In the primer we looked at how the evolving brain gave rise to the basic function of Interpretation which could create temporality by bringing the past and the future into the machinations of the present as they relate to the senses. Here, we are going to look at a very generalised representation of brain that shows this relationship, where Interpretation is in red, as the elementary unit of function, and the states of Entities, in blue boxes, are the sources and product information of Interpretation. In the green box at the bottom is represented the World in which Dasein exists. Take a minute to orientate yourself in the diagram, and imagine, for example, how the thoughts of our fish observing the red predator may play out in this system. There are some new terms here, which we shall presently explore, so don't worry about them yet.  What is immediately obvious from this diagram is the cycle of cause and effect created between the Interpretation of the mind and the World within which it is manifest. It should not be forgotten from our introduction concerning evolution that the brain is at root a device for enabling the appropriate action of a replicator within its environment, only in its action within the physical world it inhabits can its inner processes be judged, by natural selection, to have been “worthwhile”, in an evolutionary sense. Let us now work our way around the cycle to see what is going on each step of the way, paying particular attention to the temporality of the system. Senses The senses, in their most archaic and modern forms, simply serve to gather information concerning the environment, and in addition, to some extent, information regarding the body of the replicator itself. In the typical human these senses are the classical sight, sound, smell, taste, touch (proprioception, temperature and joint position) and also more “internalized” senses such as pain, satiation, thirst, the urge to micturate and mental “highs” and “lows”, amongst others. There may be some degree of "pre-processing" whereby the sense "organ" in question encodes or optimises the signal for Interpretation, but this is not strictly necessary and is rather a way to help subsequent functions focus on what has been determined important in the sense, by evolution or the creator, an imposition made because of energy or power constraints. By their very nature, senses are providing information of the World Now. Entity Now + Entity Now-that-was The information that comes from the senses needs to be Interpreted before it may become of use to Dasein, an initial Entity Interpretation performs this function. The reason for this is, in a word, procedural memory, which shall be explained later. The Entity Now is the current state of the Entities of Dasein in the present and is distinguished from the World Now in that it is factically behind the Now of the world by the length of time it takes Dasein to make the initial Entity Interpretation. Its Being is one of the Entities at hand, the senses and Entities of the present as they relate to the Entity of Dasein and as the Function of Dasein determines the present to be. At any one moment in time, the Entity Now is the collection of Entities that the Function of Dasein is "experiencing" at that time, the focus of Dasein's ken, the region of Dasein that is the present. The Entity Now-that-was is the remnant of Entities of a just-passed Entity Now, the Being of Dasein as it was a moment before. This short, immediate "history" of Dasein is in one sense vital to provide a vector, so to speak, for the extrapolatory Interpretation called Anticipation. The Entity Now-that-was then serves to produce, on Interpretation with the Entity Now, a more accurate Anticipation than would otherwise be possible with a single Entity state. As we shall go on to see, there are hundreds of thousands of Entities that are Interpreted simultaneously, and in parallel, within the human brain; thus variable rates of Interpretation shall naturally produce a "spread" in temporality that would create the effect of an Entity Now and Now-that-was. Anticipation What the diagram shows, which we have not yet considered, is the origin of the action of Dasein; the Potentiality-for-Being which is the product of Anticipation. As said, by Interpreting the Now and the Now-that-was, Anticipation produces an Interpretive product that is a status of the Being of Dasein, in the future, based on the Entities held within Dasein (its past experiences, thus Anticipation is "with respect to the past"). This Interpretive product is called the Potentiality-for-Being; the "potential" here denotes both the predictive quality of the Interpretation, since it may or may not actually happen, and also the potential to act, itself, by which purposeful motor action and choice emerge within Dasein. As a function, Anticipation is analogous to the Interpretation of the senses that creates the Entity Now. Both functions are processing the information they receive with respect to prior experience, and when we investigate the algorithmic model of Interpretation we shall see that the only difference between the two functions lies in the quality of feedback that regulates them. Potentiality-for-Being Just as the Now is the state of Being of Dasein in the present, the Potentiality-for-Being is the state of Being of Dasein in a possible future. The nature of that future, the quality of the prediction so the speak, is clearly dependent on the range and depth of experiences Dasein has stored as Entities that are Interpretatively relevant to the Now at hand. If it has encountered a similar situation before, then the Anticipation Interpretation is more likely to be accurate. An important feature of the system to note at this point is the temporality created by this predictive Interpretation. By taking Dasein into a possible future, the Being of Dasein is not only in the past through its Entities, nor only also in the present through its senses, but reaching into a future it has created of its own accord. This point will be very important for the emergent properties of Dasein as discussed in later sections, and directly relates to the conception of time possessed by Dasein. On the next page the importance of the emergent properties of the Potentiality-for-Being shall be explored, before consideration of Action and the last part of the cycle can begin. Summary
Created 27th June 2008 Revised 29th June 2009 |