Fire Behind Their Eyes

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Aaron M. Schmidlin, B.S., B.Eng., M.Ed.

Graduate Program in Education: Teaching & Learning

The Ohio State University

2016

Dissertation Committee:

Dr. Patricia Brosnan, Advisor

Dr. Mindi Rhoades

Dr. Cosmin Roman Copyrighted by

Aaron M. Schmidlin

2016

Abstract

For decades mathematics educators have struggled to improve the practice of mathematics education in the face of implacable resistance, innumeracy, mathematics anxiety, injustice and race based achievement gaps (Battista, 1999; Cohen & Steele,

2002; Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999). This theoretical dissertation is a consciousness raising device designed to provide the reader with new conceptual tools for understanding how human consciousness may exist in bondage to certain classes of thoughts. Specific forms of thoughts are exposed as advancing injustice in processes contingent to their self replication and human meaning making. These thought forms actively warp modern society, culture and human consciousness into their service while undermining the good efforts of humans in all segments of society. These thoughts are a source of systematic failure in education and this dissertation further posits that the process by which these thoughts infect and subvert human consciousness is largely independent of (or determinant in directing) the conscious will of individual humans exposed to them.

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Vita

1995...... Dublin High School

2001...... B.S. Mathematics, The Ohio State

University

2002...... M.Ed. S.T.E.M. Education, The Ohio State

University

2007...... B.S. Civil Engineering, The Ohio State

University

Publications

Brosnan, P., Schmidlin, A., & Grant, M. (2012). Successful mathematics achievement is

attainable. In J. Hattie & E. M. Anderman (Eds.), International guide to student

achievement , (pp. 348-250). New York, NY: Routledge Press.

Fields of Study

Major Field:Education:Teaching & Learning

Specialization: Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics Education

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Vita ...... iii

List of Figures ...... vi

Chapter 1: Is It Possible that Our Thoughts Are Older than We Are? ...... 1

Chapter 2: The Imposition of Perspective ...... 11

Chapter 3: Why Ask Why ...... 15

Chapter 4: A Change in My Thinking ...... 20

Chapter 5: An Impactful Dream ...... 22

Chapter 6: From Dreams to Reality ...... 38

Chapter 7: An Answer in Time ...... 41

Chapter 8: Case Studies ...... 45

Chapter 9: Further Clinical Cases Perspectives and Arguments ...... 51

Chapter 10: Abstract Complications, Luminescence, and Consciousness ...... 55

Chapter 11: Insight ...... 81

Chapter 12: The Conceptual Virus ...... 90 iv

Chapter 13: Unveiling the Wolf ...... 92

Chapter 14: A Conceptual Form ...... 96

Chapter 15: Anatomy of a Virus ...... 98

Chapter 16: Reflections in Science ...... 101

Chapter 17: If Our Beliefs and Our Perceptions Blind Us, What Are We to Do? ...... 107

Chapter 18: The Unjust Premise ...... 111

Chapter 19: The Logical Virus in Education ...... 119

Chapter 20: Conclusion ...... 132

Chapter 21: Epilogue ...... 135

Chapter 22: Theoretical Exposition ...... 146

References ...... 159

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Image of a Clock ...... 52

Figure 2. Sample Truth Table ...... 67

Figure 3. Wolf Using Natural Camouflage to Avoid Detection I ...... 81

Figure 4. Wolf Using Natural Camouflage to Avoid Detection II ...... 82

Figure 5. Model for Prisoners’ Dilemma ...... 113

Figure 6. Model for Prisoners’ Dilemma Take 2 ...... 116

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Chapter 1: Is It Possible that Our Thoughts Are Older than We Are?

Is it possible that some thoughts are older than we are — older not by days or years but by eons?

Is it possible that our thoughts, like the structures of our bodies and minds, are no

“accident?”That the thoughts that we can think, will think, and have thought, are structurally predisposed to fit within our consciousness?

Is it possible that the thoughts we find accessible (the thoughts we are able to think) have been provided to us by mechanistic processes larger than ourselves, processes that created a brain structurally and physiologically predisposed to a consciousness often assumed to be inherently independent, even though it is anything but?

Is it conceivable that one of our ancestors thought the same kinds of thoughts we are capable of thinking today — that the ability to think the way we think is not a byproduct of individual uniqueness or truly independent insight, But instead an inherited evolutionary outcome?

Our human hands are not easily perceived absent recognition of the interdependence between manifestation, efficacy and purpose — while consciousness is too easily so.

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Why are our intellectual manifestations of self so often presupposed as disconnected from our physical manifestations of self?

Is this a faulty assumption of self?

Should it be obvious that the thoughts we think are thoughts that we are structurally predisposed to think?

Is this assumption engendered by our culture? Or are “we” innately and structurally predisposed to an illusion of uniqueness because the recognition of the self as “unique” is an evolutionary advantage?

If one observes the dolphin, an air-breathing mammal adapted to the sea, it is easy to interpret the function of its flippers, the reason for the shape of its body, and the location of its blowhole. Every creature has a heritable physical manifestation that has evolved to match the requirements of survival within their physical environment (Freeman &

Herron, 2007). As a result, all living things have evolved or devolved structures that may be correlated to a survival function in the environment in which they exist. Evolution by natural selection is an arithmetical consequence of an organism’s interaction with its environment (Freeman & Herron, 2007). Should we assume that consciousness is somehow different? Should the structure of consciousness be immune to an examination similar to that applied to homology in physical form — to evolutionary analysis?

The structures of physical manifestations of life correspond to their environments.

Similarly, the mind has a structure that corresponds to its environment.

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The existence of thought enables organisms to transcend a purely mechanistic response to their environments, providing an extra dimension to the evolutionary plane.

For example, humans and other thinking creatures are able to transcend physical limitations using conceptual constructs. In this way a great ape or human is able to perform the same task with a stick that an anteater performs with its uniquely designed proboscis, claws, and tongue. Intelligence transcends physical obstacles.

No part of the great apes’ physical manifestation is predisposed to the easy exploration of termite mounds with tongue, nose, or claw. Yet the existence of intelligence and the presence of a neurological structure that is able to conceive of tools provide a pathway for swift adaptation. Even if the ability to understand tools is not as externally obvious an adaptation as an anteater’s tongue, it is more profound than the finite evolution of individual physical characteristics that are limited in their ability to allow accommodation.

Our ability to use simple tools exists largely because of the competitive advantage that the thought of “tool use” provided our ancestors (Freeman & Herron, 2007). As a result, the thought of using a tool is in no way unique, nor are the kinds of thoughts that allow us to use “new” tools by any reasonable stretch of the imagination.

We are not the first, nor the last, to fall in love, to use a simple tool, to speak and understand a language, or to wonder at the meaning of life. Certainly the ability to think the thoughts that we assume are unique to us —the thoughts that we believe are hidden deep within our hearts, thoughts which may well be ancient in comparison to us —was

3 handed down to us by evolutionary processes that shaped both our physical and our intellectual manifestation in this world; more precisely, the actual structure and function of our brains which support our ability to think productively about such constructs were handed down to us by evolutionary processes (Emery, 2004; Freeman & Herron, 2007).

Certainly we could be the first generation to see a new technological or cultural change, but both our thoughts and those “new” tools exist because of our ancestors and their thoughts. Even such advancements as Tesla’s electric motor and alternating current are derived from a neurological structure handed down to its progenitor from prior generations (Freeman & Herron, 2007).

Looking deeply at this situation allows one to begin to reorganize the traditional interpretation of the role of thought. Under this lens, thoughts don’t exclusively exist because we think them; instead, we exist as we are because ancient thoughts shaped the

“we” that into which “we” have evolved. One way to understand this is to recognize thinking as an evolutionary advantage. With some thoughts more advantageous or more aggressive than others, the presence or absence of advantageous thoughts can dictate the survival of a species or an individual. As a result, the human brain has evolved to understand and think thoughts in a very determined manner — specifically to think those thoughts proven to be advantageous to prior generations (Freeman & Herron, 2007;

Emery, 2004).

If manifestations of intelligence and the existence of specific kinds of thought are evolved phenomena, even the prompt for survival — the concept of it, the desire for it —

4 is a competitive advantage to those organisms that possess it (Freeman & Herron, 2007).

Significant research has been conducted into the convergent evolution of cognitive constructs (Emery, 2004). Our brains are highly evolved structures, and the fact that we are capable of thinking specific kinds of thoughts is an easily overlooked source of evidence of the age of those thoughts.

Such a discussion has tremendous implications. It could be easy to mistake or twist this assertion into a case against the uniqueness of self. It is not. It is, instead, an argument that suggests that the assumption of the uniqueness of self is a predisposition provided by evolutionary processes.

Additionally, inasmuch as this is not an argument against the uniqueness of self, it is an argument about buckets and the water that they hold.

Buckets hold water because they are designed to do so by a purpose or demand outside themselves — a demand that is greater than them. If buckets fail to hold water, they are disposed of, replaced, or repaired.

Is it possible that we are all buckets and our shape (neurological structure) has a purpose greater than our individual conceit? That we have been shaped to carry specific kinds of thoughts? That our physical and intellectual manifestation of self is designed for carrying and containing something older than ourselves —for carrying thoughts of a certain shape and function?

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Just as “self-identity” may be an evolutionary advantage, perhaps our many thoughts, lusts, dreams, and desires are also handed to us with a specific structural purpose equivalent to the purpose associated with the shape of a dolphin’s flipper (Emery, 2004).

While it is easy to assume our thoughts are shaped by individual will, given the age of thought as an organic manifestation and given its participation in evolutionary processes, it is clear that our minds have been shaped over the eons by ancient classifications of thoughts that have persisted across the generations in such a way as to be determinant in bringing about the human mind we witness today.

While some thoughts provide thinking beings with an evolutionary advantage independent of their individual will or conscious recognition, evolution is dynamic and never isolated to one species’ or group’s advantage. Specifically, thinking beings also provide specific kinds of thoughts with fertile (conceptual) ground for selective replication and propagation. Thus, the roles of thinker and thought are intrinsically related and similarly impacted by evolutionary processes -- yet thoughts exist within the extra dimensional space provided by neurology and the existence of communication. The assumption that our thoughts are uniquely our own becomes an obstacle to the clear apprehension of our true relationship with our thoughts, and inhibits the recognition that the very shape of our minds has been determined by the existence and relative advantage of ancient thoughts. In this we have a concept-driven natural selection process that may or may not be easily apprehended. Within this process, the presence or absence of critical concepts is a dominant contributor to natural selection. This concept-based natural

6 selection process may be used to gain insight into the general evolution of intelligence and the accompanying neurological structures that support the growth of specific classes of ideas (Emery, 2004; Freeman & Herron, 2007).

Because the physical world may be “seen,” it is easier to observe and interpret physical manifestations of evolutionary processes. This can create an implicit assumption that evolution is primarily engaged with the physical structure of the “natural” world.

This assumption would lead one to believe evolution principally results in structural changes to the physical manifestations of life on earth (e.g., anteaters’ long tongues, or the shapes and variations in birds’ wings or fishes’ fins). These are physical manifestations easily correlated with environmental constraints.

Yet…

The existence of thoughts…

The ability to think them…

This is a tremendously powerful extra-dimension to the evolutionary environment. It could almost be conceived of as an extra-dimensional space. Certainly thoughts are materially and structurally mediated — physically constrained by the neurological systems that contain them — existing in a niche somewhere between the physical and the transcendent.

Thoughts exist beyond the physical even as they are constrained by it. In this way they create their own evolutionary space.

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Research into the convergent evolution of intelligence has shown certain birds have evolved to carry and develop concepts of both hiding and stealing. Yet along with the thought of “stealing” for these birds also came a need to avoid others when hiding food

(Emery, 2004). The mere existence of a thought (like stealing) impacts an entire aspect of corvid neurological development and behavior. It’s as if an entirely new dimension were added to the conceptual environment of corvids — in correspondence with the existence of that thought.

In this we have an example of the dominance of the cognitive construct over its carrier, as corvid brain design is contingently impacted by its ability to access, accommodate, and house specific concepts. In this, biology, physiology, and environment are tremendously impacted by the abstract and the imaginary.

In the face of transcendent thoughts, physical environment becomes almost secondary

— this is certainly true in the case of humans who have a species-based dominance dependent not on physical, but intellectual, attributes. As such, we may now conceive of ideas as an extra-dimensional space that has an evolutionary shape and form. This shape impacts the advantages or disadvantages inherent to the actual structure of our mind and bodies. In short, the evolved design of our brains and bodies is the result not only of our ancestors’ physical environment, but also of our ancestors’ thought environment . As a result, our conceptions of thought may now become more complex and dynamic. We find that ideas may not impact just our perception of reality, but also

8 that their existence has had an ancient and significant impact on the physical structure of our brains.

Just as the physical environment has a form and requirements that are expressed in our bodily members (fish with fins, people with feet), so also do the intellectual requirements for survival have a form that, accordingly, impacts the shape of our mind.

In this way, we have a system of implications between the form of our bodies, minds, and environment, each impacting the other. These manifestations of evolutionary biology have important implications not only about the nature and purpose of our body, but also about the nature and purposes of the thoughts of our ancestors. In short, we may now look at thoughts as having an invisible shape within an evolutionary domain of thought that may be observed in the same way in which both energy and the wind are assessed.

Gifted computer programmers often have a conceptual advantage in accessing this realignment of our concepts of self, physical form, and thought. It is possible that they are more able to perceive the mechanistic connection between physical constructs and intellectual constructs. Programmers understand that their ideas (programs) are real. They are constantly laboring with the imaginary to give birth to the “real” — the computer program. They understand that hardware and software evolve to fit one another and recognize that thoughts have a structure, just as circuits have a structure, and that the

“thought,” though “imaginary,” is as “real” as the “real world.”

Many fail to countenance or understand that their idea of what is “real” is implicitly predicated by the existence of the thought that first gives them the ability to think of the

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“real” as real. Perhaps they do not recognize that the “real” is predicated by the imagination of a thought that engenders the acceptance of an imagination of “real.”

Can we countenance that the concept of “we” exists because of thoughts? Can we see that “you,”“I,” and “we” are thoughts? Even our concepts of self are imaginary.... So, too, is our differentiation between the real and the “imaginary” — it is fundamentally imaginary. This is not an indictment of the real so much as it is an indictment of the assumption that real things (like thoughts) are imaginary. It is also an indictment of the assumption that a clear differentiation between the real and the imagination exists anywhere other than in the imagination.

It is a challenge to recognize that a thought could have been a determinate component in the bodily manifestation now enjoyed by humans — let alone that our minds and our consciousness could have been dictated by the shape of something as mercurial as a thought. What is a thought after all? A blink in the eye, an amorphous component of the consciousness of some ancient hominid or great ape ancestor imaginations....

Even more challenging to comprehend is the idea that these thought forms have persisted over the eons, and that they are still at work within and among us — hiding within our consciousness, lurking behind our eyes, ruling not only our conscious conceptions but also dictating the (now) ancient structures of our brains and our ability to think, see, and understand — to know the difference between red and black, hearts and spades, light and darkness, even wisdom and madness, the real and the imaginary.

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Chapter 2: The Imposition of Perspective

My sister was working in a World Trade Center building when the towers fell.

Like many people who had loved ones working at or near ground zero on 9/11, I was tremendously impacted by the tragic events of that day. Even years later I still have vivid memories of the towers’ collapse — the feeling of denial and revulsion that tore at my heart, the images of people choosing between the fire and the fall, and finally the twin towers collapsing into crushing darkness, swallowing countless people and blanketing the streets of New York in a consuming wave of ash and dust.

At the time, the massive number of phone calls that swept into the region during the collapse made it impossible for us to reach her by phone. Unable to ascertain her wellbeing, my family spent much of the day transfixed and horrified by the imagery broadcast over the news. I didn’t know what to do.

As we waited for word of my sister, we witnessed mass murder on constant replay.

We didn’t know if my sister had been in the collapse. The constant repetition drilled the terrible images home.

As the day passed, helicopters and tower cameras broadcast images of a black cloud of smoke blanketing the sky over New York. The hovering shadow carried a sense of doom and finality. In time, the phone lines cleared, and we learned my sister had escaped 11 the collapse. The shock of the situation left me confused and overwhelmed with an abject sense of disbelief. I had experienced 9/11 at a personal level. Although many miles separated me from the attack, although my sister was physically uninjured, the fear of losing her and the constant stream of terrible images broadcast by the news seared the trauma of the event into my consciousness at a visceral level.

As I look back on the event, my heart was wrenched by the images of the collapse — people trapped on the upper floors, clinging for life, buffeted by the wind, smoke, and flames — doomed to die.

Thousands of families had lost a parent, a sibling, a child. I could not comprehend

“how” anyone could, or “why” anyone would, do such a thing. My thoughts reeled in astonishment seeking an explanation. My being scrambled for a “why” that I could comprehend.

I found none.

There was no good justification, no true explanation, for the horrible thing I had witnessed. Injustice of this scope was beyond my comprehension.

Soon enough the world knew who had done it and why they claimed they had done it.

But this brought no comfort, no true explanation or answers. The world had nothing to offer in response other than angry rhetoric, finger-pointing, and talk of justice. The hollow dogma and rhetoric streamed by demagogues did not explain how or why such

12 horror and pain could be foisted upon ordinary people — abject recipients of wrath, those doomed to die, those doomed to mourn, and those doomed to witness.

All of the published responses to the tragedy were mindless, worthless, and full of the same madness I had just witnessed — the madness that had almost killed my sister.

I wanted an answer to the madness, not more of the same.

Like with many of life’s traumatic events, I wasn’t conscious of the impact the attack had had on me. In time, the conscious recognition of a need for that “why” was swallowed in the confusion and stress of the experience.

Though my heart was torn within me, it was not until I was forced to reflect deeply on the experience (while planning this book) that I realized how much influence the attack had had on my thinking over the intervening years. My silent desire to reconcile that terrible experience had churned below the surface for years and imposed itself noiselessly upon my heart and my head. Over time, I found that “why” popping up again and again in my life experiences and research. In fact, it quite literally seeded itself into my dreams.

In time, almost by a process of slow accretion, my silent need for “why” matured into an insight, and an answer that helped me to grapple with what I had witnessed.

It is my sincere hope that this book will provide readers with new perspectives and insights into a better “why” than the “why” offered by our demagogues, and perhaps the spirit of our age.

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It is my hope that this book will allow new insight into our world and into the many people and thoughts that inhabit it in a different light. In seeking to do so, I have included some of my own story. In time, I hope the reader will see the contexts and the connections I have found, and benefit from them.

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Chapter 3: Why Ask Why

Cynicism and past pain can contribute to an insensitivity that renders even profound puzzles trivial. The mystery of lawlessness is no mystery if lawlessness is the standard of measure (2 Thessalonians 2:7-12, New International Version). But, even so, recognizing such prompts its own questions.

What is injustice? How is it perceived? Is it truly alien? While wrestling with this challenge, I incidentally found myself in a uniquely personal conversation with a colleague about the issue. In an unguarded moment, I asked, “Are you ever surprised by injustice?” In response, there was a slow sad pause and then, “No... Not surprised....”

There was more there, but it was attached to a quiet resignation, an acceptance of the way things were that carried the weight of both pain and disillusionment.

After a short pause, she told me her father had walked with Martin Luther King, Jr., and, later, she told me she remembered the day King was assassinated. As we spoke, I came to discover that there was an inexpressible poignancy to her memories of her father, of that time and how her father had struggled to relay news of King’s death in a way she could comprehend as a small child. In that moment, words failed, but, hidden behind her words, in the pauses of her speech, I could hear echoes of her father’s gentle explanations and the warmth that had been between them. It was a moment of rapport. Even with

15 many years looming between us and “then,” I felt connected to her childhood narrative and those gentle moments with her father. In time, she claimed that she had always known the world was “not just,” and again said, “No... I am not surprised at injustice.”

Even so, in the silence between her words, in the pauses where words failed, I caught flashes of a little girl weeping with her father, weeping for Martin — protesting an incomprehensible injustice. It is in those tears that I again find the validity for a mystery some would blindly set aside as trivial — for even a child knows what is senseless, and sometimes adults do as well.

I did not contest her assumptions of “always knowing,” though her father had had to help her cope. Her pain, and even the hard-won wisdom carried with it, had rendered the mystery of lawlessness and injustice almost trivial.

If one is honest and possessing a tender conscience, there is clearly something profound at work — the same pain and trauma that should prompt intelligent investigation into the roots of injustice actually disguised it from view. This is a painful and profound mystery. Somehow the “shape of injustice” provides active resistance to the recognition and elimination of injustice. It is, in this case, almost structurally resistant to interrogation.

Bitter acceptance of injustice as the norm is not the only opponent to the recognition of the mystery of injustice. The “modern myth,” the belief that the current generation has somehow evolved beyond the darkness of the past, the idea that our culture is now too

16 well educated, too sophisticated, too wise, to behave as our “primitive” ancestors once did, also contends against the acquisition of the mystery of injustice.

Under this view, injustice is a thing of the past — perhaps a common belief among the privileged, which I have termed the modern myth.

Neville Chamberlain, (a British Prime Minister, infamous for announcing “peace for our time” prior to the start of WWII) and Moloch (an ancient pagan god to whom people once sacrificed their children) are both easily accessible caricatures of the activities of these common deceptions and the natural interference the modern myth and cynicism pose to the acquisition of the mystery of injustice (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2015).

A common caricature of Chamberlain is an easily accessible touchstone. In much of the western world, the wounds of WWII and the horror of the death camps are still fresh within the collective cultural consciousness. Chamberlain, whether deserving or not, is commonly portrayed in a negative light.

