner world. The details are a bit involved, but if we can hang in there, we can see that it really does make a lot of sense. It is, in fact, both awesome and delightful.

And it has profound implications for understanding the meaning of our existence. It's precisely in this fundamental understanding of the fact that each of us has our own inner world that the findings of contemporary science and the insights of ancient religions converge.

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To begin with, the neurological account of consciousness represented by the phase "cognized environment" makes clear that we do not have direct access to the external world.

Rather, data coming in via the senses from the external world (the "operational environment," as Biogenetic Structuralism calls it), gets taken in and organized by the brain's activities in terms of what's already there in the organizational structures of the brain. And this "cognized environment" is what constantly gets modified by our life-experience.

Biogenetic Structuralists refer to this process as the Empirical Modification Cycle; I spelled it out a bit in post #14 (on Person as Process). The main idea is that, via physical ("anatomical") changes in the physical links and electrochemical activities in the brain, in-coming data from the operational environment (the external world) constantly modifies the already-there structural organization of the brain.

It sounds awfully complicated, but it's not an unfamiliar experience. We "live and learn," as we often say after an especially significant modification of our personal awareness. We just don't usually think about that kind of experience in terms of brain functioning.

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With regard to understanding that we each have our own inner world, we need to keep in mind that, when we come into the world, something is "already there." The basic structural organization of our brain and nervous system is there right from the start; it's in-born.

To appreciate this perspective, we need to take the long view, precisely the view offered to us by evolutionary science. At the second level of evolutionary complexity, life results from the organization of atoms and molecules in the DNA of living cells; at the third level of complexity, mind-- gnosis (our personal consciousness)-- results from the organization of living nerve-cells in our brain's structural systems.

And the brain's neural structures are, of course, the result of our genes. As we grow through our nine-month gestation period, from a one-celled zygote to an embryo and fetus, the development of our brain and nervous system has its source (just as do physical characteristics like our body-build and hair color) in the genetic material we receive from our parents.

And it's this genetically-based organizational structure of the brain which is constantly being modified by our life-experiences.

Because our brain and nervous system comes from our DNA, we are born with an "already-there," genetically-based, neuro-gnostic brain structure. We are unique from the start.

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Three enormously significant ideas-- awesome ideas, really-- come from this combined evolutionary, genetic and neurological perspective. Each has to do with one of the three levels of the cosmic process: matter, life and mind.

The first, with regard to physical matter, is that our personal in-born consciousness is the result of millions of years of cosmic evolution.

Not just the chemical elements in our bodies and their structural arrangements in our DNA, but also the subsequent structural arrangements in our brain and nervous system, have a long history.

Human beings emerge at the third level of the cosmic process, but in terms of the cosmic matter of which we are made, that process started a long time ago; it started with the Big Bang. Each of us personally has been "gathered," as Teilhard puts it, "from all time and the four corners of space."

Teilhard describes us as having been gathered "into a wondrous knot." I imagine the "knot" he had in mind was an immensely complicated and beautiful Celtic knot. It's a good image for the material complexity that is the basis of our personal consciousness which has been in the making for many billions of years.

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The second "awesome thought" coming out of the combined evolutionary, genetic and neurological perspective has to do with life, the second level of complexity in the cosmic process. It is that the DNA of every human being is different.

While the general structure of human and chimpanzee DNA differs by less than two percent, and in fact all things on Earth have a great deal of their DNA in common, it is also the case that the specific structure of each human being's DNA differs from that of every other human being.

Statistically, the chance that any two persons might have exactly the same DNA structure has been calculated to be about one out of 10⁸⁰. That number is larger than all the stars thought to exist in the universe.

So each of us is genetically unique. Right from the start, even as a one-celled organism-- even before we have a brain and nervous system out of which our consciousness emerges-- we are called forth by the cosmic process ("from all time and the four corners of space") as utterly unique beings. (Even identical twins cease being totally identical once the one-celled zygote from which they are forming begins to divide.)

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The third "awesome thought" has to do with the level of mind. It's a specifically neurological concept.

We need to remember that, as I said above, data coming in via the senses from the external world (the "operational environment") is organized by the brain's activities in terms of what's already in the brain.

