Rethinking Reductionism With Google Maps

"The romantic spontaneity and courage are gone,

the vision is materialistic and depressing.

Ideals appear as inert by-products of physiology;

what is higher is explained by what is lower

and treated forever as a case of 'nothing but'

-nothing but something else of quite an inferior sort.

You get, in short, a materialistic universe,

in which only the tough-minded find

themselves congenially at home."

 -William James

(The Present Dilemma in Philosophy)

Matthew Giobbi, 2012.

A sea change has occurred in how we understand the structure of knowing in cognitive neuroscience. Today, researchers, writers, and professors of psychology are holding discussions in a way that is much more in-line with the attitude of William James's radical empiricism.

James instructed the emerging science of psychology to embrace a cross-paradigmatic (in today's terms, an interdisciplinary) attitude of investigation. It has been a long time coming for psychology. James, greatly in spirit with his friend C.S. Peirce, was attempting to point the science of psychology in the direction that the other sciences of the 20th & 21st Centuries would take; a trajectory towards semiotics. Much of what Peirce outlined in his works on semiotics, a system of thought that has been the central influence on contemporary science, was unpacked for psychology in James's radical empiricism and pragmatism. Today, it seems that we are closer than ever to the third culture that C.P. Snow had called for in 1959; a truly radical empiricism.

Despite this shift in how we approach knowing, there are two philosophical attitudes that seem to prevail amongst students entering into the university study of the social sciences. It is for these students that I present this essay. It is not a suggestion to reject, but rather, an invitation to expand how we think about knowing through the social sciences. These two attitudes are strikingly present in conversation with most of my first-year students. Both share a common origin in early, classical, concepts of the philosophy of science, as well as an almost taken for granted (captivation-in-an-acceptedness) place in the Enlightenment rules for thinking. In addition these philosophies are closely related to two fallacies of thought, a consideration that is the topic of this undertaking. The two concepts that I speak of are Reductionism and Mechanism.

William James

In his extraordinarily insightful text on the philosophy of science, Worldviews, Richard DeWitt explores the evolution of the scientific knowledge systems since the early Greek thinkers. Just as Professor Hilary Putnam describes, in an interview with Bryan Magee, DeWitt outlines some central attitudes that have been dismissed within some sciences, and privileged within others. Whether this be the result of an internalist attitude within a specific field of study (only learning the history and philosophy of the science from within that science), or due to the absence of the study of the philosophy of science in most university science departments, the question of what science is has a different answer depending on the discipline in which it is asked. This is especially true for the social sciences. The main distinction between physics and the social sciences has been the adoption of Peirce's philosophy in the former, and a forgetting of it (through James's pragmatism) in psychology. This is the context of the problem, but let's turn to the two specific concepts of interest in this discussion; reductionism and mechanism.

The idea of reductionism is woven into the fabric of our sense of reality. Although it seems obvious that bigger is made-up of smaller (subatomic, atomic, cells, organs, etc...), an accompanying sensibility is not necessarily true; that smaller is the cause of bigger. Reductionism, then, is the idea that larger features are caused by smaller features. Examples include the idea that an area of the brain causes a certain behavior or temperament, or that a particular emotion is merely a result of certain neurotransmitters. This attitude of reductionism commits what is referred to as a causal fallacy, specifically, the idea that smaller causes bigger. It is an attractive, almost commonsense, point of view. However, critical analysis shows us that smaller might be correlated with bigger, but, smaller is not necessarily the cause of bigger. As we all learn in the first year of research methods, "correlation is not causation".

C.S. Peirce

Let's consider an example. In a popular Introduction to Psychology text by David Myers, the author correctly points out that brain scans of virtuoso violinists reveal a specific development in the motor strip of the right, frontal cortex. This area of the brain is associated with the left hand and fingers, which are predominant in violin playing. The right hand is mostly used for grasping the bow, rather than fingering notes, which accounts for the difference in neural concentration and activity between the left and right motor cortex. Keep in mind that this is true due to the lateralization of brain function; the left side of the body is associated with the right side of the body. Note the choice of the word associated rather than caused. Even in the use of the most basic words one can infer causation rather than correlation. The point Myers makes is that the violinist's brain has concentrated neural tissue and activity through years of practice of the instrument, and in turn, correlates with greater finger dexterity while playing the instrument. We do not have a clear causal relationship here, but rather, a correlationship. In this example, we cannot say that the brain in causing the violin playing, no more than we can say that brain chemicals are causing an emotion. The idea that the smaller causes the larger is a fallacy that has a history rooted in the 16th and 17th Century Scientific Revolution, a tradition from within The Enlightenment.