Moloch, an ancient god to whom worshipers sacrificed infant children in the heat of a billowing fire, is perhaps less accessible than Chamberlain (Encyclopedia Britannica,

2015). I once found it very easy to imagine these ancient worshipers of Moloch as mere caricatures of humanity. In hindsight it seems that it was all too easy to distance my own life experiences from those ancient followers of Moloch. It was much too easy to perceive followers of Moloch as too bizarre, too uneducated, and too primitive to be any indication of what could happen in the “modern” world. It was too easy to dismiss their worship and violence as characteristic of their primitive nature and primitive culture. But, 17 as I think again of that black cloud hovering over New York, I wonder: Should I have been surprised when I later discovered that the terrorists were relatively average-looking people with families of their own? Or was it strange that seeing them would be so much like the morbid investigations into serial killers? Investigations where “interviews with the neighbors” revealed nothing abnormal – “Maybe a little quiet…”

Should I have been shocked that such average-seeming people committed mass murder and killed themselves in the process? Should I have been surprised that strangers nearly murdered my sister in the name of their god?

In the face of such a personally impactful tragedy, I could not honestly dismiss these men as easily as I once dismissed ancient worshippers of Moloch. The nearness of their impact — their inhuman humanity —was not as easily denied as the humanity of long- dead followers of Moloch.

Further, if I were forced to accept the reality of these bombers, I also could no longer dismiss the actions of ancient followers of Moloch. The modern myth was washed away, lost to me -- no longer accessible in the face of such clearly consistent and historically documented behaviors.

It could be easy to relegate this problem to a general symptom of religion. Yet honest assessment shows that this view is limited and biased. Victor Frankl, a death camp survivor, neurologist, and psychiatrist, once said, “I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some

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Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers” (Frankl, 1986).

Mass murder prepared in lecture halls? Injustice inhibiting the recognition of injustice? Clearly there is something more at work here than just the actions of two- dimensional cardboard-cutout monsters, religious zealots, or primitives. These synecdochical titles (zealots, primitives, religious) are generalizations that dehumanize and serve to distract us from the real issue (Moore, 1993).

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Chapter 4: A Change in My Thinking

I once heard it said that we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them. I found this to be true as I struggled to comprehend the processes of massive injustice within human agents.

After witnessing the 9/11 attack, I had terrifying nightmares that woke me up in the night and gripped my heart in terror. I can still remember some of those dreams even more than a decade later. They still prompt reflection and emotion.

At the time, my dreams seemed too bizarre, too strange, for me to consciously connect them to the devastation of 9/11. Upon waking, I remember desperately grasping for the light like a terrified child, but, even with the lights on, the dreams were not dispelled. At the time, I didn’t know why I was having them. In hindsight, the connection seems obvious — 9/11 was a traumatic life event. Certainly I should have been more concerned if I had been untouched by what I had witnessed. Even so, my nightmares directed me to a path that helped me to reconcile my 9/11 experiences with a higher level of thinking than I had found previously accessible.

One dream in “particular” was seminal in prompting insight and changing my thinking. It helped me to move away from the shallow answers provided by a supposition

20 of the “evil” nature of humanity, a witless general bias against all religion or the foolish acceptance of another modern myth.

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Chapter 5: An Impactful Dream

Dreams often provide a change in perspective, if only for a short time. One can become another person, even another thing. My dream found me as two people at once. I was simultaneously a distant observer who received an explanatory narrative and a participant stranger named Michael.

Michael sat quietly with his wife Mary. They were in the waiting room of a hospital in upstate New York. It was a stark scene. The cinder block walls were painted bland white with a base of ugly blue subway tile. The tile was stacked halfway up the walls from the floor. It was the kind of scene one finds in so many of the public hospitals built in decades past. The architectural design was an attempt at 1950s cost-effective modern.

But the nature of the place and the cold tile walls gave the occupant a somewhat desolate and antiseptic feel.

The waiting room was speckled with artifacts of halfhearted attempts to make the stark waiting room more comfortable — a few out-of-place pieces of used furniture positioned strategically around the room — beat-up end tables, dated fabric chairs, shade lamps with exposed extension cords stretching awkwardly across the room, only one wall socket available. A few used magazines were piled on cheap side tables. A stern-looking older woman in horn-rimmed glasses and a white nurse’s uniform stood behind an

22 oversize wood-toned reception desk that looked like the rounded face of a battleship. It was designed to be imposing.

Fluorescent lights flickered from the ceiling and were reflected in stark white and blue. Wide windows of reinforced glass separated those in the waiting room from numerous hospital patients that stood wondering about an adjacent locked ward in various states of dress, street clothes, and gowns. They were the admitted patients. Many appeared to be consumed by a lost and distant look that consumed their eyes and darkened their countenances.

Mary sat reading in the waiting area. She was sick. Deep dark circles rimmed her eyes. Though she was not well, she put up a strong front, smiling at Michael with her eyes full of love. They both did their best to encourage and support each other. To

Michael she was still as beautiful as the day they had met, though he loved her even more. She had gorgeous black hair and an aura of strength. But, it was a strength subdued by a sense of careworn exhaustion. The dark circles under her eyes and pale skin hinted at a hidden pain.

Mary had a brain tumor that was slowly killing her. They had taken a long drive through the mountains to this upstate New York hospital seeking help. Every doctor whom they had visited in the past several months had refused to help. No one was willing to operate. The surgery was just too risky.

This visit was their last stop in a long line of clinics and doctors’ offices. The neurosurgeon they hoped to see was famous for his brilliance and success with similar 23 cases. At Mike’s behest, he had agreed to review Mary’s case. Mary and Michael sat quietly in that stark place, silently choosing hope. Committed to each other and standing firm against a bleak environment and a stark future. Several older couples also sat in the room, reading, waiting to be seen for dementia and various age-related problems. Mary was the exception — a youthful face touched by a shadow of death.

Mike’s phone rang, and he moved out to the hallway to answer. As he walked down the hall, he looked back over his shoulder at his lovely wife bathed in lamplight. She was too beautiful for the stark waiting room, filled by the aged and infirm. Even though she was in pain, she seemed to glow with an inner light that exposed the surrounding darkness of the room. He loved her more than words could say.

It was a business call, so Mike tried to keep the conversation upbeat — pretending nothing was wrong. His short walk brought him past the reinforced glass windows and doors of a secure ward, in a locked and guarded section of the hospital. Out of the corner of his eye, Mike noticed a patient who was in particularly bad shape, with a shaven head and unhealthy, blotchy, off-color skin. Scratches and sores in his skin were apparent even at a distance. His eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by tremendous dark circles.

A dirty legless hospital gown hung from the man’s thin skeletal frame. Long uncut and filthy fingernails extended from broken, boney hands clutching what looked like a book constructed from toilet paper rolls and random scraps of paper. Clearly the man had manically composed the book while in treatment — constructing it from random material and trash left about the ward. Out of the corner of his eye, Mike could see the patient

24 moving toward him, holding out his “book”— offering it to Mike who just kept walking.

Mike didn’t want to interact with such an unhealthy figure even through a layer of glass.

Somehow, while Mike’s back was turned, the patient made his way past the locked ward doors and into the hall. Approaching obsequiously from behind, the patient held the book out in a weak grasp.

A furtive glance at the man’s filthy hands told Mike he didn’t want anything that this man had to offer. So Mike just kept the phone to his ear and his back turned while pretending to be intensely interested in the ceiling.

The patient moved within inches. Mike could hear his breath, could smell the stink of his unwashed body. In the back of his mind, Mike felt guilty about ignoring and not recognizing this obviously unwell man. But, with every breath, Mike was poignantly reminded of the man’s filthy state. He stank, and Mike didn’t want any part of it. They stood like that for a few tense moments — Mike staring intensely at the ceiling, phone to his ear -- the man in rags behind him. Waiting ... holding that filthy book. For a distressing moment, Mike worried the man would reach out to grab him. But, finally, the awkward moment passed, and the man shyly turned away in defeat.

As the “danger” passed, Mike turned to watch from the corner of his eye, continuing his façade of obliviousness. When the patient walked into the waiting room, Mike breathed a sigh because he assumed that the stern-looking nurse would intercept the man and return him to the secure ward.

25

But, to Mike’s surprise, the nurse just ignored the half-naked patient as he wandered into the waiting room wearing little more than a hospital gown and overly large woolen socks. Frozen by confusion, Mike could only watch. He couldn’t understand why the nurse did nothing. As the scene unfolded, Mike struggled to think of a polite way to ask the nurse to do something. The half-naked man began moving around the room, trying to convince someone to take his book. Most people just rudely ignored him, as Mike had done. They hid behind their newspapers and magazines — refusing even to look at him or his book. They even talked to one another as if he wasn’t there.

Mike continued to watch the scene in puzzlement. That was, until the filthy man began to move toward Mary. Mike balled his fist and moved to intercept. But Mary stopped Mike with a stern look. She was disappointed that the man had been ignored by everyone — by Mike in particular. She spoke kindly to the man and then politely accepted his book. With his book accepted, the patient wandered back to his ward. Mike came up to Mary, his fist still balled protectively, heartbeat elevated, a little angry, a little frustrated.

“You didn’t have to take that thing. Why don’t you just throw it away?” said Mike reaching for the book.

Mary calmly insisted, “I told him I would read it,” and slipped the book into her purse.

Mike was confounded by his wife’s kindness and her honesty. Mary would keep her word even if she had given it to a half-naked lunatic. 26

As Mary placed the book to her purse, the oddest thing happened. The book changed from tattered mess of toilet paper and cardboard into a sleek purse-size book of red leather.

No one seemed to notice.

Their conversation was cut short when a nurse called for Mary. It was time.

The visit didn’t take long and the news wasn’t good. Their much vaunted and illustrious doctor had cancelled. Mary was called back only to be informed that the doctor was not able to see her. No justification was provided and there was no opportunity to reschedule.

For Mary, it was a death sentence.

The trip back to the car was an emotional blur. They had placed their hope in this visit and the rug had just been pulled out from under them.

No explanation, no apology, and no hope for reprieve.

They both tried to put on a brave face as they walked out. Mike made promises about finding another doctor.

Mary said, “No more doctors ... Not right now.... I ... I need a rest.”

The truth was (she knew) there were no more doctors to be found.

The road from the hospital wound back out through the foothills of the Adirondacks.

The hospital was left on a peak off in the distance. It was surrounded by foothills and 27 wilderness— all the roads to and from twisted through thick forest and roughly undulating terrain. The road home was well paved and shadowed under mature greenery.

It was full of the sharp turns, rises, and dips familiar to anyone well-traveled in such mountainous regions.

Mike drove emotionally. He sped to push back the stark finality that had just been presented to them. He ground his foot into the accelerator, venting his frustration into speed — half hoping for an accident but skillfully navigating the turns.

Mary leaned back, pale and silent. She was in deep rapport with her husband Michael.

She wanted to escape the pain of the moment, too. She needed the release that the road offered them both — the feel of acceleration and the pull of the turns. They wanted to forget themselves in the moment, to forget the diagnosis, to forget the cold reception at what had been their last hope.

As Mike busied his mind and body with the road, Mary picked up the red book, seeking yet another distraction. As soon as she began to read she became ill and called for Mike to stop the car.

She needed to vomit. Mike quickly stopped. He was worried his driving had made her feel ill. He ran to the passenger door to open it. Mary crawled out weakly and vomited on the side of the road.

While Mike reacted to her sudden illness, a narration began.

A voice spoke, “It wasn’t the driving. It was the book.”

28

While Mike held her head and regretted his driving, the narrator explained the scene in words and images that it was the book that was making her sick (though neither Mike nor Mary knew it): What was written was so vulgar, so at odds with Mary’s beliefs, that just reading a few words had made her sick —yet even though what it said was anathema to her spirit, it was written with such perfect logic that Mary couldn’t logically see why it was wrong.

Mary was hooked like a fish. Frozen like a deer in the headlights, unable to escape, unable to turn away. Something terrible was beginning to happen to her, and neither she nor Mike knew it. Terribly unaware of what was happening to his wife, Mike just sat attentively in the grass, holding her hand and waiting for the nausea to pass.

It was perhaps a last moment of peace for the couple. The fresh air helped clear their heads. A small spring trickled out of the rocks near the edge of the road. The air was clean and smelled of wet earth and cut grass. There was something comforting and still about the place. For some time they just sat quietly together in the grass. Soon they felt refreshed and cleansed by the cool air and the smell of the fresh water spring rolling out of the hill next to them.

After a few moments recovering, Mike gathered up Mary’s things. In Mary’s rush to vomit they had been scattered about the grass beside the car — her purse, some papers, the red book. The book seemed larger than Mike remembered it being — too large now for Mary’s purse. Mike placed the book in the glove compartment and helped Mary back to her seat. For some reason neither noticed the change in the book. They drove slowly

29 the rest of the way. Mike was too worried to hurry. They barely made it out of the forest before sunset.

The day turned into night. Mike didn’t want to risk a long trip in the car with Mary feeling ill. They stopped at a little flyspeck of a town — more of a clearing with a travel lodge and a convenience store than a town really.

They rented a unit in the travel lodge and set up for the night. Apparently the place was popular for New Yorkers in hunting season. Located in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of a heavily forested and depopulated region, Mike couldn’t think of any other reason for the motel’s existence. Each unit was equipped with a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, and a separate bedroom.

Mike carried their baggage into the apartment. He left the book in the glove compartment. Mary went to shower and prepared for bed while Mike walked to the gas station/convenience store to find something for dinner.

When Mike returned to the apartment, Mary was still in the shower. The book, now large and encyclopedic in size, was sitting on the living room table. No one had moved it from the car.

Mary finished her shower and sat with Mike on the couch. They ate convenience store food and watched public television. Finding the book on the table in front of her,

Mary began to read again. Soon she was so sick she had to go to bed early. She left the book on the coffee table.

30

Mike started to pick up the book and read, but remembered the wretched state of the man who had given it to them. He set it back down and, after a few more minutes of public television, went to bed — exhausted by the long drive and the intense stress of the day. He fell quickly to sleep next to his wife.

In the silence of the night, the book moved again. It appeared in bed next to Mary and nudged her in her sleep, tormenting her with its sharp edges, preventing her from sleeping. It would not relent until she read it again. She was sick and feverish. Exhausted and in a daze, Mary finally gave in — without questioning the source, the motive or even the existence of her tormentor — she took the book into the bathroom and began to read again.

Hours later, Mike woke to the sound of retching. Mike rushed to the bathroom. Mary was kneeling on the floor, mechanically alternating between the book and the toilet — reading and vomiting — vomiting and reading. Every time she read it, it made her sick.

Yet as soon as soon as she was done being sick, she turned again to the book. She was hooked, unable to escape, unable to let go until she had finished.

Mike rushed to comfort and aid his wife, convinced it was the tumor. He was unaware of the illness’s true source. The scene faded.

The dream continued with Mike talking to a friend on the phone. Mike was at the end of his rope. Months had passed since their visit, and Mike was desperately seeking to cope with changes to Mary’s personality.

31

Mary had become prone to mood swings and strange, unprovoked fits of rage.

Intolerant of the children, she had started to enforce strange rules of behavior and dress around the house — even beating them if they didn’t say the right things or wear the right clothes. It had gotten so bad that Mike had resorted to leaving the children with friends and family during the day — in order to keep them safe.

Mike had talked to the doctors about the issues. They told him it had to do with

Mary’s tumor — that personality changes were common in situations like Mary’s.

But Mary read the book religiously and enforced the rules she found within it. She would quote it and impose it on everyone around her. All the doctors said that this kind of mania was a possible result of her condition.

But Mike wasn’t convinced it was the tumor anymore.

Mary’s obsession with the red book and its rules was too focused, too specific, to be changes from a tumor. Mike had (finally!) begun to suspect the book.

Even so, all Mike really knew was that he was slowly losing his wife. The Mary he had known was slowly disappearing.

It seemed almost like the person she had been was slowly being consumed and replaced. He couldn’t believe that her behavior changes were just the result of her illness.

In desperation Mike started to investigate the book itself. Mike had never seen anything like it. There was no publisher, no title, and no author. Yet it was expertly and seamlessly bound in blood-red leather. For some reason he still did not notice how much the book’s

32 physical form had changed since he had first encountered it. When Mike tried to take it, to dispose of it, Mary would rant and rave or just threaten and get violent. It was always with her, and she protected it like a child or a precious heirloom. She did anything and everything she could to protect it in both aggressive and subtle ways. She would even claim that he wasn’t clean and that he shouldn’t touch it — that there was something dirty about him that would disrespect the book.

Faced with his wife’s rapid emotional decline, he desperately reached out to hospital staff to inquire about the book — begging for information about the patient that had given Mary the book. He received only callous refusals to recognize his need or even the problem.

Finally at wits’ end, Mike hired a private investigator to research the book.

Days and weeks passed.

When his investigator finally called from the field with “news too important to discuss over the phone,” Mike rushed to respond.

He called his mother to let her know that it was going to be another late night and thanked her for looking after the children. He couldn’t get through over the phone and encountered the answering machine instead. But this was too important to set aside. He had to find out.

33

Mike called off work and left town to meet with the investigator. Once again he took the long drive back to upstate New York, where the investigator was concluding his investigation.

They met at a diner near the hospital.

The detective provided Mike with a hefty file. What the investigator had learned was terrifying.

Over the past few years there had been a rash of murders. These murders were tied to some sort of book mania. But not just any book, a red leather-bound volume written by a man who had murdered his family.

This man, “the author,” had been placed in treatment at the same upstate hospital that

Mike and Mary had visited. He had died there; committed suicide in his cell.

But that was not the end of the story.

Apparently several copycat murders had occurred in association with the same red book and the same mania. But these murders were committed by staff members, nurses, and janitors — all people who worked at or were connected to the hospital — where “the author” had received treatment prior to his murder.

All had committed terrible crimes. An image of the last known participant was attached to a newspaper clipping in the file. Mike recoiled in horror. Shock coursed through his body....

34

The image staring back at him was the disheveled man who had given Mary the book in the waiting room. He was the neurosurgeon Mary had come to see. That is why the appointment had been cancelled. That was why the man had been free to roam the hospital. That is why they couldn’t get their appointment rescheduled, and that was why there had been no justification or excuses offered — why the staff had given Mike the runaround for months. Mike had only spoken with him on the phone. He had never seen him in person.

Their chief surgeon had lost his mind, murdered his family, and given Mary the book that had prompted him to do it.

Mike reeled from the news and struggled with what to do — struggled to understand what was happening.

This couldn’t be real....

This couldn’t be happening....

Yet it was happening.

Mike had been watching it happen for months — watched it incubate within his wife.

It was the stuff of a horror movie.

Mike immediately called his mother to check on the kids. She wouldn’t pick up.

On the road home, he again lost phone signal in the hills. He had no idea what to do, but he was terrified by his discovery. He could only drive on.

35

As he exited the Appalachians, the phone signal improved and a voicemail came through. It was his mother. She claimed she had been unable to reach him and had reached his wife. She didn’t understand why he had wanted her to watch them when his wife was home.

Her message was apologetic but she let Mike know she had other things to do. She was sure the kids would be okay with his wife.

Mike desperately called friends and family, trying to reach anyone who might help.

He even tried the police, but no one understood. No one believed him.

He did the only thing that he could do.

He went home.

When Mike arrived home, the sun was down, and his home was dark and strangely cold.

No one greeted him.

There was only silence and emptiness.

He called for the kids, but no one answered.

Mike made his way through the house in terror. Terror at the silence — terror at the unnatural cold filling his home.

He walked toward the bedroom and his temperature dropped with each step.

36

He opened the door to the room he shared with his beloved.

Mary was there....

She was naked, soaked in blood from head to toe, floating in the air above their bed and chanting. She had a knife in one hand and a cup of blood in the other. The book was spread open underneath her.

She was uninjured, she was not bleeding. A glance around the room revealed the source of the blood. Mary had murdered and dismembered their children; scattered their body parts around the room.

Mike screamed in horror and collapsed to the ground. In disbelief he stared blankly ahead until finally, unconsciously, he found Mary’s eyes and looked into them.

As I dreamed, I also looked into her eyes.

What I saw in her eyes horrified me more than the images of the children, more than the blood, more than Mary floating and chanting ... soaked in the blood of her dead children.

There was fire behind her eyes, a desolate empty fire that consumed her from the inside out — the fires of hell.

37

Chapter 6: From Dreams to Reality

I screamed, woke up, and lunged to turn on the bedroom light. The dream impacted me tremendously, physically and mentally. I shook in terror and prayed for the vision to go away.

As the shock wore off, I found the strength to move, and stomped about the room, waving my arms, desperately trying to dispel the memory of what I had seen.

I went to the shower, hoping to wash the memory away, but the water came out icy cold —the cold was too much like the icy cold of Mike’s bedroom. I fled the shower and curled up on the floor, rubbing my eyes, and waited for the memory to fade and the terror to pass....

In time, the fear passed. The dawn came. I took the hottest shower I could muster.

I couldn’t understand why a dream would feel so real. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t dispel its memory. The dream held me in its grip for some time thereafter. It changed my thinking and drove me to ask new questions with new insights. I still have vivid memories of it — even years later. Most of my dreams fade before I even rise from bed.

38

Throughout the dream, everyone but Mike thought that Mary’s behavior changes came from a tumor. I wondered if it were even possible for a tumor to do that. Is it possible for a book, or the ideas it holds, to do as much damage as a brain tumor? Even more ridiculous — was the book alive? Could an idea harass a human being? Could a system of ideas enslave a human?

Could a book or the ideas it contains do that to someone — step into someone’s consciousness and steal everything? Rob them of their humanity and leave them desolate? Make a kind person cruel? Drive a loving mother to murder her own children?

