¿algunavez tepreguntaste silasbancas podíanestar deotramanera?
¿algunavez tepreguntaste silasbancas podíanestar deotramanera?

martes, 12 de abril de 2011

Reseteado Kernel "Homo insapiens"

Hay una crisis nuclear en el mundo, nuclear porque afecta al "kernel" o corazón del sistema. El capitalismo es un sistema operativo, descendiente del patriarcado. Se puede resumir aquí en que cuando miramos un número, no estamos viendo vida, o multitud de relaciones, sino un simple punto, en un simple espacio, definido como una simple línea recta (el eje mayor de la "cruz"), vertical, donde nuestra atención se reduce al punto, de la línea recta (eje de ordenadas) donde está nuestra nota de curso, o nuestras acciones de bolsa.


Este sistema operativo tan hartamente minimalista como peculiar, se nutre de todos aquellos aconteceres vitales, que se desvitalizan a fuerza de enderezar nuestros cuerpos, nuestros sentidos, nuestra atención, y nuestro pensamiento. Somos, aquellas mentes más burocratizadas, como especies "estenoicas", monocultivos mentales de Vandana Shiva, que "por arte de birbirloque", nos encontramos adorando, rezando, e idolatrando, (literalmente!) con la fuerza exponencial masiva resultado de un sistema operativo sobre una masa "M" de población, en un tiempo "T". Hartamente refutado ya el tal sistema operativo, hay aún ciertos "kadafi" aún acogotadamente agarrados a él.


Este texto no es "ciencia infusa", o ni siquiera una reflexión interesante, es simple fruto de sacarle hasta brillo durante años, al "gúgel", nomás. Hay una revolución cientifica, hartamente disponible en internet, pero invisible, aún, para las masas de cientificos especialistas. "Vueelvo", como el cantante valenciano. Vuelve el sentido común. Vuelve el sentido del común, o de lo comunitario, vuelve el chamanismo y/o pensamiento del niño (el de la niña no tiene que regresar pues nunca se vá!); y vuelve de la mano de los mejores equipos de investigación del mundo, tras billones de dólares y miles, millones de cientificos, incluyendo ya, con carta de igualdad, al chaman, como al cientifico, al pastor, como al ingeniero, a cualquiera, como depositario de una diversa y múltiple verdad, compartida.


Nuestra exploración de años de integración científica, nos conduce a 64 propuestas como líneas de fuga, para fugarse y olvidarse de esta Crisis Global que a nuestros ojos resulta, pues, hartamente paradójica, tras ver el tesoro intocado de nuevo conocimiento científico, tan perentoriamente necesario, como fácil de atesorar, si nos dedicamos, gustosamente a ello.


Hay, nunca mejor, dicho, cuatro planos de la realidad, que son los que principalmente alimentan este fósil viviente sistema operativo 1.0:


Planilandia (adoración) 1.0.0

El plano de la pantalla, en especial el formato "telediario convencional", cuerpos mutilados de cintura para abajo, solos, que no escuchan, solo rezan, mantras, ideas, que a fuerza de reproducirse en nosotras, siguen reproduciendo al sistema 1.0, cada vez menos!.


Planilandia (adoración) 1.0.1

El plano carreteril, tragado innecesariamente por demasiadas mentes que se aplanan a fuerza de mirar atentamente a un estrecho plano.


Planilandia (adoración) 1.0.2

El libro clásico, más de lo mismo, aquí la carretera mide un cm de ancho y es tan larga como un renglon global de muchos kilometros. Leyendo eres el helicóptero aero-vigilante de la playa lineal asfáltica.