At the time, physics was largely developed through Newtonian, or what is now called Classical Mechanics. The idea was that all the structures of the natural universe (from planets to the brain) were merely a mechanized, clockwork structure that are governed by universal laws, just waiting to be "discovered". The way to discovery of this mechanized, lawful natural order was through reduction; dissection, magnification, and peeling away to the ultimate substance. This ultimate stuff, it was thought, would be arrived at through careful observation and measurement. Newtonian notions of science were abandoned in the early 20th Century, in particular with the Einsteinian Revolution which established that stuff at the subatomic level does not follow the same laws as the substances at the atomic level. In other words, Newtonian science does not work at the subatomic level. Today, physicists speak less in terms of classical mechanics, and more in the ideas of theoretical physics; Chaos Theory, String Theory, and subatomic physics.

New models of science, which physics embraced in the early Twentieth Century, were largely based on the influential thinking of C.S. Peirce. Without Peirce's work on semiotics there would be no theoretical physics. Whereas most of the sciences moved away from the "old view" of science, much of the social sciences did not. Despite the fact that the founder of American psychology, William James, called for a scientific psychology greatly influenced by Peirce, the more simplistic system of behaviorism completely overshadowed James in the early Twentieth Century. Radical Empiricism and pragmatism were not alone in this, the Gestalt tradition was also drowned by the behaviorist paradigm, not to return until cognitive psychology emerged in the 1960s. The way in which scientific psychology has been done, since the Nineteenth Century, has largely been based on antiquated notions of a Newtonian Science. Today, as predicted by thinkers including Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, scientific psychology has rethought what "science" is and how it is done.

A rethinking the fallacious assumption, that reductionism infers cause and effect, can be illustrated by using a familiar model from Google Maps. With google maps we have a function that is similar to that of the microscope when looking at a tissue sample; magnification. Through "zooming out" (the - function) we can take a distant of view of the object from afar. As we increase our magnification ("zoom in" with the + function), we are able to approach the street level of a specific neighborhood. We are tempted, when magnifying a piece of tissue, to understand the cells as building the tissue. We are also tempted to understand neurotransmitters (or brain areas) as the "cause" of a simultaneous emotion, behavior, or thought process. However, we would never claim that somehow a street in Newark causes the universe. We do not view the magnification of maps in the same way that we view the magnification of neural tissue or the brain. The question is, why do we assume causation through reductionism, and can we expand our approach and understanding of science, in a radically empirical way, through the Google Map metaphor?

Buddhist Psychology: Introduction to Lucid Dreaming Part 1

Dream Theory
Sleeping versus Waking Conscious

The dream is not an activity of sleep, rather, it is an appearance of a constant, unconscious, flow of emotions that becomes apparent when the sensory organs are muted by sleep. In this way, we approach the dream as something that we experience in waking consciousness at the emotional level, and in sleeping consciousness at the rational level. Dreams are the rational experience of emotional cognition.

During waking consciousness we interact with auditory, tactile, olfactory, visual, and gustatory stimuli (known in cognitive psychology as bottom-up processing). We also interact with internally generated memory (experienced as past) and fantasy (experienced as future), top-down processing. The unconscious (automatic processing) of psychodynamic theory is an emotional, irrational, motivation that directs our thinking and choice of action. Evolutionary psychology understands these desires, described by S. Freud as das Es (the id), as powerfully effective methods for survival and procreation.

We understand dreaming, as described in the Buddhist, Vedic, Hindu, and Gestalt traditions, as another form of cognition. Carl Jung described this as intuitive thinking. We understand emotion as another form of decision making, often described as intuition, or a "gut" feeling.

