Ed Paradigm Camera Ready

The ecoDarwinian
Paradigm:
In a Landscape of Suggestions
(April, 2008)
Published Lulu
& distributed by: www.lulu.com
copyright © Richard Ostrofsky, 2007

ISBN: 978-1-4357-1325-3
1st Edition: April, 2008
Front Cover: Ripples of the random . . .

Image courtesy of www.freeimages.co.uk
For Maya, Galilée, and other precious human children.
Beautifully self-organized systems . . .

W hat lasts longer among the ripples of the random must last longer than those
ripples that last not so long. That is the theory of natural selection in a nutshell.
– Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Gregory Bateson
Until at least relatively recent times, most human beings believed there was an
essential difference between what went on in their own minds and went on in
the rest of nature . . . Human beings had a reasoning soul, linking them to
something divine, to something that is, above and beyond the principles
governing the rest of nature.
– The Last Resistance: The Concept of Science as a Defense
against Psychoanalysis, Marcus Bowman
. . . in this book the provisional solution which we have reached must be the
final word: the thoughts themselves are the thinkers.
– Psychology, W illiam James, (1909)
The world will always be here, and it will always be different, more varied,
more interesting, more alive, but still always the world in all its complexity and
incompleteness. There is nothing behind it, no absolute or platonic world to
transcend to. All there is of Nature is what is around us. All there is of Being is
relations among real, sensible things. All we have of natural law is a world that
has made itself. All we may expect of human law is what we can negotiate
among ourselves, and what we take as our responsibility. All we may gain of
knowledge must be drawn from what we can see with our own eyes and what
others tell us they have seen with their eyes. All we may expect of justice is
compassion. All we may look up to as judges are each other. All that is
possible of utopia is what we can make with our own hands. Pray let it be
enough.
– The Life of the Cosmos, Lee Smolin
Table of Contents
and Overviews
Preface 13
The eco-Darwinian (eD) paradigm; this book’s origin, theme and
structure; acknowledgments.
Talk #1 Eco-Darwinian Psychology 21

A mind is what a brain is doing; the brain/mind system can be
understood as a self-organizing ecology; intentions and actions
emerge from loosely-stable neural patterns; consciousness is not
a metaphysical property; contrast between folk psychology and
current neuro-psychology; the eD paradigm can be applied to
organizations and to whole societies; much of the human unease
and cultural dislocation in today’s world can be ascribed to the
shift from a top-down to a bottom-up world-view; the eD research
program.
Talk #2 Order Without Design 39

Three world-views: the religious, the Newtonian, and the modern
eco-Darwinian; evolutionary change is coherently patterned,
self-driven and self-consistent; the Darwinian paradigm goes
beyond standard Darwinian theory in its conception of
self-organization and in its applications; six modes of
self-organization: natural selection, balance of income and
outflow, principle of least action, teleonomic directedness, power
law, self-similarity (or auto-poiesis); the Baldwin Effect;
co-evolution and ecology.
Talk #3 The Power of Suggestion 59

The concept of suggestion serves better than information as a
basis for communication theory; suggestions influence (not
necessarily inform or control) a production system that receives
them; a communication means what it suggests its recipient(s)
think or do; minds, cultures and societies can be conceived and
studied as ecologies of suggestion; we can think of ourselves as
suggestion processors (suggers), and of mind as that suggestion
processing itself; competition of incompatible suggestions is our
normal state: it is not inner conflict but coherence and agency that
need to be explained as a brain’s remarkable achievement;
loosely stable sources of suggestion (termed re-suggestive
structures or scripts) are the basis of skill, memory and culture.
Talk #4 Distributed Cognition 79

A mind is what ten billion unintelligent neurons in a brain are
doing; how a brain is like an ant hill; swarm logic; stigmergy;
neural nets; the brain as a kind of tuned receiver; adaptive
intelligence; stigmergic guidance in human society.
Talk #5 The Concept of Mind 97