Planilandia (adoración) 1.0.3

Hay aulas convencionales, jerarquicas, demasiadas, mudas en su muy alto por ciento, son cuevas - de deprivación sensorial -, restos anacrónicos de la educación industrial, que tan útiles como han sido para parir toda la maravillosa ciencia lineal, conductivista, es hora de que sean relevadas (de ahí las rebeliones escolares,...) al modo 2.0, "todos viendonos las caras todo el tiempo", como llega a ocurrir en unas cuantas aulas, de educación especial, en mi misma universidad, un poco hacia el sur-sureste. Así el multicerebro resultante, será capaz de compartir, con sencillez, toda esta maravillosa ciencia global que, como decíamos, confluye con el sentido común, el chamanismo, y el rejuvenecimiento, no solo de las teorías, sino de nuestros propios cuerpos, que de pensantes pasan a ser pensantes actuantes, y donde las puertas de la percepción ya echan a volar sin remedio, trayendo para vosotras, cuatro simbio tecnologías, muy practicas y divertidas, para disfrutar de la diversidad sensacional, cuando tu sistema multiple, y co operativo mimouX (tu cuerpo serrano!) se decide, por libre elección y capricho, a ir en modo 2.0.


copylife, mkptmk, mimouX e infimóniko, son las cuatro herramientas que nos dan carta abierta para dos cosas:)))


(esa figurilla doblada sonriendo, es el "autologo" de todas estas paridas serias, y al mismo tiempo cachondas, que empezaron hace tiempo a llamarse simbiodiversidad, o lazimby, y que ahora aflora "a lo wikileaks"...).


Primera cosa:

Para abrir tus puertas de la percepcion y por tanto las fuentes de tu imaginación, a traves de las sencillas tecnicas del chamanismo ("sentir como un niño").


Segunda cosa:

Para con los cerebros así fertilizados, ser capaz de hincarle el diente a toda la ciencia global que se te ponga por delante, pues nadie te examina, sino que tú eres el libre observador...


Tercera cosa: así podrás comprender mejor estas 64 medidas, dichas aquí y allá, "por la calle de gúgel", para auparnos de la crisis, creando empleo a rabiar, y para disfrutar. Precisamente en ADN alguien hablaba de "volver atrás", de quitar maquinaria y repartir el trabajo entre más sueldos, y así rebajar nuestra cuota en todo el tema del petróleo... No hay "volver atrás", o acaso prohibiríais el yoga, o la música sacra...?


Adivina, lector, tú que eres tan divino, cual de las sesenta y cuatro va primera?


jueves, 3 de marzo de 2011

abdequeing: an abduction-based democracy quality index

published via web 2.0 at London indymedia quarters: https://london.indymedia.org/articles/7696

INTRO
Today societies have diverse invariant relicts, preventing their evolution towards objectives widely consensual. These areas are as anquilosed, parallised, cancerated organs, within a living organism we call cities, countries, and/or civilizations. Western civilizations actualy are in a inferiority position in relation to countries less abducted by the catholic idolatry process, that along history has reached many areas of our everyday life, in spite of the supossed a-confesionality, of our supossed democracies. In this process of bio-cultural reproduction of bipolar abduction, the conventional, one-way, 1.0, model of education centers plays an ineludible role. People sit and attending towards a perpendicular, plane wall (planiland). The same bipolar "text" is found in motorways, and in classical, one-way, 1.0, books or writings. Last ones are in a intense metamorphosis process, by hypertext and all the wellcoming parafernalia existing in the Web 2.0. But the other to axis of bipolar abduction are still in a paradoxical shock, without evolving with a comparable speed. We speak here of mass media too, where the same 1.0 abduction is still very present...


CORPUS OF THE TEXT
Common Language have the instintive power to reach the greatest audience. The quick recent development of the integration process in Science has affected to scientific language too. Integration process in Science is better aproached when you subject put yourself from the advantage point of "Global Science". Global Science can be instintively seen as the network resulting from the integration, in any area of knowledge, covering, thus, all the possible generated knowledge. In this sense we are talking about the book of life, or of the akasik records, or the Universal "U" set. From the materialistic (from matter, mater) point of view, Sensosphere is a good meme for covering, instinctively, the same arena, with the great advantage that, as we are speaking of the world of sensations, its relations with common language is empowering, as the world of sensations is to common language as all the new (two millenia) abstract, scientific language, is to common language.

Common language is, thus, the best and eficient connector to move yourself within Global Science. For Digital Natives no problem of comprehension at all. These reflections longly expressed in the guay gueby gueb, are intended mainly for Digital Inmigrants, as Myself, also intended, thus, as a bridge, very wide bridge, to reconnect these two "lost" generations. Lost in the sense of pragmatical incommunication.

