Equilibrium: Ethics as Harmony and Improvisation in Responsive as - the Core Psychophysical Process a bio logical foundation for ethical engagement -Bentley Suzanne Noel Universit A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to The y of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Contents Abstract . v Introduction . 1 Chapter 1 – The Core Psychophysical Process Introduction . 9 1. The Core Psychophysical Process . 10 2. Introduction to F.M. Alexander: within his historical context . 12 3. Alexander’s Experimental Process . 16 4. The Alexander Technique in Teaching Practice . 18 5. Practical Descriptions of Balancing Mechanisms and Startle Reflex . 22 6. Startle Pattern: Hunt’s experiment and what it makes clear . 25 7. Habits of Mind . 27 8. Reflective Self-discipline . 29 9. The CPP, Fear, and Developmental and Learning Processes . 30 10. Alexander Technique Methodology Consistent with Core Psychophysical Processes: the interactive self as the instrument of experimentation . 34 11. The Cultural and Scientific Context . 40 12. Explaining Reflexes and Neuro-musculo-skeletal Interconnections . 45 13. The Core Psychophysical Process and Brains, Minds and Bodies . 52 14. Embodiment . 53 Chapter 2 – Susan Hurley’s Shared Circuits Model . 57 1. What is Cognitive Science – is it just about brains? . 57 2. Hurley’s Shared Circuits Model . 58 3. The SCM and Simulation –Theory, Theory –Theory: regarding understanding and communicating . 70 4. Imitation, Inhibition, and Making Embodied Sense Together . 72 5. The Articulation of Experience in Language . 78 6. Summary of the SCM and Extensions to Chapter 3 . 80 Endnote – Susan Hurley’s Chart . 82 Chapter 3 – The CPP and The SCM . 83 1. Key Commonalities Between the CPP and the SCM . 84 2. Inhibition . 85 3. Means and Ends . 86 4. Self–Other and Perception–Action Dynamics . 87 5. Empathy and Psychosocial Development . 88 6. Cognition, Communication and Ethics . 88 7. The CPP Flow of Perception, Reaction, Reflection and Choice of Action, and Hurley’s Levels of Human Function . 89 Chapter 4 – Dualisms versus Cognition as Embodied . 97 1. Dualism in Philosophy, Psychology, and Cognitive Neuroscience . 98 2. Alexander and Holistic Logic . 100 3. Perception and Action . 101 4. Variations of Cartesian Dualism and Its Origins in Atomism and Mechanism . 103 5. Language, Representationalism and Dualism . 105 6. Quantum Physics, Agential Realism and the CPP . 108 7. The Enactive Process . 110 8. Externalism and Sensory-motor Meaning-making . 114 9. Computational Minds . 116 10. Holistic Understandings . 117 Chapter 5 – Embodiment . 119 1. Multi-sensory Meaning-making and Perception . 121 1a.The Dominance of the Visual in Western Culture . 125 2. Emotion and Cognition – Two Integrative Perspectives . 127 3. Body schemas and the ‘Automaticity’ of Skilled Actions. 134 4. Attentive Expanded Awareness in Action . 141 5. Language and Embodiment . 143 Chapter 6 – The Arts, Embodiment and Ethics . 149 1. Music Explains Itself: meaning is embedded in culture and relationship . 149 2. Harmony, Resonance, and Metaphor . 151 3. Defining Music . 154 4. The Phenomenology of Engagements in the Arts . 155 5. Music-making is Embodied, Extended and Inclusive . 158 6. Improvisation and Arts Phenomenology . 159 7. The CPP, Propositionising, and Reflective Self-discipline . 168 Chapter 7 – Bodily ‘I’dentity . 172 1. The Self as Identified through Cognitive Neuroscience . 172 2. Self as sonzai of ningen . 177 3. Levinas: self and difference . 181 4. Self in Relationship – from Ego to Empathy . 184 5. Empathy and Responsibility . 187 6. Climate and Cultural Narratives . 189 Chapter 8 – Dark Ethics . 194 1. Conscious and Unconscious Minds and Intuition . 195 2. Language and Difference . 198 3. Embodiment and Sexualised Identity . 202 4. Touch – Reclaiming Sensory Meaning-making . 206 5. Sensuate Being-in-Relationship and the Aesthetic Dimension . 207 Chapter 9 – The CPP and the Phenomenology of the Arts as a Basis for Practical Ethics . 211 1. Holistic Embodied Learning through the Alexander Technique and the Arts . 212 2. Ethics as Harmony and Improvisation in Responsive Equilibrium. 217 3. Human action rides a current... 221 Chapter 10 – Illustrations and Applications – Signalling Future Directions of Research . 222 1. Traditional Western Medicine and Alternate Healthcare Practices . 222 2. Drugs and Psychosurgery . 224 3. Women’s Perspectives in Bioethics . 227 4. Cross-cultural Understanding . 229 5. Transplantation and Organ Donation . 230 Bibliography . 