Emotion and Thinking as Decision-Making Processes

In waking consciousness we privilege rational cognition, which favors logical analysis and causal experience. We are motivated by emotional states (moods) that inform our rational experience. Although we can be aware of our mood, we are often unaware of the impetus for these moods, for they are reactions to unconscious thoughts that are of survival and reproductive value. As cognitive psychology tells us, mood (affect) determines how we think about something.

It is not until we enter the hypnogogic (stage 1) state of dream life, marked by alpha wave brain activity, that our sensory thresholds rise, essentially disengaging the mind from the outside world (turning off bottom-up processing). With reduced sensory input from the eyes, ears, and other sensory organs, we are left, without distraction, with the contents of our, typically, unconscious mental processing. Our logico-rational experience of the unconscious is that of irrational emotions, often in symbolic, illogical experiences. We call this dreaming.

Qualitative research provides the richest information regarding dreams. Using qualitative, phenomenological methods, we can rationally analyze the irrational, symbolic meaning, of dreams. Using the insights from semiology and semiotics, outlined by C.S. Pierce and William James, we can understand the link between a geometric, interactionist, analogical thought process (experienced as emotions) and the arithmetic, linear, logical thought process (experienced as thinking). In this way we approach thinking and emotions as two processes of decision making. The point to be taken here is that meaning can be understood by understanding our emotional reaction to the sign (symbol) in a dream. Not unlike Freud's description of the latent versus manifest content, we have the signified (emotion) and the signifier (dream image) of semiology. The linguistic structure of the dream can be read as a text, with emotional phenomenological analysis, by the dreamer.

We experience the emotional (geometric) processing during waking consciousness as mood. We experience the logical (arithmetic) processing during sleep as dreaming; as an introspection into the unconscious (automatic processing). Understanding the phenomena of dreaming in this framework is essential to the introduction to lucid dreaming.

Buddhist Psychology: Langri Thangpa's Mind Training

In 2002 I was first introduced to Buddhist Psychology. At the time, the practice and study was little known in colleges, and usually only within the Jungian tradition, or through Erich Fromm, D.T. Suzuki, and Richard De Martino's groundbreaking, 1970 text, Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. Undergraduate courses on the subject were not common, and the idea of the Eastern scientific method was not well received by the positivist social science model. The area of study had only a handful of texts and small pockets of practitioners in the West.

Today the scene is different. Partly due to popularization by thinkers including Alan Watts, the Dalai Lama, and numerous scholars of psychotherapy and Buddhism; lectures, seminars, courses, and graduate programs of study are not uncommon. Most recently have been books by Mark Epstein, Jeremy Safran, and Dan Arnold. Courses have been appearing not only in graduate programs of study (Naropa University), but also in undergraduate course offerings in psychology (UC Berkeley).

When I first studied Buddhist psychology, while at The New School, I found the teachings to be life-enriching, transformational, and understandable. It wasn't long before I was introducing students to the concepts of Buddhist psychology. Those students have asked me to replicate some of those lectures, and I get a steady flow of E-mails from those who are inquiring on to which books, lectures, and thinkers to consult. To this end, I have decided to post some of the teachings here.

One of the classic teachings in Buddhist psychology comes from Langri Thangpa, an 11th Century Tibetan Buddhist. Written in eight verses, the poem offers guidance in "training the mind". We might understand these as lessons in how to deal with the difficult situations of life, in a productive and self-enhancing way. Popularized by the Dalai Lama in his Central Park Lecture of 1999, the eight verses offer a paradoxical approach to dealing with difficulties with others and with ourselves. First I will present the text in its entirety, and then I will offer my own experience of each verse.

Eight Verses for Training the Mind 

by Langri Thangpa

• With a determination to accomplish 
the highest welfare for all sentient beings
 who surpass even a wish-granting jewel
I will learn to hold them supremely dear.
• Whenever I associate with others I will learn 
to think of myself as the lowest among all
 And respectfully hold others to be supreme 
from the very depths of my heart.
• In all actions I will learn to search into my mind 
and as soon as an afflictive emotion arises
endangering myself and others
 will firmly face and avert it.
• I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature 
and those oppressed by strong sins and suffering 
as if I had found a precious 
treasure very difficult to find.
• When others out of jealousy treat me badly 
with abuse, slander, and so on, 
I will learn to take on all loss,
 and offer victory to them.