Abduction is (the basis of) creativity. Abduction, in the Peirce sense, is a circle where rays, of diferent colors and intensity, are going in a fuzzy sistole-diastole cycling (espiral), from the center of the circle towards the circunsference. Abduction, in a bipolar sense, is a circle where only onle line is in that process. Onle line going from "six" to "twelve". Onle line with only two colours: black and white. White is from the center of the circle towards "twelve". Black from the center of the circle towards "six". The world is thus divided by dichotomies. The physical world too. The south don't exist at all. It is within Junguian "Unconscious". Just because it is not existent in everyday language, or at least in mass media. The same horizontal (abciss) line mark our mental south-north barrier, as in the map if you see to the line in the straight of gibraltar. As the mass media dedicate very much more images and information for USA than for Maroc, Maroc, for neighbour andalusian people, keep in the hidden curriculum. Maroc as a representative southern country, where each day their citizens are using solutions coevolved during many generations, and that are not been abandoned by the bipolar abduction of Progress ideology. Jasmine Revolutions are the fruit of internet too, connecting instantaneously among all the (islamic) world any information, that in old times were chirurgicaly administered by the so-controlled bipolar mass media.

Converted to hiden curriculum all the arsenal of information generated and keeped in southern countries, the dreams of formal managers of the future of northern countries were narrowly selected among all the possible alternatives, just because all the alternatives from southern countries were a priori, neglected.

Converted to hidden curriculum was also all the information coming from our own history, just because some half century ago the cities of europe were also plenty of people freely developping what today the laws of european countries consider ilegal, or "informal economy".

The recent "unipersonal" polarization of islamic revolutions is a very good example of bipolar abduction. Gadafi represent the recent best example for calculating our abdequeing democracy index. If public workers in public mass media show their consent to the actual dominance, in time of emission, of the figure of one homo sapiens individual, as scapegoat, they are showing an infinitesinal value of democracy, if we sume-up all the days from 23 February. In fact "23F-syndrome" could be a good name for that, just because mass media show the same solipsism that spanish mass media in the night of "23F". Representationism cannot justify that sensorial, bipolar, abductive, sensorial bombing of citizens, if they supossedly are in a democratic society.

Many northern cities are military occupied, by private cars. "SUR" Málaga Newspaper called them "invaders", years ago, by the same "Manuel X." writer writing today last page column. e can imagine any colonial country, or France occupied by nazies. A global destrction army us paradoxicaly reducing all of our abilities for living, in our cities. In the meanwhile there are many cities where people win this battle over the private cars. It us supossed that our rights as UE citizens would be the same. But there are two kind of cities in Europe. Cities in continuous emergence situation, by the invasion of private cars, and the car-free cities.

Abduction is closely related with diversity. The same low levels of abdequeing we find, for example, in transport advertisements. Populiticians say they are pulling bikes in next future, but until recently, the advertisements of cars overlapped in density by many times, other ads on bikes, or buses, or trains.


Maybe traffic jams represent the main informative Aquiles Scheel to dismantling urgently the norhern dependence and or adiction, towards a surplus of oil compsuption that never has the consequence of a better life for us. Children in London seeing the high index of traffic jams may call alould to their parents: But Mommy, were we living in a "fifth world"? Traffic jams graphics of "google-earth" type would allow a quicker evolution towards cities were these same chldren denouncing aloud the actual "subdevelopment" situation, will live in better cities, not militarised for the sake of some ones, helped by an old abduction 1.0 technology..


nyc.indymedia.org/en/2010/04/110530.html

miércoles, 23 de febrero de 2011

Review of Damasio: Body and Emotion in Consciousness

Book of the Month:
JRSM 2000; 93: 99-101


Review of
The Feeling of What Happens:
Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness
.
Antonio Damasio. Heinemann: London, 1999.
ISBN: 0 439 00773 0.

Bruce G Charlton MD
Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry
Department of Psychology
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
NE2 4HH
England

Editor-in-Chief, Medical Hypotheses

Tel: 0191 222 6247
Fax: 0191 222 5622
E-mail: bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk


Antonio Damasio occupies an extraordinary position in the world of neuroscience. On the one hand, he is an internationally famous physician and scientist, publisher of many papers in the most prestigious journals, and author of the best-selling book Descartes' Error. On the other hand, his achievement is seriously under-rated.