This means that not only do each of us start out as utterly unique, but that as we grow and develop, our in-born, genetically-based consciousness constantly gets modified by incoming data from the external world. Each life-experience, each thing we do, each choice we make, modifies who and what we are even more, so that as we live out our life we become even "more unique."

This is probably one place where "more unique" is a correct expression.

If, when we're born, our genetically-given uniqueness is such that there's only one chance in 10⁸⁰ that anyone else might have DNA identical to ours, then by the time we're two or three years old, the innumerable modifications of our inborn uniqueness-- via the Empirical Modification Cycle-- would make the chances that anyone else would have the same personal consciousness as ours would be far less likely than one in 10⁸⁰.

Mathematically, it's probably more like one chance in 10⁸⁰ raised to the eightieth power; i.e., (10⁸⁰)⁸⁰!

The point is that our in-born uniqueness is so modified by our life experience that there never was, and never will be-- indeed, never can be-- anyone like the utterly unique individual that each of us is. No one else-- past, present or future-- has or will experience the world exactly the way each of us does.

No one else-- ever, in the whole history of the cosmos-- is "the world become conscious of itself" in exactly the same way.

It seems like a strange idea, when we first think about it, that each of us has (or is) our own inner world, and yet, as I mentioned earlier, it really is a familiar experience.

In everyday life, it usually gets expressed in negative terms. We often say, of people we find difficult to understand or be sympathetic to, "She lives in a different world than I do." Or we easily dismiss someone's thoughts with words like, "He lives in his own world."

But it's a profoundly positive aspect of our personal existence. And, as these evolutionary and neurological perspectives become better known, we can expect that they will have a strong impact on our religious understanding.

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For example, with his early awareness of the significance of cosmic and biological evolution, Teilhard had an extremely positive appreciation of the fact that we each have our own inner world.

The Teilhard scholar, Georgetown University theology professor Thomas M. King, S.J., mentions it several times in his book Teilhard's Mass: Approaches to "The Mass on the World" (Paulist Press, 2005).

Fr. King calls it Teilhard's "individualism," and notes that it is an element of Teilhard's thought which often goes unrecognized even by those familiar with Teilhard's writings.

In Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier-Priest, 1914-1919 (Harper and Row, 1961), Teilhard says, "Every man forms a little world on his own."

Teilhard wrote two essays with the title "My Universe." In one he observes, "I've become so accustomed to living in 'my own universe'." And in his Letters to Two Friends, 1926-1952 (New American Library, 1968) he says, "Another man is, for each of us, another world."

Fr. King notes that sometimes Teilhard refers to persons by the philosophical term "monads" and quotes Teilhard's Writings in Time of War (Harper and Row, 1967) where he says, "Each monad, in turn, is to some degree the centre of the entire Cosmos."

In that same collection of Writings, Teilhard sums up his view in one sentence: "Each one of us has, in reality, his own universe; he is its centre and he is called upon to introduce harmony into it."

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Science and religion converge powerfully in that last statement.

The scientific fact that each of us is at the center of our own world doesn't isolate us from the rest of the universe. Rather, it allows us to see that we have a profound relationship with the entire physical cosmos and thus that our personal existence has meaning and purpose within the cosmic evolutionary process.

We usually associate terms like meaning and purpose with religious or spiritual views more than with objective science, but that last statement of Teilhard's brings the two together in a way that simply wasn't possible before humanity awakened to contemporary evolutionary perspectives.

The "biogenetic" (evolutionary) perspective of modern science allows us to see the validity of the old religious idea of vocation.

Because we are at the center of our own inner world, we are thereby "called upon"-- by our very existence as part of the cosmic process-- to do something. We have a task. We have a purpose. Life isn't meaningless.

And when we see that our very existence is the result of fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution, and that the details of our everyday life have significance within that cosmic process, it slowly becomes clear that what we are "called upon" to contribute to the evolution of the universe is nothing less than ourselves.

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"This stuff is a bit heavy for me," one of my cousins told me recently.

"Yes," I said. "Isn't it awesome!"


sam@macspeno.com

#13. Cognized Environment

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This is the second of three blog postings dealing with the Mystery of Person in light of the neurological perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism.

In my previous post (#12) I noted that we have many different names to talk about the mystery of conscious awareness: words like mind, soul, spirit, person, psyche, self, inner self, consciousness, cognition, awareness, knowledge, understanding, gnosis and episteme.