• When one whom I have benefited with great hope 
unreasonably hurts me very badly, 
I will learn to view that person 
as an excellent spiritual guide.
• In short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception
 all help and happiness directly and indirectly
 and respectfully take upon myself
 all harm and suffering of my mothers.
• I will learn to keep all these practices 
undefiled by the stains of the eight worldly conceptions
 and by understanding all phenomena as like illusions 
be released from the bondage of attachment.

Mind training, in Buddhism, is a practical guide for interpersonal communication and an opportunity for self exploration. Each of the eight "teachings" is a method for transforming negative transactions into positive exchanges, and recognizing defensiveness as the chance for growth and a better understanding of self.

In the Buddhist tradition, it is taught that defensiveness is an opportunity for learning about oneself. What this means is that, when we become defensive, in reaction to another person's comment, it is usually because that comment is bringing to our attention something that we do not want to believe to be true about ourselves. In fact, it is not unlike being introduced to something in ourselves that disturbs us when we realize that others can "see through" the mask, armor, or façade that we have put on. The principle rests on the belief that we only become emotionally defensive when we are not secure with the accusation of the suggestion, albeit at an unconscious level. Some students find this to be a difficult concept to grasp, or accept, but, when one does come to accept this as fundamental, a world of self-discovery becomes available.

• With a determination to accomplish 
the highest welfare for all sentient beings
 who surpass even a wish-granting jewel 
I will learn to hold them supremely dear.

This lesson, the simplest to understand, might be the most difficult to achieve. It is a commitment to hold people to be the most precious of all things, more valuable than any fortune or jewel.

• Whenever I associate with others I will learn 
to think of myself as the lowest among all
 and respectfully hold others to be supreme 
from the very depths of my heart.

This, a very challenging instruction, is not to diminish one's own self-value to others in a narcissistic masochism, but rather, to make everyone we meet feel special, important, and like a gift. This often means acknowledging and praising them, rather than proving one's own importance.

• In all actions I will learn to search into my mind 
and as soon as an afflictive emotion arises
endangering myself and others
 will firmly face and avert it.

This lesson works well for depression, anger, desire, and revenge. It tells us to remain attentive to our emotions, and to become aware, and reverse these negative feelings, as soon as they begin in us. If they are left to form they will become too strong to control. This lesson teaches us to monitor our feelings and the importance of timely reversal of negative feelings.

• I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature 
and those oppressed by strong sins and suffering 
as if I had found a precious 
treasure very difficult to find.

This teaching, perhaps the most paradoxical of the eight, teaches us that those whom we find the most despicable; the thieves, liars, and predators, are the ones most in need of care, love, and our compassionate attention. The teaching encourages us not to despise these people, but to take pity on them and help them to govern themselves.

• When others out of jealousy treat me badly 
with abuse, slander, and so on, 
I will learn to take on all loss,
 and offer victory to them.


When someone treats you poorly out of jealousy, give them praise and the spotlight. They are fueled by a strong sense of inferiority that can only be conquered through others lifting them up, rather than beating them down.

• In short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception
 all help and happiness directly and indirectly
 and respectfully take upon myself
 all harm and suffering of my mothers.

The gist here is that by helping others, we make the world better for ourselves too. Rather than resenting our neighbor for not picking up the doggy-duty on the sidewalk, we help them by picking it up ourselves. In so doing, we make the world better for ourselves, others, and set an example for the person who left it.

• I will learn to keep all these practices 
undefiled by the stains of the eight worldly conceptions
 and by understanding all phenomena as like illusions 
be released from the bondage of attachment.

Finally, this is a commitment to remind ourselves, daily, of these eight laws of interaction with ourselves and others. An obligation to remain faithful to these teachings in order make our lives, and the lives of others, more bearable.