In my view, Damasio is not ‘merely’ a successful career neuroscientist and popularizer; he is the major living figure in his field, possessor of the most profound understanding of higher human cognition: in short, a genius. If I was able to nominate one individual for the Nobel prize, it would be Antonio Damasio.

This may sound like wild over-praise, but it can be justified. If a genius is someone who has two ideas, then Damasio justifies the sobriquet. Firstly, he achieved the long sought-after integration of emotions into the mainstream explanatory schema of cognitive neuroscience; so we can now understand emotions in exactly the same way as we understand vision. And secondly he solved the problem of the nature of consciousness - a topic which forms the substance of his latest book The Feeling of What Happens. I will do my best briefly to outline these seminal theories.


Emotions are brain representations of body states

Damasio’s theories are based upon the standard neuroscientific conceptualization of brain function, a framework which originally derived from work on the visual system. Essentially, objects in the external environment cause patterns of activation of retinal receptive cells, and these retinal patterns are processed serially and in parallel to extract the visual aspects of the environment that we perceive. Patterns in the external world correspond with patterns of nerve cell activity in the brain, and these brain patterns are termed cognitive representations. So ‘thinking’ is done by means of patterns of nerve cell activation.

Damasio has suggested that while the senses of vision, hearing, touch, taste smell function by nerve activation patterns that correspond to the state of the external world; emotions are nerve activation patterns that correspond to the state of the internal world. If we experience a state of fear, then our brains will record this body state in nerve cell activation patterns obtained from neural and hormonal feedback, and this information may then be used to adapt behaviour appropriately.

For example, if we see the approach of an aggressive looking man, this image provokes sympathetic nervous system activation which affects the internal environment of the body by its action on smooth muscles and hormonal levels. This change in body state corresponding to the emotion that we call fear leads to patterns of nerve cell activation in the brain. Emotions are therefore cognitive representations of body states that are part of a homeostatic mechanism by which the internal milieu is monitored and controlled, and by which this internal milieu influences behaviour of the whole organism.

Emotions are based on internal body environment which act as inputs into the brain, just as visual or auditory information is an input to the brain from the external environment. Indeed, in evolutionary terms, the brain is primarily an organ for homeostasis - a centre which collects and collates feedback on body states, and acts to maintain constancy of the internal milieu. This concept vastly clarifies the role and nature of emotions, and allows them to be studied using the full force of integrated modern neuroscience.


Emotions and consciousness

Emotions are also vital to the higher reaches of distinctively human intelligence. Contrary to some popular notions, emotions do not ‘get in the way of’ rational thinking - emotions are essential to rationality.

Damasio’s group is probably best known for their case studies of reasoning in people with neurological damage to their emotional systems. For instance, people with damage to the ventro-medial part of the pre-frontal cortex (VMPFC) may be able to perform to a high level on most language and intelligence tests, but they display gross defects of planning, judgement and social appropriateness. Damasio’s group have shown that these defects in patients with VMPFC damage are caused by their inability to respond emotionally to the content of their thoughts.

For instance, using the above example, when thinking about an aggressive man, a normal person would physically experience the emotion of fear, because thoughts can lead to emotions. Thinking-about frightening events can activate the sympathetic nervous system, just as real life frightening events can cause activation (this is why people read ‘thrillers’ - to make themselves frightened). But when a person has VMPFC damage they will not activate the emotion of fear, hence they will not be able to make appropriate judgments of this individual, nor will their plans take into account his aggressive disposition. A person with VMPFC damage can not be frightened by reading about a murderer - although he would be frightened by meeting one in real life.


Somatic marker mechanism

Perhaps the most fertile of Damasio’s ideas, and one which has had a major influence upon my own work, is the idea of a ‘somatic marker’ mechanism which forms the basis of human consciousness. The somatic marker mechanism is the way in which cognitive representations of the external world interact with cognitive representations of the internal world - where perceptions interact with emotions.