232 v Abstract In this thesis I address the ethics of corporeal being at a foundational level. Rather than starting the discussion of ethics at an abstract level founded in propositions and logical sensori- arguments about principles, I offer an holistic view of human engagement that recognises motor processes and our embodied engagements with the world as foundational to and integral with cognition and higher functions and social skills. I propose that the capacity of human beings to act in an ethically responsible way is built into our biological, psychosocial natures, and that ethical interaction is informed and enhanced by intentionally cultivating a particular psychophysical process. The Core Psychophysical Process (the CPP) that I have identified naturally underlies our interactions in the world as vertebrate creatures, grounds our primary and ongoing developmental and learning processes, and is integral with the process of developing neuro-musculo- our ethical ‘second nature.’ The CPP is expressed at a fundamental level in a reflexive experiential skeletal expansive and contractive process that is integral with an sequence of perception, reaction, and reflection leading to choice of action. which There is a constant ebb and flow of contraction and expansion throughout the body resonates with, in and through all of our experiences. It is integrated into processes of reasoning, interpretation, intentionality, emotion, valuing and habit, all of which, along with the abilities to inhibit, deliberate, and choose, are foundational to ethical action. Elements of the CPP are active at every level of corporeal being, from the fluent maintenance of equilibrium at neuronal level through to the dynamics of ethical deliberations and negotiations between people in society. In this thesis the Alexander s Technique and processes in the Arts provide exemplars wherein the foundational intrinsic aspects and expression of the CPP can be understood. In order to fully explore the impact of the CPP in human experience, I examine both theoretical and practical experimental experience with the CPP in relation to: historical and and contemporary readings from different cultures in bioethics, ethics, philosophy, feminist philosophy, the philosophy of mind; empirical investigations in cognitive - science, physiology, and neuroscience; and Susan Hurley’s Shared Circuits Model. This is a phenomenological study, from a feminist and arts based perspective. Arts Phenomenology starts with the question: ‘What is the experience of being with, acting with, with the intention to?’ That perspective leaves behind subject/object, mind/body interaction g dualities to understand human experience as extended and grounded in the embodied dentity s multi- - s of social bein . I offer alternate conceptions of embodiment, and explore Bodily ‘I’ that reflect sensory meaning making grounded in experience. 1 Introduction , a logic In this thesis I ddress the ethics of corporeal being at a foundational level. Rather than starting the discussion of ethics at an abstract level founded in propositions and al sensory- arguments about principles, I offer an holistic view of human engagement that recognises motor processes and our embodied engagements with the world as foundational to and integral with cognition and higher functions and social skills. I propose that the capacity of human beings to act in an ethically responsible way is built into our biological, psychosocial natures, and that ethical interaction is informed and enhanced by intentionally cultivating a particular psychophysical process. That process naturally underlies our interactions in the world as vertebrate creatures, grounds our ’. primary and ongoing developmental and learning processes, and is integral with the process of developing our ethical ‘second nature neuro-musculo- rocess I call this process the Core Psychophysical Process or the CPP. The CPP is grounded in a creatures ‘startl eflex’ skeletal reflexive movement p fundamental to all vertebrate experiential known as e r . That movement process is integral with an sequence of perception, reaction, and reflection leading to choice of action. - In a threatening situation, the startle reflexive response is activated by the perception of danger which then triggers the reaction associated with fear an inward contraction and immobility. Overt action ceases thereby creating an opportunity for a creature to take in - information on many levels and to consider its next most appropriate action. Whatever action subsequently occurs is energized by expansive movement through the musculo skeletal system that corresponds with brain activity and electrical and chemical processes throughout the body. - of The reflex element of the CPP is more than a survival oriented physiological response, in -spine- that there is a constant ebb and flow contraction and expansion that happens through the head pelvis structure, and which is integrated with movement throughout the body. Contraction reflects a gathering