This entry deals with a Biogenetic Structuralist term for the mystery of conscious awareness: "cognized environment."

I know that doesn't sound too promising. But-- like the phrase in post #12, "cognitive extension of prehension"-- it's quite helpful for our understanding of what it means to be a person.

As I described in that entry, the phrase "cognitive extension of prehension" offers significant insight into the fact that due to the cosmic evolutionary process, the matter of the Earth has become not only alive but self-aware. The main idea there was that, thanks to the structures and functions of the human brain, we are free to some extent of the affective or emotional ties our primate relatives have, via the brain's limbic system, to their immediate environment. And that this freedom--liberty, autonomy, independence-- as limited as it is, is precisely what was meant in earlier times by our spiritual nature.

The great value of seeing our human spirit from this neurological perspective is that it doesn't separate us from the rest of the living world, as religious dualism does; rather, it situates us within it. It marks "the End of Dualism," as I entitled entry #11, because it helps us to see that the human spirit is rooted in the Earth and the cosmic process.

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The topic of this posting, the term "cognized environment," is similar, but it looks at personal consciousness from a different slant. While the "cognition extension of prehension" deals with the fact that, as a result of the cosmic evolutionary process, "the matter of the Earth has become alive and self-aware," this second term, "cognized environment," helps us to understand what it means to say "That's us! That is what we are."

It really is a very good way to describe the mystery of ourselves. It helps us see not only that we are the matter of the world become conscious, but also that, as the matter of the world become conscious, we are active participants in the dynamic cosmic process. In terms of the convergence of science and religion, this neurological viewpoint opens the door to a contemporary spirituality of everyday life as participation in the evolution of the universe.

That spirituality will be the topic of a future posting. In this present entry I hope to spell out some details of just what neuro-scientists mean by "cognized environment."

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We're hardly comfortable thinking of plants and animals as the matter of the cosmos become self-transforming life-forms. So thinking of ourselves, not only as "the matter of the cosmos become alive" but also as self-aware, is even more challenging.

We know, however, from personal experience what we're talking about. And even though it's difficult to wrap our minds around this objective way of looking at ourselves, it is, as I've said repeatedly now, well-worth whatever time and energy we can give to it.

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One part of that effort is to note that if we begin by asking "How can matter become conscious?" we have already slipped back into the pre-20th century perspective about matter. What we're really asking-- in that older context-- is: "How can something inert and passive and dead become alive and aware?"

Thanks to the modern evolutionary perspective, we know that that's not a good way to think about matter, life and mind. It's called "thinking from the bottom up," and we need to look at cosmic evolution from the opposite direction, "from the top down." When we do, it's obvious that life, not death, is what the world is all about.

And not just "life" in an abstract sense. It's human life that's at the center of the entire cosmic process. In Teilhard's words, quoted back in entry #11, "We are the Terrestrial head of [the] Universe... the fruit of millions of years of psycho-genesis."

We need only think for a moment of human society, of culture and civilization and of our personal relationships, to see the validity of what Teilhard calls this "neo-anthropocentric" view. When seen from the top down, the story of the universe as it shows itself on Earth is centered on human consciousness. Personal self-awareness is the very apex of cosmic evolution.

That's what the neurological jargon term "cognized environment" helps us to understand.

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We need to keep in mind two things from the modern scientific worldview. One, from the evolutionary perspective, is that that universe isn't static but dynamic. The other, from neuro-physiology, is that the human brain and nervous system is the most complex thing we know of in the entire dynamic universe.

It's easy to see why Teilhard said our understanding of the world as dynamic rather than static is the most significant change in human consciousness since consciousness first appeared on Earth. In terms of neurological concepts, it means not only that our brain is the universe at its most complex stage of development but also that brain activity is nothing less than that "dynamic universe at its most complex stage of development" in action.

The obvious question then: "What's going on in the brain?"

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You might like to look back at blog entry #10 (Overview of Biogenetic Structuralism) to check out the section on Chapter V which deals with their distinction between the "operational environment" and "cognized environment."

The term "operational environment" is neurologists' jargon for the external world outside ourselves; it's their way of talking about the physical universe as the environment (the world) in which we exist-- and within which, of course, our brain operates. In contrast, they use the term "cognized environment" to refer to the inner world which is continually being created by the activity of the brain's structures.

