As a result of private comments by email and a certain amount of enthusiasm for a more thorough explanation of the concepts covered in Part Two, I am going to continue with a fuller description of the mind/matter story from the physical and biological perspectives, writes Phil Becque

As we saw in part two the introduction of the concept of holomovement brought an end to the mind/matter split proposed by Descartes, and it is worth bearing in mind that no such split occurred in Eastern phylosophy, so this was largely a European/USA distraction. However, it is also worth noting that mechanistic assumptions and a fragmentary world view lie behind most of modern physics and biology, are still very much in evidence today, even though a fundamentally different approach, has been available since 1983 with Bohms' ideas.

While there is a lot of lip service for holistic ways of looking at things, other imperatives seem to drive people back to a partial and fragmentary view to reduce the complexity of a situation down to something more managable. Whenever there are meetings of many different parties with various self interests, the number of conflicting views expressed can seem to be irreconcilable. The challenge for us then, is to move towards applying ideas like the holomovement to very large scale projects like protection of the environment. Bohm proposed a new way of sharing information that kept the big picture firmly in everyones minds. I will present my shorter version of it here, but for the full monty please see: Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Chapter 2 'The Rheomode'.

Bohm had noticed that confusion, and people talking at cross purposes, were very common in many of conversations that he had. As a result he proposed a set of fairly simple steps to ameliorate this. He noted, that broadly speaking, there were three distinct spoken styles: Debate, Discussion & Dialogue

With debate the objective is to win - to bring a group of people over to your way of thinking

With discussion the objective is to make your point and express your views.

With dialogue the objective is to 'share meaning' - Bohm thought this was by far the best way to proceed.

1) Start the dialogue by setting as broad a CONTEXT as possible and remind people that CONTENT & PROCESS are two aspects of one whole movement.

2) Agree with all the participants what list of topics will provide the CONTENT and the PROCESS by which everyone can contribute.

3) As the dialogue unfolds with each participant giving their point of view; ensure that everyone understands the RELEVANCE of each topic of CONTENT to the CONTEXT so that the MEANING is clear and shared amongst the group. One of the main benefits of doing this, is that all the participants understand not only the views expressed but also the 'logic behind' that view. Getting agreement on a way, or number of ways to move forward, is generally then much easier.

I have to say that when I first came across this that I could see a practical utility to it. In my line of work, with many business meetings, the possibility for talks to go arwy because of conflicting interests was very great. So I was mindful of trying out Bohm's ideas to see if they actually worked in practice. Although I got a few quizzical looks at first - especially if I had called the meeting - to my delight, when ever I applied the above I had much more productive meetings, even if they took a bit longer 'to get going' and overran on average by 15-20 mins. Over time I became more skillful in the way that I achieved points 1 & 2 so that in many ways it didn't matter if I had called the meeting or not. If it started out as a debate I would try and reposition everything as discussion and then subtly slide into dialogue mode by saying some like 'If I have understood your position correctly . . . and then go to describe a broad context and the points that they had made in this 'new' context.

Like Bohm, Karl H. Pribram (born 1919), an Austrian-born neurosurgeon and theorist of cognition also wondered if the brain might use something like a holographic means to represent information and memories. He was struck by the similarity of the way that information is distributed in a hologram and the way that information is encoded in the Implicate Order that Bohm had developed. In a 3D holographic image the information of the whole image is present in any part of the plate that captures that data. So to the naked eye it looks like a jumble of lines. But when two lasers are shone through the plates a 3D image appears; and remarkably if you take part of each plate away you still get most of the image. In a similar way, it is possible for someone to suffer quite severe brain damage but retain a good deal of brain function because memories are distributed throughout the brain.

They worked together on a model for human cognition that is very different from conventionally accepted ideas. The extensive use of Fourier transforms to mathematically analyse MRI and PET scans led them to assert that the brain uses something like a holograhic technique to encode cognitive functions. Pribram is also well known for his work on emotion, motivation and consciousness. Given that we all experience consciousness on a regular basis; it may be fitting at this point to ask how it came about in the first place. And this is where the story gets really interesting for me.

The most convincing explanation of how cognition arose in the first place and also to how it is self sustaining, came from Chilean neuroscientist Humberto Maturana asking the following questions:

What properties must a system have to be called truly living?

Can we make a clear distinction between living and nonliving systems?

What is the precise connection between self-organisation and life?

What is the organisation of the living?

What takes place in the phenomena of perception?

His central insight that: "living systems are organised in a closed, causal, circular process that allows for evolutionary change in the way that circularity is maintained, but not for loss of the circularity itself." He also realised that: "a nervous system is not only self organising but also self reffering, so that perception cannot be viewed as the the representation of an external reality but must be understood as the continual creation of new relationships within the neural network: 'The activities of nerve cells do not reflect the environment independent of the living organism and hence do not allow for the construction of an absolutely existing external world." (The Web of Life p96) . He goes on to say: "Living systems are cognitive systems and living as a process, is a process of cognition. This statement is valid for all organisms, with and without a nervous system"

After publishing this work Maturana, teams up with a younger neuroscientist called Francisco Varela, so that they can flesh out these new concepts and work on a complete verbal description of circular organisation. In order to differentiate this from other concepts they decided to create a name for it and they chose: autopoiesis

Auto, means 'self' and refers to the autonomy of self organising systems; and poiesis (from the Greek root of poetry) means 'making'. So autopoiesis means 'self making'. The organisation of living systems, they explain, is the set of relations between its components that characterise the system as belonging to a particular class (e.g. bacterium, flower, cat or a human brain). They go to explain that in a living system "the product of its operation is its own organisation."

Even more excitingly they go on to say: "The central insight of the systems theory (a.k.a Santiago theory) is the identification of cognition, the process of knowing, with the process of life. This represents a radical expansion of the traditional concept of mind. According to the Santiago theory, the brain is not necessary for the mind to exist. A bacterium, or a plant has no brain but has a mind. . . .The new concept of cognition, the process of knowing, is thus much broader than that of thinking. (The Web of Life, Capra, p170)

I have to say that as a Buddhist I was overjoyed to read this fantastic book which is extremely well put together. Even though it's fair to say that Fritjof Capra has his critics - his supporters (e.g. James Lovelock & Lynn Margulis) are pioneers and I would say the best in their field. But clearly for someone to suggest that: "the brain is not necessary for the mind to exist" is going to come in for some flack from the reductionists. Be that as it may, as a Buddhist I find the whole line of argument very compelling and with distinct parallels with what we saw in part 1 of this series. On page 156 of The Web of Life we find 'The Key Criteria of a Living System' and I have highlighted below - where these appear with reference to Apperance, Nature and Entity:

Appearance:

1) The physical world of matter which can be defined in terms of existance an non-existance e.g. physical DNA

2) It is bounded by space and time

3) The physical structure that embodies a persons pattern of organisation - their body.

4) All physical form is changeable and temporary. The world of continual flux.

Nature:

1) Neither existance nor non-existance not bounded by time or space.

2) Has the capacity to be activated by stimuli

3) Dormant or latent potential e.g. information in DNA

4) Spiritual nature of life especially a person and their changing moods

5) Qualitative aspect of a physical system e.g. Charcoal and Diamonds are both made of carbon but with a different molecular relationship

6) Synonomous with mind or the continuous movement of the subconcious

7) Unlimited potential

8) Transmission of knowledge, wisdom and experience through the collective unconcious

9) Capacity for good or evil at any moment

10) Latent information holds the potential for it's own manifestation

11) Pattern of organisation i.e. the configuration of relationships that determine a persons character

Entity (of the Unchangeable Self)

1) This entity gives rise to Appearance and Nature

2) It is consistent and unchangeable over time even though our mood changes

3) A persons identity as a unique instance of life.

4) Self powered and self actualizing individual

5) Life process that maintains the continual embodiment of a living systems pattern of organization.

6) Similarities to the authentic existential self of Jaspers and Heidegger and Nietzsch's superman

7) Buddha is Life itself

　

As Nichiren Daishonin says:

Thus, as we have seen, even those

who lack understanding, so long as

they chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, can

avoid the evil paths. This is like lotus

flowers, which turn as the sun does,

though the lotus has no mind to direct

it, or like the plantain that grows with

the rumbling of thunder, though this

plant has no ears to hear it. Now we

are like the lotus or the plantain, and the

daimoku of the Lotus Sutra is like the

sun or the thunder.

　

Next time - The Ten Worlds - or each life state has it's own logic