The notion of suggestion connects the concepts of “mind” and
“body,” helping us see these as alternative descriptions of a single
process; our understanding of mind must work from the bottom-
up, not imagining consciousness as a magical entity that runs the
mind; kinds of minds; cognitive coherence: the resolution of inner
conflict; looking ahead: Talks #6 – #9 and after.
Talk #6 Pattern and Structure 119

A pattern is anything of which repeated instances can be
recognized; patterns propagate in various ways: by direct
copying, by accretion and growth, by repair and replenishment;
by ramification and specialization; by adaptive complementation.
patterns organize their environments as extensions of themselves;
the distinction between prediction and anticipation; entangled
causation in ecological systems; the use of simulation to
anticipate ecological events; ecological relationships are
politicious – simultaneously cooperative and in conflict.
Koestler’s holarchies: a world of recombinant holons, guided by
each other’s suggestions; the distinction between structure and
system; toward a science of self-organizing pattern.
Talk #7 Neural Wetware 139

Review of the history of brain/mind science: the scientists of
brain and mind found that they were studying the same system
from different points of view; the brain and body organize and
present a mind which in turn influences the body; the
convergence of research in psychology, neurophysiology and
artificial intelligence; Minsky’s “society of mind” – a modular,
black-box approach; affect and emotion; learning as an evolution
of firing patterns in a neural network; domain-specific learning;
neural plasticity and pre-disposition; neural development and
brain architecture; the brain as an organ of adaptive interface
between the creature and its world.
Talk #8 Language 159

The significance of language for human biology; from suggestion
to signs and symbols; the sign as a re-suggestive structure; a
symbol is a sign that points to other signs, rather than to real
things in the world; the word as a catchment basin, “draining” an
area of experience; the evolution of language; the connection
between language and tool making; the “bewitchment” of
language; language as a medium.
Talk #9 Consciousness 177

Consciousness as “fame in the brain” – the felt reverberation of
a dominant neural pattern; any entity that could do all the things
that conscious beings do would have to be conscious; sentience
and linguality; narrative consciousness allows our minds to be
changed indirectly by a conceptualized past and future, not just
directly by a changing situation; the concept of “self”; the
individual as a kind of mobile, sentient “plant.”
Talk #10 A Mind of One’s Own 195

The concept of personality; personality as a context for
suggestion processing; as an ecology of re-suggestive structures;
as a system of tectonic plates; as a shaping of affect into emoting
cognition; as the encapsulation of a life history lived in a given
culture; personality is not to be confused with temperament; the
mind as a self-construing holarchy of re-combinant features; six
levels of personality; personality “disorder” is more like an
overly rigid order of re-suggestive structures that resist
correction; emotional homeostasis of self-excitation and
self-soothing; psycho-therapy as a training in specific skills.
Talk #11 Culture and Relationship 215
The notion of culture, in its usual sense, is circular, and cannot be
used as a principle of explanation; a modern society is comprised
of many over-lapping cultures, only partially accommodating to
one another; culture resides primarily in material artifacts and in
the brains of individuals, and is then negotiated between
individuals in their relationships; we can think of culture in the
first instance as a personal inventory – a system of memes, or
re-suggestive structures, that guide an individual; James
Gibson’s concept of affordance.
Talk #12 Society 229

Society is a politicious, open system: of prerogatives and power
relationships; of stigmergic prompts; of child-rearing and
education; of narrative; society as a “trading bloc” – hopefully,
with a default culture of civility; society as a suggestion ecology
defining a structure of relationships; primarily, people are neither
role-players nor game-players but suggestion processors who live
in playpens and playgrounds; the individual as negotiator; civil
society as a default culture; the prospect of an integrated social
science.
Talk #13 Groups and Governance 245

The seeming paradox of government in a self-organizing system;
government as a peculiar industry for the production of public
goods; the free-rider problem; groups as “local publics”; the
fractal nature of society; the addictive nature of government;
government is a matter of arrogation and acquiescence, not
contract; political entrepreneurship; the law of propagating wants;
no separation between economics and politics; the concentration
of wealth and power; scale of concentration is limited by the
reach of government; technology has made war prohibitively
expensive and greatly increased the reach of governments;
government is a feature of human biology; government as a setter
of contexts and as a buffer system.
Talk #14 At Home in the Cosmos 265