As the most complex thing in the dynamic universe, the brain's neural cells and networks are themselves not something static but, rather, a dynamic field of electro-chemical reactions. And neuro-gnosis (the research scientists' name for personal consciousness) is the result of that dynamic activity of the neuro-gnostic structures.

It helps to keep aware that we're talking about the third level of the cosmic process. Not just the realm of matter studied by physics, nor the realm of living things studied by biology, but the realm of that inner mystery for which we have so many names-- mind, soul, spirit, person, psyche, self, inner self, consciousness, cognition, awareness, knowledge, understanding, gnosis and episteme-- the realm of the human sciences.

The main idea in the neurological perspective is that, at this third level of cosmic evolution, each individual is born with a rudimentary gnosis-structure: a genetically-based (in-born) potential for awareness resulting from natural selection and the cosmic evolutionary process, and out of which our personal consciousness grows by corrections and modifications based on data coming in from the operational (i.e., external) environment.

In terms of evolution and natural selection, the brain's primary function is to construct an internal version of the external environment-- which it does in order to moderate input from and response to that external world.

It is an evolutionary survival mechanism; it allows us to recognize what's potentially hurtful or helpful in the operational environment. If incoming data produces a negative affect (i.e., if something in the external environment appears threatening or in some other way unattractive), the object can be avoided; and if the affective response is positive (the object appears to be potential food, protection or a mate, for example), the object may be approached.

The basic idea here is that any sense data that enters the brain is immediately compared with already-there previously-stored sense data. This provides an evolutionary advantage because the sense data is processed in terms of how it fits with previous information already stored in the brain and nervous system. From a biogenetic (evolutionary) perspective, neuro-gnosis (consciousness) is the "informational content" of the neurological structures, and the neuro-gnostic structures are the media of nerve cells and their networks in which this information is "coded" and by way of which it can be modified.

All this wouldn't sound so strange if it wasn't ourselves that we're talking about.

But the point of it all is that personal consciousness is the "environment, cognized."

And what a perspective it is!

Conscious awareness is the dynamic universe, at its most complex level of development, doubled back on itself and raised to a new, third, level of complexity. That's us. We're not just part of the world, we are the world, internalized. As a result of thousand of millions of years of evolution, we are the universe become conscious of itself.

The religious implications of this scientific view of ourselves are immense.

Ours is the first age in humanity's cultural development when we can understand ourselves this way. I'm not saying that it's likely that we'll soon add "cognized environment" to the names we have to express "the mystery we are." But there's no question that everything looks different from this neo-anthropocentric perspective, including the meaning of words like mind, soul, spirit, psyche, self.

One of the most interesting things is the realization that human activities-- our personal relationships and the products of our creative imagination and technical know-how-- are not just private activities; they are nothing less than the creative universe in action. They are the cosmic process doing its thing through us.

So much to explore!

sam@macspeno.com

#12. The Cognitive Extension of Prehension

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This is the first of three blog postings dealing with the Mystery of Person in light of the neurological perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism. It is intentionally being posted on Independence Day: it's about the neurological basis in the brain and nervous system for human freedom.In contrast to the static worldview of former times, the essence of the modern scientific perspective is that we live in a dynamic world, much bigger, older and more complicated than our ancestors ever dreamed.

The dynamic worldview of modern science allows us to see not only that the physical matter of the Earth has become alive in the form of self-transforming structural systems (plants and animals), but also that a portion of the living world has so increased in complexity, via the development of the vertebrate brain and nervous system, that it has become self-aware. Matter, life and mind are three distinct levels of development in the cosmic process.

Teilhard felt that this new scientific perspective was the biggest development in human history since humans first appeared on Earth; we can expect that anything this big will have a major impact on humanity's religious perspectives. Exploring those perspectives is what my efforts with this blog are all about.

I called the previous entry "The End of Dualism," for example, to make the point that we no longer need to think of ourselves as spirits trapped in bodies, as did Greek thought and those dualistic religious perspectives of western culture based on it. As I said in that posting, the modern evolutionary view "marks the end of philosophical and religious dualism which has influenced every aspect of human life for several thousand years." Thanks to contemporary science, we have a much better understanding of the relationship between mind and matter.