Make her blind to their suffering?

Blind...? Perhaps that was a part of what was so terrifying—she had forgotten her children’s value. In a way, she had become blind to their humanity and value — almost impervious to the realities that had once been a defining component of her existence. As I look back, I can only describe what I witnessed (in her eyes) as desolation and blind pain

— a kind of hell. A category of pain far removed from conscious understanding. The

Mary whom Mike had once known was gone....

I could not comprehend how such a thing (and it did seem to be a thing) could exist within a living human being. Not just exist, but replace. An intellectual desolation had inhabited her.

In retrospect, it seems clear that my dream was engendered by the deep-seated horror

I had felt for 9/11. Some may think it odd that I would take such a dream seriously enough to think deeply upon its implications. I have questioned myself in a similar 39 manner. But I have come to the conclusion that it would be foolish to discover insight, only to ignore it because it came in an unusual way.

After that dream, I began to look more closely at ideas and stories. I began to think more deeply about how ideas can and do impact people. I wondered if it were possible for an idea or set of ideas to make those kinds of changes in a human being. Both 9/11, and the aspect of Moloch, justified such an investigation of these concepts.

Unfortunately, all I really had at the time were the questions prompted by two nightmares, one waking and the other sleeping.

40

Chapter 7: An Answer in Time

Years passed and found me back in the classroom, as an adult student examining seminal readings in education, looking once again at learning theory and grappling with the mercurial nature of thought and consciousness. I was blessed with a tremendously insightful and experienced faculty advisor. My terrible experiences with 9/11 were nearly a decade in the past. The last thing I anticipated was to discover a very real connection to those terrible post 9/11 dreams during graduate coursework in mathematics education.

Nonetheless, it did occur.

Videos of student work are a common component to educational research. When you are seeking to analyze and deconstruct what someone is doing or thinking, it is helpful to have a record that you can refer to again and again. Much like coaching professionals who pour over game tapes looking for insight, researchers in mathematics education pour over videos of problem solving.

Over the years, my faculty advisor had collected a significant amount of research data that included assessments of students’ problem solving. One video in particular provided a unique connection to 9/11, and to Mary. For me, it opened a new line of research.

The video was gathered during a research project focused on helping disadvantaged students and their teachers. Researchers were working to help teachers focus on student

41 thinking through something called Cognitively Guided Instruction, CGI (Carpenter,

Fennema & Franke, 1996). As a component to this research, students’ problem solving skills were intermittently assessed and recorded. The videos documented the students’ mathematical skills and provided a record of student progress from kindergarten to the first grade.

As with many CGI programs, when students were set free to use their own thinking, they provided evidence of ability exceeding what was commonly anticipated by teachers.

This student, named Jasmine, was no different. While participating in the CGI program, she showed exceptional skill, growth, and insight. She did a wonderful job solving very complex problems that many students in traditional classrooms find inaccessible.

After showing tremendous growth in the CGI classroom, she eventually returned to a traditional classroom. After attending regular instruction in a traditional class room, videotaped assessment of her performance indicated a tremendous negative change.

Problem types that she had been previously competent with now seemed inaccessible to her. Her body language changed. Her confidence was gone. She moved from claiming she was “smart” at mathematics to reflecting on mathematics as meaningless and guessing at processes without apparent reflection. Having records of her performance compressed over time by the video was a powerful experience. One of the most poignant issues presented by the film is the reality that, if her performance had not been recorded prior to returning to a traditional classroom, her lack of success in mathematics could

42 easily have been blamed on her. All too often, poor performance in school is attributed to students or teachers with little or no reflection upon the beliefs that produce poor results.

In this child’s case something had literally been stolen from her. It is “no wonder” that experienced educators have been reduced to tears by witnessing video records of this change in Jasmine’s performance. Over the course of a few video sessions, Jasmine had lost her insight. In a way, she had been blinded. This child had had her ability to see meaning in mathematics stolen. She had possessed understanding, she had had access to meaning in mathematics, and somehow a piece of that had been taken from her. I could not avoid noticing the similarity between what happened to Mary and what happened to this child. In my mind’s eye, I was rocketed back to my memories of my nightmare of

Mary.

Mary had had her humanity stolen. Something had imposed itself on Mary (in my dream) and some component to Jasmine’s experience in school had imposed itself on

Jasmine’s consciousness.

I wanted to understand how this could happen, how someone’s ability to “see” meaning or reason could be stolen by exposure to a system of instruction or ideas. Further inquiry into this child’s case revealed that her symptoms were not unique. In fact, there are literally decades of independent research focused on children with the same characteristic symptoms as the child in the video (Skemp, 1987). Even so, the primary difference between what had happened to the student in the video and what has been documented in traditional research into these symptoms is a video record of this student

43 doing and understanding mathematics prior to losing its meaning. This record documented the development of a deficit. This was at variance with research that merely documented deficits without identifying the imposition of one.

The existence of the video and the supporting educational research was a critical imputation and an artifact of what I soon discovered to be a hidden, largely unexamined, unconscious, systematically reinforced process — a process that manifested itself in both a blindness to meaning and the development of conceptual deficits.

44 Chapter 8: Case Studies

Neurological researchers and physicians’ case studies have also documented the development of conceptual deficits. One commonly studied clinical case involved a literate 64-year-old woman who, when examined, had developed a reading deficit. Even though she was unable to read, she retained the ability to write. But, when she was shown her own writing, she could not read it (Blumenfeld, 2010).

The deficit experienced by the patient was targeted. How can someone be capable of writing and yet incapable of reading? The two processes seem so intrinsically related, it should be impossible for either skill to exist independent of the other. Yet the tasks of reading (in) and writing (out) are managed by, and require different activities in, different regions of the brain. The patient’s symptoms dramatically demonstrated this fact

(Blumenfeld, 2010).

Neurons are the basic signaling components and facilitators of brain function. They are enmeshed with each other in incredibly complex systems of connections.

Microscopically, the brain is composed of nerve cells known as neurons and backing cells called glia (Blumenfeld, 2010). Early research into the structure and function of the brain stimulated debates into whether the brain should be described as a network or a collection of specialized areas. In time, it was determined that the brain was both a

45 network and a collection of specialized regions, and that each identified region conducted its own functions in concert with other regions of the brain (Blumenfeld, 2010). All of these regions are connected by nerve cells that allow the critical processing and functions associated with each of these regions (Blumenfeld, 2010).

In the case of our 64-year-old woman, who could write but not read, it is important to understand that a region of the brain called Wernicke’s area helps manage the association of meaning to words and symbols. Wernicke’s area (an “in” process) is involved in the initial processing of sounds and symbols, and allows them to be comprehended. Nearby regions are also involved in these processes, and damage to these nearby regions can cause a variety of problems with the comprehension of language. In these processes, regions in the non-dominant hemisphere of the brain are also participants. Corresponding portions in the non-dominant hemisphere aid in the comprehension of tone of voice and emotion. To say the least, the system is complex, interconnected, and interdependent.

Wernicke’s area has been identified as being intrinsically involved in the associations that allow the development of meaning in communication (Blumenfeld, 2010).

Another region called Broca’s area (an “out” process) is critical in converting meaningful thoughts into words (Blumenfeld, 2010). As with Wernicke’s area (in), it operates in concert with other regions of the brain, including other regions of the prefrontal cortex and the non-dominant hemisphere of the brain (Blumenfeld, 2010).

While the processes above are tremendously complex, it could be said that

Wernicke’s area is involved with associating meaning with input and Broca’s area is

46 involved with associating meaning to output (Blumenfeld, 2010). These areas are separate but vitally connected and important regions of the mind. They represent both necessary sides of the coin, interpretation for input and interpretation for output.

Disruption of the operation of their internal structures and connections or disruption of their external connections to the rest of the brain can inhibit the apprehension and/or expression of meaning (Blumenfeld, 2010).

When a person is seeking to apprehend meaning from the written word, visual information enters the nervous system through the eyes. This information is then transmitted by nerves to the visual cortex to be processed there and then transmitted via nerves from the visual cortex to the appropriate regions of the brain for processing

(Blumenfeld, 2010). All of these steps require specific connections to be active and operating. The presence or absence of connections within and between these regions of the brain can be determinant in how and what people are able to see, think, or understand.

Given our brief crash course on the neurological processes necessary for reading, we may begin to apprehend the source of the problems that the 64 year-old patient was experiencing. From what we now know, we can “infer” from her symptoms that stimulus proceeding from her visual cortex was blocked prior to reaching Wernicke’s area. This

“inference” may sound presumptuous, yet it is “inferences” like these that allow physicians to develop clinical diagnoses. Prior to the development of the MRI, patient symptoms were accurately used to make decisions on how and where to conduct brain surgery. Even so, without surgery, an MRI revealed the truth of our diagnosis.

47 Our patient was suffering from a “disconnection syndrome” brought on by a brain tumor and edema that were blocking connections between her visual cortex, Wernicke’s area, and regions of her left hemisphere. This disruption inhibited her ability to interpret the written word but failed to inhibit her ability to produce the written word. The nature of this inhibition, its impacts and limitations, was structurally dictated. This 64-year-old patient’s condition was not new, it had been documented as far back as 1892

(Blumenfeld, 2010). Clearly our “inference” into this disconnection syndrome was supported by research outcomes and physical evidence.

It is an odd thing to begin to see how human conception can be dictated by physical constraints. In this way we begin to unearth the interaction between thoughts and their physical manifestations within the world. Just as Darwin looked at an orchid and predicted the long-tongued moth, Xanthopan morgani (Darwin, 1862), we begin to see implications in the structure of our minds.

It is clear that our patients’ ability to “understand,” access, and use her own conceptual models and mechanisms was dictated by the existence, or lack of, neurological connections within the brain (Blumenfeld, 2010). Without a working connection between or within these processing regions, it was impossible for her to even think about or interpret her own writing (Blumenfeld, 2010). Challenges in other regions or connections can inhibit any number of cognitive tasks.

48 Awareness of how deficits may be mechanically developed begins to set the stage for further inquiry. Our examination of the impact of the existence or absence of connections in the mind is an introduction to a deeper and more meaningful exploration.

Certainly, Jasmine had not lost the ability to read. Jasmine had lost the ability to think productively about mathematics. Why and how could an educational process be associated with symptoms similar to those exhibited by patients suffering from a brain tumor -- symptoms similar to those exhibited by a character out of a nightmare? This is not a simple case of poor retention, though it is a profound mystery — a mystery that we will soon unravel.

Before proceeding, we will further our investigation of structurally induced symptoms and the “the incomplete conceptual view” that is created when connections or regions within the brain are damaged or removed.

What is it to lose a conception?

One cannot step into another’s perspective and see through their eyes. Can you imagine what it would be like to be unable to read while being able to write? What would the “shape” of that thought be? Could you “feel” it, would you “feel” it? Though many claim to possess empathy, empathy is tied to an assumption about what someone else may be feeling.

49 How can we understand what it is to have meaning absent? How may it be perceived?

Further, if meaning is absent from consciousness then its absence is most likely undetectable to the person lacking it.

In order to unravel a sufficient conceptual representation for this cognitive phenomenon, I pursued additional clinical cases helpful in the development of insight.

50 Chapter 9: Further Clinical Cases Perspectives and Arguments

The mind is characteristically asymmetric between the right and left hemispheres. In general, the dominant hemisphere (usually the left), is directed toward the processing of language and the management of motor functions (Blumenfeld, 2010). The non-dominant hemisphere (usually the right), may be said to manage attention mechanisms and spatial analysis (Blumenfeld, 2010). In general, the left hemisphere responds to stimuli on the right side of the body while the right hemisphere attends to stimuli on both the left

(strongly) and the right (less so). In the average individual, damage to the right or left side of the brain can result in an inability to perceive stimuli in the regions managed by those hemispheres of the brain.

Specifically, damage to the right parietal or right frontal lobe can result in a condition called hemineglect syndrome. This condition can cause people to fail to respond to regional pain and can prevent them from noticing areas managed by their damaged cortex

(Blumenfeld, 2010). This can result in a neglect to care for entire regions of their bodies and can cause people to disassociate their sense of self from themselves. People with this condition report being startled by their own limbs (Blumenfeld, 2010). Imagine waking up in bed, not even knowing your arm is yours, thinking it is the arm of a stranger. What is that like?

51 Further, individuals with hemi neglect syndrome often neglect not only portions of their own body but also portions of the external world. They may be unable to describe entire regions of photographs. This deficiency in perception, the inability to fully interpret images and photographs, is often used as a tool to diagnose neurological damage

(Blumenfeld, 2010).

Hemispherical neglect can provide a thinkable model for apprehending the loss of a conception, if only because it can provide an easily accessible example. This example will allow significant insight into the impact that damage to neurological regions or connections can have on consciousness. As part of a clinical assessment, a patient experiencing hemispherical neglect was asked to draw a clock. The patient produced an image approximated in the following (Blumenfeld, 2010).

Figure 1. Image of a Clock

Clearly profound obstacles existed between this individual and his conscious conception of right space.

52 Why start counting where right turns to left?

Why chose to begin counting at the bottom left of that image?

There is clearly a hole that this person’s conception is unconsciously “walking” around. In many cases, hemispherical neglect patients are unaware of their deficit

(Blumenfeld, 2010). In a clinical case similar to the clock with no right side, a woman who had gone blind was unaware of her blindness (Blumenfeld, 2010). She had finally been admitted for treatment after what must have been an emotional struggle with her family. This strange deficit in perception and self-analysis prevented her from seeking treatment as she was not aware of the loss of her sight. It is worth contemplating this condition and reflecting on what aspects of human consciousness and meaning making are exposed by this phenomenon. Have we seen such things in other contexts?

One may be driven to ask: How one can be blind and not know it? Why is it important to know that one may be blind and not know it? Why is it important to witness a clock with no right side?

Clearly these clinical cases demonstrate that it is possible to be blind and not know it

— that it is possible to be unaware of what is structurally inaccessible to our conceptions.

This is a “real” physical obstacle, not just an abstract complication of consciousness. If we reflect on the information with which we have been provided, we find that every human conception is dictated and developed by the physical structure of our nervous systems. Our concepts of right and left exist because there is a physical structure of neurons there to support them. Our concepts of words, meaning, space, time, self, and 53 mathematics exist because of an underlying neurological structure. If we remove that structure, we remove the existence of the conception. If we reflect again on the clock that was missing a right side, we are confronted with the reality that a conception may be mechanically removed. In the clinical example, we have a physical imposition mechanically excising a person’s sense of meaning and conception of “right.” No shortage of clinical studies stretching back to the 1860s document that the physical structure of our brain and the connections within it either allow or disallow concepts to exist within our consciousness (Blumenfeld, 2010). If we remove the underlying structure, or if we interfere with the development of prerequisite structures for thought, we remove or interfere with the existence of that conception.

54 Chapter 10: Abstract Complications, Luminescence, and Consciousness

There are a multitude of theories associated with learning. The subject is immense — there is virtually an ocean of material on the subject, and many of the tools we have are often insufficient for the task.

Understanding “understanding” is no simple task. What is it to know something? The closer we look, the more challenging the problem becomes — the further disconnected we are from a solution. In some ways, this is a direct result of using thoughts to explore thoughts — it is like using oven mitts to try to feel a quilt. There is a limit to the accuracy of meta-cognition. How much more precise can one thought be in relation to another?

Can we even be certain that what we think we “understand” or “see” is the full story?

Even worse is expressing our thoughts and inquiries. We are faced with the challenge of using words to deconstruct thoughts. Which is more precise? Which is more profound? If we look closely at the definition of any word, we begin to see that all words are defined in relation to other things associated with their own words. If we use conceptual models to define conceptual models, it is inevitable that the problem of imprecision is compounded.

As a child, I occasionally had the opportunity to visit the ocean. I gathered shells on the beach. Many were lined with mother of pearl. I loved the way light danced on their

55 iridescent surface. It was fascinating —red one moment, blue the next — another mystery. In time, I learned that the luminescence of mother of pearl came from calcium carbonate, a material devoid of innate shine.

Calcium carbonate on its own is incapable of producing luminescence. Instead, mother of pearl appears the way it does because of how the calcium carbonate is physically layered during accretion. This accretion constructs a shale-like plating spaced at a distance so close to the wavelength of visible light that it interferes with the progression of light, and thereby creates luminescence.

Certainly if we were limited to the naked eye, it would be a challenge to understand the nature of nacre. Yet nacre is a microscopic and seminal component to luminescence.

In many ways the shine is completely different from the shell or the structure of the nacre. Together they generate a manifestation that is greater than the sum of its parts.

How much like consciousness? How much like the light of life on a countenance?

The assessment of consciousness and meaning has an ethereal component, supported by hidden structures of logic. Yet it is not always clear how physical structure interacts with consciousness. We have observed that the existence of regions within the brain allow and support the development of insight and recognition — but is there an underlying process? How does learning and growth happen at a microscopic level?

Traditional educational research into consciousness and learning are insufficient to the task of assessing learning because it lacks true insight into the nacre. Analysis without

56 insight into the underlying structure of the brain is almost as productive as interpreting the luminescent shine of a shell with the naked eye.

If one wishes to understand how the brain conducts its processes and allows for meaning, one should look past behavior, closer to the underlying structure that allows it.

One must have a basic understanding of how neurons develop and respond to stimuli.

The absence of neurological connections or function can have a profound impact on conception. The previous clinical examples were designed to build awareness of how the structural characteristics of human “knowing” is dependent on physical connections within the brain. Neurons make up the basic signaling units of the brain (Blumenfeld,

2010), and are the microscopic components to human knowing. The existence of all cognitive constructs and outcomes in the mind are intrinsically dependent upon the operation of neurons (Blumenfeld, 2010). By understanding the behavior of neurons, we can begin to understand how meaning is made within the brain.

At the most fundamental level, long-term learning and conceptual development are characterized by structural changes in neurons (Hubel, 2015). Each neuron contains a cell body, nucleus, and extensions called dendrites and axions. Dendrites receive most of the cell’s inputs. Axions transmit signals from those cells. The main method of communication between neurons occurs at synapses, where information from one cell’s axion is transmitted to other cells’ dendrites.

The human brain contains around one trillion (10ˆ12) cells and typical nerve cells receive and transmit information from thousands of other nerve cells (Hubel, 2015). This 57 is made all the more complex by the many connections between nerves and the variety of chemical and electrical signaling processes available (Blumenfeld, 2010). Given such complexity, the logical processes and outcomes available are impressive enough to perhaps translate sounds into meaning and back again. Even in the face of all of this complexity, it is still true that at the most basic level, a neuron either has a connection or it does not. The existence or absence of a connection can profoundly impact access to meaning. As such, this is not a trivial reduction — just as the clock with no “right” or

“left” side is not a trivial absence.

Studies conducted in the 1940s and 1950s provide an easy first step toward understanding how consciousness relates to physical connections within the brain and how these connections among neurons develop and/or fail to develop. These studies, generally identified as “Dark Raising” studies, involved raising animals without exposure to light. The primary outcome of raising animals in darkness was a “failure to learn to see.” In other words: blindness and permanent damage to neurological connections between the eyes and the brain. These experiments showed that lack of stimulus during neurological development caused mammals to become permanently blind as adults.

This outcome informed nature vs. nurture arguments. It also provided a conceptual aid to those who assume that we are born equipped with the ability to make meaning of our world independent of externally dictated processes.

In short, the inability to see, as a result of a failure to simulate, helps us to conclude that external stimuli and experience are critical components to the development of the

58 neurological connections necessary to access and communicate meaning. As such, both existing biology and external stimuli are critical participants in mammalian neurological development and the development of neurological connections within the brain. The lack of productive stimuli during development results in profound neurological difficulties. It is no surprise, then, that severely neglected children develop “profound” cognitive and conceptual deficiencies (Hubel, 2015, p. 7 & 27).

In exploring the role of stimulus in the development of the nervous system, modern researchers have made significant progress. Nobel Prize recipient and researcher Dr.

David Hubel conducted more specific and directed research into this phenomena, utilizing various methods and algorithms that physically impeded light stimuli. Hubel obtained similar results to those found in the dark raising studies. He also found that, without stimulus, animals failed to “learn” to see. Upon investigation, Hubel found that this impairment of vision did not result from a developmental problem within the eyes themselves, but that the problem was instead located in the nerves that were transmitting information from the eyes to the brain (Hubel, 2015, p. 2). In short, the imposed deprivation impacted the development of neurological connections to and within the brain (Hubel, 2015).

A failure to develop a specific connection can cause any number of problems. In the case of the dark raising studies of the 1950’s and in Hubel’s subsequent work, the absent stimulus caused blindness. The clinical studies we have already reviewed also found that damage to existing neurological connections can cause blindness, hemispherical neglect,

59 and a selectively limited inability to read with and without selective agnosia (Blumenfeld,

2010).While damage imposed by tumors, age, or disease are profound, equivalently profound problems may be derived simply from a lack of helpful stimulus or neurological connection.

Far from being unique, these results have been historically correlated in humans.

Children who had cataracts that inhibited visual stimulus early in life also experienced a permanent blindness which “psychologists commonly and quite reasonably attributed

(…) to a failure of the child to learn to see or, presumably the equivalent, a failure of

[neurological] connections to develop” (Hubel, 2015, p.3).

But what about our 64-year-old patient, and Jasmine? Both experienced the development of deficits after demonstrating the capacity to understand and interpret stimulus. Can conceptual deficits be developed in otherwise normal neurological connections — without tumors, damage, or disease? Clinical research has shown that it may be possible.