We need a story that gives our lives some meaning; kept within
their spheres, science and religion do two different jobs; most
conflict between religion and science could be avoided; religion
per se need not be superstitious; Allport’s definition of religion;
a self-organizing system needs no creator, but the task of finding
a meaningful context for one’s life remains valid and urgent;
religious people believe in a God whose commands provide a
ground for moral choices, values and meanings; Darwin sets the
challenge of transcending nature in a non-superstitious way;
Darwinian Gnosticism; organized religion as a franchise
operation.
Talk #15 Being Human 283

Taking the world apart; the eco-Darwinian paradigm and the
context of life; no metaphysical self; mind is a biological
phenomenon, not a supernatural add-on; much of what we are is
unconscious; from Divine Mystery to insuperable complexity;
Man is no longer the measure; we are beneficiaries and victims
of human nature; the need for suggestive guidance; shifted
concepts of autonomy and agency; the Baldwin effect again; a
shifted concept of authenticity.
Talk #16 Becoming Trans-human 301

Impact of the eD paradigm on society began with science itself;
toward a “singularity” of human history where the rate of
technological change is infinite and impossible to regulate;
technological change is no longer just quantitative, but is
becoming qualitative as well – changing what it means to be
human; the eD paradigm plays a key role in many of these
transformative technologies; the eD paradigm val-orizes
difference as the source of evolution and progress; the culture
war around people’s attitudes toward science and technology as
“progress”; the concept of redemption.
Talk #17 What We Don’t Know 313

Areas of Ignorance: questions that are still open: why is there
something rather than nothing? what replaces the idea of cause
for eco-Darwinian systems? Is life a kind of infection that some
planets happen to catch, or should it be seen as a tendency of the
universe, or both? How does an organism develop from a single
fertilized egg? chance and necessity; relationship between
cognition and emotion; how does the brain represent the different
kinds of information? toward Bateson’s ecology of mind, and a
science of humankind; the human animal needs guidance that
science cannot offer; the future of scientific civilization and of
humanity itself; personal philosophy.
Further Reading 329
Index 351
14
PREFACE
Preface
. . . theories of evolution which, in accordance with the
philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging
from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon
of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor
are they able to ground the dignity of the person.
– Pope John Paul II 1
In 1972, Gregory Bateson published a collection of cross-disciplinary