Although we know by personal experience what self-awareness means, we find it extremely difficult to put into words. We are indeed a mystery to ourselves. But contemporary neurological studies, set within a biogenetic (evolutionary) context, offer much help in our understanding of the "mystery which we are."

In this posting and the next I hope to share my understanding of the two closely related but distinct ideas about personal consciousness which in the jargon of Biogenetic Structuralism are referred to as the "cognitive extension of prehension" and the "cognized environment." Both have especially significant religious implications.

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To make sure we get off to a good start, we need to keep in mind that the word "matter" means far more today than it did in previous times. Our knowledge of the very small (summed up in Quantum Mechanics), of the very large (summed up in Relativity theory), and of the very old (summed up in Astronomy and Geology), allows us to see that the physical stuff of the universe is something very different from the dead, inert, passive material which for many centuries it was thought to be.

With our dynamic-evolutionary perspective, we can see that the three distinct stages of the material world's development are what is studied respectively by the physical sciences, the biological sciences and the human sciences. But the fact that the findings of the human sciences remain less well known than those of physics and biology, and indeed sometimes are hardly considered authentic science at all, indicates how much we have still to learn.

And of course it is in the "sciences of the mind," those which study the third level of the material world's development, that the implications for humanity's religious understanding are greatest.

But it is the unified perspective-- that matter, life and mind are three stages of the one same cosmic process-- which constitutes the modern scientific worldview.

From an anthropological point of view this unified view is called the "New Cosmology." It is, in fact, a New Story of the World, and one which-- despite religious, ethnic and cultural differences-- all humanity can eventually come to share based on the findings of objective science: plants and animals are the natural result of the evolution of cosmic matter, and human beings are the pinnacle of the development of life on Earth.

This is the new, modern context which we have for understanding the mystery of ourselves as conscious persons.

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One of the most interesting things about personal consciousness is that we have so many names for it. In different situations, we use a variety of words-- mind, soul, spirit, person, psyche, self, inner self, consciousness, cognition, awareness, knowledge, understanding, gnosis and episteme-- to name the inner experience of personal consciousness.

Because we see ourselves from so many different points of view, it's sometimes difficult to recognize that all those terms refer, in fact, to the one same thing. We really are a mystery to ourselves in the most profound sense: we can never exhaust understanding ourselves.

But modern science, especially that combination of neurology and cultural anthropology called Biogenetic Structuralism, offers much help along these lines; and this is one of the places where science and religion converge considerably.

As I said above, I see two big ideas especially worth exploring. The first is Biogenetic Structuralism's jargon phrase, "the cognitive extension of prehension." It deals with the fact that due to the cosmic evolutionary process, the matter of the Earth has become not only alive but self-aware.

The second is a closely related but distinct concept: the amazing fact that we human persons are "the matter of the Earth which has become not only alive but self-aware." "Cognized environment" is the jargon phrase for this concept. I'll try to spell out that idea in some detail in my next blog entry, and offer some thoughts about its religious implications in entry #14.

This present posting focuses on "the cognitive extension of prehension."

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When I first discovered that the field of Biogenetic Structuralism is what I've called "the parent generation" of research for contemporary neurological studies being done at the University of Pennsylvania by Andrew Newberg and associates, it took me a half-dozen readings of their original text Biogenetic Structuralism [Columbia University Press, 1974]) to make sense of their ideas about the cognitive extension of prehension.

So you might like to look back at posting #10 (Overview of Biogenetic Structuralism) where in the sections on Chapters III and IV I've tried to describe these challenging ideas. As I've said a number of times, they are not easy to understand, but they're not impossible either; they are well-worth whatever time and energy we can give them.

The main idea encapsulated in the phrase "cognitive extension of prehension" is that, thanks to the way the human brain works, we are to some extent free of the affective or emotional ties our primate relatives have to their immediate environment.

The structure and organization of the human brain is such that we have a real, if limited, independence of the brain's limbic system, the part of the brain we share with all vertebrate animals going back to our reptile ancestors. It is this relative freedom from instinctual action and response to things in our immediate surroundings which enables us to imagine possible causes of things not present in the external environment; it allows us to deal with things in their absence, to plan ahead and to make choices. This cognitive ability obviously had great survival value for our earliest human ancestors and accounts for contemporary humanity's predominance among the living things of the Earth.