Many animals display awareness of external sensory stimuli (eg. monkeys may be aware of specific aspects of the visual environment they see, as demonstrated in innumerable experiments). But what is unusual about humans is that we are also aware of our bodies, our ‘selves’, and this inner-directed attention forms the root of consciousness. Damasio argues that consciousness is based upon an awareness of the ‘somatic’ milieu, and that awareness of inner states evolved because this enables us to use somatic states (ie. emotions) to ‘mark’, and thereby ‘evaluate’, external perceptual information. And this interaction of cognitive representations occurs in working memory (probably located in the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex).

For example, when registering the identity of an aggressive man, the body state of fear in response is also registered. In order to use this in planning future action, the brain needs to create a cognitive representation that contains both the external perceptual information (identity of the man) and the internal emotional information (fear in response to that particular man) - and this is achieved in working memory by the simple device of having evolved the ability to project body state representations into working memory where we can be aware of them.


The social nature of intelligence

The main incompleteness of Damasio’s theory at present is, I believe, an insufficient acknowledgment of the fundamentally social nature of human intelligence, as elucidated originally by Nick Humphrey.

The concept of social intelligence is the idea that the main problem which human ancestors faced, the problem that most affected human ancestors differential chances of reproductive success, was competition with other people. This means that human consciousness and human language evolved and are adaptive specifically for social tasks, and for those human social conditions which prevailed at the time of rapid frontal cerebral cortex expansion. Consciousness was ‘designed’ by natural selection for dealing with other people.

Comments here-and-there in Damasio’s work suggests that he has would go along with this idea, but his examples and explanations do not emphasize it. Some of my own work has been concerned to fill this gap in Damasio’s reasoning. For instance, I suggest that the somatic marker mechanism evolved specifically to perform the job of ‘strategic social intelligence’. Strategic can be contrasted with ‘Tactical’ social intelligence, which is found in many animals, and does not require large cognitive capabilities. Strategic social intelligence is the ability to perform internal cognitive modeling of social relationships, in order to understand, predict and manipulate the behaviour of others - and is found only in animals with a large pre-frontal cerebral cortex (humans and other apes and primates, dolphins, elephants and some other social mammals).

I believe that the somatic marker mechanism (SMM) evolved specifically to perform internal modeling of social relationships, and that the SMM is also the basis of what has been termed the ‘theory of mind’ mechanism. Theory of mind is the mechanism that enables us to interpret the mental states of other people - their dispositions, intentions and motivations. In other words, it seems that Damasio’s work stands at the very heart of our attempts to understand what it is to be distinctively human, and to be a human among other humans. His books lay the basis for an agenda for future research which could hardly be more exciting or important.


Damasio as writer

I hope I have sufficiently emphasized the richness of work here. But I must admit that neither Descartes' Error nor The Feeling of What Happens yield this interpretation easily. The books can be read on two levels. At one levels there are fascinating stories about fascinating patients - and it is this ‘Oliver Sacks’ level that has brought Damasio to public attention. There are purple passages, references to high (and low) art, personal anecdotes and engaging confessions. But when it comes to the ‘neuroscience’ parts of the books, we are - in my opinion - confronted by writing of extreme complexity and difficulty.

I read Descartes' Error four times, very slowly, in order to understand it. Clearly, it was well worth the effort; but this is much more concentrated attention than I am usually prepared to devote to a book. And most readers of Descartes' Error have not been so dedicated. Consequently, very few of Damasio’s readers - not even the professional neuroscientists - have followed him into the extreme ramifications of his arguments. This is, I suspect, why the depth of his achievement has not been grasped.

Damasio is a pioneer at the furthest reaches of understanding the human brain and human intelligence. He is sending back reports expressed as clearly as he can manage to make them - but the job is an immensely difficult one, this is unfamiliar territory. The parallel that springs to mind is the work of WD Hamilton and GC Williams on evolutionary theory in the early and mind 1960s in which they revolutionized our understanding of animal cooperation. However, the magnitude of their achievement was not appreciated for more than a decade until their work had been ‘translated’ by the brilliant communicator Richard Dawkins. Perhaps Damasio will need to wait for help from a ‘Dawkins’ before his achievement is properly recognized.