Top 4 Uncanny Moments in Film

Recently a friend and I got on the subject of childhood movies and the uncanny. Sigmund Freud took up his own thinking on the uncanny in a essay from 1919 entitled The Uncanny. It is from the essay that most psychologists are familiar with Das Unheimliche. Freud makes a distinction between the heimliche (concealed) and the unheimliche (unconcealed). Freud described the phenomenon of the uncanny as a projection of the repressed id onto the figure which brings forth the discomforting experience. Here are my top 4 examples of the uncanny from familiar films.

4. Mary Poppins

There is something uncanny about the entire Mary Poppins story. This scene stands out for me as a moment of the uncanny.

3. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

I am not alone in sensing the uncanny in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The "Child Catcher" is a particularly uncanny moment.

2. The Wizard of Oz

What is it about the Wizard of Oz that is so familiar, yet so strange?

1. La Dolce Vita
My number one moment of the uncanny is the finalé from La Dolce Vita. Fellini is a master of resonating the unconscious.

Wilhelm Reich in A Postcognitive Negation

Chapter 2

Reichian Character Analysis: The Characterological Approach

This is an excerpt from Giobbi's first book, A Postcognitive Negation, available at amazon.com, published by Atropos Press (2010).

The aim is to provide a framework for understanding the theoretical perspective and proposal of this dissertation: that rigid personality underlies the authoritarian character. The second, and central point of the dissertation is that character precedes all aspects of position including, philosophical, ideological, moral, and vocational choices of the individual. The relationship between the scientific “experimental” paradigm in American psychology can be understood as taking on the characteristic of the authoritarian personality (sadistic character) and has established a moral sado-masochistic relationship with non-experimental, scientific, schools of thought in psychology. In order to fully realize the proposed relationship one must understand the underpinning dynamic structures of the “sado-masochistic” or “authoritarian” character on which it is based. Foucault tells us “In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.”

            We take a position that is not exclusively one of drives and defenses but of the mind as a whole. We are not as interested in mechanisms of defense as in the character of defensiveness. We have had little use for ideas about psychopathology or statistical abnormality. We largely view these as social constructs that have little relevance outside of a context as something called a “disease”. A characterological approach is one that views not “symptoms” or “pathologies” but ways of being that are structured within a context. There is necessarily an ethics involved when a social structure is considered. Lacan is clear on this “Symptoms, those you believe you recognize, seem to you irrational because you take them in an isolated manner, and you want to interpret them directly.” Character is not in isolation. Therefore we do not proclaim a morality-absent take on character. Morality is viewed as an intimate structure within the context of a privileging of components. In other words, without considering the moral structure of a weltanschauung one has little more than a disparate collection of meaningless (context absent) “symptoms”.

            In introducing the theoretical orientation which we are taking it is not an effort to engage in theoretical debate or even ask the reader to take on this theoretical orientation. It is presented as an effort to better help the reader in understanding the theoretical orientation from which we are writing. It is an effort to dis/orient the reader. For example, the obsessive-compulsive character style is much more conducive to the scientific weltanschauung, whereas the hysterical character style is much more complementary to an artistic weltanschauung –whatever that might mean. In the characterological approach, as laid down by Reich, one is not interested in pathologies or in viewing culture as a symptom. One is interested in characteristic ways of being that seem to be present in individuals. In this study of the relationships between schools of thought in American psychology we will be looking at the individual character of those schools of thought and how the dynamic between these groups fits into a larger structure. We propose this larger relational structure to be one of moral sadomasochistic exchange. Individually we will describe the moral sadistic and moral masochistic way of being. In order to clearly realize the style or way of being that is found in the scientific Weltanschauung or the artistic/theoretical weltanschauung we must not only examine what is said by each tribe, but how it is said. This level of analysis allows us to not only consider the manifest character of the message but the implicit character of the medium itself.