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At first hearing, this idea of the "cognitive extension of prehension" doesn't sound too helpful as an understanding of the mystery of personal consciousness. But in fact it is.

"Prehension" comes from a Latin word which means to seize or grasp; we're familiar with its use in describing the prehensile tail of South American monkeys who use their tails as an additional appendage for wrapping around and holding on to tree branches.

But "prehension" also has a conceptual meaning, as when we say of something which we've previously had a difficult time understanding, "Oh, now I get it". We're saying that we have "grasped" the issue, that we have been able to "wrap our minds around" it. That's what's meant by the cognitive extension (at the human level) of primate prehension.

As I said above, the findings of the human sciences remain less well known than those of the physical and biological sciences, so these words sound strange. But in fact we know what they mean from personal experience.

The main point which the phrase "cognitive extension of prehension" conveys is that human behavior isn't just a matter of instinct, as it is with our primate cousins. We are less stimulus-bound and have a certain amount of autonomy because of the way the structures of our brain are organized. And, obviously, this behavioral freedom from "instinct," limited as it is, is what distinguishes us from our primate cousins and accounts for our characteristically human traits of speech, creativity, technical know-how and imagination.

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What's less obvious-- and this is my whole point in this post-- is that this partial independence of the human brain from the vertebrate limbic system is precisely what was meant in earlier times by our spiritual nature.

In the centuries before anything was known about neuro-physiology, it made good sense to say that "humans have a spiritual soul." In the context of the pre-scientific static worldview, talking about the spiritual nature of the soul was a good way of expressing the fact that what distinguishes homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom is our limited but real autonomy from the world around us. Liberty or freedom is the very essence of what we mean by the human spirit.

Thanks to 20th-century scientific studies of the brain, we can understand even better what the freedom of a human person means. And the great advantage of seeing our spiritual aspect from a neurological perspective is that it doesn't separate us from the rest of the living world but situates us within it. Today, we can see more clearly than other generations that personal consciousness doesn't exist apart from the Earth's biological evolution but, rather, that we are an integral part of the evolution of the universe.

And it's this neurological-evolutionary perspective-- that the human spirit is rooted in the Earth-- which I described in posting #11 as marking the end of religious and rationalist dualism.

When we see what the cognitive extension of prehension means, it becomes clear that we neither have to deny as do scientific rationalists that we have a spiritual soul, nor to claim as religious fundamentalists do that only our spiritual side has value.

And this New Cosmology, this New Story of our place in the living world, coming out of 20th century science, takes away nothing of the awe, wonder and astonishment we experience at the mystery of being a person. Indeed, it enhances it tremendously.

And it opens the door to a much more healthy religious understanding of ourselves not as aliens to, but as participants in, the cosmic process.

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In the dualistic religious perspectives of pre-scientific times, humanity's main task was to escape from the world. Today, thanks to the modern evolutionary perspective, we can see that we not only belong to the world but also that we have a role to play in it.

The modern scientific worldview doesn't take away human dignity, it restores the age-old religious insight of the value of the human person. It allows us to see that each of us has a cosmic vocation, called by our very existence to make a personal contribution to the evolution of the world.

This is one of the most significant places where religion and science at their best converge: in helping us recover the sense that our personal existence has meaning and purpose.

sam@macspeno.com

#11. The End of Dualism

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The first chapter of the "definitive" 1990 book on Biogenetic Structuralism, Brain, Symbol & Experience (Columbia University Press reprint, 1993) starts with a quote from Teilhard de Chardin's The Future of Man (Harper & Row, 1964).

Teilhard states what he calls a "neo-anthropo-centric" view: we humans "are the head (Terrestrial) of a Universe that is in the process of psychic transformation. We can rightfully considered ourselves," he says, "the fruit of millions of years of psycho-genesis."

This scientific view marks the end of philosophical and religious dualism which has influenced every aspect of human life for several thousand years.

"Dualism" refers to the division of reality into matter and spirit, and to the separation of human beings into body and soul. Many think it is the very essence of a religious view of the world to hold that we have a spiritual soul which lives forever and a material body which dies and decays into dust.