essays under the provocative title: Steps to an Ecology of Mind.2 Since
that time, Bateson’s ecological metaphor has been emerging as a root idea
of current neuropsychology and cognitive science. We are beginning to
understand the human mind as a kind of eco-system, doubly constituted
by loosely stable firing patterns of a human brain and nervous system on
one hand, and by participation in a natural and social environment on the
other. The flip side of this ecological image is evolutionary and
Darwinian – and, as such, anathema to traditional-minded people who see
the mind as constituted top down from a supreme “command centre” of
soul or spirit or consciousness.
In effect, we begin to understand the brain as a massively parallel
information processor – or suggestion processor as I prefer to say. Animal
brains give rise to animal minds. Human brains give rise to human minds.
A great many inter-communicating human minds give rise to the
1
Address to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996. See
www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm
2
I credit this ecological metaphor for cognition to Bateson, having been
unable to trace it further. For a timeline of the evolution of cybernetics,
see www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/timeline.htm .
15
THE ECO-DARWINIAN PARADIGM
collective mind of culture and society, which in turn shapes and is shaped
by all the individual minds that comprise it. The over-all picture is not of
sovereign minds thinking thoughts and making choices, but of human
thoughts and choices formed as spontaneous outcomes from a competition
of innumerable competing suggestions. As William James had already
seen over a hundred years ago, “The thoughts themselves are the
thinkers.”
We must expect some fur to fly when the import of these ideas is
fully grasped – for, in extending the ecoDarwinian (eD) paradigm of
self-organization from the origin of living species to the functioning of
brains and minds, they directly challenge over 2500 years of religious and
philosophical speculation on the nature and ground of human existence.
This tradition taught us to see ourselves as nodes of immortal, conscious
spirit created by a loving, omniscient God. Even when a secularizing
mind-set abandons the theocentric vision, we still like to think of
ourselves as more-or-less rational agents. By contrast, the eD paradigm
and recent neuro/cognitive science stemming from it is teaching us to
understand ourselves as self-organizing, bio-social, suggestion processors.
In psychology and elsewhere, much of the cultural dislocation that we
experience today can be ascribed to this shift from a top-down to a
bottom-up perspective.
In this book I have attempted to sketch the landscape of possibilities
and issues that appear when eD ideas are taken on board as a
comprehensive world-view. To this end, I offer a series of dialogues
between an amateur philosopher and his wife, a practicing
psychotherapist. Guy (representing the author), speaks for the eD view
that mental events correspond without remainder to physiological events,
and that events of both types configure themselves spontaneously on
bottom-up, self-organizing, ecological principles. He is fascinated by this
new, biological understanding of brain and mind, and certainly does not
find it devastating. His wife Thea, on the other hand, starts out largely
ignorant of the new science, and dismayed by what she has heard of it. Its
conception of the mind as an evolving eco-system is completely alien to
her, and she is worried about its implications for her clients and for the
public. One thing that Guy and Thea can agree on is that eD science
proposes a cognitive revolution more radical than the heliocentric
astronomy of Copernicus and Galileo.
16
PREFACE
Since those early days of science, there has been a growing rift
between the world of ordinary experience and the world construed by
what we call “science” – an intensive process of empirical, critical,
abductive investigation. The central issue, we are now finding, lies
between two opposing styles of explanation: between top-down and
bottom-up thinking. From a top-down perspective, some idea of God, an
Intelligent Designer, or at least transcendent Natural Law is practically an
intellectual necessity as a First Cause from which the whole show
proceeds. Things happen a certain way, ultimately, because that is God’s
will – whatever you decide to mean by “God.” If you then ask why God
wills it so, there is no rational answer.
Taking a bottom-up view, we find that it is not only possible, but very
fruitful to conceive the whole show as having organized itself out of
nothing – and to frame our explanations on that basis. In this
dispensation, as Smolin says: “There is . . . no absolute or platonic world
to transcend to. All there is of Nature is what is around us. All there is of
Being is relations among real, sensible things. All we have of natural law
is a world that has made itself.”
What Smolin says here, speaking probably for most living scientists,
is quite radical when you stop to think about it. It’s radical because, in
transforming our understanding of Nature, this paradigm shift changes
how we understand ourselves. Just as we’d been accustomed to think of
the world as designed and called into being by an act of volition, so we
were accustomed to think of bodies and minds as separate entities under
the control of a Self – a disembodied knot of pure consciousness. So
much was this knot of consciousness conceived as separate from mind
and body that we imagined a real entity, the Soul, which leaves the body
after death to meet some posthumous destiny of its own. In a scientific
psychology, this idea of a metaphysical Self is no longer tenable because
no evidence for it has been found, and because it does not help to explain
anything. On the contrary, it places the central phenomenon of this
science, our sense of being minds that deal with other minds, beyond
explanation.
It is important to be clear about this: In the biological sciences,
evolution and the ecological interdependence of life-forms are highly
confirmed theories. In psychology and the social sciences however, what
I’m calling the “ecoDarwinian paradigm” is not yet by itself a theory.
17
Rather, it’s an approach – a strategy for seeing and making sense of

