This is the primary function of Dasein. Interpretation enables everything we may think. In an everyday sense, interpretation is an action we generally ascribe to the higher practices of art and criticism. We talk of his or her interpretation, the noun, and the process by which one gains that through contemplation or insight, the verb. It turns out, however, that if one carefully considers one's own mental thought, if you constantly ask, "how do I do that?" one shall find Interpretation to be the primary function of the mind. Proust identifies Interpretation in the following passage: "Of those elements which compose our personality, it is not the most obvious that are most essential. In myself, when ill health has succeeded in uprooting them one after another, there will still remain two or three, endowed with a hardier constitution than the rest, notably a certain philosopher who is happy only when he has discovered in two works of art, in two sensations, a common element." The Captive, Marcel Proust This definition is equally applicable to both interpretations of a higher nature and to those of the most fundamental action. The foundation of Interpretation is in memory; for once replicators began to store, in some manner, the senses of experiences encountered within the world, for these to serve any use they must be recognised again in the future. The difficulty in defining Interpretation is that there is no definitive way of performing one; evidenced by the obvious fact that no two minds are alike. Thus, since we wish to create a machine that may Interpret we shall have to settle for a general understanding of the process. In practice, one should envisage a large part of the brain as a filter, a pattern recognition device, and identify this property as Interpretation. At the entrance to this filter we input data; either externally or internally created. This information flows through a mass of connected Entities and in conforming to a certain pathway, a pattern of flow, it identifies itself with certain Entities of the filter. The manner of it's departure from the filter, therefore, determines the nature of the data presented, and from the nature of the filter reveals what the filter has been designed, or "learnt", to do. In this, and other ways, the construction of the mind is purely relativistic; a thing or a function is defined by the interrelations formed through experience alone. Static Interpretation As Proust says, Interpretation is the discovery of a commonality between two things, two Entities. Let us start with a trite example; you see a tree. How is it that one recognises this to be a "tree"? Photons are "reflected" from the tree and some reach your retina, which translates the intensity and frequency of the light to a continuous stream of neural impulses that are sent by the optic nerve to your visual cortex. The ventral stream of your visual cortex then receives this information after it has been codified, and filters this data and matches it to a prior experience of having viewed a "tree". In a logical sense, all that is being performed is the pattern recognition of the sight of the tree with the Entities of trees already experienced. This is static Interpretation, the mere recognition of a thing as a particular thing. Evolutionarily, this was the primary function of Interpretation and thus the origin of the function of memory. Temporal Interpretation Now, Interpretation may have this quality of matching an Entity to a sense-experience, but within the relativistic framework mentioned it may, by performing the exact same process, have other functions. Imagine seeing a ball drop in front of you and bouncing till it comes to a rest. If this is the first time one may be surprised by its behaviour (for most of us we would have to go back many years to our first sight of a falling ball; for now, to envisage the amusement of a baby seeing such a sight is enough). But the more one sees a ball bouncing the more one is comfortable with the physicality of the situation and the more one expects it to happen. Here, ones mind is recognising the ball, matching it to past experiences and in so doing Anticipating what it will do at each stage of its fall. This is a temporal Interpretation, which for the visual system is performed by the dorsal stream of the visual cortex. Weak Temporal Interpretation There are two possible ways to perform a temporal Interpretation, the simplest being to Interpret the present-at-hand according to one's Entities. This is taking an Entity of a "single moment" and, based on experience (which has altered the inter-relations of the "filter"), predicting what is likely to happen next. For example, if one sights a ball frozen a foot off the ground, one is likely to think the next step is for the ball to "continue" an assumed ascent or descent; this "continuation" having been Anticipated by the probability of experience. Weak temporal Interpretation therefore has the quality of not Anticipating the future, but of Anticipating the next logical step; its realm is assumed cause and probable effect. This "probable effect", of course, may, however, have real world correlates in the future. Strong Temporal Interpretation Just as if one wishes to go somewhere, in space or time, if one wishes to make an Interpretation of the future a "vector" is needed. So whereas weak temporal Interpretation starts from a single Entity, of a single temporality, strong Interpretation takes two or more; Entities from a range of "moments", to Interpret the present and past to Anticipate the future. We can see the necessity for such a process by imagining our frozen ball now a foot off the ground and next to a wall. From a snapshot of the situation, an inexperienced mind would assume the same situation as before whereby the ball is likely to continue its descent to the ground. But we know, through years of playing with balls, that balls tend to be kicked, thrown or hit. They fly and roll and bounce. Commonly, they are thrown against walls and bounce off them, as they do off the ground, and we "know" that given just this image there is no way to accurately predict its behaviour. The Anticipation of the Now and the Now-that-was is an example of a Strong Temporal Interpretation, which produces the Potentiality-for-Being. In the given example, Anticipation is able to take into account the path the ball has traced within it's model of the World, and should arrive at a reasonable prediction for the subsequent motion of the ball. Strong Temporal Interpretation creates a Potentiality that is the future. Derivative Interpretation This is a form of Weak Temporal Interpretation that is vital for language and self-awareness. "Derivative" means this is an Interpretation of an Interpretation. Of course, in the strict sense of the cycle, this is the case of all Interpretations; so here we mean derivative within the context of the loop of the main cycle. The Potentiality-for-Being is taken and Interpreted, perhaps to several derivative degrees, then brought back to the Potentiality-for-Being. The origin of Derivative Interpretation lies in the formation of groups amongst the replicators. The primer describes how within groups it is necessary to communicate, and Derivative Interpretation allows communication. How? The purpose of language is to give or receive information from another instance of Dasein. Language can be divided into statement and question; giving and receiving. The thing is, even if one could talk well, would one say to a child or a monkey, "What is the probability of an acute myocardial infarction in Pan troglodytes two months postpartum?" Why not? We "know" before we should even ask such a question that there will be no pertinent answer. The foundation of communication is Interpretation on the part of the speaker, to know before the listener even hears how the listener is going to hear, and on the part of the listener to understand the intended meaning of the speaker. This mutual reciprocity of Interpretation is how Derivative Interpretation, and so communication, first occurred. We look at this in practical detail in the section on Language. Summary Interpretation is the fundamental function of Dasein, enacted by the cortical neurons within the human brain; symbiotically linked to the creation and recognition of Entities it acts like a pattern recognition filter that, in the configuration described on this site, gives rise to emergent functions we identify with "consciousness". Created 9th July 2008 Last revised 30th January 2009 |