In the mean time, both Descartes' Error and The Feeling of What Happens are essential reading. Although they masquerade as ‘popular science’ they are ground-breaking classics of psychology and neuroscience on a scale that can be compared with William James immortal Principles of Psychology (which started life as an undergraduate text book). These are books to buy, keep and ponder. Do so, and you will be ahead of the ruck by at least a decade.


E-mail
bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk

En defensa de la Felicidad, Mathieu Ricard

En defensa de la felicidad, de Mathieu Ricard

Hace algunos meses empecé a leer el libro En Defensa de la Felicidad y todavía no lo termino, mejor dicho, no deseo terminarlo. Cada párrafo me invita a reflexionar, me sacude la conciencia, pero al mismo tiempo destila una savia que nutre mi espíritu e ilumina rincones oscuros de mi mente. Esto me ha sucedido con poquísimos libros, a saber, Los Maestros del Lejano Oriente, de Baird T. Spalding y Autobiografía de un Yogui, de Paramahansa Yogananda. Todos ellos tienen algo en común: contienen conocimientos universales y verdades profundas que atañen a todos los seres humanos.

Así como los personajes de una novela desarrollan y se transforman en el curso de la historia, hay textos que dejan huella imperecedera en el lector, modificando su manera de pensar, sus ideas y hasta sus convicciones éticas, filosóficas y religiosas. No recuerdo a ningún otro autor que haya hecho un análisis tan completo sobre la felicidad, como M. Ricard. En la literatura de oriente y occidente hay miles de definiciones y los filósofos se han ocupado de ella en términos vagos. Para Manuel Kant, la felicidad completa se consigue cuando el individuo ha satisfecho todos sus deseos. Para Epicuro, la felicidad es la ausencia de dolor físico y de alboroto mental.

No interesa lo que hagamos ni a qué nos dediquemos, parece que el ser humano de alguna manera, conciente o inconcientemente, directa o indirectamente, en el corto o largo plazo; lo que hace, lo que espera, lo que sueña, está relacionado con un deseo profundo de bienestar o felicidad. Aún el que se ahorca está buscando acabar con su miseria. Algunos encuentran la felicidad rememorando el pasado, o imaginando eventos en el futuro y, algunos, viviendo el presente con pasión.

Mathieu Ricard ha escrito una guía para desarrollar el conocimiento más importante de la vida. Lo ha escrito con compasión, lógica incisiva y buen humor. Expone las falsas y limitadas conjeturas que tenemos sobre el potencial como seres humanos y nos demuestra que la verdadera felicidad no sólo es posible, sino que es un derecho de nacimiento. Algunos capítulos tienen títulos como: la alquimia del sufrimiento, los velos del ego, cuando nuestros pensamientos se convierten en nuestros peores enemigos y la sicología de la felicidad. Al final se incluyen ejercicios prácticos. Leer a Ricard es como emprender un viaje por un desierto extenso y tenebroso, acompañado de un guía amable, jocoso, de sabiduría milenaria que ayuda a sortear los peligros y los espejismos hasta llegar a salvo a un oasis, donde hay palmeros que dan sombra y una fuente que ofrece sus aguas cristalinas al viajero sediento.

Mathieu Ricard nació en Paris, es científico, abandonó una carrera prometedora de genética celular en el Instituto Pasteur, y se convirtió en monje budista, hace 35 años. Es traductor del Dalai Lama, renombrado fotógrafo y está involucrado en proyectos humanitarios en Tibet y Nepal. Otras publicaciones suyas: El Monje y el Filósofo (diálogos con su padre, el filósofo Jean Francois Revel), El Quantum y el Lotus. Es autor y fotógrafo de “Viaje hacia la iluminación“, “los Monjes Danzantes del Tibet” y de los fotolibros: “Himalaya Budista” y “Tibet, un Viaje hacia el Interior

Body and Emotion in the making of Consciousness

Registro Anterior Siguiente
Autor Damasio, Antonio R.
Título The feeling of what happens : body and emotion in the making of consciousness / Antonio R. Damasio
Publicac. New York [etc.] : Harcourt Brace, cop. 1999

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martes, 22 de febrero de 2011

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