While no one would deny that mind and body are two distinct aspects of our reality, or at least two distinct ways of describing what we are, we need not hold to a dualistic view that one part has an independent and superior existence to the other.

Over the last few centuries it has been gradually recognized that the dualistic view is not only not the essence of religion but that it is an inadequate understanding of human nature and a disastrously harmful view of the world. It allows for exploitation of the Earth and the suppression of its peoples. Global warming, for example, as well as the patriarchal oppression of women and the glorification of war, are direct consequences of matter-spirit dualism.

Religious fundamentalists reject evolution precisely because they think it negates matter-spirit dualism and so denies both human dignity and the very existence of a creative source to the world. While the evolutionary perspective does indeed negate body-soul (or matter-spirit) dualism, its understanding of matter (or body) and spirit (or mind, soul, psyche) is different from the long-held views which western culture had inherited from the world of the Greeks and Romans. We've learned a lot since the time of Plato. Thanks to contemporary science, we don't need to depend anymore on the Greco-Roman understanding of mind and matter.

One of the great values of modern science is that, far from denying human dignity, it enhances it. It allows us to see ourselves as nothing less than "the universe become conscious of itself," and it allows for a much more integral understanding of the relationship between the physical world and its creative source.

The efforts of the Biogenetic Structuralists help greatly in our understanding of the human place in the physical universe. In this blog entry I hope to spell out my understanding of the neurological perspectives on the human person which Biogenetic Structuralism opens up for us.

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We know that the universe is billions of years old, that it is filled with millions of galaxies and stars, and that planets are made from the chemical elements produced in the hearts of stars. Chemical compounds, such as water, amino acids and proteins need the cooler temperatures of planets. Along with rocks, oceans and clouds, the Earth's living things-- from amoebas to primates-- are made of the same chemical compounds. We're made of the same stuff as the rest of the universe, literally star dust; and one of the major chemicals in our bodies, the simplest of the elements, hydrogen, goes all the way back to the Big Bang.

A wonderful description of the human body as a manifestation of cosmic history can be found on page 40 of Mary Conrow Coelho's book, Awakening Universe, Emerging Personhood (Wyndham Hall, 2002).

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Just as the atoms and molecules of chemical elements and compounds are made by the complex joining of subatomic particles, so living things are made by the complex joining of atoms and molecules. What makes a living thing different from the chemicals which compose it is that an animal or plant is a structural system: it is a self-regulating and self-transforming system that preserves its original identity while changing. 

That's what "structuralism" means. A tree in our backyard or a bird sitting in its branches are good examples: we are so used to such structural systems that we seldom recognize what a miraculous thing a living plant or animal is.

The idea of a structural system is Biogenetic Structuralism's basic starting point. What makes this scientific perspective "biogenetic," and thus different from the earlier form of structuralism in the field of anthropology, is its dynamic (evolutionary) emphasis and its application of that developmental view both to the human central nervous system and to human cultural systems.

Cosmic evolution, neurophysiology and culture! That's quite an all-inclusive picture. Biogenetic Structuralists want to maintain a non-dualistic vision in their scientific account of consciousness. And because, as Teilhard says, the human mind is "the fruit of millions of years of psycho-genesis," they want to "leave out nothing" in seeking to "understand understanding." They want to take into account the entire evolutionary history of the universe as well as what neurological science has learned about the human brain.

For this reason, neuro-physiological information about the structural arrangements and functions of the brain and nervous system, gathered by scientists over more than a century of research, has a central place in the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective. Little of this scientific knowledge has filtered down to the popular level, so it's unfamiliar and difficult for most of us. In my blog entry #10, Overview of Biogenetic Structuralism, I offered a brief introduction to it. Here's a quick review of the more relevant points:

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In the brains of mammals there are specific sites which connect with the senses. These brain sites provide the animal with incoming information about the external world. This information, which Biogenetic Structuralists like to call by its Greek name, gnosis (knowledge or awareness), has survival value for individuals and species.

In the more advanced mammals called "primates," these brain sites have more complex areas associated with them, but these "association areas," as they are called, function more or less separately from one another. They store gnosis, information about the external world, so it can be compared with further data coming in from the senses. Some of the gnosis stored in the association areas has a genetic basis, the animal's DNA inherited from its ancestors. This in-born awareness is the result of natural selection, the biological phase on Earth of the cosmic evolutionary process.