things. Specifically, it’s a way to understand ourselves: as biological
systems that evolve and self-organize, and fall spontaneously into
ecology-like patterns that are temporarily and loosely stable. On this path,
consciousness becomes a phenomenon to explain, not a primal substance
that must be taken for granted.
And that is the scientist’s point: On this path, the phenomenon of
mind potentially can be explained, where a top-down view can only find
a mystery. Whether one properly responds to a mystery by singing hymns
to it or laboring to understand it (or both, or neither) is a question that
readers must answer for themselves. Stop reading here if you cannot bear
to contemplate that the mind is not an impenetrable manifestation of God
– only a scientific puzzle of extraordinary complexity.
Beginning with Locke and Holbach in the 18th century, a few
philosophers and scientists came to suspect that the ancient mind-body
dualism was wrong: that mind and brain are really the same thing from
different points of view, or that a mind is what a brain is doing. By the
time of Freud and William James in the late 19th century, this idea was
a commonplace in scientific circles. But only since about 1970 have we
begun to understand just how a neurally grounded mind is possible. We
are far from having all the answers yet, but we begin to have a general
understanding of how the brain’s workings produce what we experience
as experience itself: as sentient, self-aware consciousness.
To understand anything at all, the first step is to choose a metaphor
for its investigation. If mind is not a mysterious substance that arrives in
the body at conception and departs at death, then what is it?
Leibniz thought of the mind as an elaborate mechanical device – like
a windmill or a clock. Freud imagined it as an overheating steam engine
with valves that got a bit sticky sometimes, allowing internal pressures to
build dangerously high. Many 20th century psychologists conceived the
mind as a kind of stored-program computer with cultural “software”
running on the brain’s “hardware” – or “wetware” as organic computers
have been called. Gregory Bateson saw that the mind had more in
common with an evolving eco-system than with an externally
programmed computer, and thereby launched the most promising
metaphor to-date: the basis for most current research, and the one that
we’ll be following. Skeptical Thea will say this metaphor is no more
18
PREFACE
likely to be correct than any of its predecessors. She may be right – yet
there is reason to think we are at last on the right track.
Bateson developed his ideas about the evolving, ecological mind in
the currently prevalent language of information; but I believe a language
of suggestion may prove more apt for the purpose, and for the theory of
communication in general. Loosely, a suggestion is a message that
prompts a person, a nerve cell or any responsive being, to think or do
something. It may be thought of as exerting a weakly causal or influential
force, in a way that information, in this term’s strict, quantitative sense,
does not.
In ordinary language, information is comprised of statements and
other representations of states of affairs in the real world. Information
merely brings us news of what is going on. By contrast, suggestions exert
an influence upon us to interpret our world and/or respond to it in some
specific way. Our observable behaviour then – what we actually do – will
emerge as an outcome of competing suggestions from various sources:
e.g. to fight or flee, “stick it” or “chuck it,” welcome a friendly advance
or not.
All meaningful information conveys suggestion, but information in
the engineer’s sense, is not yet meaningful; and it is the “meaning,” rather
information per se that is suggestive. As well, not all suggestions carry
information. For example, the touch of another person is always highly
suggestive, but how would you define or measure its information content?
A similar difficulty exists when communication is thought to be based on
the transmission of signs – marks or events that “stand for” something
else. All signs suggest; they suggest what they are taken to stand for. But
not all suggestions make use of signs. Signs refer through learned
association to ideas and entities beyond themselves, but communication
is much more than that, and it begins on a more primitive level altogether.
Primordially, and above all, what communications communicate are
feelings, relationships, values. A theory that commences at the level of
information overlooks the most basic and urgent communications of all.
More on this in Talk #3.
Our approach then will be to think of the brain not as an information
processing device, but as a suggestion processor – and to identify what we
call “mind” either with the stream of suggestions processed, or with the
pre-existing structures of suggestion through which new suggestions are
19
evaluated, and either turned down or accepted. These structures derive