But we need more specific information about the results of Hubel’s research. Hubel conducted bilateral experiments that allowed a comparison between the impact of stimulus and non-stimulus on neurological development within the same subject. One eye was covered and stimulus was inhibited, while the other eye was left uncovered. These experiments found that neurons that were normally dominated by the covered eye were, in time, either dominated by input from the other eye or degraded to the point of being unresponsive to stimuli (Hubel, 2015). In humans, “this kind of blindness is what the

60 ophthalmologists call amblyopia (....) It is by far the commonest kind of amblyopia, indeed of blindness in general” (Hubel, 2015, p. 14).

Further, research into this natural process showed that this was the result of a form of competition between alternative connections within the visual pathways (Hubel, 2015). In short, stimulus in concert with non-stimulus caused the un-stimulated connections to deteriorate. In decades past Donald Hebb introduced a theory of how connections develop and learning occurs (Hubel, 2015). It is still in use today. David Hubel summarized the theory as “a synaptic-level model for explaining associative learning”

(Hubel, 2015, p. 17).

It’s essential idea is that a synapse between two neurons, A and C, will

become more effective the more often an incoming signal in nerve A is

followed by an impulse in nerve C, regardless of exactly why nerve C fires

(....) For the [A-C] synapse to improve, nerve C need not fire because A

fired. Suppose, for example, that a second nerve, B, makes a synapse with

C, and the A-to-C synapse is weak and the B-to-C synapse is strong;

suppose further that A and B fire at about the same time or that B fires just

slightly ahead of A and that C then fires not because of the effects of A but

because of the strong effects of B. In a Hebb synapse, the mere fact that C

fires immediately after A makes the A-to-C synapse stronger (Hubel,

2015, p. 17).

61 This synaptic model correlates well with the research Hubel conducted into the development of the eye-brain connection. Hubel’s research also provided documentation of competitive deterioration of neurological connections.

Further, studies indicated that, during a specific period, neurological connections are plastic and subject to change. After a certain point of development, these pathways cease to be plastic, and the damage or the solidity of connections (from the eye to the brain or otherwise) became permanent (Hubel, 2015).

In the case of blindness induced by deprivation, prior to the death of plasticity, deterioration of the eye-brain connection is not irreversible. If the connection is still plastic and if certain actions are taken, damaged connections can be repaired. But the recovery of a damaged connection is not as simple as just uncovering the covered eye and allowing stimulus to occur. It was found that the damage (instilled dominance of competing connections) was retained unless the more powerful (dominant) connection was covered and the previously covered connection was provided with the formally absent stimulus. In short, it is only when the dominant connection is subverted that the non-dominant connections recover (Hubel, 2015).

Further investigations revealed that this competitive deterioration was not limited to cases in which one connection was covered and the other was stimulated. Damage could be replicated even if neither eye was covered and deprived of stimulus. In this case, the research subjects (animals) were made artificially cross-eyed. The resulting contradictory stimulus in regions where the crossed eyes overlapped connections in the non-dominant

62 regions were found to competitively deteriorated. In short, the discord between signals

caused the non-dominant connections to deteriorate, eventually causing regional

blindness in the non-dominant overlapping regions (Hubel, 2015).

This process of competitive deterioration and development within the brain is an

elegant structural solution to the meaning-making process. If we regard the tremendous amount of confusion that can occur when we receive contradictory stimulus (in this case visual), excising contradictory stimulus at a structural level becomes critical to the development of a consistent visual field or conception. This can be witnessed in individuals who are made cross-eyed by accidents or damage. Depending on their age and their neurological plasticity, children are documented to accommodate and develop a consistent visual field while adults are often forced to wear an eye patch — in order to

avoid the headaches and disequilibrium contingent to the competing and contradictory visual input in a discordant visual field (Hubel, 2015).

In short, the deterioration of neurological connections did not only occur as a result of deprivation. It occurred because the non-dominant stimulus did not match the dominant

stimulus (Hubel, 2015).

This result is important because it exposes some of the neurological process behind

meaning-making at a structural level. The mind naturally accepts and builds neurological

connections in concordance with stimulus that is in agreement and naturally rejects

discordant stimulus at a structural level (Hubel, 2015).

63 By using this natural process and exposing test subjects to various forms of stimuli during plastic phases of their neurological development, researchers were able to cause the perceptions of subjects to be dominated by a variety of modalities, including perceiving or failing to perceive specific modalities of light or motion by raising subjects under a variety of conditions (Hubel, 2015).

The general outcome of all experiments being, the nerves that were stimulated (and the subsequent perspectives they supported) were fostered to the detriment of cells that supported non-dominant or un-stimulated perspectives. These structural developments then dictated the way in which these subjects were capable of seeing the world for the rest of their lives (Hubel, 2015). In summary, the world these subjects perceived was dominated and controlled by the internal structural development dictated by stimulus and experience.

These research items provide a foundation for a productive insight into the systematic processes that support the apprehension of meaning. Hubel may have said it best when he claimed:

Our notions of the possible implications of this type of work thus go far beyond

the visual system—into neurology and much of psychiatry. Freud could have been

right in attributing psychoneuroses to abnormal experiences in childhood, and

considering that his training was in neurology; my guess is that he would have

been delighted at the idea that (...) childhood experiences might produce tangible

histological or histochemical changes in the ...brain (Hubel, 1995, p. 27).

64 The implications of these studies cannot be understated. Hubel found that he could make an animal literally go blind by imposing only a small discord in the nature of its visual stimulus. While this process of competition with deterioration and development in plastic connections is a very logical and necessary component to human and mammalian meaning-making, it also exposes the very real possibility that consciousness may be impinged upon by something as simple as discordant stimulus.

Plasticity is a necessary component for learning; it allows our consciousness, yet, if its connections are plastic, they can be modified, deteriorated or reinforced. Hubel’s research found a snowballing effect to neurological deterioration and reinforcement. By this, he found that damage to non-dominant neurological connections could not be recovered without artificially “covering” the unnaturally dominant systems of connections. Once a competing system of connections becomes dominant, it remains dominant unless it is artificially subverted.

This physical reality creates profound questions. We often imagine that learning is an addition to knowledge, that the reading of a book opens new horizons. But is it possible that learning may narrow our horizons? Is it possible that some ideas, if impactful, are capable of literally turning the proverbial “lights” out — out to new insight and new or different thoughts? Is it possible that what we learn can negatively impact our humanity?

If we reflect again on the first moment Mary opened that book and vomited, it is worth wondering what possible connections there could be to this body of research.

65 But perhaps we have moved too swiftly. Some conceptual folding back may be required to expose the implications of this research. We will do so here by repeating the observations we have made. The primary pathways of communication in the nervous system are called neurons. Neurons both transmit and receive information through connections with other neurons. The presence or absence of these connections allow or disallow the communication and reception of information to and from neurons. The mind automatically develops or deteriorates connections based on the consistency of the stimulus received from the outside world. The presence or absence of these connections can dictate the modalities and nature of information that the mind accepts, retains, and is capable of processing. Given that the brain operates both through regions that perform specific processes and through networks among those regions, the presence or absence of connections within and among those networks profoundly dictates what can be conceived and understood. Exposing this structural characteristic of consciousness also exposes the existence of physical obstacles to consciousness.

These physical obstacles can create hemispherical neglect. Or, given the diversity of functions in the brain, physical changes can lead to a similar neglect of any number of stimuli, ideas or dimensions of reality and perception. Specific examples of reading and writing, blindness and consciousness of “right” or “left” space, were highlighted. Hubel’s research indicated that something as seemingly innocuous as contradictory stimulus can create deficiencies just as profound as those created by tumors or other physical impositions.

66 The first, most basic characteristic of this exploration finds that the transmission of information is structurally dictated by the presence or absence of connections. This characteristic of the mind is obtainable through any number of observational processes.

Further, the presence or absence of a connection is a logical operation and a function derivative of a physical structure. From this simple binary of connected or not, yes or no, true or false, all the natural logical products of brain operations, human logic, and the physical constructs of human endeavor are derived. Anyone acquainted with basic logic has encountered the following truth table:

Figure 2. Sample Truth Table

. This truth table may be equivalently represented physically by “and/or” circuit structures. The existence of structural logic expressed by circuits is profound. While human beings often conceive human logic as an imagined human construct, this research exposes that human logic is, at its most fundamental level, a function of physical structure. It is not possible to have a physical system of connections within the mind without a corresponding structural logic. This observation is made all the more profound 67 when one reflects on the fact that biology has somehow driven organisms to construct reflections of themselves in electronics, language, and mathematics. This is a beautiful and profound organic process. At a basic level, our thoughts are an imprint, a cognitive shape, a form of structural logic that replicates itself on the outside world. This reflection of our consciousness has manifested so efficiently in our constructs that some worry that the constructs, our thoughts, or our machines will someday take over.

In many ways, the imposition of intelligence is like a rock striking a still pond, reflected over and over again in self-replicating waves, echoing out to infinity in a silent liquid code. One does not need to be consciously aware of the fact that one is an imprint in order to replicate oneself — just as one does not need to be aware of truth in order to benefit from it or be dictated by it. The most basic truth being the structural truth that allows human thought to exist.

Given the brain’s natural function and structure, there are three primary developmental responses to stimuli that are present in all cognitive processes:

(1) Acceptance of concordant stimulus

(2) Simultaneous time sensitive reinforcement and degradation in which competing

processes are integrated into the dominant neurological structure

(3) Non-responsiveness owing to either a structural inability to respond or the

absence of plastic connections necessary for the apprehension of the new

stimulus.

68 Scrupulous readers familiar with constructivist theory and the work of Piaget will note that (1) and (2) correlate well with the concepts of (1) assimilation and (2) accommodation (VonGlasersfeld, 1989).

These three options represent an elegant biological solution to the problem of making meaning from the world. There is a tremendous amount of information available to any organism. Highly evolved and complex organisms like mammals are faced with the challenge of both accessing information and efficiently sorting and making meaning from it. The first step to the goal of meaning-making would be to make a solid differentiation between the meaningful and the unproductive. It was once said that, without some sort of system or schema, the world remains confused (Toulmin, 1972; Posner, Strike, Hewson

& Gertzog, 1982). Clearly, if we were unable to sort the stimulus provided to us on a day- to-day basis, we would be completely unable to find meaning.

The nervous system does much of the sorting automatically at the structural level.

First, the different sources of information are broken down into modalities and directed to specific regions for processing — the ears for sound, the skin for touch, the eyes for light, and so on. The information from each of these modalities is then turned over to specific regions of the brain for even more precise differentiation.

The critical step in that precise differentiation is the growth of nerves that develop in such a way as to allow the mind to accept concordant stimuli and ignore discordant stimuli. Accepting information that is consistent and non-contradictory is a natural step to finding meaning. This process of accepting the consistent over the dormant, or

69 discordant, leads the mind naturally to automatically accept consistent information that may then be meaningfully interpreted — much like the consistent visual field desired by adults who choose an eye patch in preference to double vision (contradictory stimulus).

In the end, like the wearing away of trails through the wilderness through much use, specific pathways of meaning are developed, and, in time, these connections and these pathways of meaning become permanent. In some ways, this is good; it allows us to have a relatively reliable and consistent perception of reality. Yet, once the connections of the mind cease to be plastic, the mind will be structurally incapable of perceiving the world in any other way (Hubel, 2015). Because neurological connections are degraded in competition, specific perspectives become dominant and undermine the development of competitive schemas (Hubel, 2015).

This is possibly a sad state of affairs, but, if you are not aware of anything else, you may well be happy with it. In other words, if your “1:00 am” starts where “right” ends, how else are you to tell the time? Given such a perspective, you may conjecture and debate about the nature of “right,” but, without the necessary conceptual structure and connections, you may never “clearly” apprehend it. Such a path of reasoning may lead to questions about what is plastic and what is not in the human mind. Such questions are important, but they miss a more subtle and important point: What the human mind is capable of interpreting and understanding most readily is dictated by what the mind has already experienced and that for which it has developed a structural accommodation.

70 By way of conjecture, if one has seen only vertical stripes one’s whole life, then one is most likely to understand the world through what has already been structurally accommodated. It is possible that other modalities that do not compete with the dominant perspective may be fostered. If you show such an individual a horizontal line, in all likelihood he or she will initially perceive it as a series of dots. The long term ability to grow into “seeing” or “accommodating” a horizontal line is dependent both upon the plasticity of the connections and upon the probability of interfering with the dominance of the pre-existing vertical line pathways on which the individual currently relies to make meaning from the world.

As observed in Hubel’s research, non-dominant systems of perception may not be fostered in competition with dominant systems without subverting the stimulus co-opted by the dominant neurological structure. In the case of animal subjects with one eye covered, changing the dominance involves switching the eye patch. But, if the issue is a human conceptual model, you are less likely to be able to invent a patch that will allow the construction of a new system of neurological connections that may compete with the existing conception. (The recovery of sight to subjects blinded by deprivation requires the dominant eye to be covered for a time in order to allow the non-dominant eye to recover site, and there is only a limited period of time in which even these drastic efforts are able to recover sight.) What does this say about individuals burdened by a specific dogma?

Clearly, neurological connections behave in the same manner whether they are connecting the eyes to the brain, the ears to the brain, the skin to the brain, or one concept to another within the brain. This is a powerful roadmap for communicators and educators 71 who wish to have people “see” and understand something new. In the interaction of

dominant and non-dominant competition must also be countenanced.

All aspects of brain function are dependent upon the connections developed between

and among brain regions. Plastic nerve connections subjected to discordant or

contradictory stimuli behave predictably: They reject the non-dominant stimulus through

deterioration and develop toward the dominant concordant stimulus. Under this model,

the mind has an existing structure. It receives stimulus, and that stimulus either agrees with the pre-existing structure, drives change in that structure, or is structurally rejected and ignored. If the stimulus does not match the internal structure, either the stimulus will

be ignored or the internal structure will be modified to match the consistent external

stimulus; or a combination of these processes will be undertaken. While a stimulus may be unreadable, it may still be structurally accommodated at a level below conscious recognition. This provides a biological and structural explanation both for the equilibration of cognitive structures and for the persistence of dogma (VonGlasersfeld,

1985; Hubel, 2015).

It is possible that the implications of these structural phenomena may not be easily conceptualized. Fortunately, research published by Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman

(1949) exposed the impact of competitive neurological processes in conscious human

perception.

While conducting research into human responses to incongruous stimuli, Bruner and

Postman documented people’s responses to flashcards that displayed unanticipated

72 characteristics. For example, when subjects were shown black-hearted playing cards, they were found to perceive the black hearts as red. The first response to this variation in stimulus was documented as perceptual denial. This response was the dominant response exhibited by their subjects (27 of 28). Most of the participants perceived either a specific color because of a shape or a specific shape because of a color (Bruner & Postman,

1949). Subjects were exposed to the same cards over and over again, for longer and longer periods, until, in the process of time and experience, accurate recognition was achieved.

But, in documenting transitions in perception, such responses showed all three components of the brain’s neurological responses to stimulus. First, given that the mind must naturally send stimulus to separate regions for processing, these subjects showed (1) automatic acceptance of concordant stimulus (in the case of shape dominance the shape was automatically assimilated), and (2) non-responsiveness owing to the lack of connections necessary for the apprehension of new stimulus. In the case of shape dominance, no clear pathway was developed for a shape that had such a color. So they perceived the color that was concordant with their preexisting schema rather than the actual color (i.e., a red heart rather than the black one displayed to them). This visual experience is concordant with the Hebb synapse model and with Hubel’s observations.

In the process of time, recognition was generally achieved, and this component of our theoretical frame (2) — being a time-sensitive reinforcement and degradation in which

73 the competing stimulus is developed into a dominant neurological form — was achieved, with the actual nature of the card finally apprehended (1).

Clearly, the three primary results of stimulus are not static, nor are the derivative outcomes applied without reference to the complexity of the connections between the various processing regions of the mind.

This research also documented a variety of reactions, including a compromise reaction in which was found a middle ground between what was experienced in the past and what was being presently seen. Bruner and Postman found that a middle ground was found in situations in which participants were able to make use of pre-existing pathways/connections or, in their terms, “where a ‘perceptual middle ground’ existed between the expectancy and the stimulus” (Bruner & Postman, 1949, p. 215).

In these compromise reactions, neurological prompting suggesting a shaped-based schema caused neurons associated with “black” to fire even when the shape of a spade or club was painted red. This caused the cards to be perceived as mixtures of colors. (Bruner

& Postman, 1949, p. 216) Eventually, as in all cases, recognition was achieved with time and exposure, but the variety of reactions documented the partial and specific dominances associated with participants’ cognitive structures.

If we review the case of “compromise,” and apply my learning model we find, (1) the participants accepted the concordant stimulus. In one case, the concordant stimulus was the shape of a club or the shape of a spade. (3) A partial structural non-responsiveness was stimulated as the shape of the club and spade required a color of black while the 74 stimulus was in “reality” red. (2) A simultaneous process of reinforcement and degradation occurred as the new stimulus competed with the existing and dominant neurological structure. This competition finally resolved itself into agreement with the imposed stimulus (1).

This research also documented reactions such as, “I can’t make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn’t even look like a card that time. I don’t know what color it is now, or whether it’s a spade or heart I’m not even sure now what a spade looks like!” (Bruner &

Postman, 1949, p. 218) This kind of reaction was documented as a disruption response.

Again, with time and exposure, the subjects were able to figure out what the card was.

In the disruption example above, we find that (3) the participants exhibited a structural inability to respond to the stimulus productively and (2) simultaneous time sensitive reinforcement and degradation while integrating the new stimulus into their dominant neurological structure. It is worth wondering: Did these subjects exhibit the disruption response because they had a more enmeshed or different structural predisposition for accurately identifying cards? The assumption being, they did not experience automatic acceptance with a shape or color dominant interpretation of stimulus to the disadvantage of the latter. It is also possible that these people did not have a firm image of “what a spade [looked] like” in the first place (Bruner & Postman, 1949, p. 218), and perhaps they were (2) in the midst of developing a new neurological structure concordant with the image before them and resultantly found themselves unable to define what a spade was as they fluctuated between competing schema.

75

The resolution of these conjectures was provided by Bruner and Postman as they observed that subjects often first experienced a dominance reaction (1 & 3), followed by a sense of wrongness (2), and then finally a resolution in the form of a more complete recognition (1) (Bruner & Postman, 1949).

Clearly, what we learn constrains what we can see. It provides forms of knowledge and anticipation but also interferes with the acquisition of the truth. This obstacle to the acquisition of this world is so profound that it is observable in people staring at a flashcard. How much more profound is this phenomena when it is a component to a dogma or a specific system of beliefs? How does one dissuade a terrorist or confront a person who has a structurally reinforced sense of reality? How does one help a child overcome intransient mathematics anxiety or innumeracy?

This research clearly exposes the obstacles that information faces in seeking to be integrated into an existing body of knowledge. It also exposes the possibility that meaning may be constructed in such a way as to inhibit the accessibility of alternative meaning — quite literally, the ability to “see” may be constrained or subverted — subverted without a tumor, damage, or deprivation during neurological development.

The flashcard studies help us to understand the challenges faced by people trying to

“see” while perceiving the world through a dominant neurological structure (schema) existing in discord with external stimulus. In the case of flash cards, eventually the discord between the participant’s schema and reality was resolved (2). It is worth noting that this perception was still plastic and able to be modified with significant time and

76 effort. Not all neurological structures are subject to modification. In some cases blindness may become “permanent.”

Additionally, if neurologists can be trusted, long-term learning is characterized by structural changes in neurons (Hubel, 2015, Blumenfeld, 2010). Therefore, the ability to make these structural changes is a physical constraint to the learning process. Some structural changes are more profound than others. As such, some changes may be easy, hard, inhibited, or impossible — changes in non-plastic connections has not been observed (e.g., animals raised in darkness stay blind, while black hearts initially interpreted as red will eventually be correctly interpreted). Under my model, the ease with which information may be processed is based on the amount of structural resistance present to resist the construction of a structure concordant with the new stimulus. The amount of stimulus required to support that construction and the required number of physical modifications to neurological structure impacts the accessibility of any conceptual modification.

As a result, such conceptual changes may be conceived of as easy, hard, or impossible. A reasonable tongue–in-cheek example could be the structural accommodation of the location of car keys in comparison to the acquisition of meaning in some complex portions of a mathematics course. The sheer number of structural changes necessary for the acquisition of some forms of meaning is characterized by physical barriers to learning at the neurological level. Certainly (assuming generally accepted

77 neurological function) it is less challenging to alter the remembered location of your car keys than it is to integrate the meaning of new and complex multi-facetted relationships.

The existence of dominant neurological structures both explicates and complicates understanding of learning and structural changes to consciousness. If we repeat Bruner and Postman’s study and we think we see a “red” heart when the truth is otherwise, it is because existing conceptual structures direct and interfere with our ability to properly interpret the external stimulus provided by the card (Hubel, 2015; Bruner & Postman,

1949). We literally see, understand, and interpret information based on the pre-existing structure of our nervous system. The nervous system dictates what we can or cannot see and what we can and cannot interpret or understand. Sometimes structural interference such as that found with the flash cards can be corrected with extended exposure, but amblyopia can result from structural interference within the nervous system when it integrates with a pathway for dominant disruptive external stimulus. In Hubel’s research into deprivation and development, he found that exposing the previously covered and damaged “eye” did not correct the amblyopia because the existing dominant neurological pathways subverted the development of a neurological pathway that might support the development of sight/meaning in the blinded eye. As such, amblyopia is resistant to healing and potentially impossible to address without intervention. This is a natural consequence of competition between neurological connections.

