Turing Instabilities in Biology, Culture, and Consciousness?

Original Paper Adaptive Behavior 21(3) 199–214 Ó The Author(s) 2013 Turing instabilities in biology, culture, Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1059712313483145 and consciousness? On the enactive adb.sagepub.com origins of symbolic material culture To m F r o e s e 1,2,3, Alexander Woodward1 and Takashi Ikegami1 Abstract It has been argued that the worldwide prevalence of certain types of geometric visual patterns found in prehistoric art can be best explained by the common experience of these patterns as geometric hallucinations during altered states of consciousness induced by shamanic ritual practices. And in turn the worldwide prevalence of these types of hallucinations has been explained by appealing to humanity’s shared neurobiological embodiment. Moreover, it has been proposed that neural network activity can exhibit similar types of spatiotemporal patterns, especially those caused by Turing instabilities under disinhibited, non-ordinary conditions. Altered states of consciousness thus provide a suitable pivot point from which to investigate the complex relationships between symbolic material culture, first-person experience, and neurobiology. We critique prominent theories of these relationships. Drawing inspiration from neurophenomenology, we sketch the beginnings of an alternative, enactive approach centered on the concepts of sense-making, value, and sensorimotor decoupling. Keywords Enaction, sense-making, representation, hallucination, Turing patterns, human cognition 1 Introduction & Simon, 1976), the enactive approach instead starts with the biologically embodied mind, and must there- Forms of artistic expression, rituals, and language are fore address the ‘‘cognitive gap’’ between adaptive universal features of all known human cultures. While behavior and abstract human cognition (De Jaegher & animal behavior is mostly governed by immediate envi- Froese, 2009; Froese & Di Paolo, 2009). Thus, rather ronmental demands and the meaning of animal com- than simply assuming the notion of representation as munication is generally fixed by biological evolution, its most basic conceptual foundation for explaining the human symbolic practices and their meanings are the internal mechanisms of human cognition, it tries to historical outcome of a seemingly open-ended social understand the biological, social, and historical origins process of cultural evolution. Explaining the origin of of the phenomenon of symbolic representation as an such symbolic practices in terms of our biological aspect of our cultural environment. This approach embodiment and the social circumstances of our prehis- helps to avoid a lot of the unnecessary linguistic and toric past is one of the major outstanding challenges of theoretical confusion, which has plagued cognitive sci- science. Indeed, the origin of symbolic representation ence for many years (Harvey, 2008). And it also helps concerns the origin of the human condition as such, hence the idea of modern humans as the ‘‘symbolic 1Ikegami Laboratory, Department of General Systems Studies, Graduate species’’ (Deacon, 1997) or ‘‘Homo symbolicus’’ School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan 2 (Henshilwood & d’Errico, 2011b). This is an issue that Instituto de Investigaciones en Matema´ticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas reaches across the great divide between the natural and (IIMAS), Universidad Nacional Autońoma de Me´xico (UNAM), Me´xico 3Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad (C3), Universidad Nacional social sciences, and has implications beyond the remit Autońoma de Me´xico (UNAM), Me´xico of science itself. The enactive approach to cognitive science is in a Corresponding author: good position to advance the debate about the origins Departamento de Ciencias de la Computacioń, Instituto de Investigaciones en Matema´ticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas (IIMAS), of the earliest symbolic practices. Whereas traditional Universidad Nacional Autońoma de Me´xico (UNAM), Apdo. 20-726, cognitive science presupposes the existence of an inter- 01000 Mexico D.F., Mexico. nal ‘‘symbol system’’ as its basic starting point (Newell Email: [email protected] 200 Adaptive Behavior 21(3) to bring to light some unresolved foundational issues. for the cross-culturally shared value of these specific The question therefore becomes how primary adaptive kinds of geometric patterns. processes of sense-making of the here and now could We then evaluate current models of the neural basis have been transformed into secondary forms of sym- of geometric hallucinations, because basic neural pro- bolic sense-making of the absent and the imaginary cesses are prime candidates for explaining this cross- (Froese, 2012). cultural selective bias. These models typically propose Enactive accounts of this profound qualitative tran- to view the visual system as a potentially excitable sition are still in their infancy, but there is broad agree- medium whose autonomous dynamics are unleashed by ment that there is no one single biological or social disinhibiting altered states of consciousness. Essentially, explanatory factor. We are dealing with a historical it is suggested that the disinhibited visual system gener- process emerging from the interaction between biologi- ates spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity due to cal processes, social practices, and the cultural back- Turing instabilities. Researchers also generally claim ground (Froese, in press; Hutchins, 2010; McGann, that the geometric hallucinations experienced by the 2007; Stewart, 2010). The development of an account subject are mental representations of these neural pat- that theoretically bridges the cognitive gap therefore terns. However, while these neural models are capable promises to simultaneously provide an interdisciplinary of reproducing some of the geometric patterns that are bridge between the natural and social sciences. found in prehistoric art and non-ordinary visual experi- Furthermore, because the interaction between cultural ences, their range remains severely limited. In addition, processes and biological embodiment is mediated at the the models tend to trivialize the relationship between personal level through lived experience, this scientific the structure of subpersonal neural processing and the integration is not limited to objective processes, but content of personal visual experience by assuming that also includes phenomenology of the first-person per- visual experience is a representation of inverse optics spective. Cognitive science thereby becomes an applied to neural activity in region V1 of the visual ner- ‘‘anthropologically informed cultural neurophenome- vous system. nology’’ (Laughlin & Throop, 2009). The aim of this We then propose an enactive approach to resolving paper is to contribute to this enactive approach to the these issues. By drawing inspiration from the method various interplays between biology, culture, and con- of neurophenomenology, we argue that the role of self- sciousness, in particular by critically examining the role sustaining neural activity, which is closely associated of altered states of consciousness in the generation of with neural Turing instabilities, has been underappre- geometric prehistoric art. ciated. According to an enactive approach, self- sustaining neural dynamics can generate their own 1.1 Overview of the paper intrinsic value in relation to their conditions of self- maintenance, and they can also serve as a neural We first take a closer look at the one of the most promi- mechanism by which to decouple autonomous brain nent theories of the origin of prehistoric art and high- activity from the influence of environmentally mediated light its main shortcomings. The prevalence of certain sensorimotor dynamics. Both of these aspects can help geometric patterns in the symbolic material culture of to explain the aesthetic selective biases of the first art- many prehistoric cultures, starting shortly after the ists, in particular their interest in inner experience as emergence of our biological species and continuing in exemplified by abstract hallucinations and imaginary some indigenous cultures until today, is explained in phenomena, which are not directly related to the terms of the characteristic contents of biologically demands of their physical environment. We speculate determined hallucinatory experiences. However, we that the self-sustaining dynamics may account for why argue that the correlation between the first artistic these geometric hallucinations were experienced as motifs and typical hallucinatory experiences is not suffi- more significant than other phenomena, and that at the cient to serve as a full explanation. In particular, there same time their underlying neural dynamics may have is a lack of consideration of the value associated with served to mediate and facilitate a form of imaginary altered states of consciousness, both in terms of phe- sense-making that is not bound to immediate nomenology and function. What is it about these non- surroundings. ordinary visual patterns that made them more attractive for artistic expression than most others of an almost infinite set of possible patterns, both physical and ima- 2 On the origins of the symbolic mind ginary?1 Given that humans appear to be in principle capable of arbitrarily associating any kind of stimulus Starting with Darwin’s (1871) evolutionary approach to with any kind of meaning, as epitomized by language as the origins of human language in terms of natural and

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