            The first encounter with ways of being is often found to be through the Rorschach test. Ways of thinking and perceiving are the primary material of such projective tests. Typically, the Rorschach will make apparent the underlying impetus on which the character structure is build regarding defense mechanisms and traits that come be what we call character. What is being proposed here is that far from science or theory as something that is done, it is something that is lived through a way of being that can be reflected in the character structures of the individuals that are drawn to them. In this way, science is not a method but a manifestation of a group’s way of being. The group attracts a specific character style –a particular psychological makeup. For example, a certain attention to detail, interest in the specific, and crush on the “real” is not simply an ideology but a character structure and approach to life that has been described by psychodynamic psychology –namely the obsessive-compulsive character style.

"I" and "Me": A New Model for S/O Split and the Birth of the Self

Salvador Dali, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus.

Regarding theories of how the "self" comes to be known, that is, how "I" comes to meet "me," the leading figures are Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead and Jacques Lacan. These three theorists  have proposed models for the way in which the knower becomes the knower of the known. Also called the self concept, conscious self, and the subject/object split, the concern is how one comes to be both knower and known. This question continues to be an area of exploration for artists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, and philosophers.

Mead's symbolic interactionist theory has roots in the pragmatist philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Building on the idea that we are born as an "I" -an active knower- and only come to develop the self, the "me," through social interaction. Mead describes how the I begins to relate gestures with reactions in others. Through these gestures the child comes to discover that they can manipulate the environment. Later, the child begins engaging in play. During solo play the child adopts contrasting roles, switching between doctor and patient, cop and robber, or "good guy" and "bad guy". Mead describes how this switching between playtime characters forms the child's ability to switch between perspectives, eventually developing the ability to see the I from the point of the other, which Mead calls the me. In social play, the child learns the rules of certain games. These rules, or limitations, Mead contends, serve as the first symbolic other,  which we can say comes to frustrate the child with limitations on action. This is the point from which Sigmund Freud picks up. 

Jacques Lacan, speculating on the work of French philosopher and psychologist Henri Wallon, proposed that the self is realized between the ages of 6 and 18 months, when the child comes to recognize itself in a mirror for the first time. Dubbed the mirror phase, this is the moment when the subject splits, becoming the object of its own subjectivity. The mirror stage is the foundation of the image of the I, what Lacan came to call the imaginaire (image of the imaginary).

Whereas Mead contends that the "I" becomes aware of the "me" through childhood play, and Lacan contends that the moment of self recognition occurs in relationship to one's image in a mirror, we would like to propose a yet unexplored aspect of the subject/object split.

The proposal is that dreaming is the evolutionary mechanism that brings about the image of the self and self consciousness.

Although evolutionary psychologists have proposed various models for the evolutionary function of dreaming, one which illustrates dreaming as a mechanism of self consciousness has not been proposed. Even in psychoanalysis, where the dream serves not only as the "royal road to the unconscious," but also as a foundation of psychoanalytic theory, does not make the dream-self connection.

An initial elaboration on this model, a speculative addition to both the social interactionists' and the psychodynamic insights, will be made here, although the idea is in need of more thorough elaboration.

Since infants are prelinguistic, their dreams are most likely to be similar to early memories, called flashbulb memories. This would mean a compilation of images, not unlike montage technique in film. In the prelinguistic state the framework of chronos time, dependent on the grammatical-logical reference (present, future, past) of most culutres, would not be acted. Instead, the dream life would mostly consist of kairos time, or the emotional connection of motion and transition between images. As the infant enters into linguistic stages (after 1st year through 6th year), the features of language begin to shape thought and thus the dream. Contrasting between the dream life and waking life, comparisons between transductive logic, analogic, induction and deduction, as well as chronos based time become evident. We cannot know that the dream follows rules that are unlike the rules of waking life until the rules of waking life are developed (learned) through grammatical framing and symbolic interaction. This would also include individuation, or what Jean Piaget referred to as object permanence and overcoming egocentricity.

In the dream the child encounters the image of the self. When we dream in the third person, we experience the emotional reaction in the first person. It is at this moment that the characteristics of the I experiencing the me, described by Mead, fall into perfect harmony with this dream model of self. Unlike Mead's model of the development of the self concept, which acts through play, this model depicts the child simultaneously experiencing the emotional experience from inside and from outside of the I. The child is, at once, actor and audience to their own performance.