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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Chiasmus: A Phenomenon of Language, Body and Perception Christine M. Grausso Doctorate of Philosophy University of Edinburgh 2020 ii Acknowledgements I would especially like to thank my supervisor, Dr. John Joseph, for all of his guidance with my research. His exceptional good humor and detailed feedback were both helpful beyond measure. Thank you to Dr. Richard Shillcock, who reviewed my work and provided constructive suggestions during the process. Special thanks to Dr. Hannah Rohde for her kind direction and assistance at every stage – and to Dr. Jamin Pelkey, for his inspiring work on the topic of chiasmus and participation as my thesis examiner. Finally, thank you to my family – my parents, Frank and Virginia Grausso, and my aunt, Renee Hertz, for their constant encouragement; to Anne Chalmers for being a support whenever outside obstacles presented themselves; and especially to Claire Barrie, for her endless patience and compassion. iii iv Abstract The term chiasmus and all its many variants describe a phenomenon of language, body and perception. As a syntactic-rhetorical device, the usage of which is culturally diffuse, chiasmus involves a re-ordering of elements in a sentence to produce an A-B-B-A pattern. An example of this is the well-known saying falsely attributed to Hippocrates: “Let thy food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” As a symbol, chiasmus describes a pattern with intersecting lines, the most simplistic form of which is the X. Chiasm, in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, refers to a phenomenon of body and mind. Insofar as it is used in the latter part of this work, chiasm refers to how the body and brain negotiate motor function, touch and perception: the right hemisphere of the brain corresponds with movement and function in the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere of the brain corresponds to movement and function in the right side of the body. All chiastic forms involve an intersection or crossing of the elements—whether syntactical or anatomical. The first chapter of the thesis is a literature review entitled, “Chiastic Studies and Typology,” which gives an overview of a few in-depth studies on chiasmus and of chiastic types that have been identified in semiotics and at the syntactical level. The second chapter of the thesis, “Chiastic Forms and Figures: Truths, Logic and Cross-Linguistic Usage” examines chiasmus as a semiotic and syntactic phenomenon. Part of the discussion considers whether and how chiasmus as a semiotic phenomenon is not only a symbol of self, but also a symbol of the person’s truthfulness or trustworthiness. Proceeding on, this section transitions into a broader reflection on how chiasmus overlaps with truth-functional logic and is an aspect of systematicity in language. Focusing specifically on a sub-type of chiasmus, antimetabole, this section highlights 80 different examples, in 28 different languages and family groups. Antimetabole is characterized by precise reversals of the sentence elements: “Let thy food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” entails a repetition and reversal of the elements medicine and food. This phrase would still be chiastic if a synonym for food was used, but it would not be an example of antimetabole. The identified examples of antimetabole fit into eight types: 1) Equalization: AB equates to or is the same as BA 2) Part-whole: A is part of B, and B is part of A 3) Exclusion: A excludes B, and B excludes A 4) Dissociation: A dissociates from B, B dissociates from A 5) Combination: A and B, B and A; the elements are grouped together 6) Comparison: A and B are better than B and A; or A and B are worse than B and A v 7) One Way Effects: A affects B, but B does not affect A; or A does not affect B, but B affects A 8) Multiple Effects: A affects B, and B affects A; or A affects B and B affects A; can also include more elaborate reversals with repeating C, D, E elements The third chapter of the work, “Merleau-Ponty’s Chiasm: a Theory of Perception” concerns Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s text The Visible and the Invisible, in which he develops chiasm as a concept. This is an interpretation of his text that argues that the chiasm is a five-fold bodily relation, referring to: 1) Its role in connecting the visible with the invisible – or the perceptual with mental phenomena 2) The way the two eyes work together to produce one perceptual experience 3) The experience of touch other things and touching oneself 4) A linguistic and meaning-making process, in which meaning is constantly in flux 5) The social dynamic, or interactivity between One and Other The fourth chapter, “Models of the Brain: Metaphors, Architectures and Chiastic Applications” argues that the chiasm has usefulness in describing perception and activities of the brain. Beginning with a criticism of metaphors of the brain which have been influential in defining approaches to artificial intelligence, this chapter reveals the shortcomings of calling the brain a hierarchy, and the related notion that the brain is either a top-down or bottom-up architecture. It also challenges presently held views on how information is stored in a brain. Each sub-section accomplishes this by examining a different approach, including: 1) Representational Theory of Mind and its corresponding logic-based efforts to produce an artificially intelligent computer 2) Connectionism and one of its promising descendants in deep learning, specifically the convolutional neural network underlying SPAUN (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network); and 3) Bayesian approaches to mind, which found momentum alongside linear predictive coding, and Hidden Markov models. To complete this analysis is a more intensive argument that the architecture of the biological human brain is chiastic, rather than strictly top- down or bottom-up. The final part of this chapter draws on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, along with a body of research on the brain and bodily hemispheres. It demonstrates why scholars and engineers in artificial intelligence would be remiss to overlook the chiasm—both in developing vi theories of perception, and when it comes to making practical design choices in building more humanlike artificial intelligence. The last chapter in the thesis “Embodied X Figures and Forms of Thought” is intended to be a companion piece or footnote to the first. It is a review of Pelkey’s 2017 book, The Semiotics of X: Chiasmus, Cognition, and Extreme Body Memory. This review was previously published in Semiotica and is included here to provide further useful background. vii Lay Summary Chiasmus is a syntactic pattern, most frequently an A-B-B-A pattern, though the patterns may be more elaborate and include more elements. Before the main chapters, there is a literature review chapter, “Chiasmus Studies and Typology,” which introduces different types of chiasmus identified to date. The second chapter of the thesis “Chiastic Forms and Figures” concerns chiasmus as an aspect of language, but also of semiotics. Where it describes symbols, chiasmus refers to X — two lines that cross. I probe Pelkey’s (2017) thesis that X represents a spread posture of the human form, while also exploring X as a symbol of a “truth,” via its correlates in Western culture. The paper “Chiastic Forms and Figures” examines chiasmus as a tool with some similarities to truth-functional logic, and analyses 80 examples of chiasmus from 28 different language families and groups, in an effort to show some common cross-linguistic types. The third chapter, “Merleau-Ponty’s Chiasm: A Theory of Perception” is an interpretation of The Visible and the Invisible by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in which chiasm the structure that both links and separates the individual from the World and all other instances of ‘flesh’, a primal element which pre- exists the material world. The chiasm also describes the relation and interaction between individuals, who are themselves part of flesh. For Merleau-Ponty, chiasm includes the optic chiasma, which connects the eyes and allows normal perception to occur, and it also encompasses how a person engages in touch and the experience of touching oneself. The other chiastic relation Merleau-Ponty defines is a linguistic one, pertaining to the exchange between two speakers and how they engage in the meaning- making process. After closely examining these bodily relations, I propose a more robust theory of perception, social interaction and language in Merleau- Ponty’s text. The fourth chapter of the thesis, “Models of the Brain: Metaphors, Architectures and Chiastic Applications” reinforces how Merleau-Ponty’s concept of chiasm is useful in describing human perceptual processing. The dominant view is that the brain is hierarchical, and that information is conveyed through it in “bottom up” or “top down” manner: through the eyes and visual areas and up to the higher order areas of the brain, or with the higher order areas of the brain generating predictive content that is then shared with the lower, visual areas.