The only way Hubel found to recover sight in his subjects was to subvert stimulus from the dominant eye/neurons while promoting stimulus in the previously non-dominant

78 and subverted connections (Hubel, 2015). Unfortunately, this is not so easily done with neurological structures that cannot be physically or mechanically imposed upon. So in this we have a coin of two sides. While competition among neurological commotions is a requirement for the natural construction of a consistent field of view, a consistent field of view requires the subversion of alternative views (Hubel, 2015). This competitive behavior is consistent among plastic neurons, and the corresponding side effects of these

“automatic” developmental processes are clearly observed not just in the presence of humans with consistent fields of view and the reading of playing cards, but also in the production of amblyopia -- amblyopia being the most common kind of blindness in people (Hubel, 2015; Blumenfeld, 2010). With all of these new insights, we may now define another sort of less commonly countenanced amblyopia, one that prevents individuals from accessing ideas, as opposed to visual stimulus. This form of amblyopia is cognitive amblyopia.

While visual “amblyopia is a partial or complete loss of eyesight that is not caused by abnormalities in the eye,” cognitive amblyopia is the partial or complete loss of the ability to see and understand concepts that is not caused by abnormalities in the brain

(Hubel, 2015, p. 3).

It is at this point that we may cycle back to the little girl, Jasmine who lost the ability to see meaning, and to Mary, who lost the ability to see humanity. Both showed symptoms of a cognitive amblyopia that inhibited their ability to “see and understand” specific concepts. Given our new insight into the apprehension of meaning and an

79 assumption of normal neurological function, their deficits may now be interpreted as an apprehensible physical outcome in natural neurological processes (Hubel, 2015;

Blumenfeld, 2010; Bruner & Postman, 1949) Further, their symptomatic behavior correlates well with significant research documenting the impact that existing systems of beliefs have on new learning (Vosniadou, 2008; Posner, Strike, Hewson & Gertzog,

1982; Von Glasersfeld,1989).

If Mary and our Jasmine were exposed to external stimuli that created structural resistance to the apprehension of either “mathematics” or “humanity,” then their blindness could have been induced by exposure to a consistent external stimulus that produced a dominant neurological structure which then subverted their apprehension of stimulus contradictory or alternative to that dominant structure. In short, they developed a cognitive amblyopia in reference to their individual conceptual deficits.

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Chapter 11: Insight

Even on first brush these insights are profound. But it is not always easy to recognize the depths of the implications of neurological processes until the phenomena are more closely examined or (in the least) expounded. Perceptual denial is a complex phenomenon, the surface of which was only touched by Bruner’s compromise reaction.

One powerful implication of the competitive structural processes behind learning (which include perceptual denial, compromise reactions, and cognitive amblyopia) is the little- known fact that these neurological phenomena have actually impacted the bodily form and features of most life on earth. As such, it is now worth inquiring if the reader recognizes the material that is now being presented to her.

Figure 3.Wolf Using Natural Camouflage to Avoid Detection I. Photo Used by

Permission of the Photographer (c) Art Wolfe / www.artwolfe.com .

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Because it is easy to miss this wolf.

A wolf among the trees.

Figure 4. Wolf Using Natural Camouflage to Avoid Detection II. Photo Used by

Permission of the Photographer (c) Art Wolfe / www.artwolfe.com

Natural camouflage has traditionally been used as a tool to highlight and explain evolutionary processes. It may now be utilized to expose dynamics of neurological function and the dominant influence conceptual processes have on the evolution and physical manifestation of life on earth. As such, independent of our insight or conscious awareness of perceptual processing, life has been continuously evolving in response to this neurological process.

A significant portion of this text was dedicated to re-examining our relationship with our thoughts. It was argued that certain kinds of thoughts may be older than any of us and that the shape of our physically manifested neurological structure (which is necessary to think those thoughts) is an evolved structure contingent to those thoughts. Natural 82 camouflage (so common it is often taken for granted) reveals that the physical form of most life on earth is derivative of a conceptual domain rather than a physical one. We may now see that the physical world, the bodies of wolves and the external form of much life on earth, is molded by the structure of thoughts — molded by what has been conjectured to be “only imaginary.”

The wolf is constructed in such a way as to drive you to integrate it into your plant schema, rather than your furry predator schema. This structure is “designed” to effectively blind you to the wolf. With this reality apprehended, we may take the second step and “see” that there are clearly many options by which blindness may be subtly imposed upon a thinking being.

In this example, the “blindness” is structurally imposed. Not knowing what a wolf is, will often prevent you from “perceiving” it as anything other than what it asserts itself to be. That is, until experience allows such a conceptual change to develop (Vosniadou,

2008; Posner, Strike, Hewson & Gertzog, 1982; Von Glasersfeld, 1989). Further, even if you do know what a wolf looks like, this knowledge will not render you immune to its camouflage. In a way, this is a powerful conceptual trap. A cognitive trap as perfectly evolved as necessary for the survival of wolves.

As such, wolves and other natural organisms have evolved physical forms designed to

“creep” behind a dominant perception.

Is it possible for a system of ideas to behave in a similar manner? Certainly this process does occur as a result of normal neurological function. Is it possible for ideas to 83 do so outside of your independent will? Can we consider neurological function subject to will or a source of it? We have already seen a piece of this process with a black heart on a traditionally red playing card. What else is capable of doing the same? Could something else, perhaps a book or an idea, co-opt the same process?

As we gaze deeper into consciousness we may begin to see that what we can think and understand is influenced by the language we have to generate communications.

Certainly by now we can “see” that ideas and their contingent neurological constructs can blind our ability to “see” a wolf by co-opting our idea of what a plant is. But to lose sight of and deny the humanity of your own children — to commit murder after reading something as trivial as a book — this is much harder to understand or to even find possible. Yet the more we learn, the clearer this possibility becomes, and the more obvious the wolf — as we gradually began to find its outline against the trees.

The mind has a structure, and the conceptions it contains also have a structure (Hubel,

2015; Blumenfeld, 2010; Resnick & Ford, 1981; Posner, Strike, Hewson & Gertzog,

1982). The timber wolf is designed to co-opt a structurally predetermined “definition” of a tree.

This structurally predetermined conceptual filter is a “definition” in a structural form.

By way of analogy, locks and keys have a structure. A lock rejects any structure that does not fit, yet the right set of picks will fit neatly into the lock. In the same way a wolf uses natural camouflage to “fit” within a grove of trees and avoid detection. In short our

84 perception is dependent upon structurally imposed predispositions that are contingent to experience and act as definitions and pathways for meaning.

In the nervous system external stimulus is categorized, sorted, accepted, or rejected based on these structurally predetermined “definitions.” In a similar way physically mediated neurological constructs are both molded by and allow specific avenues for learning and perception. These structured “definitions” are conceptual locks that determine fit and category. The timber wolf is designed to be misinterpreted by this process in order to avoid being processed as a predator. It is important to observe that wolves do not have to be consciously aware of the implications of their physical form in order to benefit from it. The same could be said for cognitive constructs and ideas.

In human neurological function, this structurally mediated vulnerability to

“definitions” is reflected in all aspects of human information processing. Researchers in the field of communications are well versed in the function played by definition in socially-constructed perspectives on reality, and they have documented many contingent societal conflicts that result from this neurologically determined system of definition. No small amount of research in communications has been conducted into the occurrence of conflict in association with definition in public debate.

In moving to this higher level of research, we are slowly moving from the microscopic to the macroscopic, from the very simple to the complex. In so doing, we are attempting to avoid losing the meaning provided to us by the microscopic while progressing to higher levels of conception, so as to draw a discernible and meaningful

85 path from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Starting at a structural level, we moved forward to consciously apprehensible forms of amblyopia in the forms flashcards and camouflage. Camouflage exposed the relationship between neurological structure and

“definition.” Communications research into the function of “definition” in public debate helps us to continue in our progress to increasingly complex levels of human conception.

By way of example, a popular 1993 article written by Mark Moore exposed the role played by definition in a public debate between loggers and environmentalists. In

Moore’s article, he found that representations, definitions, and beliefs about the spotted owl maintained and propagated a conflict that was “too threatening to resolve” (Moore,

1993, p. 258).

Over the course of this conflict, loggers came to see the owl as a cause of poverty, homelessness, joblessness, and dysfunction among their communities. As a result, the existence of the owl was seen as a threat to loggers’ jobs and families. For environmentalists, the existence of the owl came to represent the environment as a whole

— the very life of the Earth. These groups’ views of the owl developed into a false binary in which the Owl was defined predominantly as something to be sacrificed or something to be “saved” (Moore, 1993, p. 271). In this public debate, these synecdochical representations of the spotted owl were a source of irreconcilable conflict (Moore, 1993).

When a wolf’s camouflage is effective, the wolf’s external appearance as a plant is taken as a representative of the whole. Moore found that, for these groups, the owl operated as a representation of reality and was imbued with characteristics it did not

86 actually possess. These imbued characteristics facilitated the development of an ideology among both loggers and environmentalists. As a result, the associated ideologies removed the conflict from resolvable frameworks (Moore, 1993).

These accepted representations of the owl came to be the locus of conflict between loggers and environmentalists. They offered “efficient rational[s]” that disguised the true economic issues and directed the conflict into an irreconcilable framework (Moore, 1993, p. 271). People’s perspective and their ability to “see” the source of their conflict was inhibited and directed by the “definitions” they had accepted for the spotted owl. In a manner similar to peoples’ challenges with flashcards, accepted definitions of the spotted owl blinded them (to the true source of their conflict) (Moore, 1993). At the time of the article’s construction, Moore claimed that regional bars and pickup trucks were still decorated with the effigies of dead spotted owls (1993).

By way of conjecture, we find an extraordinary form of harmonic resonance in which the more polarized the conflict, the more the dominant and polarized the representations of the owl must have been. The more polarized the representations, the more discordant the conflict.

If we are willing to consider it so, and if the representation could be considered a thing (with its own interests — interests unrelated to the interests of any actual spotted owl), it may be said that the representations’ interests were much more efficiently met by the propagation of conflict than by the resolution of it. The division between groups

87 actually served the synecdochical representation of the owl more than it served the needs of the people inhabited by the representation or the owl it was constructed to represent.

In this social interaction representation, natural perceptual processes, amblyopia, and injustice interacted in almost mechanistic processes. In much the same way as a dolphin’s flipper evolves to fit the water or a physical virus evolves by natural selection, the synecdochical representation evolved into a form that most efficiently propagated the conflict that gave birth to it. In this way, the synecdochical representations became progenitors of future conflict and, in so doing, they created an environment that supported their continued propagation. This process of representation influencing perspective and perspective fueling representation is almost mechanical in nature.

Certainly it does resemble evolutionary processes as only the most effective ideas remain to be examined. This is not the structure of an idea that fits into your minds and then fades without impacting anyone. Further, just as wolves are structured in such a way to co-opt natural meaning making processes the representations of the owl did the same within a social exchange and they propagated a specific format of belief to the disadvantage of the accurate assessment of reality and to the advantage of a replication of a belief.

Computer viruses mechanistically replicate themselves. A computer virus is piece of code “usually hidden within another seemingly innocuous program ... that produces copies of itself and inserts them into other programs” (Merriam-Webster.com, 2015).

This process reflects the behavior of natural viruses within living hosts. The function of

88 the synecdoche in public debate correlates well with the seeds of a conceptual framework for a logical virus, or equivalently a conceptual virus.

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Chapter 12: The Conceptual Virus

If such a thing as a conceptual virus were to exist, it would be structured in such a way that it would penetrate and modify other thoughts (rather than living cells) into platforms for its own replication. In this way, it would be a thought that infects awareness and drives its host to replicate and support the viral thought. Further, it would also need to do so at a level inaccessible to conscious decision-making, or, in the least, it would co- opt conscious decision-making in such a way as to cause otherwise thinking people to propagate the same idea either willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, or an abstract combination between.

The seeds of a conceptual frame for such a virus are displayed by synecdochical processes in public debate. The synecdoche is active in the construction of ideology and

(in the case of the spotted owl debate) it impacts people’s perspectives and twisted the debate so as to interfere with the resolution of the conflict. In so doing, it propagates the conflict so as to promote divisive representations that support its further existence

(Moore, 1993).

Perhaps Moore’s spotted owl may be too limited in its scope to truly qualify as a globally infectious agent. Perhaps the synecdochical representation of the owl would perish without the distressed circumstances of loggers to motivate resentment. Certainly

90 injustice and desperation played a role in reinforcing a twisted representation of the owl.

If an idea were truly viral, it would need to be much more aggressive, perhaps to the point of carrying the seed of injustice along with it.

While the spotted owl debate did show how representations could foster further conflict by, building irreconcilable frameworks of dispute through evolving twisted representations, it is a conflict that could fade with changing environmental conditions.

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Chapter 13: Unveiling the Wolf

“I’ve always known that the world wasn’t just....” At least that was my colleague’s reflection on her memories of Martin Luther King’s death. The pain she carried was in many ways a reflection of a much broader generational suffering left in the wake of slavery in America. Though slavery has been abolished since 1865, we as a nation are still suffering its consequences. This terrible injustice has left a legacy that continues to globally impact society, government, education and the lives of countless individuals.

While communications research into the function of “definition” in public debate helped us to further our understanding of increasingly complex levels of human conception, research into social systems associated with observations of racial achievement gaps can help to bring clarity and insight into how injustice may flourish in spite of the misery it propagates.

Specifically: research into social systems associated with racial and gender achievement gaps and the psychological processes underlying anti-social behavior provide needed insight. Social justice researcher Dr. Cohen has a significant body of work that exposes the impact racist beliefs have on student performance in the modern

American classroom. Over the course of his research, Cohen found that traditionally negatively stereotyped students were more likely to carry a perception that they were

92 being treated unfairly by their instructors. He also found that this perception could occur independent of actual bias, and this perception of bias can impede these students’ ability to respond to instruction and perform in class. This imposition increased objective inequalities in the classroom (Cohen & Steele, 2002; Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999).

While Cohen was clearly interested in addressing the needs of disadvantaged students and their teachers, his research exposed a profound dilemma. The mere existence of a

“racist premise,” an anticipation of bias, disadvantaged every individual involved in the classroom exchange and it aggressively invited all of the participants to adopt racist attitudes independent of the initial presence of the actual bias against one group.

The “racist premise” — a seemingly mild belief in the mere possibility of bias— impeded students’ ability to respond to constructive feedback. Having their ability to respond to feedback impeded, the students were disadvantaged because their performance suffered. The instructors were also disadvantaged by this situation. Their best efforts to provide instruction and guidance were impeded by the racist premise as students did not respond to their feedback “normally” or productively. The final result was poorer student and teacher performance and a poorer social environment as lower performance combined with the fear of bias implicit to the “racist premise” not only reinforced itself but also invited both students and their instructors to adopt biased attitudes toward one another.

In short, the mere existence of the racist premise, independent of any individuals’ intention, was enough to propagate racism. This occurred within the social medium at a

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“sub-rhetorical” level — the place where the premise dwells—independent of the conscious will and desire of any participant.

Clearly both the students and their teachers would like to be understood and responded to positively. Their desires were subverted. Due to fear and misapprehension, the situation was warped to fit the underlying framework presented by the racist premise.

This “racist premise” was a sub-rhetorical phenomenon — it operated as a definition without any participant needing to consciously seek to utilize it. It was an assumption that impacted everyone involved, and its mere existence literally carried injustice with it. It also injected this injustice into seemingly innocuous social situations and propagated injustice as a mechanistic process.

Given Hubel’s research, this is truly a terrifying prospect — the prospect that an idea can literally generate injustice just by existing. We already know ideas can literally warp the perception of reality of its hosts. Clearly they also impinge on the social reality to manifest increasing levels of injustice.

I struggled with this characteristic of thought for some time. “How can the mere anticipation of racism so profoundly alter human perception and aggress on everyone close to its host?” Racism is truly fearsome — as a system of thinking — as an opponent to humanity. The mere existence of its “premise” sets people at odds, independent of their will or intention, inspiring fear, perceived threats, and injustice (Cohen & Steele, 2002;

Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999).

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In discussing the possibility of the existence of a logical virus, it was found that, if such a thing were to exist, it would be structured in such a way that it would penetrate and modify other thoughts (rather than programs) into platforms for its own replication.

In this way, it would need to be a thought that infects people’s perceptions and drives

them to replicate the belief. It would also need to do so mostly at a level inaccessible to conscious decision-making or, in the least, co-opt decision-making in such a way so as to cause otherwise thinking people to propagate the idea.

Clearly, racism is so poisonous the mere anticipation of its presence can summon it into existence and, in the case of Cohen’s research, create a race-based performance gap, fostering injustice, bias, fear, and acrimony. Given this phenomenon, it is no wonder that racism and unjust race-based evaluations of humanity and validity have persisted in

American culture.

This is made all the more terrible because we know that people literally mechanistically “see” what their experience and structurally determined definitions dictate. A sub-rhetorical premise provides a definition to its hosts without the conscious recognition of its hosts. Reflections on the implications carried forward from our

discussion of cognitive amblyopia expose how profound and devastating a trap a sub- rhetorical premise can be for its victims. Racism infects its victims in a very tangible

way, even as it invisibly sneaks behind their perception and “turns out the lights” by generating a definition-based amblyopia.

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Chapter 14: A Conceptual Form

While our physical form creates implications about the nature and purpose of our body parts, thoughts also have a form. Their forms are intermeshed and inscribed by both physical and conceptual constraints.

The “wedge” is a simple tool. Yet the “wedge” is merely a term we use for a natural phenomenon. Its shape and purpose are also enmeshed together. The “sub-rhetorical racist premise” that drives the propagation of racism is a conceptual shape. Its shape serves a function, and, much like a wedge, the racist premise divides perceptions of people in twain, placing them on teams and propagating innumerable injustices.

Independent of the intention or shape of other thoughts, the sub-rhetorical premise is a mechanistic construct. The more attention and force you concentrate on it, the more powerfully it will define your perception of reality. In many ways it is a profound and devastating cognitive trap, as its mere presence creates injustice.

We have previously observed that ideas and rhetoric evolve in social situations with the most virulent or powerful being retained in the social consciousness. In Cohen’s research, students and teachers were placed at odds, perhaps independent of their conscious will. As terrifying as this realization is, it also empowers us. The first step in any struggle is recognition of the bonds that hold us. If we can see that our enemy is a

96 system of assumptions that we have failed to question, we can use this to reveal that our enemy is not a person or group of people so much as a system of ideas. Further, this recognition will allow us to dissect and expose the racist “belief” as culpable for the damage it causes, rather than allowing ourselves to be blinded by the circumstances that unjust beliefs foster. It is critical to understand that characterizing groups of people as villains and focusing exclusively on injustice merely serves to promote fear and injustice that provide productive support for the survival of the racist premise and the problems that it creates.

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Chapter 15: Anatomy of a Virus

If we were to take a closer look at the phenomenon, the conceptual virus finds its entrance, exit, and abode within the individual minds that make up the general social consciousness. It has three primary properties that are dictated by the structure of the environment in which it exists. The first primary property of a conceptual virus is that it is structured so as to be easily, innocuously, and automatically accepted by its host. The second primary property of the conceptual virus is that it is structured to co-opt its host’s perceptions in such a way that both the host and the host’s thoughts propagate and house the virus. The third property is a kind of viral DNA hidden below the first two. In its most exposed form, it is an unjust assertion; in its most innocuous form, it is a sub rhetorical premise hidden within seemingly logical beliefs. Acceptance of an unjust premise, consciously or otherwise, fosters amblyopia in its host.

The properties of the virus are characterized by forms of deception. In much the same way that the timber wolf is designed to slip behind perception, a logical virus does the same. It hides its form by appearing to be something other than what it is. Clearly, many deceptions and misapprehensions can exist in human conception, but what differentiates conceptual virus from a normal deception is its ability to impregnate the mind with ever- new deceptions that propagate the unjust premise. It is this second characteristic of

98 infecting perception that warps the behavior of the hosts of the virus. In order to decode and explicate these properties, we will further examine them in context.

Our research up until this point shows that the mind finds meaning in the world by rejecting inconsistent discordant stimulus in deference to consistent and concordant stimulus. This process of acceptance and subversion of specific forms, constructs, and modalities of stimulus is the way that human beings are able to develop a consistent field of view. It is also the source of the most common form of blindness in general — amblyopia (Hubel, 2015). If the inconsistent and the unreasonable are to find access to human conception, it must first disguise itself as consistent and reasonable. It must slip behind our conceptions unnoticed, much like the wolf in camouflage. Resultantly aggressive ideas first gain entrance by appearing to be consistent and reasonable (Posner et. al., 1982).

There are any number of incomplete broken and just plain bad ideas that creep into people’s consciousness. Yet to replicate the same bad idea on the level necessary to cause cultural infection takes a skill significantly greater than any normal human may be capable of mustering on their own. Skilled deceivers and manipulators must disguise their lies in order to have them accepted. The virus must also be so “skilled,” or at least properly accoutered and damaging.

The illustrative counterexample being the unskilled and inexperienced child whose face is covered in chocolate claiming they didn’t eat any chocolate. Greater expertise in misrepresentation may lead them to wipe the chocolate off their face prior to the claim.

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Similarly, logical viruses are camouflaged so that their initial representations do not engender recognition or even perturbation in their hosts. Being cognizant that your teacher may potentially be biased seems like a reasonable presumption. In “appearing” perfectly “reasonable,” the sub-rhetorical premise does its work — seeding conflict among people. Students experiencing a “perceived” threat find it perfectly reasonable to question critical feedback. But we have also observed that this “perfectly reasonable” path produced poorer performance and disadvantaged both students and teachers. The absence of a dominant discordant stimulus to disprove the assertion of the virus is more profound than the presence or absence of chocolate. Yet the model holds true and fear and bias have been found to generate an achievement gap (Cohen & Steele, 2002; Cohen,

Steele, & Ross, 1999).