from various sources: from our families and cultures and personal life
histories to be sure, but also, through our genes, from the whole biological
history of our species. In tracing the interplay of all these influences, we
can understand human beings as self-organizing systems of suggestion
that constitutes themselves on the fly, under the pressure of events. Thus,
when you speak of your “self,” you mean yourself as a whole – a whole
creature, body and mind together, embedded in your society and world.
Or you mean a mentally constructed “self-image,” comprised of
suggestions that you put to yourself and others, as a basis for their
relationships with you and as a context for your own choices. Thus, a
human mind can be identified with the patterns or structures that come
together in its brain for the parsing and evaluation of suggestions – and
with that processing itself. But there is no transcendent, metaphysical Self
or “Soul” at the mind’s core. There doesn’t need to be.
Advantages of our suggestion-based, eD paradigm include the
following: First, the theory of communication can be grounded at a
primitive level involving the formulation, reception and selective uptake
of suggestions to feel, think and/or do something. The “meaning” of any
suggestion is what it suggests we feel or think or do. The theory of
knowledge can then be recast in a language of suggested ideas and values,
rather than asserted “truths.” Epistemology is thereby personalized;
values are brought back into the domain of reasoned (ie. justifiably
suggested) argument; and intellectual arrogance becomes a bit more
difficult.
In psychology and social science, the cybernetic notion of “control”
can be replaced with a looser and more appropriate notion of influence or
guidance based on a weighing and selective uptake of suggestions. This
done, it becomes possible to think about and study various types of social
relationship as the mutual exchange of suggestive guidance.
Richard Dawkins’ concept of a meme (a transmissible packet of
culture) can be interpreted as a re-suggestive structure capable of putting
more-or-less consistent suggestions to the persons who encounter it.
Bateson’s “ecology of mind” can then be studied as a dynamic, loosely
balanced system of suggestions that people tender to themselves and to
one another. The concept of “mind” is thereby detached from the
experience of consciousness, and the phrase “unconscious mind” loses its
20
PREFACE
flavor of oxymoron. We find ourselves with a fairly precise language of

“mind,” parallel and isomorphic to the physiological language of “brain.”
All this said, and radical as our paradigm shift is in some respects, it
is well to remember that the change is more semantic than real: We
continue to be the same creatures we have always been, though a new
language of self-description becomes available. Just as modern astronomy
does not alter our day-to-day perception of a unique Sun that sets and
rises, so this ecological paradigm need not alter the way we ordinarily
treat ourselves and each other as autonomous, morally responsible
individuals. It is I – not a brain, or a system of suggestions – who writes
these words. It is you who read them.
In the last reckoning, a scientific theory, even a solidly established
one, is no more than a suggested way of looking at things – good for some
purposes, not so good for others. A certain tension always remains
between one’s personal experience of life, and the public story (or stories)
in circulation. There is room for discrepancy – a legitimate one – between
scientific and ordinary ways of seeing the world. At the same time, this
new shift of understanding, like the earlier ones of Copernicus and
Darwin, must be expected to have cultural and political consequences.
Until we grasp that interpretations are just suggested cognitive strategies,
the tendency to spin scientific theory into political and religious ideology
is unlikely to disappear.
I also want to stress that these “Talks” are a product of collective
intelligence in the sense of Talk #4. This writer makes one in a great
swarm of minds, buzzing along a stigmergic trail laid down by many
others, adding my own two scents (sic) to theirs. It goes without saying,
then, that all the books and websites referenced, and the innumerable
conversations (with friends in sympathy with these ideas and other friends
decidedly not) played a part in making this the book it is. Specific
acknowledgements and thanks are due first of all to Gregory Bateson,
Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Nick Humphrey who turned me on
to the eD paradigm. In particular, it was Dennett’s provocative book
Consciousness Explained (1991) that made me see the enormity of the
paradigm shift in progress, and launched me on the project of getting my
head around these novel ideas.
And I gladly express appreciation to several friends, especially Carol
Motuz, John McKeefery and Luis Oliver, with whom I discussed these
21
ideas continually. Their reservations, or (as in Carol’s case) outright

hostility to the paradigm, were greatly helpful in this writing.
Instead of a conventional bibliography, I provide a list of books and
Web sites, organized by topic. These serve as a starting point for further
investigation, while the bare list of topics conveys the breadth of
landscape to be surveyed. I have not provided a glossary, but suggest the
use of Wikipedia and 1-Click Answers to supplement the definitions I’ve
provided.
Finally, a word of caution: In this book I’m sketching a certain
outlook, more than arguing the case for it. It is not a work of scholarship
and close reasoning, but of Web surfing and synthesis. