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The Center of the Universe
William S. Moxley
4. The Neuromechanics of HRS Introduction
BEING AN OUTLAW does have its share of sudden
and tragic surprises. The moralist (if he has read this far, out
of a taste for voyeurism or some other vice curious to those who
know what is right and hesitate not to coerce others to their
views), shall now have permission to gloat. Yet it has been my
life experience that sudden misfortune occurs to us all, most
unexpectedly and just when we thought we were going along quite
nicely. Moralists and fanatics of all kinds get their share quite
as much as the outlaw, the iconoclast, or the revolutionary, but
moralists seem rarely to commit their misfortunes to pen and
paper. The worst of misfortunes that men suffer is in my view the
slow, life-long and silent tragedy of those who do not, or will
not abandon so-called security when opportunity knocks. To be
simply dragged along by the responsibility to safety may be
instinctual, but it is hardly creative nor does it lead to the
fulfillment of the more precious potentialities of being human.
To arrive safely at the stage of life where it is certain that
the halfway point has passed, yet not even have an interesting
story to tell, would be for me a far greater tragedy than the
several which awaited.
During the later stages of our morning-glory
researches, news reached us that two friends, who had been
missing for a few days, had been ambushed and shot dead while on
an expedition into the mountains of Michoacan. Several times
previously they had brought back with them the most amazingly
potent cannabis for us to sample; in those days seedless
marijuana, or sinsemilla, was almost unknown. I remember
introducing sinsemilla from one of their mountain forays
to a few friends in New York who were well acquainted with all
the varieties of hashish and pot that international smuggling
could bring to market. With the exception of that rare piece of
especially strong Lebanese Red, the sinsemilla won all
contests.
In spite of the new climate of liberalism on
both coasts of America, for several marijuana smoke-ins had
occurred and were mostly tolerated (it even seemed like
legalization would not be too long in the offing), in Mexico
association with any aspect of marijuana classed one immediately
as a contrabandista, and subject to the same wild-west
outlaw-style of justice as any train robber, or trafficker of
guns, hard drugs, slaves, or revolution. The fate of our
mild-mannered hippie friends was adequate proof of this. A few
weeks previous, we had been invited to a luncheon in celebration
of I-was-never-certain-exactly-what, and around the great table
of Mexican haute-cuisine sat the chief of police of Guadalajara,
a couple of army generals charged with controlling, among other
things, the local drug traffic, a half-dozen other government
types, a whole tribe of the most authentic-looking contrabandistas
one could imagine, including the major marijuana and hard-drug
broker of the state of Jalisco, and three disguised hippies (we
had cut our hair short north of the border to ensure ease of
entry into Mexico). Well it was a merry time indeed, I am ashamed
that I had not then learned enough Spanish to relate here the
details of the merriment, but the machine guns were casually
reposing along the entire length of the dining room wall in a
manner surpassing even Hollywoodian depictions of 1920's Chicago.
We hippies, of course, came unarmed.
Perhaps the JohnWayneian fables we had been
nourished on from early youth inured us to such signs of
impending catastrophe, but the loss of our friends suddenly
transformed the mythology of good guys versus bad guys
into a sobering lesson. It was not the type of sobriety the
moralist will now blame me for not embracing, for that is the
sobriety of capitulation to a lie, a lie which is not even one's
own. It was more the type of sobriety gained by the hard won
contest in which a small bit of wisdom is wrested from the ritual
of initiation which fate so generously supplies in response to
boldness. All the ancient tribes had structured their societies
with elaborate and demanding ritual contests whereby the young,
expressing their natural and new-found boldness, might gain
wisdom with minimal risk, but our own advanced Western society
had dispensed with such superstition, with the feeble exception
of First Communions and Bar Mitzvahs, and so the young found it
necessary to express prowess through automotive inanity,
alcoholic one-upmanship and other silly sport, the corporal and
spiritual fatalities of which seldom prompted scholars to bemoan
the demise of ancient ritual. If anything, new layers of laws and
regulations, and a few new prisons were expected to do the trick.
But I digress.
What the tragedy prompted me to do was not beat
a penitent retreat from my errant ways, disobeying laws that were
written for my own good, but to remove to safer climes and
continue on my researches with redoubled enthusiasm. Since the
outlawing of all use of LSD in 1967, the predictable had
happened. Clandestine manufacture and distribution had flourished
as had bathtub gin several decades before, and parallel to
bathtub gin incidents, not all clandestine LSD was of good
quality, nor manufactured by those intending that its use be
accomplished intelligently. (And as for parallels between alcohol
and psychedelic drugs, this is as far as it goes: either, or
both, may be legal or illegal, used or abused.) As a chemist, it
seemed a worthwhile project to experiment with the various
published synthetic methods it was possible to use in the
manufacture of LSD and other psychedelics, in order to develop
the most efficient processes possible. Efficiency here would mean
that the process had to employ a minimum of equipment, easily
obtainable chemical precursors and reagents, and still produce a
product of more than just acceptable purity, and in maximum
overall yield.
And as a shaman concerned with the existential
health of my tribe, it was also my duty to discover and relate
all possible knowledge to the people who would need such
information to use the psychedelic substances wisely. This aspect
of my work turned out to be by far the more difficult, for not
only had we lost touch with (eradicated, actually) much ancient
wisdom gained over millennia by the shamanic traditions, but the
modern political, social, and even scientific climates made it
practically impossible to recapture much of that early wisdom in
the natural way. The modern situation colored and distorted our
abilities to reproduce the mindset that would naturally see the
psychedelic experience as sacrament: the modern orientation had
first suspected the diabolical, then the insane, and soon
thereafter was trying to discover how to use psychedelics as
weapons of war and subterfuge.
Luckily, my friends, who were experienced in
that sort of thing, were able to import my laboratory back across
the border no questions asked. And so I found myself, back in
Somewhere U.S.A., (still a draft evader), and with an interest
that attracted over the next several years various groups of
persons wanting to promote the clandestine use of psychedelic
drugs, for reasons which seemed to change from noble to pecuniary
in proportion to the success achieved.
Unfortunately the prohibition of psychedelics
has for the last quarter-century prevented much progress from
being made on elaborating the details of the neurological effects
of LSD and other psychedelics in the human brain. As I mentioned
previously, the very modest amount of work that has been
done was with laboratory animals, or in vitro cultures of
nerve cells, and has in general been directed toward
toxicological or forensic ends. Thus there is not alot of
reliable data available on how normal doses of psychedelic
substances affect normal neurochemistry in normal human subjects
experiencing the more valuable and interesting aspects of
psychedelic experience.
If for the past several years experiments could
have been performed using volunteers, especially experienced
psychedelic users, in the attempt to accumulate some reliable
data, the task I will now attempt would be far more
straightforward. For example, I suspect that if the new and
powerful scanning techniques of PET and MRI were combined with
the experimental ingenuity of some of the top cognitive
neuroscientists to illuminate the brain mechanisms paralleling
cognitive processes altered by psychedelics, we would rather
quickly find out alot more about not only the mechanisms of
action of psychedelic drugs, but many other neuro-psychological
realities as well. If mere speculation about the psychedelic
experience has led me to discover a major new brain function
(assuming that the HRS mechanism is as important as I suspect,
and corresponds to various discoverable patterns of neural
signaling in the brain), imagine what a little serious research
is likely to turn up. Needless to say, even the underground
scientist of independent means is unlikely to have access to
Positron Emission Tomography equipment.
Nevertheless, I have gleaned enough data from
existing research to at least advance a few preliminary guesses
as to the neuromechanics of the Habit Suspension Model of
psychedelic experience. But before I venture into this minefield
of complexity I must discuss some further implications and
illustrations of the habit routine search cognitive process that
I have hypothesized. In proposing the habit routine search
mechanism as a fundamental but previously undiscovered brain/mind
process not only out of necessity to explain psychedelic effects,
but also from the perspective of other psychological,
anthropological, and evolutionary viewpoints, I hope to build
some badly needed bridges between these disciplines utilizing the
new model.
The phenomena discussed below, when viewed
through the new lens of the HRS model, start to be understandable
in a new way. But in addition, since current discipline-specific
models leave much to be desired in attempting to explain at least
some these phenomena, they demand a new and global way of
understanding them. The habit routine interpretation is not just
an alternative model for aspects of reality already well modeled,
but a viewpoint which may be able to unite poorly understood and
diverse phenomena under a common theoretical outlook. All of the
topics I will mention deserve more space than I can give them
here, some would require a lengthy analysis, but at the risk of
over-simplification, I don't believe I need an exhaustive
treatment to show just how wide the application of the habit
routine model might conceivably be. My attempts to propose
neurological models also will require reference back to these
many topics:
Anthropology
In anthropology, our understanding of the
phenomenon of shamanism and the ability of shamans to temporarily
divest themselves of their culture-bound cognitive limitations
using psychedelic preparations suddenly becomes much more than
the drugged delusions of the primitive mind as some have
suggested. The historian of religion Mircea Eliade wrote in 1951,
"But we have seen that, in shamanism itself,
narcotics...represent a decadence and that, in default of true
ecstatic methods, recourse is taken to narcotics to induce
trance." (1)
Naturally, if one's whole viewpoint concerning
"narcotics" has been shaped by the Prohibitionist Ideal
of Twentieth Century Western Civilization, it would have been
difficult indeed in 1951 to recognize the true significance of
the use, not of narcotics, but psychedelics by tribal peoples.
But Eliade's view is stillclung to today by more than a few
so-called scholars, yet paradoxically their own
"culture-bound cognitive limitations" strikingly
revealed in the mentioned Prohibitionist Ideal are as in need of
cure as were those of the tribal peoples they see as decadent.
The great importance of shamans and psychedelic
drugs to so many early societies can now be seen much more in
terms of the temporary yet cumulative cognitive advantages that
psychedelic experience would have conferred. The success of
shamans in curing some of the diseases of tribal members under
their care takes on new meaning, as does the use of psychedelic
agents in rituals for initiation into adulthood, for devination
and the making of important decisions, and more. Psychedelic
experience as habit suspension unites the understanding of many
aspects of the life and evolution of Early Man. And far from
being a decadent substitute for "true ecstatic methods"
as some insist, I will show that psychedelic use was and remains
the genuine article for which many less efficacious substitutes
were tried and abandoned. The stability, longevity and ecology of
many ancient societies could only have been a by-product of
cultural wisdom; if limited and narrow from our modern point of
view, such wisdom certainly was not accidental, and in some
respects represents ideals which modern industrial civilization
has not even pretended to espouse. Our knowledge of ancient
psychedelic plants and their use is the subject of many excellent
books and reviews now available (2); the knowledge represented in these
works goes far beyond the primitive views that were prevalent in
1951.
The transformation of shamanism into organized
religion, a much discussed though poorly understood process, was
most certainly a process which was paralleled by the
discontinuance of the use of psychedelic preparations. Insofar as
this transformation has also been one in which doctrine and dogma
have not only replaced, but forbidden direct individual
experience of spiritual realities, it would be difficult to
maintain that the change worked for the benefit of the individual
in need of spiritual fulfillment. It seems obvious that the
transformation was a political one, brought about by those
requiring control over their subjects through the creation and
manipulation of cognitive habit routines, and especially the
prevention of the use of methods enabling the individual to
bypass the limitations imposed on him.
The transformation was certainly not a
refinement which led to peace and harmony among early
civilizations having organized religions and priesthoods. Lack of
peace and harmony among nations and civilizations has, in fact,
become the most important behavioral characteristic of the human
species insofar as it threatens that species with extinction.
Individuals, robbed of their access to direct experience of
religious truth (and here there is no substitute: religious truth
is something that must be personally experienced), become
members of a society which can be coerced by petty tyrants into
all sorts of collective insanities. In a future chapter I will
extrapolate the importance of early shamanism and the use of
psychedelic plants in two directions: firstly to show that a very
significant role for psychedelics can be hypothesized in the
early evolution of man; and to supply yet one more sermon on the
faults of modern civilization and what might be done about it.
Meditation and Other Techniques
The understanding of meditation techniques, sensory
deprivation, religious ecstasy provoked by various insults to the
body, and the panoply of other methods that human individuals
seeking enlightenment and self-transcendence have employed down
through the ages becomes unified by the present model of habit
routine search and suspension. I propose that all these diverse
techniques are more-or-less effectivemethods for achieving what
the psychedelic drugs do more efficiently and directly, viz., to
suspend one's programming as represented in the personal
collection of habit routines. If there is something to be said
for the "naturalness" of non-drug methods, methods
whereby the individual is purportedly gaining the ability to
achieve transcendent states at will, there is even a stronger
statement to be made by the obvious unnaturalness of the more
violent and self-destructive methods of certain religious
ascetics: extreme fasting and mortification of the flesh, such
techniques must be seen as quite primitive substitutes for the
use of natural psychedelic plants, quite benign by comparison.
Note that I do not propose that these various
techniques affect brain operation through exactly the same
mechanisms: the outcome of altered or suspended habit routines
may be realized by quite different mechanisms and points of
intervention in neurological operation, both neurochemical or
self-induced, as I have already suggested. The hypothesis of the
HRS system being the fundamental and primary cognitive operation
of the nervous system upon which all the ensuing processes of
thinking are based, fits well with the proposal that there would
likely be many diverse ways to alter the system as a whole,
especially considering the cybernetic nature of most if not all
brain processes.
Instinct
The operation of what have been called instincts,
both in animals and man himself, may now be understood in a new
way. Although the capacity and characteristics of memory in
animals are generally agreed to be very limited compared with
man, the use of data implanted by experience, as well as the
genetically-expressed data of the collective experience of a
species, not as long-term memory in LMA, but as data for the
operation of HRS, seems a promising new approach in ethology.
Chapter 6 will explore some of this territory.
Personality and the Unconscious
In psychology and psychiatry we may begin to
understand better what the personality is, where and how the
neurological data that result in observed personality traits is
stored and accessed. A more physiological and operational
understanding of the properties of the "unconscious
mind" may now be possible, and may extend to understanding
how the prevalence of irrational belief can coexist in the same
society, even the same individual, with logic and rationality. We
may be able to apply the new concepts to the understanding of
phobias, neuroses, and personality disorders, the power of
propaganda and the phenomenon of crowd madness, the
neurocognitive correlates of prejudice, and the practice of
methods by certain individuals which seem to render them much
less susceptible to these major human weaknesses.
Human - Animal Dichotomy
The fundamental difference between man and animal
is an ancient question, still debated from the perspective of
many opposing viewpoints. The habit routine model may provide a
new assessment of man's uniqueness in his ability to suspend or
modify the operation of habit routine at will, (with practice),
and so develop and cultivate the ability to be creative. I think
it is safe to say that animals have the ability to be creative,
at least in a simple way, but they exhibit such ability only when
there is little alternative, as in a crisis, or in experiments
designed to elicit such behavior. They do not do so out of the
exercise of free will, so much is obvious. Man can, however,
cultivate and practice the art, and dwell in a creative state by
choice, but this is not to say that most human beings make the
required effort to do so to any significant extent. Thus proposed
differences between man and animal have to date always seemed
merely a matter of degree rather than substance, animals
exhibiting any suggested trait simply on a less complex level.
Tool-making, language, music and dance, and other examples could
be cited. Understanding the difference as a major reorientation
from a habit routine governed mode of existence to at least a
potentially Creative-Individual Mode (3) may be the characteristic which is more
of substance than degree. Further exploration of this topic must
also await future chapters.
The Binding Problem
The so-called binding problem in philosophy and
psychology, the lack of an adequate psychological or neurological
theory to explain how unitary consciousness arises out of the
multiplicity of sensory signals which arrive at the brain, (and
the multitude of independent channels of sensory processing that
have recently been demonstrated), may have a solution using the
ideas I have suggested. With the recent elaboration of Parallel
Distributed Processing models of brain function, where it is not
even suggested that there is a central structure
"responsible" for consciousness, the binding problem
has become even more mysterious, to philosophers at least. But if
our unitary conscious experience is not the experience or
awareness of the totality of sensory input (and mental
reflection) itself, but rather the after-the-fact experience of
our own habit routines activated by the sensory data, and
overlaid with only a sparse sampling of the sensory data relevant
to the habit routine complex called into play, the binding
problem disappears.
The relative absence of brain structures which
associate all the sensory data from the various sensory inputs
and intermediate processing areas to produce overall unitary or
"bound" awareness is no longer a mystery, because
unitary experience of external reality is an illusion. What we
experience are the cognitive or perceptual structures provided by
our own habit routines which enable the evaluation of only the
most salient or attended to aspects of external reality; we see,
hear, and understand only what we have already seen, heard, and
understood, plus a small fragment of new sensory data which
relates agreement or disagreement, the presence of novelty or
sameness. It is through this deceptively small window upon the
external that we exercise our apparently powerful abilities of
free will and creativity. The power over external events which
results, although demonstrably quite limited, seems great, great
enough to install in us an illusion of control far greater than
the evidence warrants.
If one of the fundamental questions in cognitive
science has been whether perceptual data for which there is no
conscious awareness can influence behavior, then from the above
it can be seen that not only is this possible, but since the
total sensory input is used primarily (almost exclusively) to
select habit routine complexes in thinking1, which is entirely a
pre-conscious operation, then the conclusion is that sensory data
is primarily unconscious and the primary "causative"
agent in behavior! I will return to the binding problem during my
discussion of the brain systems which enable the construction of
habit routines.
The Experiments of Benjamin Libet
The time delay between sensory signaling and the
subjective conscious perception of sensation which has so
carefully been demonstrated by neurosurgeon Benjamin Libet and
other experimenters may also have a simpler explanation than
those proposed so far. Libet and others have shown that a
pin-prick of the finger, for example, transmits a signal to the
cortex of the brain via the thalamus, which arrives in a few
thousandths of a second. All sensory signaling except olfaction
is similarly transmitted: first to the thalamus which acts as a
sort of relay-station distributing the signals to the appropriate
domains of the cortex. Yet conscious perception of the pin-prick
can by various experimental techniques be shown to be delayed by
up to a half-second, while "cerebral neuronal adequacy"
is achieved. (4) It
is proposed that there is then "a subjective referral
backwards in time, after neuronal adequacy is achieved, which
antedates the [perception of the] experience to correspond to the
time of early cortical responses..." [the onset of signaling
measured after a few thousandths of a second].
The alternative view that I propose is that the
original sensory signaling, passing through the thalamus, is
projected to all the appropriate areas of the cortex, and it is
this signal, by comparison with all the stored data representing
the frames of memory, which generates the habit routine complex
which is then used in the thinking2 processes of perception and
symbolization. The time delay corresponds precisely to the time
necessary for all the thinking1 (pre-conscious) comparisons of
current sensory signals with LTM (long-term-memory) to assemble
the habit routine complex to be presented to thinking2.
According to my view then, the original signals
from the periphery of the body, projected upon the cortex by the
thalamus, are not at all the "data" of which we become
aware. This original sensory "data" will be selected,
trimmed, and mostly eliminated during the process of HRS (habit
routine search), and only details from the data which are
relevant to the habit routine complex brought to awareness will
be included. Thus the greatest part, by far, of the
"data" which is experienced, the supposed "bound
awareness" of external reality, is merely the data that
already existed as LTM.
The problem of how experience is referred
backwards in time is also neatly resolved since what is
experienced is the habit routine complex generated from sensory
data received at the time of the pin-prick or other
peripheral input: the habit routine complex represents the
sensory data at the instant of reception into thinking1, not at
the (up to) half-second later instant of perception in thinking2.
The variability of the time delay may represent the level of
complexity of the HRS process required in each case, a strong
sensory signal is perceived more rapidly than a minimal one
because less cognitive effort is required to construct a habit
routine when the salient data is stronger than the background
sensory information. Remember that both strong and weak signals
arrive at the cortex with the same small time delay ("a few
thousandths of a second").
The idea that "perception is a function of
expectation" (5)
is, of course, not new. But the dependence has so far been seen
more as a minor imperfection or inconvenience, easily over-ridden
by careful observation especially by he who is in the act of
studying such phenomena. The new view provided by my theory shows
that very attitude to be a product of the "minor
inconvenience", the magnitude of its influence being
directly proportional to the certainty of its negligibility. I
repeat: in a very literal sense, we see what we have already
seen, hear what we have already heard, think what we have already
thought, believe what we have already believed, and I'm afraid in
most instances in most people most of the time, little else.
Illusions to the contrary may well be provided and sustained by
installed habit routines! Disagreement with this analysis may
well provide evidence for its accuracy!
Further Experiments
In a further series of investigations, Libet was
able to show a similar and apparently much more mysterious
anomaly. A carefully executed series of experiments seemed to
call into question the operation, perhaps even the existence of
"free will" as we know it. Again, the results were
indicated by the existence of various time delays in neural
signaling relative to tasks that the subject was asked to carry
out. Here is an abstract of theoriginal article:
Voluntary acts are preceded by electrophysiological
"readiness potentials" (RPs). With spontaneous acts
involving no preplanning, the main negative RP shift begins
at about -550 [milliseconds]. Such RPs were used to indicate
the minimum onset times for the cerebral activity that
precedes a fully endogenous voluntary act. The time of
conscious intention to act was obtained from the subject's
recall of the spatial clock position of a revolving spot at
the time of his initial awareness of intending or wanting to
move (W). W occurred at about -200 ms. Control experiments in
which a skin stimulus was timed (S), helped evaluate each
subject's error in reporting the clock times for awareness of
any perceived event.
For spontaneous voluntary acts, RP onset preceded the
uncorrected Ws by about 350 ms and the Ws corrected for S by
about 400 ms. The direction of this difference was consistent
and significant throughout, regardless of which of several
measures of RP onset or W were used. It was concluded that
cerebral initiation of a spontaneous voluntary act begins
unconsciously. However, it was found that the final decision
to act could still be consciously controlled during the 150
ms or so remaining after the specific conscious intention
appears. Subjects can in fact "veto" motor
performance during a 100-200-ms period before a prearranged
time to act. The role of conscious will would be not to
initiate a specific voluntary act but rather to select and
control volitional outcome. It is proposed that conscious
will can function in a permissive fashion, either to permit
or to prevent the motor implementation of the intention to
act that arises unconsciously. Alternatively, there may be
the need for a conscious activation or triggering, without
which the final motor output would not follow the unconscious
cerebral initiating and preparatory processes. (6)
Although Libet himself commented in the closing
section of his paper, "...it is important to emphasize that
the present experimental findings and analysis do not exclude the
potential for 'philosophically real' individual responsibility
and free will", several writers have, at least in popular
presentations, rather exaggerated the possible implications of
the experiments:
...The conclusion is that we are deluded in believing that
each of us is a free agent who may decide to take an action.
Such a decision is an interpretation we give to a behavior
that has been initiated someplace else by another part of
ourselves well before we are aware of making a decision at
all. In other words, the decision has been made before we are
aware of the idea to even make a decision. If "we"
are not pulling the strings, then who or what is? The answer
is, it is an unknown part that is unfathomable to
introspection. (7)
...Here we have physiological confirmation of Ambrose
Bierce's definition of 'intention' as apprehending the
imminence of an action. Behind the scenes the blind
brain-mind is determining what action to take, and when to
initiate it. And as it sends out messages to the muscles to
move, so it also initiates processes that may end up as a
conscious prediction of the act that is already on its
way. Consciousness, however, ignorant of its own foundations,
takes this prediction, and re-interprets it as control. (8)
Actually there are some elements of truth in
these observations, as I hope to show below, but they do not
support the implied positions of the authors. The peer commentary
in the same journal as Libet's original article, it must be said,
did not at all suffer from the same exaggeration, but presented a
range of quite perceptive criticisms of the methodology of the
experiments and suggested several less extreme psychological,
neurological and philosophical conclusions, yet Libet was in my
opinion able to support his position effectively. But none of the
commentators seemed able to simplify the experimental results and
their implications with a new modelof what might actually be
taking place. Let me first describe some further details of the
experiments:
Each experimental subject was asked to observe a
kind of TV monitor on which was projected a spot of light
rotating around the center of the screen. This was the timing
device: psychological and sensory events were timed by observing
their occurrence relative to the clock-position of the spot of
light. The subject could then relate, for example, the timing of
a pin-prick or other event such as a decision, to the position of
the spot at say, three o'clock. The subject was then asked, at a
completely random moment chosen by himself, to suddenly flex the
fingers of his hand, and observe the clock-position of the spot
of light at the moment of his being aware of having made the
decision to flex his fingers. What was consistently found was
that an electrical signal in the cortex of the brain, the
"readiness potential", would appear about four-tenths
of a second before the subject signaled his awareness that
he had made the decision to flex, and that the actual flexing of
the muscles appeared about two-tenths of a second after
the apparent time of the decision. The fact that these were
considered startling and unexpected experimental results is
illustrated by the depth and intensity of controversy that ensued
in trying to explain the results within the framework of the
various critics' paradigms. What was debated by all was the
question of volition. How could the decision to take a voluntary
act, which in anyone's book must certainly be a conscious
event, be preceded by an unconscious event of such
regularity that the timing of the ensuing muscle movement could
be predicted from it?
The answer, according to the habit routine
model, is that there was no volition whatsoever concerning the
decision to flex the fingers. This was a "decision"
pre-programmed to take place as an instruction in working memory
for the selection and implementation of habit routines that would
lead to the desired movement. The trigger for this decision was
another instruction in working memory, the instruction to "choose
a random moment". The volition involved in the overall
process consisted of the voluntary programming of working memory
by the subject to carry out the instructions of the experiment,
nothing more. And nothing less, especially, for in this process
we observe quite unambiguously the operation of free will: the
subject chooses quite freely to follow the instructions of the
experiment, and consciously programs his working memory with the
recipe for carrying out the desired sequence, viz., choose
a random moment, notice the position of the timing device, and
then flex the fingers.
Owen Flanagan has expressed a similar
interpretation of the experiment. But his philosophical intent
seems to be to argue against any idea that mind might be anything
other than something caused by physical,
observable-in-principle brain processes. He calls his position on
the mind/brain debate "constructive naturalism", but
seems to fall into the same trap concerning causation that I
mentioned previously:
I conclude that Libet's results, far from offering solace
to the suspicious epiphenomenalist, are precisely the sort of
results one would expect if one believes that conscious
processes are subserved by nonconscious neural activity, and
that conscious processes play variable but significant causal
roles at various points in different cognitive domains. (9)
The first proposition, "conscious processes
are subserved by neural activity", is in logical
contradiction to the second, "conscious processes play
causal roles". If the first proposition is taken to mean
that for every conscious process that may be defined or
intuited to exist, then there is necessarily a real, durational,
and logical sequence of neurological operations in the brain
which precedes and causes the conscious activity (causation must
have duration and precede the effect which results), then the
conscious process of the second proposition must be
included: it must also be caused by neurological activity, and so
its apparent causative power is only a reaction to previous
neurological causation. As I stated above, the mind, or
consciousness, is thus reduced to having no actual causative
power at all, it becomes an inoperative concept.
I must also reiterate my own position that this
argument does not automatically make me a "suspicious
epiphenomenalist" nor a closet mysticist. The mind/body
debate has, like so many other debates, become polarized into a
binary reductionism: if you're not in the one camp, you must be
in the other. If you don't believe that the physical
manifestation of the brain "causes" all the mental,
intentional, qualitative, subjective, and yes, spiritual
manifestations of the human (to say "organism" would
already be admitting to the reductionism I am questioning), then
you must be an advocate of mysticism, i.e., unscientific.
My previous analogy to the dual nature of
electromagnetic radiation is apt, I think, for it illustrates the
same debate that occurred in physics long ago: is light a
particle or a wave? Or both simultaneously? Does the particle
nature of light cause its wave aspects? Or vice versa?
All these questions may only be asked from the point of
view of classical physics, they only have meaning from the
classical view. Once quantum mechanical physics enters the scene,
no one even attempts to answer the questions on the classical
level. If my guess that brain and mind are parallel aspects of a
more fundamental reality is nebulous, perhaps it will take on
some relevance when a "quantum mechanics of philosophy"
will be available. Whether a process of mind studying mind will
accomplish such a feat is still an open question.
I hope I may be forgiven for having diverged
considerably from my analysis of Libet's findings to repeat an
argument of the previous chapter, for I think that the argument
and the logical inconsistency it points out lend some credibility
to the use of the habit routine model as a way to resolve many
aspects of current debate. The habit routine model is far from
being a mystical proposition, yet it seems that many questions
which previously forced opinion into either the reductionist or
mystical extremes are now moot. If the habit routine model does
not itself show how mind and brain might be parallel and
complimentary aspects of the same thing, it at least weakens some
arguments that such a view must be unscientific. To continue with
the habit routine view of Libet's results:
I would propose that the time of the onset of
the "readiness potential" corresponds exactly with the
implementation of the instruction in working memory to
"choose a random moment", and that the ensuing delay
corresponds to the time necessary to activate the habit routine
search process to produce a pattern which seems to the subject to
satisfy the instruction, "choose a random moment." At
this point, the second and third pre-programmed instructions to
notice the time, and then flex the fingers is launched, and the
ensuing delay again corresponds to the time necessary to select
and activate the various habit routines necessary to implement
the physical action. The subjective timing of the intention to
move the fingers occurs when it does because it must await the
success of the first instruction to choose a random moment. When
conscious awareness is satisfied that this criterion has been
met, it "approves" the continuation of the instruction
sequence in working memory. Notice that I have adhered to my
intuition that mind and brain are simultaneous, not causative in
either direction; in this example the readiness potential is the
physical attribute of the larger process which is implementing
the instructions of free will.
Hallucinations
I have already alluded to the idea that the
so-called hallucinations resulting from psychedelic experience
are not "real" or strong hallucinations at all. In this
case, normal sensory data, perceived without the usual framework
of acceptable habit routines to organize and categorize the
perceived sensations, becomes itself seemingly hallucinatory (in
the naive subject) because it is perceived "as is".
And, as I mentioned previously, the perception of such sensory
input, especially if the set and setting of the experience are
threatening (as in the above account of a hospital-setting LSD
session), will through feedback to further thinking1 habit
routine search produce even more bizarre results, greater
feelings of loss of control, etc.
Classical hallucinations produced by brain
pathologies and various diseases are a quite different
phenomenon, as was noted by many of the early psychedelic
researchers. It was in fact the widespread dissatisfaction with
the term "hallucinogen" (and also
"psychotomimetic") which led to the coining of the term
"psychedelic" as a properly descriptive name for these
substances. Classical hallucination produced by brain pathology
(or as manifested in the delirium tremens of end-stage
alcoholism, for example), is probably outside the domain of the
habit routine model, although the psychological and cognitive
results of certain nervous system diseases may assist in devising
the neurological model of habit routine search. In the next
chapter I will discuss some types of brain damage which provide
such evidence.
Subliminal Perception
Many diverse psychological experiments have been
able to show that information from a briefly encountered
experience, although not subsequently accessible to normal recall
of memory, nevertheless provides data which the subject uses
"unconsciously". (10) In recent studies, the terms
"explicit memory" and "implicit memory" are
used to denote sensory information which can, or cannot be
consciously recalled. The terms correspond roughly to what I have
called LMA, or logical memory access (explicit memory) and the
output of the habit routine search system (implicit memory). But
defining the two as different types of memory obscures
what the habit routine model makes clear: the memory
"data" is the same, it is the method of access which is
different.
A typical experiment would run something like
this: Subjects are given a brief exposure to a word presented on
a screen. A 30 millisecond showing is not long enough for the
subject to recognize that he has seen anything at all, yet in
subsequent testing the word will be identified more frequently
from lists of random words than statistics would predict.
Research on subliminal perception had been motivated by studies
of amnesic-syndrome sufferers, who had often been observed to
have intact implicit-memory function despite gravely affected
ability to recall autobiographical events. A patient afflicted
with amnesia might be taught a procedure, for example, and shown
by testing to have retained at least some information that he had
learned. Yet he would have absolutely no memory for the time or
place nor the procedure in which he had learned this information.
Daniel L. Schacter (footnote 8) has identified
five types of evidence for the dissociation or independence of
these two memory processes and concluded, "Taken together,
the...studies constitute solid evidence for a fundamental
difference between implicit and explicit memory." The
evidence, I believe, fits the Habit Routine Model like a glove,
but it is not at all necessary to propose independent memory
systems to explain it. The Habit Routine Model proposes that the
same memory "data" from exactly the same distributed
sources in the various domains of the cortex, are accessed and
assembled by two different processes, one automatic, ongoing, and
pre-conscious (HRS in thinking1), the other voluntary,
deliberate, and accomplished by feedback of cues assembled from
conscious analysis and evaluation of thinking2 (LMA).
The model illustrates how HRS can retrieve
information from the briefly perceived, subliminal exposition,
yet LMA, which must have reference to a process of duration,
cannot access the same data. The film frame/clip analogy is
useful here: the 30ms exposure is recorded, just like all sensory
data, but it represents only a frame of a film. LMA must access a
sequence of frames during recall, a series of time-related frames
of a certain duration, a "film clip". This may be a
result of the nature of the cues which are used in LMA, or
perhaps just the inherent operating characteristics of the brain
system which reconstructs conscious memories. Or it might be
hypothesized that the memory of an instantaneous cross-section in
time, like the 30ms. exposure, would simply not register in
consciousness, thus no process of cue-construction necessary to
retrieve a memory would be possible.
An interesting experiment suggests itself to
attempt to show the operation of information collected and
useable as habit routines, but not accessible in LMA. A series of
images is shown, all subliminally, demonstrating one of several
possible logical relations between several different generic
objects depicted in the images. By "generic" I mean
that the objects do not have individual or "personal"
characteristics, but denote a type, or a class. Numbers or
letters in a non-descript font would be a good example, as would
simple geometric figures. In each image is also a prominent and
unchanging "reference" object which does have intrinsic
specific characteristics, a photograph of Jack Nicholson perhaps.
The images may be interspersed with other images, both subliminal
and perceptible, or they may even be inserted in a short film,
for instance.
Afterwards the subject is asked to deduce a
possible logical relation between the several types of generic
objects, now shown continuously, in one case with the
reference object shown, and in another case without the
reference. To deduce any one of the several possible logical
relations between the generic objects requires a logical sequence
of brain/mind operations, including attention and decision,
reference to previously learned knowledge of similar cases, it
requires deliberation of a complex nature. The logical relation
between the generic test objects implied by the series of
subliminal frames, if deduced preferentially over other possible
logical relations when the reference object is included, would
indicate that habit routines had been installed by the data in
the images; the co-presentation of the reference object should
reinforce the habit routine learned about the logical relation
indicated by the images. And not only would the routines be
invisible to LMA, but even recall of the objects themselves would
be nil.
Note that some preference for the required
logical relation should be present even without the reference
object. The prediction is that a small preference should be found
without, and a larger and much more significant preference with
the reference object present. This is because the reference
object has obvious and strong individual characteristics which
would be expected to activate the assembly of habit routines in
which it played a part, whereas the test objects have little or
no specific characteristics. The experiment would demonstrate
that even complex logical decisions, supposedly made on the basis
of consciously applied information and calculation, are
nevertheless guided by invisible and pre-emptory patterns
installed in memory in perhaps involuntary and illogical ways.
(What would be logical about preferentially choosing one of
several relations among geometric figures based on a picture of
Jack Nicholson being present?!).
Context - Dependent Memory
This proposed experiment is a reduction to the
subliminal perception level of a more general phenomenon called Context-Dependent
Memory, which was described as long ago as 1690:
The British associationist philosopher John Locke refers
to the case of a young man who was taught to dance. His
lessons always took place in the same room which contained a
large trunk. Alas, it subsequently proved to be the case
that: "The idea of this remarkable piece of household
stuff had so mixed itself with the turns and steps of all his
dances, that though in that chamber he could dance
excellently well, yet it was only while the trunk was
there." (11)
Experimental studies of context-dependent memory
in recent years have established the importance of the effect,
but no general cognitive model has been proposed which might
explain its operation. The application of the habit routine model
may consolidate understanding of several currently studied
aspects of memory. Baddeley reports a particularly interesting
study, the results of which lend themselves directly to
interpretation using the habit routine model. This interpretation
of context-dependent memory will additionally lead us into
another question of importance for understanding HRS and LMA and
how these processes are initiated:
Is it actually necessary for the subject to return
physically to the same environment for context-dependent
effects to work, or is it sufficient to imagine the original
environment? This was explored in a study by Smith (1979) who
had his subjects study 80 common words in a distinctive
basement room on the first day, and then attempt to recall
them on a second day in either the same room, or in a
fifth-floor room with very different contents and
furnishings. Subjects who recalled in the original basement
room tended to remember about 18 words, significantly more
than those who remembered in the different upstairs room, who
recalled only about 12. Of particular interest however was a
third group who were tested in the different upstairs room,
but instructed to try to recollect as much as possible of the
original learning environment before starting to recall. They
remembered an average of 17.2 words, not significantly
different from those who had physically returned to the
learning environment. (12)
The habit routine interpretation of these
experimental results would be as follows. The original session in
which the 80 common words were studied was, like all ongoing
cognitive activities, organized around and facilitated by habit
routine complexes which each individual has developed over his
lifetime of conscious activity. They would be roughly similar for
all the subjects, but not identical, some persons obviously
having developed routines for study (the memorization of a list
in this case) which are somewhat different and more or less
effective than those of other individuals. Nevertheless, for a
given subject, habit routines typical for that subject are used
for the learning process, and the information learned is
incorporated into memory as further habit routines based on the
learning routines. Thus the learned data is itself organized into
habit routines related to those used in the learning. We might
think of the learning routine as a sort of template on which the
data to be learned is imbedded. But more than just the
"data" of the words is recorded! All habit routines are
potentially re-assembled from the entire sensory and cognitive
input of the moment (including the habit routines brought to bear
in implementing the ongoing process): if the words were printed
in red ink, if Beethoven's Fifth Symphony were playing at the
time, if one had an annoying itch, all these, including the
general surroundings of the room and the emotional
"feel" thus elicited in the learner, are part of the
habit routine which contains the information concerning the words
studied.
In the above experiment, recalling the words
later is improved if the subject is tested in the same room; here
the word information embedded in the habit routine created at the
time of learning is accessed more reliably by the presence of the
sensory input of the room (which matches elements of the original
habit routine). But improvement is also noticed just by asking
the subject to imagine the original learning location. In
this instance, the habit routine is activated by thinking2
imagining the original scene and supplying this as an input
parameter to HRS via working memory.
It has been noticed in many studies that if the
words to be learned can be organized in some way, either
intentionally with a mnemonic or categorization process, or
"unconsciously" by the influence of context, as is the
case here, then subsequent recall is much improved. We may view
this effect as the production of habit routines having an
internal organizational structure, a cross-linking between
elements of the routine, so that recall or recognition may be
brought about by more numerous cueing situations. The context in
which the learning is taking place, the basement room, provides
an organizational framework, as would more intentional or
contrived methods such as relating the words to certain
categories or classes.
This brings us to the related question of the
difference between recall and recognition. In word learning
experiments, a subject can be tested for his recall of
words, i.e., the words that he can remember on demand; or
for recognition, wherein he is given a list of words only
some of which were words to be learned. The subject then goes
through the list and replies yes or no to each entry. Baddeley
discusses the many experiments that have been done and the
methods used to correct for various errors inherent in the
procedure. (13) It
has been shown that, as a rule, recognition is far better than
recall, scores for the former being typically twice or more the
scores for recall. A single case study (of myself) illustrates
the disparity and suggests also that using the experimental
paradigm of learning and recall of words (as opposed to
images, or composite sensory patterns) may not tell the whole
story:
In the 1950's and 1960's I often frequented
small record shops to buy cheap (I was a student) and usually
out-of-print jazz record albums. Album cover design, even then,
was crucial in promoting records that were not expected to be big
selling items, and so many were quite original in appearance.
When sifting through the bins, I almost never erred in knowing if
I had already bought an album, yet a printed list of titles was
much less helpful. To this day I can look at an old jazz album on
display, and tell immediately if I already own a copy in my
collection of well over a thousand. A list of titles is much less
effective. And if asked to recall the cover art from a well-known
album, I will usually fail for most items. Out of a thousand, I
can right now bring to mind the cover of perhaps twenty or
thirty, yet somewhere in my head is the "data" required
to recognize them all. I predict, on the basis of my own
experience here, that if experiments on recall vs.
recognition were performed using visual and perhaps audio
material, as well as composite sensory input, the disparity
between recall and recognition would far outpace the results
found for word study tasks.
Baddeley notes, "The question of how recall
and recognition are related is one of the oldest in the study of
memory. It is also one that remains complex and
controversial." I think that the Habit Routine Model may
have some ability to simplify the controversy, for the
distinction between recall and recognition parallels closely the
distinction I have made between LMA and HRS. In recognition, the
result comes about automatically and rapidly through HRS, the
effect of context being entirely "pre-conscious", an
operation of thinking1 processes; whereas in recall, the context
can be consciously recreated to assist in the process as in the
experiment above. Thus in the recall of words learned in the
basement room, the subject can improve his score by simulating
the context, using LMA to intentionally reconstruct the look and
feel of the basement room. In the experiment that I have proposed
(showing a series of subliminal images containing the constant
context or non-generic item), the context item automatically
supplies access to habit routines which produce the response. In
the basement room experiment the working memory is intentionally
programmed with a reconstruction of the context (in the case of
the upstairs recall), which then as a parameter for ongoing
thinking1 assists in recall.
Filling In
Another phenomenon of recent interest and debate
which may benefit from a habit routine interpretation is filling
in. In its simplest aspect, it has long been known that due
to the particular structure of the eye, there is a small blind
spot on each retina at the position of its attachment to the
optic nerve. The portion of the visual scene projected here is
therefore not represented in the visual cortex of the brain, yet
we have no awareness that there are two blank spots in our field
of view. (A simple experiment that all children are taught shows
the reality of the blind spot.) The process whereby the brain
nevertheless produces an apparent continuous field of view is
called filling-in, and some examples of recent research and
controversy are nicely summarized by Francis Crick. (14) Although the
filling-in of the blind spot may be a quite simple process in
normal persons (the retina itself may play some supporting role)
a more extensive and higher-order kind of filling-in is known to
occur with brain-damaged patients. Crick reviews the research of
Ramachandran (15)
and his colleagues and concludes,
Filling-in is probably not a special process peculiar to
the blind spot. It is more likely that, in one form or
another, it occurs at many levels in the normal brain. It
allows the brain to guess a complete picture from only
partial information-a very useful ability. (16)
The Habit Routine Model agrees entirely with
this assessment that only partial information arrives at
conscious awareness, yet an apparently seamless perception of
reality results. But the model goes even further in saying that
most, or nearly all, of the data we believe we are perceiving is
the data produced by the "filling-in" that the habit
routine search process has provided. It is not surprising then
that such a powerful system can fill in the minor amounts of data
lacking due to the characteristics of the retinae, or even of
damage to the visual cortex of the brain.
Synaesthesia
Along with the renewal of interest in consciousness
and the mind/body problem in the wake of the demise of
behaviorism has come a wave of new theories about long-known yet
little-understood phenomena such as synaesthesia, the cross-over
or confusion of two or more sensory domains. Popular books about
such long-standing enigmas have reached a wide audience. In
observing the disparity of proposed theories attempting to
explain some of these phenomena, it becomes evident that
psychology and the study of the mind is still in its infancy. But
also, due to the breakneck pace at which research is now
eliciting important if uncoordinated results, it seems of
paramount importance for some part of this wide area of
exploration to devote its efforts to providing linkages between
the various disciplines, attempting to design overall theoretical
frameworks which deal with all the phenomena on a unified basis.
If not, I fear we are in for even greater overall confusion,
disagreement, and controversy. In reaction, a new brand of
behaviorist, mechanistic, nothing-but-ism is likely to take hold
to again stifle creative approaches in man's study of himself. I
make these comments here because a recent book on Synaesthesia (17) illustrates the
lack of coordination in recent theoretical approaches. I should
not single out this book from the many others which have
purported to "explain" consciousness or various aspects
thereof; reading several of these is more like watching a
sporting match than an exposition of a deliberate research
undertaking.
The quotation from The Man Who Tasted Shapes above,
in the section on Benjamin Libet's time-delay research,
exemplifies the point, I believe. One-upmanship contests, perhaps
encouraged by editors and publishers, take precedence over
accurate representation of others' work. As for synaesthesia,
Cytowic presents interesting theoretical ideas, but limits them
by inaccuracy of presentation of supporting evidence. This is
certainly the case where he attempts to present results of
psychedelic research to support his ideas. (18) Reported synaesthesia during
psychedelic experience has occurred frequently enough to warrant
attention. Yet scientific attention is so severely limited by
research restrictions that it is certainly a dubious conclusion
that psychedelic synaesthesia has anything more than coincidental
parallels to naturally-occurring synaesthesia. Cytowic remarks,
Ethical considerations guarantee that 1950s-era government
research into the effects of LSD on humans will never be
repeated. While no contemporary research exists, however, the
older data about the drug's general effects on the nervous
system are reliable.
The statement reveals, I fear, a dual ignorance.
If the unethical 1950s-era research he refers to is that
undertaken by the CIA, (and highly unethical it was, along with
much if not most other CIA "intelligence" activities),
then Cytowic displays a glaring unawareness of the research of
the dozens of workers who administered many thousands of
psychedelic experiences in which ethics were not only respected
but a primary consideration. But if Cytowic is ignoring this much
greater body of highly ethical research for the abominable
fumblings of the weapons and mind-control crowd of MK-ULTRA/CIA
fame, it is highly questionable to then express confidence about
"older data being reliable."
It is simple enough to explain psychedelic
synaesthesia in terms of habit routine suspension, (I will leave
it as an exercise for the reader!), but I believe that the habit
routine model may also succeed quite well in explaining naturally
occurring synaesthesia. Cytowic states that synaesthesia is a
product of the limbic system, not the cortex, and with this the
habit routine model is in moderate agreement. I will show in the
next chapter the interplay between the cortex and various centers
of the limbic system which brings about the various habit routine
cognitive operations. But rather than having to postulate an
enhancement of limbic activities, or the actual crossing-over at
some point of sensory signals as others have done, (both of these
hypotheses depend on the supposition that it is the bound
awareness of all the sensory domains which consciousness
perceives), a simple and small change in the limbic activities
which access and apply habit routines is the only hypothesis
necessary.
Once again we see that if it is not bound
sensory awareness of which we are conscious, but rather our own
habit routines, the mechanism underlying the phenomenon is easily
imagined, rather than requiring several hypothetical nervous
system operations unsupported by any existing research. And once
again I think, the habit routine model shows its capability to
moot certain questions of controversy by providing an overall
structure in which previously misunderstood or misinterpreted
phenomena are now brought together.
The Newly - Sighted
Another such phenomenon recently discussed in a
popular book (19)
concerns persons who have been blind for many years and whose
sight is then restored, the "newly sighted". Oliver
Sacks relates the rare yet typical case of Virgil, a man blind
since early youth due to heavy cataracts. At the age of fifty, he
undergoes the relatively simple and risk-free operation for
cataract removal. All are hopeful for wonderful results, yet, as
has been noted in the handful of cases with other newly-sighted
patients, curious and difficult problems arise and persist, and
the final result has often been disappointment and tragedy: Not
because sight is not restored, but as Sacks relates in a lengthy
and fascinating account of Virgil's tribulations, sight seems to
be extremely difficult to understand and interpret in such a
situation. According to the habit routine model, we could say
that firstly, Virgil had no available perceptual habit routines
to be activated by visual stimulation, therefore what he
"sees" is only color and motion in a practically random
and significance-less pattern. With effort and practice, he is
able to interpret some of the visual data in terms of the world
as he has known it through his other senses, but he has immense
difficulty in learning these interpretations: they must be
repeated each time anew. For instance, visually he cannot tell
his dog from his cat. The instant he touches one or the other
however, its identity is obvious. Relating the visual data to the
touch is not retained however, for the next time he encounters
the animal visually, again he is lost.
Secondly, cognitive aspects of the habit routine
complexes are also lacking. This was illustrated by Virgil's
inability to see photographs and pictures as anything but random
if interestingly colored surfaces, even after he had been
practicing with his new vision for awhile. Along with previous
cases, he could not see people or objects in the pictures, even
after he had learned to recognize them in the flesh. He simply
did not comprehend the idea of representation for there were no
cognitive habit routines available which would allow and
facilitate such interpretation.
And thirdly, since all Virgil's existing habit
routines consisted of structures building upon his previously
available senses, (it had been remarked how his sense of touch
and smell were acute, and far more developed than in normal
persons), there was no possibility of intuitive or automatic
cross-modal association between his new vision and his
established cognitive schemes for understanding the world around
him. With a cane, he could walk up a stairway easily, yet the
vision of the same stairway gave no comprehension of its
three-dimensional structure and how one might navigate it. This,
in spite of knowing for certain that what was being viewed was
the same object that could be climbed with ease bytouch alone.
There were no cognitive habit routines enabling a connection
between the reality as perceived by the two sensory methods.
I refer the reader to Sack's description of
Virgil's symptoms (which one might call them in the sense that
they are the result of a deficit, in this case a deficit of habit
routines of perception and cognition necessary for the function
of meaningful vision). With the elaboration of each strange
effect, the habit routine interpretation is easily and
effectively summoned to organize and understand the situation as
a whole. In one sense, Virgil was in the situation of a young
child, trying to learn and establish the habit routines necessary
for interpreting a strange and colorful visual world around him.
Yet in another sense, since his brain and cognition had already
fully developed in other directions, taking account of his
deficit, he could not hope to achieve what the child does
effortlessly. In the young child, the entire cognitive structure
of habit routines is nascent and plastic; at fifty years of age
this structure is rigid, established, and not amenableto radical
change such as the sudden introduction of a new sensory pathway.
In such a case as Virgil's we can see that the total absence of
habit routines enabling the interpretation of vision renders the
visual sensation incomprehensible; visual data arriving in
thinking2 awareness without any organizing habit routine
structure results only in a profound and, in the end, often
tragic confusion which becomes a liability rather than a gift.
Perception of Language
I believe it is difficult, if not practically
impossible in some situations, to experience raw sensory data; we
cannot avoid experiencing external reality in terms of our own
habit routines. Consider what happens when we hear someone speak
a few words. If the words are in a language which we ourselves
speak, they are immediately and unavoidably transformed into
meaning! Try studying some difficult subject while a conversation
is going on, or worse, an abusive TV advertisement is running. We
are practically incapable of hearing such auditory sensory data
as just noise, the meanings of the words keep attracting our
attention. But the meaning is not inherent in the sound! If the
language is not a familiar one, no meaning is produced! What is
the difference? We experience our own habit routines, as I have
stated, and when we hear auditory input which calls forth habit
routines of meaning, it is these habit routines which are
pre-emptively experienced, not the pure sound of the words. Even
for a foreign language, our habit routine search process is still
active (if less insistent), trying to pick out short successions
of syllables which might have a correlation to our own language,
in the attempt to get at least some fragmentary meaning out of
the noise. The point is, we are practically incapable of just
listening to speech as pure noise, the habit routine search
system simply overrides the will to do so. The habit routines
turn the sound of speech into meaning, automatically,
unavoidably. (Interestingly, in meditation, one practices the art
of "quieting the internal dialog", of experiencing
reality without analyzing it, without attaching one's own
semantic interpretation to it. As I mentioned above, meditation
seems to be a method for suspending the significance and use of
habit routine in ongoing awareness.)
Now it is not conscious episodic memory, or LMA
which gives us the ability to understand language; we do not
actively recall the many instances in which we learned the
meanings of the words and their combinations. Yet the data that
was installed by these instances is certainly being used. For a
particular word I may perhaps be able to recall the event of
learning its meaning, but this is not what is used for present
understanding. Rather, the sum total of all instances in which
the meaning took on relevance for me is accessed (to continue
with the analogy of a film), asa collection of frames, by the
habit routine search process, and this collection of frames is
the habit routine called forth through which meaning is produced
in awareness. The fact that one can use a word in conversation
quite accurately, yet find it difficult to produce a satisfactory
definition of that word upon demand, illustrates the two
cognitive processes. Providing a definition requires LMA, (or at
least considerable conscious analysis of context to deduce what
the meaning must be), whereas the automatic use of a word in
proper and meaningful context is entirely controlled by the habit
routines generated in the thinking1 processes.
If it is easy to see how auditory input of
language results overpoweringly in the experience, not of the
pure sound, but of the meaning of that sound, (and hence
the habit routines which produce that meaning), I would ask the
reader to go back over my arguments concerning the other sensory
modalities. The experience of vision, for example, must be
parallel to audition of language: we do not experience the raw
sound, nor the raw visual scene, but rather the meaning to
which we habitually attach that sensory input. I cannot
stress enough, we experience what we have already experienced;
the view, if it has been stated in many contexts down through the
ages, now represents a new and radical paradigm shift for
understanding perception and psychology, for understanding
ourselves in a radically new and more complete way.
Illusions
There are textbooks full of examples of visual,
cognitive, and even auditory illusions. How do they work? One of
my favorites, since I started playing around with a video camera
and learning how to control the "white balance" so as
to achieve accurate color representation in my films, is the Land
Effect, named after the inventor of the Polaroid Land Camera. The
absolute values of colors as perceived by a standard measuring
instrument, like the charge-coupled-device (CCD) in the video
camera, change radically according to the color balance or
temperature equivalent of the ambient illumination. As I film my
wife in the shade of a north-facing wall, thence to walk out into
full southern-exposure sunlight, the colors of her costume
undergo a radical metamorphosis in the final film, if I have not
correctly regulated the characteristics of the CCD of the camera,
the "white-balance", in order to take account of the
change in illumination. If I film her in close-up, and set the
white balance to automatic, then the costume colors remain fairly
true to what we expect, but at a price: the background colors
change alarmingly. If I film her little walk from further away,
with the white balance locked to the setting which produces the
correct background, then it is the costume colors which change.
But as I observe the same scene with my normal vision, no
apparent metamorphosis takes place: blues are blue, reds are just
as red no matter where she walks, the background and the
costume are perceived without significant change even though the
color balance of light actually striking my retinae is changing
just as radically as it is at the surface of the CCD. Am I to
assume a "white-balance" feedback signal to my retinae,
adjusting their characteristics? There are no such neural
pathways in the brain. And any such regulation would not be
expected to correct for the costume and the background
simultaneously.
Whatever mechanism is producing this color
constancy effect must therefore be in the brain itself, in the
processes of cognition, although some preprocessing of
"data" has been hypothesized to occur in the retinae of
the eyes. Edwin Land and other researchers of the effect have
come up with a mathematical model of how various nervous system
"computations" of intensity information from the entire
visual field might allow constancy of color perception, but I
suspect that mathematical computation theories of brain operation
are all, in some sense, artifacts which may have good predictive
power, but are not really good models for understanding what the
brain is actually doing. I, for one, am quite certain that my
brain is not calculating integrals or differential equations due
to its demonstrated failure to do so on my final
"diffy" examinations! Admittedly, due to the very
limited and tentative knowledge about the mind that the
neurosciences have so far been able to provide, mathematical
models may be all we have, in some cases. Computer analogies for
mind processes all suffer more or less from this same failing,
which is why I may (as noted previously) enclose "data"
and "computations" in quotes when discussing mind
processes.
Land's experimental findings can be summarized
by stating that the perceived color of an object in the visual
field does not depend solely on the color of light entering the
eye from that object, but on the entire spectrum of light
arriving from all locations in the visual field. The application
to the habit routine model of perception is obvious, I think. We
would say that the habit routines for the constant perception of
color values overrule to a large extent the actual signals
relayed by the retina. But if habit routines can counteract
actual color changes with such efficiency that we are not aware
that any correction is taking place, why then doesn't it happen
while I watch the curious effect in the film of the scene which
live, caused no such drastic change? Actually, I have noticed
that after watching such a distorted film many times, as when
editing it, that I do begin to get used to the odd change in
color values, and correct for it, or at least ignore it (which
might be practically equivalent). Such habit routines can and are
inevitably developed to some degree in artificial situations such
as the film editing, but are strong and well-developed for the
experiences of daily life situations since they have been
practiced and reinforced since early childhood. In agreement with
Land's theory, we do "calculate" the color of the
object perceived by comparison with the entire visual field. But
we do so through the use of habit routines which define what
colors to expect when we see sky, grass, stone wall, tree, etc.,
and such habit routine information is only weakly established, if
at all, when divorced from natural three-dimensional
surroundings, as in the case of watching the TV film.
There are parallel situations concerning the
perception of the constant size of objects. Some very interesting
illusions have been produced to confuse our nervous system's
ability to tell us the absolute size of an object in spite of the
wildly varying size of image projected on the retinae, if the
object is moving for example. Again, I believe we can improve
upon mathematical models of how size constancy is accomplished
with the habit routine model. Constancy is again produced from
the constancy of the habit routines in use by the perceptual
system. The habit routines are what is perceived.
A Cognitive Illusion
Another quite fascinating illusion that has been
around for quite some time was discovered by J.S. Bruner and Leo
Postman in 1949. (20)
I will quote Thomas Kuhn's account of the experiments for its
concision, and also because he raises a couple of interesting
points:
In a psychological experiment that deserves to be far
better known outside the trade, Bruner and Postman asked
experimental subjects to identify on short and controlled
exposure a series of playing cards. Many of the cards were
normal, but some were made anomalous, e.g., a red six of
spades and a black four of hearts. Each experimental run was
constituted by the display of a single card to a single
subject in a series of gradually increased exposures. After
each exposure the subject was asked what he had seen, and the
run was terminated by two successive correct identifications.
Even on the shortest exposures many subjects identified
most of the cards, and after a small increase all the
subjects identified them all. For the normal cards these
identifications were usually correct, but the anomalous cards
were almost always identified, without apparent hesitation or
puzzlement, as normal. The black four of hearts might, for
example, be identified as the four of either spades or
hearts. Without any awareness of trouble, it was immediately
fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared by prior
experience. One would not even like to say that the
subjects had seen something different from what they
identified. With a further increase of exposure to the
anomalous cards, subjects did begin to hesitate and to
display awareness of anomaly. Exposed, for example, to the
red six of spades, some would say: That's the six of spades,
but there's something wrong with it-the black has a red
border. Further increase of exposure resulted in still more
hesitation and confusion until finally, and sometimes quite
suddenly, most subjects would produce the correct
identification without hesitation. Moreover, after doing
this with two or three of the anomalous cards, they would
have little further difficulty with the others. A few
subjects, however, were never able to make the requisite
adjustment of their categories. Even at forty times the
average exposure required to recognize normal cards for what
they were, more than 10 per cent of the anomalous cards were
not correctly identified. And the subjects who then failed
often experienced acute personal distress. One of them
exclaimed: "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 a heart. I'm not
even sure now what a spade looks like. My God!"...
[italics added]. (21)
The first italicized sentence raises the
question of what kind of illusion is actually happening here. The
reaction to the anomalous card is so automatic and reliable that
one is tempted to say that it is a perceptual illusion
taking place, that the subject actually perceives the anomalous
card as a normal card. But unlike many perceptual
illusions, in which the illusion persists even when knowledge of
deception is gained, here, as shown by the second of the
italicized sentences, the illusion tends to disappear after the
trick is discovered. It seems therefore that the illusion is
cognitive, having to do with the analysis or evaluation of
perception rather than perception itself. A perceptual illusion
may rely on habit routines that are fundamental to the
functioning of the perceptual system they involve, and thus be
very difficult to counteract. An example would be the now famous
line drawing which can be seen alternately as a vase, or as two
faces in profile, but never both simultaneously. (22) An illusion depending on the analysis
or higher processing of perception, as I believe the anomalous
card trick shows, can be overcome almost immediately by the
installation of new or modified habit routines via working
memory, which are supplied as parameters for further habit
routine search which then takes into account the new data that
anomalous cards are likely to be presented. It would be
interesting to know more about the few persons mentioned in the
experiment who had difficulty seeing through the trick even after
they knew about it.
At this point it might be useful to recall my
view in the last chapter that at least two different categories
for habit routines are postulated, although since a habit routine
is a composite of data from many sources, in multiple sensory and
cognitive domains, the categories will certainly overlap or be
simultaneously applicable in some situations. But as far as it is
useful, we may refer to habits of perception, and habits
of cognition. The latter will be understood as the habit
routines which are used for analytical and reasoning tasks, or
the production of meaning from language as discussed above, while
the former produce such things as the visual illusions mentioned.
I have suggested the term habit routine complex
to denote that the unitary habit routine which is constantly
constructed and presented to the awareness of thinking2 consists
of all these types or aspects simultaneously. Thus if we can
usefully isolate a part of an overall habit routine and see it as
a habit of cognition, or a personality trait, such a dissection
will be only a theoretical operation for heuristic purposes. The
actual habit routine complex is an entity constructed from all
levels of brain/mind operation from simple perceptual tasks to
complex intuitive, deductive and associational processes such as
the expression of personality.
Personality as Habit Routine
The very existence of strong, purportedly
inalterable "personality traits" seems to me a perfect
illustration of the prevalence and importance of habit routines
in producing the range of reactions to the daily life process. As
with the language example above, we do not use LMA to consciously
search our memories for the data revealing how to act in a
typical situation, consistent with our established
"personality". We react typically, but automatically to
certain situations, if not practically all situations, as an
observer who knows us well will attest. Others know us by our
personality, which when seemingly a bit different due to unusual
troubles or a very bad mood, will invite sincere inquiries of
"what's wrong? You're not yourself today!"
People who know us certainly do not expect
radical or even moderate personality change from meeting to
meeting; if encountered, someone will surely recommend a few
sessions on the couch, or medication. The most startling and
tragic event of diseases like Alzheimer's is perhaps not the
gradual loss of memory and function, but the loss and/or change
of personality which accompanies the disease. For the
family relative who loved the person as expressed through personality,
we may hear the lament, "he's just not himself
anymore." What could the personality be, if not a large
collection of routines suitable for automatic use; what data
could personality arise from if not the very same data from which
we extract conscious memories, yet accessed in an unconscious,
rapid and automatic fashion by a cognitive/brain system not under
conscious, analytic and deliberative control? The
thinking1/thinking2 model outlined in the previous chapter is a
far more descriptive and operational framework than simply saying
that personality is a property of the "unconscious
mind," as if there were some separate compartment, some
independent source of data wholly other, completely independent
of the conscious mind. It is the same data. It is the
method of use and the neurophysiology of access which is
different.
Cognitive illusions and intellectual traps are
more difficult to explain than visual illusions, no matter what
the theoretical model. But why shouldn't our opinions and
beliefs, our prejudices and expectations, our ideas about
reality, our personal metaphysical outlook, the very patterns we
use to evaluate what we believe to be truth or lies, also be not
only governed by habit routines, but actually be identical with
habit routines modified only slightly, in the ongoing perceived
normality of daily existence, by the precise monitoring of one's
present intellectual intentions? I don't deny that extensive
self-evaluation ever takes place, but in most individuals it may
take a life-crisis to stimulate it, while the creative genius and
artist may dwell there frequently. But since we all need to swim
in some kind of water, the normal everyday joe has
practically no awareness of his habit routines, and the artist
little realization that partial immunity to habit routines is his
own peculiar suspension medium. But if cognitive, evaluative
aspects of habit routines are as important as we see the visual
ones to be, psychiatry may be a far more primitive endeavor than
had been suspected even by the pessimistic.
As so often happens when one invents a model, or
attacks some problem with a new way of thinking, a search of the
literature reveals that someone has already covered the territory
and proposed something very similar. But the habit routine model
is itself applicable here: in having re-invented the idea from a
new perspective, without having previously been acquainted with
older work, I may have avoided falling into certain traps or
habit routines that the original work would have installed in the
process of learning it. Thus I discovered, long after coming up
with the idea of habit routine suspension as the mechanism of
psychedelic experience, that Sir Frederick Bartlett in 1932 had
proposed that memory and learning were represented in the mind by
being embedded in large scale structures which he called schemas
or schemata, "...an active organization of past
reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed
to be operating in any well-adapted organic response". (23) But in having
developed my own approach first, I arrived at a view of the
function of schemas, or habit routines in my terminology, which
attributes to them a more fundamental and primary importance than
even recent developments of schema theory imply. Daniel Schacter
notes that, "Although Bartlett's notion of a schema is
rather fuzzy..., and his experimental results have not proved
easy to replicate..., his approach has exerted a strong
theoretical and experimental influence on cognitive research...
Mandler...provides a useful summary of the cognitive conception
of a schema:
. . . [a schema] is a spatially and/or temporally
organized structure in which the parts are connected on the
basis of contiguities that have been experienced in space or
time. A schema is formed on the basis of past experience with
objects, scenes, or events and consists of a set of (usually
unconscious) expectations about what things look like and/or
the order in which they occur. The parts, or units, of a
schema consist of a set of variables, or slots, which can be
filled, or instantiated, in any given instance by values that
have greater or lesser degrees of probability of occurrence
attached to them. Schemata vary greatly in their degree of
generality-the more general the schema, the less specified,
or the less predictable, are the values that may satisfy
them. (24)
Baddeley summarizes the characteristics of
schemas shared by the various recent interpretations of schema
theory. The parallels to my own idea of habit routines will be
obvious, but I shall presently point out the important
differences in the two conceptions. (Baddeley is here summarizing
a paper by Rumelhart & Norman):
Schemas have Variables
Schemas are packets of information that comprise a fixed core
and a variable aspect...
Schemas can Embed One Within Another
Schemas are not mutually exclusive packages of information,
but can be nested...
Schemas Represent Knowledge at all Levels of
Abstraction
The concept of schema is broadly applicable, from abstract
ideologies and concepts such as justice, to very concrete
schema such as that for the appearance of a face.
Schemas Represent Knowledge Rather than Definitions
Schemas comprise the knowledge and experience that we have of
the world, they do not consist of abstract rules.
Schemas are Active Recognition Devices
This is very reminiscent of Bartlett's original emphasis on
effort after meaning. (25)
With a little editing, both of these sets of
characteristics could be used to define the nature of habit
routines. I have in fact learned much about what I expect of
habit routines from a study of modern research on schemas. But
there is a fundamental difference between the two concepts.
Schemas were hypothesized as hierarchical structures resident
in the mind/brain which provided an organized template on
which knowledge and memory was stored, as well as for the
incorporation of new knowledge or learning. Habit routines, by
contrast, do not have any independent or inherent existence
until they are called up, actually manufactured and assembled
from LTM data by brain systems which I shall define in the next
chapter. Although in speaking of habit routines, I continually
refer to them being accessed or called-up for use, the
terminology is only a convenience, for I do not wish to imply
that habit routines have any independent a priori
existence in the storage medium of the brain, which stores only
the frames of memory; a habit routine is constructed, in
my view, each time anew as required by the current ongoing
cognitive state. HRS is thus a process of reconstruction rather
than something akin to looking up a reference in a library. Also,
it must be remembered that Attention does not refer back to
habit routines after having received sensory information in need
of organization. Quite the contrary, for the information which is
at any moment available for Attention has already been
constructed from habit routine data via unconscious thinking1
processes.
In addition, much of the research that has been
conducted in the effort to illustrate the characteristics of
schemas has used language oriented material in the experimental
tests. The accuracy of memory in the recall of stories recounted
to subjects was studied, for example, to explore how the learning
of the story was superimposed upon schemas about typical aspects
of stories in general. But since I have proposed that language is
itself only a resonance to thinking1/2 processes,
(symbolization), occurring well after and only in reaction to
habit routine search and resulting thinking2 processes of
checking, analysis, and so on, then of necessity habit routines
do not themselves exist in terms of linguistic structures.
Language itself is not what is stored in LTM, although the means
(the data for the construction of habit routines) to produce or
reconstruct it most certainly are. I have proposed that the HRS
process is one of the earliest to have been evolved in the animal
nervous system, and this would certainly not agree with the
hypothesis that the data of habit routines was stored in terms of
language (an error and abuse-prone, add-on option only available
on the very latest models of animal life!) The study of the
manifestation of habit routines through experiments utilizing
language therefore misses their essential character. If we can
observe the effects of habit routines through the study of
symbolization processes we must not overlook the fact that we are
not eliciting the properties of habit routines themselves, only
their effect upon subsequent mental events.
An argument of economy supports the contention
that habit routines are constructed rather than accessed in
situ. If schemas or habit routines existed already structured
in LTM, then a particular important bit of information that
related to many different habit routines would have to be stored
in many different ways, redundantly, in order to be present in
the very many habit routine structures requiring it. If the habit
routine is manufactured afresh each time it is needed, the bit of
information need only be stored once. This is an
oversimplification however, since it is debatable whether the
storage of "data" in the brain can be conceived of on
the computer model of the storage of "bits" or
"bytes" of "data". Nevertheless I still
believe the argument of economy above is significant.
My belated discovery of schema theory as such a
close fit to my own model was in one sense a disappointment. It
is always gratifying to believe that one's work has originality.
But I also found an encouragement: If I had proposed the habit
routine model of cognition as a deduction from observations of
the effect of psychedelic drugs, (and in this I was sure to have
many, many critics), yet the model proposed had so many
similarities to a theory which "has exerted a strong
theoretical and experimental influence on cognitive
research" in Schacter's words, then my ideas about
psychedelic experience might not be too far off the mark. I had
arrived at a theoretical viewpoint from my study of psychedelic
experience which replicated current thinking in cognitive
science, about which I had studied very little.
I hope I have been able to convey the cognitive
nature of habit routines as I understand them. If
"Bartlett's notion of a schema is rather fuzzy", I
expect that it will also be said that my own notion of habit
routines is also somewhat nebulous. But the same could be said of
many current theoretical approaches to the working of the human
mind. The controversies and radically opposed paradigms in this
endeavor are a sure sign that our knowledge is yet primitive and
introductory, but also that a fruitful and rapid evolution of
understanding is imminent. In this chapter I have tried
therefore, not to propose a precise definition of what a habit
routine may be, but rather to illustrate some of the things it may
be in relation to several known phenomena. I am intentionally
leaving the concept of a habit routine open to further
development and more precise elaboration. If the habit routine
search and suspension model is in fact useful and widely
applicable, it will take more time and better minds than mine to
develop the idea satisfactorily. It is an ongoing effort on my
part to study the great volume of theories, models, opinions,
data and sheer speculation that has been advanced in the very
difficult task of understanding the human mind and how it works,
but professionals in this field who spend their lifetimes in the
universities and laboratories are far better equipped than I to
continue this work.
Necessarily, I have omitted mention of many
research studies about phenomena which seem to fit well with my
model, but which would have overly encumbered the present text to
describe. If at the end of the last chapter I mentioned the risk
of seeing habit routines everywhere, the reader will now see
that, if they are not omnipresent, my model at least intimates
that they are pervasive in a way that has not at all been
suspected in theories of the operation of mind/brain. I believe
that habit routines are fundamental, that HRS is the primary
cognitive operation of the brain/mind, coming before and
providing the very structure for the operations of mind of which
we have everyday awareness; and very importantly, due to these
characteristics, that the HRS process is greatly obscured by
its own operation. Only in the modification of its operation
(gradual and unsurprising in the case of meditation, for example,
radical and unmistakable in the case of psychedelic experience),
can we even suspect its existence, and attempt to understand its
characteristics and functions.
In the next chapter I will attempt to postulate
neurological mechanisms of the brain which might be associated
with the formation, use, and modification of habit routines, as
well as some of the other functions of mind that I have
discussed. Due to the present state of our knowledge of the
nervous system, my attempt will certainly be fraught with error,
not least because my own knowledge of neuroscience is
self-taught, and only (so far) a year in the making. But I
thought it would be useful to at least define some neurological
possibilities for the habit routine model, and it has been quite
alot of fun to do so. If professional neuroscientists will find
it child's play to show where I have erred, I would ask their
indulgence to suggest better neurological models rather than use
my admitted status as a novice to reject the whole theory of
psychedelic experience. In the act of too facile a dismissal of
the new ideas, (as has repeatedly happened in the history of
science), they might in the present case be providing evidence
for the very theory they are rejecting out-of-hand!
"...Psychedelics actually break habits and
patterns of thought. They actually cause individuals to inspect the
structures
of their lives and make judgments about them." |
Terence McKenna |
References
(1) Shamanism, Archaic Techniques
of Ecstasy, Mircea Eliade, Princeton University Press 1951,
1972 p417. (back)
(2) See Richard Evans Schultes and
Albert Hofmann, Plants of the Gods, McGraw-Hill 1979;
Schultes and Raffauf, Vine of the Soul, Synergetic Press
1992; and the numerous references therein. (back)
(3) This is a term I shall employ in
later chapters. (back)
(4) See "Neuronal vs. Subjective
Timing for a Conscious Sensory Experience", and other
reprinted papers of Benjamin Libet in Neurophysiology of
Consciousness, Benjamin Libet, 1993, Birkhäuser Boston. (back)
(5) References here could be cited
back to ancient Greece, I suspect. But a very cogent example is
John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, 1992, MIT
Press, p136. See also Nicholas Humphrey, A History of the
Mind, 1992, Simon & Schuster, chapter 14. Both of these,
and other recent popular treatments give a good overview of such
hypotheses in 20th Century research, and what they might indicate
about the process of perception and the nature of consciousness. (back)
(6) Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10
(4), (1987) p781. The original article and extensive peer
commentary appeared in ibid. 8 (4), (1985)
pp529-566, "Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of
conscious will in voluntary action". (back)
(7) Richard E. Cytowic, M.D. in The
Man Who Tasted Shapes, p170, 1993, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam (back)
(8) Guy Claxton in Noises from the
Darkroom, p224, 1994, Aquarian/HarperCollins (back)
(9) Consciousness Reconsidered, Owen
Flanagan, 1992, MIT Press, pp136-138. (back)
(10) See Michael I. Posner, Foundations
of Cognitive Science, MIT Press 1989, pp695-697
"Memory", by Daniel L. Schacter for a summary and
further references of original research papers. (back)
(11) Quoted from Human Memory,
Theory and Practice, Alan Baddeley, 1990, Allyn and Bacon,
p268. (back)
(12) Ibid., p270 (back)
(13) Ibid., p271ff. (back)
(14) The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis
Crick 1994, Charles Scribner's Sons, in chapter 4, "The
Psychology of Vision" pp54ff. (back)
(15) Crick lists the references:
Ramachandran, V.S., "Blind Spots" Scientific
American 266:86-91; "Perceptual Filling In of
Artificially Induced Scotomas in Human Vision" Nature
350:699-702; and "Filling In Gaps in Perception: Part 2,
Scotomas and Phantom Limbs" Current Directions in
Psychological Science 2:56-65. (back)
(16) Ibid., p. 57. (back)
(17) The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard
E. Cytowic, M.D., 1993, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam (back)
(18) Ibid., p128-129. (back)
(19) An Anthropologist on Mars,
Oliver Sacks, Alfred A. Knopf , New York 1995. See the chapter
entitled, "To See and Not to SEE". (back)
(20) Bruner and Postman, "On
the Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm," Journal of
Personality, XVIII, (1949), 206-23. (back)
(21) Thomas S. Kuhn, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Second Edition, 1970,
The University of Chicago Press, pp62-64. (back)
(22) See Francis Crick, The
Astonishing Hypothesis, 1994, Charles Scribner's Sons,
chapter 4, "The Psychology of Vision" for some nicely
illustrated examples of the vase/profiles and other visual
illusions. (back)
(23) F.C. Bartlett, Remembering,
1932, Cambridge University Press, p201. (back)
(24) J.M. Mandler "Categorical
and Schematic Organization in Memory", 1979, quoted by
Daniel L. Schacter in Foundations of Cognitive Science,
Michael I. Posner, ed., 1989, MIT Press, Ch 17,
"Memory" p692. (back)
(25) Ibid., pp 336-337 (back)
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