Even so, this implicit bias was not wholly determinant. Just as light banishes darkness, consideration combined with insight can create positive change (Cohen &

Steele, 2002; Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999).

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Chapter 16: Reflections in Science

Just as amblyopia is the most common form of blindness, the neurological functions supporting the operations of the conceptual virus are consistent. Even the practice of scientific research is not immune to this natural phenomenon. Modern debates about research paradigms may provide us with clues that will allow us to grow in our understanding of the functions and disguises of the logical/conceptual virus.

In 2006, researcher and philosopher Pattie Lather presented what she identified as five critical research aporias, (philosophical puzzles or a seemingly insoluble impasse in an inquiry, often arising as a result of equally plausible yet inconsistent premises): objectivity, complicity, difference, interpretation, and legitimization. Each of these aporias represented systems of assumptions that can and do lead to biases and inaccuracies in research, and the assumptions contingent to these aporias were resistant to critique in those who have assumed them. This resistance is present because those who have assumed them define their world based on their assumptions.

When an assumption has been integrated into their perceptions, the natural meaning- making process that accepts the consistent and rejects the inconsistent now works to defend the accepted assumption. The premise justifies and supports the beliefs and

“outcomes” of the premise and the beliefs and “outcomes” support the premise. This is a

101 tautological process. The profound implication here is not so much that the

“chocolate/premise” must be disguised; instead it becomes clear that it is the presence of the “chocolate/premise” that precludes its detection.

How, then, does the presence of the chocolate preclude its detection? Very much in the way that a synecdoche defines the relationship between the “act of perception” and the “thing perceived,” and in the same way a wolf can disappear among the trees. Faulty concepts gain entrance under the guise of what is reasonable and true — in the case of the aporia of “objectivity,” people accept the faulty assumption of objectivity because they know that personal bias can skew research outcomes. The error in this assumption is the belief that personal bias can be avoided in the social sciences. Blind to this, efforts at accuracy are implemented, but these processes do not ensure that bias is avoided. Instead, these processes merely function to camouflage this bias (Lather, 2006).

Asserted definitions, the initial selections of research questions, and the biased development of research agendas directed by cultural position and subjective schemas are disguised by processes that enhance accuracy of already prejudiced measures. Because hosts of the “objectivity” concept believe they are avoiding bias, they experience perceptual denial in regard to perceiving the bias they are generating.

These issues of perspective and paradigm still engender significant debate and rancor

(Lather, 2006). It is not my purpose to condemn efforts at objectivity, nor is it the purpose of this paper to support arguments for openly ideological research. In more than

102 one way, ideological research is the academic equivalent of saying, “It is impossible to get your hands perfectly clean, so why wash before eating?”

Instead I hope to utilize Lather’s already well developed thinking to expose how assumptions can impact the apprehension of other ideas. Even in research, basic neurological function impacts all areas of human endeavor, and all areas of human endeavor are profoundly impacted by natural perceptual processes. It should only be expected that we would encounter the same perceptual problems apparent in the development of camouflage in public debate flourishing in scientific research and blindness in general. Clearly, the assumption of “objectivity” accesses human conception by appearing to be reasonable. Once it has been accepted, it then blinds its host to aspects of perception that are both subjective and objective. Racism infects perception in the same way.

Research into the achievement gap found the mere existence of a “racist premise”

(implicitly unjust) disadvantaged every individual involved in the classroom exchange and aggressively invited all participants to adopt racist attitudes (Cohen & Steele, 2002;

Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999). As previously observed, its existence impeded the students’ ability to respond to constructive feedback. Having stymied this process, the students were disadvantaged because their performance suffered. The instructors were disadvantaged because their efforts to provide guidance were impeded. In short, the existence of the chocolate (like the assumption of objectivity in research agendas) was doing damage, simultaneously blinding the participants to the chocolate (their biased

103 assumptions) and driving them to direct their focus away from the true source of their challenges. Every pointing finger actually propagated the racist premise/virus and further blinded all participants, as resentment and fear engender resentment and fear. In this scenario, the virus camouflages itself by first masquerading as a reasonable possibility and then by hiding behind the misapprehension, resentment and fear generated by its presence.

Misapprehension, resentment, and fear drive people to spend more time worrying about each other than they do about their assumptions about each other. Further, racism convinces people that racism comes from the “other,” yet the truth is racism comes from an unjust belief about the other. It is not a characteristic of a group. It is a false accusation about a group. Clearly both the students and the teachers would like to be understood and perceived positively, yet their desires were twisted to serve the purposes and directives of an aggressive negative belief.

Once a person is co-opted into accepting an unjust “assumption,” their attitudes and behaviors become morally unproductive and virally super productive. As such, the communications, perception, and rhetoric produced by both “others” will naturally be twisted to mirror the intentions of the racist premise/virus. This constructs an irreconcilable conflict, mirroring research on public debate (Moore, 1993). As the logic progresses, the “other” becomes the monster, and racism becomes “an important truth.”

Having assumed the role of “truth” to its hosts, it may then be relied on as a perspective that offers protection — a “friend,” an ally — ready to protect its host from the evil

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“other.” In short, the “forest” is warped to serve the intentions of the wolf and Red Riding

Hood turns to the wolf for “safety.”And even as she does so, she looks more and more like him as he slowly consumes her from the inside out.

This may be said in another way. Participants indoctrinated by racism perceive the problem to be each other, rather than racism, as a separate and predatory cognitive entity that is infecting their thinking and perception. As a result, racism drives them to behave in ways that furthers the wellbeing and propagation of the racist premise/virus. In countenancing racism, racism co-opts even good intentions and twists it to propagate racism, (Ellseworth, 1989). The final proposal being, if we look only at people, we are missing the problem completely and ignoring what people are truly in bondage to.

If we recap the three characteristics of the logical virus we find: (1) easy acceptance,

(2) a structure that co-opts its host’s perceptions in such a way that both the host and the host’s thoughts propagate and carry the virus, and (3) a hidden unjust premise. We have seen significant and clear explanations of the easy acceptance found by racism when the host is primed by the perceived “sins” of the other. We have also exposed how the logical virus works within a reciprocal system of tautologies. Just as analysis of the synecdoche opened the door to insight into logical/cognitive virus, rhetoric is again an efficient pathway to expose how racism mechanistically binds human perception.

We may now more productively analyze overtly racist rhetoric in order to further deconstruct the operation of racism in the social milieu. One rhetorical assertion overtly descendent from a racist premise is the claim “everyone is racist.” I found this phrase

105 occurred 70,600,000 times in a general Google search. By way of comparison, “everyone is” occurred 1,410,000,000 results (Google, 2015).

There are a tremendous number of adjectives in the English language, even if you exclude nouns converted to adjectives. The “everyone is racist” assertion composes roughly 5% of the “everyone is” search string. If this search string truly were random, this would imply that the assertion is very common. Further, because the mere possibility of racism fosters injustice, if one were to assume that racism is ubiquitous and inevitable

— that “Everyone is Racist” — then one’s conceptions would be “trapped” in a world conceived as ubiquitously racist. Under this worldview, all of the terrible presumptions of injustice that mechanically create real injustice would be dominant in the mind of any individual hosting this assertion.

By the logic of this assertion, the host of this idea treats everyone as if they are racist.

As a result, the host gives and receives stimulus that is concordant with that assumption

(while simultaneously rejecting or mischaracterizing discordant information at a structural level). In so doing, this host’s warped perception defends itself from contradiction by defining the world in such a way that the host perceives the assertion to be true. In short the assertion creates a perception that is a self-fulfilling trap.

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Chapter 17: If Our Beliefs and Our Perceptions Blind Us, What Are We to Do?

How may the “truth” be a trap? How may one apprehend that one’s perceptions are blinding and imprisoning? It is easy to look at alien systems of belief and identify

“problems” with “their” thinking. Yet it is much more humbling when we are confronted with the potential that our own “true” beliefs may be blinding us to the real world. Even if we cannot conceive of our own amblyopias, amblyopia is a natural requirement for a

“consistent” field of view. We also know contradictory stimulus excised at the structural level supports the apprehension of meaning.

We will approach this challenge by first assessing how the validity of worldviews may be ascertained when we are limited in our ability to perceive flaws in our schema.

Two methods are commonly used to establish the validity of beliefs. The first method is based on logic. Seeking contradiction during logical analysis is the general method that

I have found most people use consciously or subconsciously to establish agreement or disagreement with an assertion of truth. The unfortunate problem with the application of logic is the fact that logic is applied to assumed premises. If the premises (sub-rhetorical or otherwise) are flawed, then the use of logic naturally provides results that are flawed.

Conscious human logic is a manifestation and derivative consequence of neurological structure — neurological structure allows all human cognition. Yet it is often the

107 application of logic that leads people to accept damaging assertions that propagate racist attitudes. Why? Because these beliefs exist within a system of tautological conceptual traps, and logic is capable only of determining the consistency of the assumptions it is presented with. Logic may not be used to contradict a self-fulfilling conception. If you start with different definitions, you receive different results.

How may validity be apprehended if our own logic deceives us?

Logical viruses assert a paradigm. When the paradigm is less efficiently disguised, it may be presented openly in the rhetoric: “everyone is,”“the other is”; whether disguised or open, it invites the application of logic on its construct. But logic without any transcendent reflection merely reinforces the faulty construct — thus trapping the host in an unproductive perception. Logic may only produce results consistent with its assumptions. If we wish to confront our own thinking or anyone else’s flawed assumptions, it is critical for us to find new methods for ascertaining the validity of ideas offered to us for assimilation.

Luckily, there is a significant body of work addressing this issue in the field of software engineering. Computer programmers have long grappled with this issue and are familiar with the limitations of logic. Improperly designed programs are unproductive.

One common programming error encountered by new programmers is the infinite loop. It is constructed as follows: “Start at A. Go to B. From B, go to A and follow the instructions at A.” If one were to continue such a process, it would never end. Similar constructs have been used by malicious programmers to cause physical damage to 108 computers by having them perform mechanical processes to their own destruction. It is interesting to see how computers naturally imitate people.

An outcomes-based assessment of validity is a tool often used by computer programmers. They question not only the logic of a specific program but also the validity of a program that produces bad results. If a program does not produce helpful results, one must question the program. This same sort of assessment may be applied to thoughts.

Unfortunately, the challenge faced by those who have accepted the premise offered by the logical virus is the certainty of the perspective provided by their structurally derived sense of reality. This sense of reality is one they are unable to question because it warps their perception and prompts them to become more and more consumed by the unjust premise. There are few “flashcards” that may be used to repudiate the assumptions of the imagination prompted by the “everyone is racist” premise. So, while outcomes- based validity is a critical tool, it is somewhat confounded by the inability of its host to recognize the possibility of a different reality than the one they are structurally directed to perceive.

This confounding factor may be mitigated by the recognition that racism and other conceptual/logical virus are rooted in an assumption of some form of inferiority or superiority in the other (moral, intellectual, physical, cultural and so on).

This assumption of inequality is the primary function of the unjust premise. To the great disadvantage of all, statements like “everyone is racist” asserts the worst and ignores the best, by promoting all people as ubiquitously in service to an evil belief. In 109 short, the inaccessibility to remediation is the final trap. Those contained by it are simply unable to see a “logical” reason for their error.

Because the assertion defines the world in such a way as to make it inaccessible to contradiction, and because the fundamental process of acceptance and rejection of concordant and discordant stimulus lay the foundation for human logic, the human mind, once infected, is unable to absolve itself or remove itself from the framework that sickens it by the mere application of logic. It must step outside the framework in order to perceive the problem, and, for many, this is impossible without help.

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Chapter 18: The Unjust Premise

If we could identify classifications of thoughts based on outcomes rather than on tautological processes, we could have a useful tool for evaluating thoughts and for engaging in more productive intellectual debate. Given the impact of the unjust premise and the conceptual virus, a productive analysis of the concepts of just and unjust, productive and unproductive, is critical.

In apprehending the problem, we may also apprehend the cure. If we are structurally able to see how the “everyone is” assumption fosters deception in the minds of its hosts

(on the basis of its outcomes), we may find a reason to reject it — perhaps even to do so while entrapped by it . The “everyone is” belief dehumanizes both its host and everyone who is viewed by its host. While the “other” will always be different, recognizing this difference does not mean we must always consciously devalue the “other” or accept definitions that cause us to see them as less than ourselves, independent of moral assertion and human compassion: If an unjust belief naturally produces worse results than those obtained by “just” beliefs we can use value relations between people as a compass for navigating viral beliefs and for assessing our own thinking.

There are value exchanges that take place in all human relations. The natural and verifiable outcomes of value exchanges address issues of validity and more fully expose

111 the very predictable results produced by unjust beliefs. In short, how people value one another produces natural consequences. Unjust value relations are a critical component to the logical virus. Injustice is the DNA of the logical virus, and injustice is the necessary framework for its own replication.

Unfortunately, the claim that a belief is “unjust” is in the eye of the beholder. The same may be said of concepts of truth, especially given the bias implicit to perceptual denial and natural tautological logic. Given this issue, questions come to mind: How can we productively define justice and injustice, given that justice may be co-opted by a logical virus to foster and replicate systems of oppression? How can we prove the inadequacy of beliefs that are perceived as objectively true? In the very least, how can we show that injustice produces worse outcomes — so that we may apply an outcomes based assessment of validity against potentially unjust beliefs independent of the assumptions inherent to that belief.

Game theory, also known as decision theory, is a tool used to model exchanges

(Osborne, 2004). On its own, it represents an entire field of study in economics, business, public policy, biology, and foreign policy. In business finance, game theory is used to understand and predict the outcomes and decisions that businesses, people, and organizations will make. It is also used to predict the outcomes that will result from changes in public policy. In biology it is used to construct simulations of evolutionary processes. In public policy it is used to evaluate the viability of laws. It has tremendous flexibility to predict and analyze outcomes, given a system of exchanges and payoffs.

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The prisoners’ dilemma is a simple model of human exchange that provides tremendous insight into questions of self-interest and injustice.

In Figure 5 below, is a depiction of this traditional tool. It outlines the consequences that result from the decisions of two prisoners on trial. In response to the allegations against them, the prisoners have two simple options: confess or repudiate. The combinations of these options produce four possible pairs of outcomes. Each outcome is represented by a different combination of prison terms. Examining the figure reveals that if prisoner 1 repudiates the charges against himself and prisoner 2 confesses, prisoner 1 will receive 25 years in prison. Otherwise if they both confess, they will each receive

10years. The opposite is true in the opposite prisoner selections.

Figure 5. Model for Prisoners’ Dilemma. (Experimental Economics Center, 2006).

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After some observation, it becomes clear that confession may the best course of selfish action for each prisoner. We may summarize this insight as follows. In both cases,

P1 is “better off” confessing. If P2 confesses, P1 receives better results than he would if he had not confessed. If P2 does not confess, P1 still receives better results than he would if he had not confessed. The same is true for P2. As a result, confession is the “most rational” choice for the prisoners to pursue. Another way of interpreting this is, independent of guilt or innocence; there is a single choice that is motivated by the consequences and rewards of the situation.

Specific systems of rules and consequences can encourage or discourage certain actions, choices, and outcomes. Reflection on this simple mathematical model helps us to see that the actions of individuals may be very strongly guided by the circumstances in which they find themselves. Though any innocent prisoner may wish to repudiate the accusations against himself or herself, fear and circumstance can drive him/her to confess to a crime he/she did not commit.

It is worthwhile to note that the “best” possible overall outcome occurs when both prisoners chose to repudiate the accusations against them. Yet the dilemma above, combined with self-interest, encourages prisoners to choose an outcome likely to result in

10 years of imprisonment for both individuals.

The two prisoners are prompted by circumstance to work against each other’s wellbeing. In short, specific systems of consequences can encourage decisions that are contrary to the desires of individuals contained by the system, and the rules of the

114 prisoner’s dilemma is an example of how the use of self-interest may produce globally poor results.

The best possible resolution of the case of the prisoners’ dilemma is only obtainable if all participants in the dilemma move away from self-interest and value each other equivalently.

If the dilemma were repeated and the prisoners communicated and valued each other’s wellbeing equivalently, the outcome would always be the best possible outcome overall. No matter what system of consequences and rewards are in place, if the two actors in the exchange communicate and agree to value each other equivalently, the best possible outcome is always accessible.

The reader is welcome to prove this fact to him/herself before continuing. Further, worse results occur when they do not.

When closely examined, this dilemma presents a transcendent truth — no matter what the rules of the game; everyone does better when they value each other equivalently and communicate.

If we recall that the rules of the prisoners’ dilemma drove individuals to work contrary to each other’s personal interest, we find it is also worth observing that the rules may also be written in such a way as to drive individuals within the exchange to act in support of each other’s interest. Such a change in the rules may then be used to drive the

115 outcomes of any system towards optimal results. One such algorithm is recorded in

Figure 6.

Figure 6. Model for Prisoners’ Dilemma Take 2

Clearly, the rules of the system depicted in Figure 6 are directed toward repudiation as an optimal result for the participants. The implication for leaders is that if they wish to receive optimal results from their organization, they will value the needs of their participants and seek to organize their efforts so that all participants are encouraged to value each other’s needs.

If leaders wish to receive less than optimal results, the choice is easy— all they need to do is to fail to develop systems that encourage all participants to value each other’s needs. Furthermore, it may be understood from Figures 5 and 6 that if a policy of the

116 organization disenfranchises a segment of the organization, the organization as a whole suffers.

Undoubtedly, injustice does not have to be intentional or obvious to do damage. But concepts like equality and empowerment may now be clearly linked to organizational success and failure. As a natural law, unjust systems and unjust decision-making inevitably produce inefficient results — results less productive than more balanced systems and beliefs will naturally produce. This phenomenon is universal and exists on both the smallest scale and the largest.

Simple observation of a Venn diagram and the process of mathematical induction should aid any reader in assuring themselves that all exchanges between the self and the other may be reduced to two entity exchanges, and therefore may then be optimized by equivalence in value. (As individual components in a system have limited interest in all other individual components and the system itself, a balance or equivalence of value may occur in all cases.)

This observation is not just an analogy. Game theory reduces “good” to numerical values, providing us with real insight into the damage that not valuing others produces. It is a thinkable representation that quantifiably shows that not valuing the other equivalently or systematically produces worse results than would be obtained by valuing the other equivalently and systematically. Clearly, unjust beliefs propagate injustice, and, when they are viral, they simultaneously propagate themselves. We have already found

117 that directly confronting them promotes them. This characteristic of viral ideas provided us with the dilemma of how to repudiate such a dangerous entity.

Game theory provides a new option — the option of utilizing a programmer’s perspective on our thoughts. We may now choose to reject even “logically consistent” as wrong, based on the productivity of the belief (independent of its tautological consistency). We may now see that any belief that causes us to value others as less than or “even” more than ourselves is unproductive and in error on the basis of the contingent outcomes of any “unjust” belief. With a tool such as this we may now begin to confront our structurally reinforced sense of reality with a specific rule: Any thought that drives us to devalue others or self is unproductive.

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Chapter 19: The Logical Virus in Education

This is all well and good, but we seem to have moved some considerable distance from what happened to Jasmine — the little girl who lost meaning in mathematics —or even Mary.

A significant amount of research has been conducted into student conceptions of mathematics (Skemp, 1987). One form of mathematics understanding exposed by this research is, instrumental understanding. Instrumental understanding may be said to be a general application of rules without any true understanding of the why behind the actions.

Another form of understanding, relational understanding, involves a deeper understanding of meaning that allows rational thought, reflection and meaningful action.

As we will soon see, instrumental understanding is in many ways an illusion of understanding, a simulacrum of meaning — prompted by unjust premises. Those who are constrained by it may reflect unproductively on concepts as simple as area. For example:

For many pupils and their Teachers the possession of (…) a rule, and

ability to use it, (i)s what they (mean) by ‘understanding’. Suppose that a

teacher reminds a class that the area of a rectangle is given by A = L X B.

A pupil who has been away says he does not understand, so the teacher

gives him an explanation along these lines. “The formula tells you that to

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get the area of a rectangle, you multiply the length by the breadth.”“Oh, I

see,” says the child, and gets on with the exercise. If we were now to say

to him (in effect) “You may think you understand, but you don’t really,”

he would not agree. “Of course I do. Look; I’ve got all these answers

right.” Nor would he be pleased at our devaluing of his achievement.

(W)ith his meaning of the word, he does “understand” (Skemp, 1978, p.9).

This student’s reaction is a form of cognitive amblyopia. He already had a definition, and this definition will present a challenge to later instructors (Pesek & Kirshner, 2000).

This form of cognitive amblyopia is common — so “common,” in fact, even teachers of the subject can possess this very same misapprehension (Skemp, 1978). Research in relation to these versions of meaning was birthed amidst significant discontent with traditional teaching methods. Stanley Erlwanger’s research article “The Case of Benny” provides a classic and significant insight into this form of understanding documented by education researchers as they sought to understand mathematics learning (1973).

Erlwanger’s work focused on the thinking of mathematics students.

The following is student work sample provided by Erlwanger (1973). that may help to build insight into a common manifestation of this form of understanding:

E: And 4/11?

B: 1.5

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E: Now does it matter if we change this[4/11] and say that is eleven fourths? [E

writes 11/4]

B: It won’t change at all; it will be the same thing… 1.5,

E: How does this work? 4/11 is the same as 11/4?

B: Ya… because there’s a ten at the top. So you have to drop that 10… take away

the 10; put it down at the bottom. [Shows 11/4 becomes 1/14.] Then there will be

1/14. So you have to add these numbers up which will be 5; then 10… so 1.5.

His two equivalent algorithms can be illustrated as follows (where a, b, and c refer

to digits): (ab)/c = a(b+c) or ab/c = b/ac = a(b+c). Benny employed a similar

procedure for converting decimals to fractions (Erlwanger, 1973, p.50).