The survival value of a primate's stored gnosis results from the association areas being connected, via physical and electro-chemical linkages, to the brain's primitive limbic system, which is an inheritance in animals from the much earlier reptilian brain.

The point of this connection with the ancient limbic system is that when in-coming data is compared with gnosis already in the association areas (whether inborn or acquired via life-experience), the comparison process has an affective or emotional component. It is a feeling-response which allows the incoming data to be re-cognized as negative (life-threatening and to be avoided) or positive (life-enhancing and thus may be approached or pursued). This information processing, an obvious and significant survival mechanism, is referred to as "prehension."

Pre-human primate brains have four main association areas, each linked separately to one of the senses. The human brain has an additional association area and connections between the association areas. It is these "cross-modal" connections, as they're called, which allows human learning to be to some extent independent of the affect or emotion-bound limbic system inherited from our reptile ancestors.

It may not seem like much of a difference, but this relative independence of the feeling-response coming from the reptilian brain is the basis for our specifically human abilities such as cognition and conceptualization.

Prehension in primates involves seeing similarities and connections between things in their environment and recognizing them as belonging to specific groups (such as possible predators or potential mates).

The "cognitive extension of prehension" means that we humans can compare, classify and group things even when they are not present in our external environment. We can "prehend" things in their absence and so we can plan ahead. This unique ability obviously has high survival value and it is what accounts for our characteristically human traits such as speech, imagination, creativity and technology.

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The concept of the "cognitive extension of prehension" offers a non-dualistic and scientific account of consciousness. It is the essence of Biogenetic Structuralism's "understanding of understanding" and it helps us to understand how we humans can be, in Teilhard words, "the fruit of millions of years of psycho-genesis."

A main point in the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective is that our inborn neuro-gnostic structures are made up not of some non-material 'substance' but of the links and networks of the brain's matter, which are themselves based on genetically determined neural structures.

Whether we call it spirit, mind, knowledge, gnosis, understanding, psyche, cognition, consciousness, personal experience, or whatever, our specifically human cognitive ability-- the ability to imagine possible causes of things not present in the external environment-- accounts for the human experience of our having (or being) an inner "cognized" environment. That inner "cognized" environment is what we call our "person."

And understanding something of it in neurological terms takes away nothing of it as the mystery which we experience ourselves to be, any more than our understanding the processes of nutrition and digestion take away from the mystery of physical growth. I mean "mystery," of course, not in the sense of something we can not understand, but in the sense of an inner experience that is so rich and full that we can never exhaust our understanding of it. We experience the mystery of our inner self in awe and wonder and astonishment.

So it's easy enough to see why Plato and the early Greeks attributed our inner experience of cognition to a non-physical or "spiritual" substance; they lived in a static cultural world and knew nothing about biological evolution or neuro-physiology. It's also easy to see why the rationalism of early science would deny its reality. Both Greek thought and early science shared the same static worldview. They didn't know anything about neuro-physiology. For many centuries, it was thought that the "seat of the soul" was in the abdomen.

And they certainly knew nothing about the universe as an evolutionary process. Thanks to modern science we now can see that our minds no less than our bodies are the result of the cosmic evolutionary process; via the emergence of life on earth and the formation of the solar system and galaxy, we go back all the way to the Big Bang and the initial creation of the world.

This is why I call these perspectives "the end of dualism." We know so much more than Plato and the early Greeks and the early Church fathers who had to use Greek thought patterns to express their religious insights. Today, we don't need to use body-soul dualism to account for the mystery of personal consciousness.

And we don't need to explain away the value of matter by attributing consciousness to a non-material substance. Thanks to the evolutionary and neurological perspectives of contemporary science, we can see today that neither "mind" nor "matter" are what they had been considered to be for many centuries. The dualistic understanding of "matter" is no less outmoded than is the dualistic understanding of "spirit."

So the end of dualism opens the way for a far richer and more life-giving understanding of the meaning of mind and matter-- soul and body-- than was formerly available. Far more, not less than our ancestors of recent centuries, the contemporary understanding of ourselves as conscious persons in an evolutionary cosmos is a tremendous source of religious wonder, awe and astonishment.

sam@macspeno.com