If we look closely at this sample of Benny’s work, we may see that he had both a very rigorous system of rules and that this system was mostly meaningless — meaningless to us as observers and meaningless to Benny as a participant (Erlwanger, 1973). It is important to note that, in spite of Benny’s meaningless performance, Benny’s teacher felt that Benny was doing well in mathematics (Erlwanger, 1973).

This form of “understanding” produces profound challenges. If you seek to correct

Benny, it is likely that Benny could “find” a process to match any outcome you may require. Because Benny reflected on mathematics as meaningless any direct intervention or instruction would be stymied by his perspective — a perspective that was structurally resistant to intervention. If you told him the answer was wrong, he possesses multiple

121 options for producing a right answer. If you told him the procedure was wrong, he was willing to change the procedure to match the new requirement (Erlwanger, 1973). Much like the wolf among the trees, access to meaning was disguised by Benny’s predispositions and beliefs.

Clearly, there are multiple amblyopias at work in Benny’s situation — Benny’s blindness to meaning and reason in mathematics and Benny’s teacher’s blindness to his absence of understanding. Benny’s condition is not new to research in mathematics education; there is a very robust history and research base documenting this phenomenon

(Skemp, 1987).

It is possible to be blind and not know it. Our previous research into neurological development and perceptual denial may now be productively marshaled to understand and interpret Benny and his teacher’s blindness. Given our understanding of neurological function, we can now understand why Benny cannot see meaning in mathematics — though it is critical to understand the nature and form of the dominant contradictory stimulus that blinded him in the first place.

Conceptual viruses render their host blind, unconscious of their blindness and also structurally and emotionally resistant to the cure for that blindness. If we examine

Benny’s symptoms as they are presented by Erlwanger, we may now begin to see that we are not just confronting a general amblyopia, and we may begin to see “wolves’ fur” where there should be “fauna.” In other words: evidence of the symptoms and activities of a conceptual virus.

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First we find evidence that Benny is in bondage to a false assertion of truth (1 & 3), and this assertion is two pronged. The most prominent prong of this assertion is the belief that mathematics is a meaningless system of processes (1). This belief was exposed by

Erlwanger’s recorded interviews with Benny. Further examination of those interviews exposed a more insidious aspect to this bondage. Benny has been oppressed to the point that he has no ability or authority to establish meaning for himself (3). The records provided to us show that Benny assumed without question that his thinking was inferior to his teacher’s, and that some more knowledgeable other must have spent years working out all the rules of math (Erlwanger, 1973).

Benny, like countless other children in mathematics classes in the US, regards mathematics as something over which someone else has authority (Battista, 1999). He regards himself (perhaps without conscious recognition of the injustice inherit to his belief) as an inferior — an inferior whose role is to receive and memorize a “better than” other’s thinking without question (Erlwanger, 1973).

These false assertions of meaninglessness and subverted efficacy defended themselves within Benny’s conceptions (2). Because Benny regarded mathematics as meaningless, he interpreted any imposition of meaning as meaningless (2). He accepted any amendment to the process provided by his teacher on the basis of her authority without reflection or access to meaning. If we can assume the ability to look into Benny’s future, he seems to have been fated to endure countless hours of instruction over the course of the years without ever apprehending meaning (2 & 3) (Erlwanger, 1973).

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Benny has been profoundly blinded by a conceptual virus that is predicated by a premise of inferiority and meaninglessness. It has directed Benny toward instrumental knowledge while blocking access to meaning, through structurally reinforced unjust assumptions and anticipations of meaninglessness and inferiority (3) (Erlwanger, 1973).

How does this false assertion of meaninglessness and inferiority propagate itself?

We will now reflect on Benny’s teacher, who felt that Benny was a good student.

Clearly, Benny needed prompting to develop and synthesize the processes that produced the results that were expected (3). Benny’s teacher, being “helpful,” responded by providing them (1). It is hard to imagine a teacher who would not (1) (Erlwanger, 1973).

Yet the assumption that Benny is incapable of mathematics without help operated like the racist premise. It engendered a devaluation of the “other” that supported the virus (3).

In the case of racism, racist beliefs engender the fear and hatred that propagate racism. In the case of Benny, projected helplessness engenders the belief that kids can’t think productively about mathematics (Erlwanger, 1973). The assumption is that teachers are the only ones in the room capable of thinking on their own. This propagates and promotes students’ assumptions that they are not able to think about and do mathematics on their own (3). The two assumptions reflect and support one another in a manner similar to the manner by which irreconcilable conflict was found to be constructed in political rhetoric

(Moore, 1993).

In an exchange in which one participant is assumed inferior and the other superior, we see a conceptual ecosystem developing. Benny’s apprehension of meaninglessness, 124 combined with the empowerment of his teacher as the “arbiter of correct,” supports an ecosystem that is tremendously productive in propagating the unjust assertions it engenders.

Both participants are blinded by the assumptions they carry. In this, we have completed the circle. Students are convinced they can’t and teachers are convinced they are the only ones who can. Because of the beliefs both carry, this assertion becomes true as perceptions of the real world are warped by the imaginary. Underneath all of this is the primary unjust assumption of a less-than / greater-than dialectic emerging contingent to the student-teacher relationship. This dialectic contributes to a perspective of the “other” that generates roles that have a fundamental disequilibrium in value.

This disequilibrium in value produces “bad” fruit consistent with an unjust exchange.

It automatically produces less efficient results as naturally as gravity. In the case of

Benny, disequilibrium in value engenders blindness to meaning. Benny becomes a receptacle for bad ideas and misapprehensions. His efforts at mathematics are broken things that contain the form of meaning, but lack its most critical components. In short, the unjust premise associated with the student-teacher relationship produces in both the student and in the teacher self-fulfilling lies and falsehood masquerading as knowledge.

Skemp’s work identifying the difference between procedural and relational knowledge, when combined with our awareness of the characteristics of an unjust exchange, indicates a logical virus, and provides us with evidence of the fundamental injustice inherent to the modern American educational system and a primary source for

125 its failures. The virus we are now identifying is both a derivative of the primary assumption of student “inferiority” and the main cause of it — it is a tautological construct interacting with the real world.

Logical viruses are designed by evolutionary processes to avoid detection and ensure that those exposed to them point fingers in every direction but toward the belief that is engendering the problem in the first place. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t last.

At its heart, a logical virus is simply a manifestation of injustice that propagates itself and gives birth to further deceptions that further propagate the virus. In this case, it is the mutual misapprehension between student and teacher that propagates blindness and ignorance. Ignorance, in this case, is merely an identifiable symptom of injustice.

The recognition of the existence of a differentiation between instrumental and relational understanding is just one line of research supporting the recognition of the operation of the logical virus in education. Many other lines of research exist and document the operation of logical virus in education and society, but it is sufficient for this work to document a singular grouping of cogent research.

If one is to apprehend the breadth of the phenomenon, one must also conceive of a state that issues curriculum requirements and testing outcomes that reward the development of instrumental knowledge. Further, one must also conceive of the fact that our teachers are commonly the product of a system that has not and does not truly value individuals.

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The ability to even conceive of a “just” possibility for the mathematics classroom may well be structurally absent from our culture’s conceptual frames. Or, in the very least, may be inaccessible due to unjust job requirements and testing standards. Certainly it is absent from the minds of a society that demands our education system function in the manner it does.

The failure of our education system to positively impact children like Benny is a direct result of a systematic injustice hiding within schema that dictate the purpose and process of education in our society (as well as the behavior and beliefs of students and teachers).

In short, until our society becomes just, the results of our educational system will remain inequitable, and we will wrestle with a multitude of cognitive genii that arise as if summoned from the woodwork. As long as our assumptions about students and ourselves are unjust, all of our classrooms will be co-opted to generate instrumental understanding and systematic self-replicating injustice. This will occur in the same way that our efforts to fight racism will be co-opted in the service of racism until our goal changes from fighting racists to valuing one another equally.

In 1968, Friere introduced the concept of submerged consciousness. In his work,

Friere sought to expose the nature of the oppressing and oppressed consciousness. In beginning our investigation with biological realities, we have, up until this point (without expressly saying so), provided new insight into the nature of a concept of submerged consciousness. As this work progressed, we have moved from examinations of the

127 cellular processes that allow the mind to make meaning, to the derivative phenomena associated with perceptual denial and the perception of incongruity, to a budding recognition of the operation of the logical/conceptual virus in human consciousness. This operation is supported by a conceptual trap that takes advantage of the means by which the mind operates, and results in perceptual blindness. The behavior of racism was the primary access point we used to expose the logical virus. We found that the underlying

“unjust premise” was the conceptual “DNA” that allowed logical viruses to spread, and create unjust caustic environments that foster its growth and twist its host’s perception of reality so as to make these hosts unwitting proponents of the very injustice they are assaulted by. In this way we found “Red Riding Hood” simultaneously consumed by and becoming “the wolf.”

Given the model provided to us by racism, we were able to bring new light to the process by which injustice propagates in the classroom — an entire species of false mathematical consciousness that is ubiquitous, self-sustaining, and well documented

(Skemp, 1987). It seems likely that the researchers who explored these phenomena were not mindful that they were exposing overwhelming evidence of submerged consciousness derivative to pervasive and systematic structural injustice in education. Nonetheless, with the aid of their scrupulous labor, we have now apprehended it.

Even so, this work does provide one cautionary amendment to Frierian models of submerged consciousness. Frierian models are by nature Neo-Marxist, and there is a reason why the history of Marxism and mass murder are intertwined. Even though

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Freiere is seeking to empower and liberate the poor, his work promotes a schema that engages humans as members of either the oppressed or the oppressor’s group.

Examination of the construct of the logical virus indicates that both participants in an unjust exchange propagated by a logical virus are equally in bondage to the ideas that promote the unjust exchange. In this, people are both participant and chattel at all times.

In failing to effectively recognize the efficacy of the oppressed and the bondage of the oppressors, Frierian theory exists within a false consciousness, one which holds only one group accountable and reduces the world to white hats and black hats. In so doing,

Frierian models may prompt us to devalue the humanity of those who have been identified as oppressors.

I do not doubt Benny’s teacher cared for Benny, yet it is probable that she was unable to understand the nature of the imposition she propagated. We should not presume to devalue her because of her complicity to an unjust virus. If we reflect on the processes of racism, we see that people were placed on “teams” independent of their individual will and forced into roles by the mere existence of a racist premise. In short, our struggle is not against people, it is against the unjust ideas that inhabit and dominate them.

This theoretical work exposes a more complex dynamic than a “these are good, these are bad” schema that merely serves to construct irreconcilable conflict and propagate continuously unjust human relations. All participants under this model have efficacy, and, while Red Riding Hood may be under assault, she may also be a servant to the very injustice that is assaulting her. All Marxist and racist models fail to reach this insight and,

129 instead, promote hatred without providing a truly viable solution — other than the acrimony that supports the growth of their unjust premises. They are incapable of apprehending the fact that their model is intrinsically unjust. I say this without hope that those possessed by the Marxist virus will recognize their plight. I fear we may still anticipate more murders, more unjust violence, from those possessed by these viral beliefs.

In removing the excuses that actually propagate injustice; this work calls all people to move to a higher consciousness. For educators, this work suggests that we may no longer conduct research on the failures of educational systems without also looking at inherent systems of oppression and injustice that participants may unconsciously serve. It is no longer sufficient to document deficits without analyzing the beliefs and assumptions that produced them, and we must do so without making value judgments that devalue the value and humanity of others. As such, we may borrow a tool from programmers and claim any belief that devalues other human beings as less-than or greater-than may be automatically rejected on the basis of its natural and unproductive outcomes.

If it is the case that concepts are invented to address problems we want to solve, perhaps we have “solved,” or at least identified the source of, the problem of unconscious blindness to injustice. I hope this work will allow people to realize that the only true literacy is ethical literacy, as it is ethical literacy from which all literacy springs. It is also ethical blindness from which true blindness springs. Awareness of this places two paths before us, the first a path to increasingly more and more productive clarity and success,

130 and the second a path to greater and greater levels of self-deception, ending in one form of tragedy or another.

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Chapter 20: Conclusion

There is no doubt that 9/11 impacted me, but out of that trauma I found new insights.

In the confusion of the moment and for years after, I could not understand the pain and the horror of 9/11. I could not understand the madness and inhumanity of that day. To this day, I cannot claim to truly comprehend any just reason for what happened, but I can now understand how it could happen — how someone’s thinking could become so warped as to allow them to do such terrible things in the name of their “god.” This understanding isn’t the sad recognition of an unjust world. Instead, it is recognition of natural mechanistic processes functioning behind the scenes, as imperfect humans grapple with and seek to understand their world.

The dream I had of Mary provided insight into hidden interactions between peoples’ sense of reality and their structurally mediated perceptual processes. Perhaps it was an accident that I would find myself studying education with an advisor who had video evidence of a child being systematically blinded to meaning. Even so, the poignancy and timing of my experiences helped me to construct a new schema for interpreting and analyzing human meaning-making processes and identifying the general operation of viral ideas in society.

132 I imagine that the book that tormented and destroyed Mary could be interpreted as the multitude of unjust “isms” at work in the world today. It could be racism, it could be the black and white hats of Marxism — the Marxist beliefs that prompted the murder of so many millions. It could be the beliefs carried by the men who brought down the towers, or the beliefs that allowed followers of Moloch to burn their children alive so many centuries ago. Within that context, independent of her conscious will or intention, Mary was recruited, infected, and consumed by an evil cognitive entity that was symbolically manifested by a blood red book — that would not stop growing and would not leave

Mary alone. I do not believe it is a coincidence that this dream imagery so accurately reflected the real world.

I did not know or understand that ideas could consume and destroy people in the way that that book had consumed and destroyed Mary. It was not until I was exposed to video evidence of the same processes happening to an innocent child — a child who had had her ability to see meaning in mathematics stolen — that I began to see the same process happening in the “real” world. My subsequent research into neurological processes and classifications of knowledge in mathematics education revealed an entire dimension of self-replicating deception and injustice that had, up until that point, operated beyond my personal perception and accessible conception.

The more I learned about human perceptual processes and neurological structure the more astonishingly and terrifyingly real the nightmare of Mary became. Slow and steady

133 analysis of research into neurological processes, human learning, and rhetorical phenomena helped to bring it into focus.

I cannot know the motivations of the men who tried to murder my loved ones on

9/11. In order to reconcile myself to the experience, I choose to assume that they were unable to apprehend the wrongness of their actions, because they were consumed by an evil belief that blinded them to the innate value and humanity of their victims — I choose to think that they were not conceptually able or willing to extract themselves from a worldview that drove them to suicide and mass murder. But these characteristics of the logical virus were already discussed. I will leave it to the reader to make her own determinations about the purpose and thinking of those men. Even so, it is my humble hope that this work will provide people with the tools and the insight they need to begin to confront the true source of any number of injustices they may be grappling with in their everyday lives. Again, the first step to confronting any problem is realizing it exists.

There are a tremendous number of implications for this work. I can only hope that the reader will think more deeply about the evolution of the thought virus and countenance the possibility of more complex autonomous thoughts. I also hope that educators will reflect deeply upon the implications that cognitive amblyopia has for them and the importance of valuing both students and themselves — that it will provide them with insight into the true value of love in the classroom and in their lives.

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Chapter 21: Epilogue

In 2011, when I initially unveiled my nascent learning theory of cognitive amblyopia at the 33 rd annual conference of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education I positioned my theory as follows:

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this work is to begin to identify the transformative effects that

traditional teaching can have on student cognition and learning, and to begin the

development of a new theoretical framework to connect research about basic

neurological development and function to phenomena associated with mathematics

learning.

The theoretical framework surrounding the phenomenon of cognitive amblyopia

proffers that the brain naturally rejects contradictory and confusing information at a

conscious/subconscious and cellular level. Additionally, it asserts that extended

exposure to discordant or contradictory input will cause structural changes to plastic

regions of the brain.

Because some student thinking about mathematics is subject to change and is

plastic, cognitive amblyopia may be induced in students of mathematics. Because

cognitive amblyopia may be induced, ineffective methods of teaching mathematics 135 including covering material, inducing potentially irresolvable perturbations and presenting material, without respect for student thinking, in a contradictory or confusing manner may not just fail to foster learning but may also engender a cognitive amblyopia and damage students’ future ability to see meaning in mathematics.

Definition of the Phenomenon

• Cognitive Amblyopia is the partial or complete loss of the ability to see and

understand concepts that is not caused by abnormalities in the brain.

• It is a corollary to visual amblyopia which is a partial or complete loss of

eyesight not caused by abnormalities in the eye (Hubel, 2015).

• It is the result of basic functions of the brain that may be observed both at a

cellular level and at the “ conscious/subconscious ” level.

• The conscious/subconscious level is the area of conscious functioning under

study that is impacted by subconscious mechanisms independent of conscious

will.

Neurological Research Basis:

During the process of experimentation into the development of mammalian eye

brain connections, Dr. Hubel discovered that introducing mild discordant visual

input between mammalian subjects’ eyes resulted in damage to the subjects’ still

plastic eye brain connections. Specifically connections between the eyes and the 136 brain that served both eyes could be developed into connections that were dominated by one or the other eye’s connection. In this case, if the discordant input continued, the other connection atrophied and was eventually rendered permanently blinded (Hubel, 2015).

Behavioral Research Basis:

In research conducted by Dr. Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman, they identified phenomenon they termed a “dominance” reaction. This reaction was evidenced by an extended denial of incongruous stimuli in adult humans who were asked to identify flash cards (Bruner & Postman, 1949). This perceptual denial of comprehension was related to research participants’ apparent anticipation of a particular type of card. For example subjects who were shown a red six of spades reported “seeing” a red heart. Some respondents were color bound others were shape bound (Bruner & Postman, 1949).

Educational Research Basis:

Dr. Brosnan, Principal investigator of The Ohio State University Mathematics

Coaching Program, documented students’ mathematical problem solving performance prior to and after a year of traditional instruction in an inner city school in Ohio. These video recordings of students’ problem solving activities evidenced significant decreases in some students’ evidenced ability to understand and make meaning of mathematical concepts and problems. Their previously evidenced problem solving proficiency was replaced by behaviors interpreted (by 137 this author) as representing mathematics as a set of meaningless processes

(Brosnan, 2011).

Research Implications

Implications of Neurological Research:

Hubel’s research indicates that at a fundamental level the brain rejects discordant or confusing input. While plastic, the mammalian brain will atrophy and ignore neurological stimulations and pathways that provide input that is contradictory to input the brain cultivates as dominant (Hubel, 2015).

Implications of Behavioral Research:

The flash card research conducted by Dr. Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman appears to clearly echo Dr. Hubel’s work exploring the physical construction of the mammalian eye brain connection (Hubel, 2015; Bruner & Postman, 1949).

Bruner and Postman’s research identified what they termed a dominance reaction and a perceptual denial of incongruous flash card stimuli (Bruner & Postman,

1949). From these research results, it is apparent that the brain is predisposed to the denial of incongruous stimulus at both a structural and a conscious/subconscious level. In short, information that is contradictory to anticipation or existing neurological structures of dominance is naturally confounded in the brain. This inability to see red spades over short time spans represents a mild and easily correctible cognitive amblyopia .

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Implications of Educational Research:

The video evidence provided by Dr. Brosnan’s work shows students’ failing to understand and engage with mathematics that they were able to understand and engage with in the past. This inability to complete these problems after attending a year of traditional mathematics instruction represented a stronger, less easily reversible, cognitive amblyopia than the inability to see the meaning of playing cards.

Potential Research Questions

Do traditional classrooms hard wire students not to see meaning in mathematics?

How do traditional methods inhibit learning and cause cognitive amblyopia in students?

If discordant information is naturally ignored by the brain, should teachers focus lessons on student errors or on student understanding?

Do people retain paradigms or biased belief systems because of an inability to readily integrate information discordant with their anticipation?

Is the existence of proof by contradiction in mathematics rooted in the brain’s natural rejection of contradictory input?

Why are people who are capable of seeing meaning in mathematics unable to see meaning in it after receiving instruction in it?

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What does the natural process of excising discordant information say about the

nature of the brain and its meaning making processes?

What does this phenomenon imply about our perception of reality (Schmidlin,

2011)?

The primary point of contention I encountered in presenting this new theoretical frame to the research community was my assertion that the mind rejects discordant and contradictory information at the cellular level. Why: Any assertion of the existence of structural rejection to discordant stimulus calls Piagetian learning models into question.

Under the Piagetian model “cognitive structure is likely to be modified when it clashes with a constraint” (Glasersfeld E., 1982, p. 5). This process of “equilibration” is

“not a static affair which returns to a status quo, but rather a relational concept whose range is continuously extended by the formation of new structures in the overcoming of perturbations” (Glasersfeld E., 1982, p. 16). Under this view of learning Piagetian adherents subscribe to the belief that “we can know and describe “reality” in negative terms alone” (Glasersfeld E., 1982, p. 5).

This Piagetian focus on a productive clash is directly at odds with the reality of cognitive amblyopia. This discrepancy between an “accepted” constructivist model and my theory of cognitive amblyopia and an agreement centered learning process did not go unnoticed. My nascent theory was immediately attacked as a misconception about learning.

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It is important to keep in mind that those initial criticisms of my theory were not based in an actual ability to contradict Hubel, Bruner or Brosnan’s data. It was instead rooted in intransient assumptions about definitions (of learning).

Under my theory, perturbation is clearly evidence of an obstacle to learning. It is the point where learning is slowed to a pace at which it may easily be observed in the external. Further if Hubel is to be believed in his claim that long term learning is characterized by structural changes in cellular connections then the Piagetian accommodation and assimilation are actually identical processes at the cellular level. As such, the use of two terms for the same process is misleading – though two terms are useful for propping up the utility of Piagetian interpretations of learning.

While it may not be explicitly clear in this dissertation presentation (attached), this is the difference between analysis of the luminescent shine of sea shells and analysis of the nacre. Or in other words the observation of evidence of thought and the observation of the underlying cellular processes. The cellular processes give insight into how, why, and when learning happens. Observation of evidence of thought provides insight into the dynamic outcomes of the underlying how, why and when.

The irony of the challenge I faced was not lost on me. I had a new theory that asserted the existence of resistance to contradictory stimulus (of perturbation as evidence of hindrance to learning) and this theory was rejected because it contradicted pre-existing notions about learning.

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I took the lesson to heart. If my theory were to be easily “accepted/learned” it would need to be presented in a manner that avoided contradicting peoples’ beliefs about learning – even while it fostered new insights into learning.

Throughout the text I did not provide clarity into the differentiation of my learning theory from pre-existing theoretical frames in order to allow it to be more easily accepted as true.

I would not normally provide this summary of difference – if I were attempting to prompt acceptance of my theory, but in order to allow my dissertation to more easily be assessed by my committee I have included an analysis of the text in subsequent sections.

This is not to say that Hubel’s neurological research cannot fit “neatly” with accommodation or assimilation models or many of the other very accurate observations made by Piaget over the years (as the accurate observations certainly do fit with the behavior of the human mind and a schema based upon neurological behavior).

Instead, I am highlighting the fact that my dissertation intentionally focused on a presentation that sought agreement with the reader’s pre-conceived notions about learning in order to prompt them into potentially subversive and new insights into agreement learning and cognitive amblyopia while avoiding interfering perturbation that would be summoned by directly contradicting popular theoretical frames of view or positing “new” knowledge. If I have done my job properly “experts” in the field will read the first portion of this dissertation and potentially have no small trouble

142 contradicting it. Clearly the format would be alien to them as it flagrantly uses words like “I” and “believe” or “think/thought.”

But, even so, in more than one way I am using Hubel’s research into cellular development to construct both a theory of learning and a methodology of instruction.

Implicit to the process of learning in my model is seeking agreement with my student’s pre-existing schema in order to facilitate growth while actively avoiding contradicting pre-existing dominant internal schemas -- By doing so, I can foster tremendous and efficient conceptual growth.

In Hubel’s research into the development of sight, the use of an eye patch was a critical tool for allowing sight to be recovered in a blind eye because of competitive neurological processes. But, the question may remain, what do we do when attempting to posit contradictory ideas. On first brush it may seem that ideas and knowledge can’t be mechanically “patched” in a practical manner. But, the wolf within the text provides us with a guide that allows us to use cognitive amblyopia to our advantage while presenting new information (though a more subtle means of covering/camouflage is required) designed to combat it.

A significant example of this “covering” is my dissertation’s avoidance of contradiction with Piagetian learning models even though that contradiction is implicit to the presentation. Avoiding direct contradiction of Piagetian learning models, while focusing on areas of agreement gave me the freedom necessary to foster potentially subversive beliefs about learning while avoiding the creation of inefficient perturbations 143 within the reader who may have rejected my new theories because of obvious contradictions with their pre-existing schema.

That said, while agreement learning processes and cognitive amblyopia are critical advances propositioned by this work, it would be easy to become entangled in unproductive arguments about Piaget’s theoretical frame. This dissertation is not a regurgitation of Piaget’s work. It is an assertion of a new theory of learning based on the behavior of neurological structures and signaling.

Even so, my ambitions were not limited to merely positing a theory that informs and reforms commonly accepted theory. The existence of cognitive amblyopia has a tremendous number of implications for learning and for grappling with hidden systematic processes in education and our human culture in general.

I was driven by a moral imperative to reach further than process arguments about learning. I hoped to actually construct an “intellectual intervention” that would act as a consciousness raising tool and allow people to more effectively grapple with systematic injustice fostered by unjust systems of beliefs that use and construct amblyopias within their hosts. In short -- given that my initial attempts at using direct instruction to communicate my theory in the 2011 PME-NA were immediately resisted (an ironic confirmation of my theory) I changed format.

I wrote a “story” designed to sneak the concepts into peoples’ interpretations of learning. I wrote a book formatted for public consumption that would foster

144 understanding of cognitive amblyopia and its many implications for learning, society and the behavior of ideas.

In my humble way I was honestly trying to make sure that my dissertation efforts were not wasted and I produced something that might actually help someone.

This ambition to positively impact others with the fruit of research is not so outrageous as it may initially be perceived (by some) and has well-developed reflections within the qualitative research fields (Atkins and Wallace, 2015). While some do research through social action, I chose to do research through and with impactful presentation of theory. As such I will now begin the laborious task of exposing the theoretical assertions I attempted to encode into my story.

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Chapter 22: A Theoretical Exposition

In attempting to answer the simple question of what happened to a first grader’s ability to see meaning in mathematics or in seeking to answer the broader question of

“How could they?” after 9/11 the text engaged in and developed a system of theory that correlated neurological structure with conscious recognition processes and applied that theory to social exchanges and the operation of ideas in society.

One of the first steps in conducting an investigation is justifying it. Why would we care -- why terrorists blow up buildings? Why would we care -- why a little girl would lose meaning in mathematics? The text addressed this question by identifying why we might not care and then problematized those justifications – specifically the text pointed out that these beliefs are enmeshed with the injustice they either conceal (through acceptance) or flatly ignore. The text further posited (in anticipation of further exploration) that the “shape of injustice” somehow actively resisted apprehension of and resistance against injustice.

Having previously revealed the characteristics of the logical virus (within this text and in anticipation of further exploration), we may now openly point to the texts claim that within injustice we find conceptual virus that: replicate themselves while simultaneously disguising themselves and injustice from clear apprehension or contradiction.

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References to Victor Frankl and the shock of witnessing “normal people” doing atrocious things (9/11 and human sacrifice) were used by the text to begin to bring belief into focus as a subject of interrogation and were designed to begin the process of moving peoples’ focus away from people as agent towards belief as agent. Moloch was a useful tool for initiating this transference of imputation – it acted as an accessible object of focus. Such focus is initially more efficient than positing claims of general systematic injustice. The aspect of Moloch is an able representation of a more clearly and fully embodied evil belief. Even so, the text was careful to repudiate and problematize any implication the reader might draw concordant with atheistic and nihilistic beliefs and general criticisms of religion. The text did so with the aid of Victor Frankl whose views were justified not only by credential but by his very real individual unjust suffering at the hands of individuals following atheistic and nihilistic beliefs engaged in genocide. At a theoretical level this does not effectively abjure irreligious assertions but it does effectively prompt the reader to look to the text for an explanation that is less concordant with any latent irreligious bias they may implicitly carry or project onto the text. More specifically this is true for imputations of Islam carried by the reader.

While Moloch is an efficient representation of an embodiment of belief, the text is designed to expose agency within thoughts/beliefs. This agency is asserted to be even greater than the agency of individual humans. The text is faced with the unenviable task of dissuading people of ownership of their own thinking and prompting them to recognize that an idea may have greater agency than themselves – greater agency even in constructing their sense of self or moral imperative. Both human ego and conceptual

147 aptitude may be obstacles to this endeavor. The text attempts to grapple with these obstacles by initiating a discussion about the beliefs that prompt terrorism and human sacrifice. It furthers this discussion by constructing insight into what I now name the kinesthetic agency of thought and its dominance over the physical form taken by all life, human and otherwise.

In order to begin the process of constructing a framework for the kinesthetic agency of thought the text references research into general evolution and the evolution of thought. The objective is to show that thought and specific forms of thought are active participants in evolutionary processes. The purpose of highlighting thought as an active participant in evolutionary processes is to show that specific thoughts are older than the individuals who think them and their historical presence or absence has dictated those thinkers’ (and other creatures’) physical manifestations in the world. The purpose of highlighting this is again to show that thoughts are real and thoughts may have greater agency than the thinker thinking them. If the reader can be persuaded to recognize that their own bodies and minds have been shaped by ancient thoughts then perhaps they can be persuaded to countenance the possibility that something that has dictated their physical form may be real and may have agency over them in the present. It is unfortunate that observation of the manifestation of human sacrifice and mass murder may not be enough evidence of the agency of thought. That said perhaps the most powerful conceptual tool utilized by the text is a re-examination of natural camouflage constrained through a lens of “camouflage as a derivative response” to perceptual processes and the conceptual definition of a tree – this presentation being concordant to a staging of Jerome Bruner and

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Leo Postman’s investigation of perception and incongruity (1949) and Hubel’s investigation into the construction of the eye brain connection (2015).

The text further prompts the reader to countenance thought as real and possessing agency by providing the reader with a description of thought that allows an imagined physical manifestation. It does this by accessing the present relationship between computers, the programs they process and the outcome they manifest while interacting together. This manifestation is correlated with the luminescent shine of sea shells and a clear observation that computer logic and the construction of electronic circuits is merely a reflection of the structure of cellular connections within the brain -- In short, logic, computers and computer programs are manifestations and reflections of human intelligence. This realization is then used to prompt the reader to reflect back again on their thoughts as programs; with the hope that programs may be perceived as “real.”

The text also prompts the reader to construct an imagined physical manifestation of thought by positing an “extra-dimensional space” in what is termed “the evolutionary plane” and it posits this shape as contingent to the “shape” of pre-existing neurological structure explored with correspondence to the behavior of neurons.

The kinesthetic agency of thought is also presented in its ability to “blind” its hosts. This ability to impose blindness is exposed by Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman’s investigation of perception (1949) reflections on 9/11, the presentation of “Mary”, reflections on the case of Benny and Skemp’s presentation of instrumental understanding

(Erlwanger, 1973; Skemp, 1978).

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The kinesthetic agency of thought is further highlighted by an investigation into alternative sources of conceptual blindness. Clinical studies of the impact of tumors and brain damage were used to show alternative sources of conceptual blindness in neurological structures. These sources of blindness were then shown by the text to be no less impactful than learned blindness; Learned blindness fostered in dark raising studies, learned blindness fostered by contradictory stimulus (during Hubel’s neurological research), learned blindness observed in a first grader, Jasmine’s mathematical performance, and learned blindness displayed by Benny (Hubel, 2015; Erlwanger, 1973).

Clinical studies of blindness and neurological damage also provided the text with the claim that neurological damage may be diagnosed by symptoms. Justification of the ability to diagnose damage by symptom was provided by clinical neurological research and practice (Blumenfeld, 2010). The text highlights this ability by pointing out to the reader that successful brain surgery was conducted using only clinical diagnosis absent the use of modern tools like the MRI (Blumenfeld, 2010).

While working to build the reader’s recognition of thought as possessing agency, the text also posits a learning theory based on clinical understandings of the physiological basis of perception (Hubel, 2015). Specifically the text focused on research into the impact external stimulus can have on the post natal development, behavior, growth and neurological connections within the mammalian visual system (Hubel, 2015). This knowledge base was initiated by researchers seeking to study the process by which amblyopia is fostered in mammalian visual systems (Hubel, 2015). The details of this research was not fully highlighted by the text, because it involved intentionally blinding

150 kittens and monkeys by various algorithms including sewing their eyes shut, sewing lenses over their eyes, cutting muscles in their eyes to cause them to become cross eyed, and cutting their skulls open to record electrical impulses along exposed nerves with probes. Such an exposition in the text would have thoroughly distracted readers from the critical points of the text. While emotionally challenging and morally problematic, the critical results of these studies (for the purposes of this text) may be outlined as follows

(They are derived from Hubel’s book Eye, Brain, and Vision): When infant cats and monkeys had one eye shut at birth cortical cells became unresponsive to stimulus from the covered eye, neurological connections normally shared 50/50 between both eyes were dominated by the eye that had been uncovered and the lateral geniculate (a synaptic relay and a terminal point of optic nerves) was pale and thin in comparison to the relay attached to the open eye. Repetition of experimentation also found that the age at which deprivation was imposed was determinant in the presence or absence of damage. Once the connections were no longer plastic they remained in force. Further, if one eye was initially closed and subsequently opened at various later dates, the damage to function remained unless, the dominant eye were also subsequently covered to allow the recovery of cortical function. Even so, there was a limited period in which the cortical function could be recovered, damaged or altered. This limited period of time was related to the process of growth and development in neurological pathways. Further research into the cortex of newborn macaque monkeys revealed that the cortical unresponsiveness was caused by a deterioration of existing cellular connections in the cortex. This deterioration was the result not of disuse but of competition between the neurons. During further

151 research of this phenomena Hubel cut the eye muscles of kittens to cause them to go crosseyed. They were attempting to force the development of an amblyopia through potential habitual suppression of one or the other eye. Initial observation of the eyes indicated this attempt to be unsuccessful but it revealed something more interesting. They found that when neurological signals were discordant between the eyes, the neurological connections to the non dominant regions of the eyes were deteriorated to the point of

“disappearance”. In effect a regional blindness was imposed by discordant stimulus.

Multiple variations of deprivation in concordance with stimulus were implemented to experiment and replicate this phenomena. Researchers (in 1970 Colin Blakemore and G.

F. Cooper, in Cambridge University) exposed kittens only to black and white stripes or darkness. This experiment resulted in preserved cells receptive to vertical orientations.

The number of cells responsive to other orientations declined. Others (Helmut Hirsch and Nico Spinelli) put goggles on cats that allowed them to see only vertical or horizontal stripes. As a result, cells concordant with that view were also strengthened or reduced

(Hubel, 2015).

The text uses Hubel’s observations of the physiological basis of perception to assert three basic neurological responses to a stimulus:

(1) Acceptance of concordant stimulus.

(2) Simultaneous time sensitive reinforcement and degradation in which competing

processes are integrated into the dominant neurological structure.

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(3) Non-responsiveness owing to either a structural inability to respond or the

absence of plastic connections necessary for the apprehension of the new

stimulus.

Within these three basic responses the text outlines the structural process by which meaning is derived and inconsistent or contradictory input is rejected. Even though the behavior of neurological connections is clearly outlined by Hubel’s research, the path from cellular structure to conscious perception is less clear. If behavior of conscious perception is similarly constrained, then evidence would need to be provided for such behavior in conscious perceptual processes. The text provides this evidence by utilizing

Jerome Bruner & Leo Postman‘s research into perceptual processes (1949). It further outlines a direct correspondence between the three responses derived from Hubel’s work and research participants’ responses to incongruous stimulus in Bruner and Postman’s independent efforts (Bruner & Postman, 1949; Hubel, 2015).

Having built a correspondence between cellular behavior and conscious perception, the concept of conceptual amblyopia is explored and expounded by the text using Bruner and Postman’s perceptual denial as a first representative of this conceptual phenomenon. Bruner and Postman’s documentation or perceptual denial/conceptual blindness is then further highlighted by learned blindness fostered in dark raising studies, conceptual blindness observed in a first grader, Jasmine’s mathematical performance, and conceptual blindness displayed by Benny in educational research (Hubel, 2015;

Erlwanger, 1973). As such, conceptual amblyopia is presented as a derivative of

153 structural resistance to external stimulus and correlated to the learned visual version of the same phenomena.

The text presents this representation of conceptual amblyopia as being intrinsically bound together with the function definition plays in interpreting the world.

The text highlights the power of the definition as being simultaneously a lens and a blinder. As such, definition may be utilized to constrain human beings’ ability to both perceive and define the world. The capstone example of this natural deficit to perception is the camouflaged wolf. The wolf clearly uses structurally mediated definitions of

“trees” to inhibit perception of wolves. This is not done consciously by the wolf instead the wolf has evolved into a form that takes advantage of conceptual processes. As such the image of the wolf is defined as a conceptual trap. Even so, further examples are scrutinized; Bruner’s flashcards demonstrate interference with perceptual processes on the basis of these structurally determined definitions (Bruner & Postman, 1949). Benny’s performance in mathematics also a highlights a more complex example of interference with perceptual processes on the basis of his definitions of mathematics (Erlwanger,

1973). Finally, perceptual issues within modern research agenda’s are also problematized using work by Patti Lather (2006).

Having provided clarification of the phenomena of amblyopia derivative to natural perceptual processes and clarifying the fact that we literally see, understand and interpret information based on the pre-existing structure of our nervous system – which is an implicit and structurally determined “definition,” the text begins the laborious process of facilitating the reader’s understanding of how perceptual processes and the

154 neurological structure that supports it, interacts with, and is impacted by ideas within a larger society.

Mark Moore’s analysis of the synecdoche is used as a starting point for explicating this interaction between the role of definition in public debate and human perception. The text examined the construction of a conflict based in definitions of “the spotted owl” and pointed out the fact that the tenacity of the conflict is more firmly rooted in the definitions characteristic of it than the actual reason for the conflict. In short the definitions themselves propagated a conflict “too threatening” to resolve (Moore,

1993). The text continued its campaign of highlighting agency in thought by identifying that the major beneficiary of the continued conflict over the spotted owl was the divisive representations that propagated the conflict. The text further (borrowing from its efforts to highlight thoughts’ participation in the evolutionary process) points out that the ideas propagating the spotted owl conflict also evolved within the conflict. As such the most virulent ideas, the ideas that were most disruptive to the clear apprehension of resolutions to the conflict were also the thoughts most likely to propagate and survive within the conflict.

Having outlined a framework of perceptual disruption, replication and aggressive definition, the text asserts the possibility of a conceptual virus being structured in such a way that it penetrates and modifies other thoughts (rather than living cells) while simultaneously infecting perceptions and driving its hosts to replicate and support it. The text further asserts such a virus would also need to do so at a level inaccessible to conscious decision-making, or, in the least, it would co-opt conscious decision-making in

155 such a way as to cause otherwise thinking people to propagate the same idea either willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, or some abstract combination in between.

The text highlights three primary properties that allow the virus perform these functions:

1) The conceptual virus is structured so as to be easily, innocuously, and

automatically accepted by its host.

2) The conceptual virus is structured to co-opt its host’s perceptions in such a way

that both the host and the host’s thoughts propagate and house the virus.

3) The virus contains a kind of viral DNA in the form of an unjust

premise/definition. Acceptance of an unjust premise/definition, consciously or

otherwise, fosters amblyopia in its host.

These characteristics and functions are then exposed within Cohen, Steele and Ross’ research into racial achievement gaps and race base mistrust in the modern classroom

(Cohen & Steele, 2002; Cohen, Steele & Ross, 1999). As such, racism becomes the text’s first example of a conceptual virus. The operation of racism is then deconstructed to expose how it, may be easily accepted, may co-opt its host’s perceptions, and may operate under the direction of a primary and often subconscious unjust assertion. It further exposes that racism is capable of completing all of these functions independent of the will or intention of any human exposed to it -- thus, completing an exposition of the real existence of such a phenomenon.

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The logical virus, and cognitive amblyopia presents the text and the reader with a profound challenge – This is the challenge of accessing and grading truth with a conscious recognition of conceptual blindness to contradictory concepts and stimulus.

The text provides a solution to this irresolvable conundrum by advocating an outcomes- based methodology for the assessment of the validity of conceptual constructs or beliefs.

It borrows methodology used by computer programmers who assess validity not only by internal consistency but also by outcomes. Clearly an outcomes-based methodology is immediately called into question without proof that certain beliefs may be accurately assessed in this way. Borrowing from game theory the text asserts a model under which beliefs that do not cause the holder to value others equivalently with the self naturally produce worse outcomes than beliefs that value all participants in an exchange.

It is not a coincidence that the text points out both the damage an unjust premise presents hosts and the automatic inefficiency of exchanges predicated by unjust beliefs about the other. In doing so the text highlights the multiple facets of injustice and desolation propagated by unjust beliefs while providing the reader with a tool for assessing their own beliefs which while logically consistent may be inherently unjust.

Prior to such an exposition by the text it is possible the reader would not possess the tools necessary to impute their own beliefs – beliefs they would be in bondage to at a structural level.

In providing a more complete outline of the function and operation of the conceptual virus the text spirals back to Benny, Mary and the first grader, Jasmine who lost meaning in mathematics. The text subtly uses the fact that clinical diagnoses could

157 be used to perform brain surgery in order to justify diagnosing Benny, Mary and the first grader’s symptoms as evidence of cognitive virus. In doing so the text then deconstructs the symptoms and beliefs presented by Benny in Erlwanger’s work (1973) and Skemp’s research is further highlighted as evidence of characteristic outcomes of unjust premises at work in education. Submerged consciousness is also exposed as a characteristic propagated by cognitive virus. The challenges of confronting such a well equipped and designed foe (the virus) is highlighted and problematized. The text points out past failures to confront injustice (communism) and argues such efforts were co-opted by the injustice they hoped to end. A primary challenge in any such conflict is the inability to recognize that the source of the problem is something many people do not believe is real.

Several ideas are presented for the first time by Aaron Schmidlin: Cognitive

Amblyopia, Agreement Learning, and the Kinesthetic Agency/Impact of Thought. It is certain that these ideas will be useful cognitive tools for future generations. Even so, one of the most subversive and easily dismissed, though simultaneously most powerful tools presented by the text is “love.” The conceptual virus is based on an implicit or explicit assumption of a less than or greater than dialectic. It creates blindness and poverty as a function of its nature. Love is the only tool sufficient and correctly oppositional to such a profoundly damaging entity. Yet, love is not scholarly. It is not “intelligent.” It is not high minded or imposing. It is not valued or honored the way it should be given the stark and profound consequences exposed by the text. It is the only hope for transcending and defeating an opponent with such devastating and profound control over human consciousness and social exchange. Perhaps even if it is not “intelligent” it is wise.

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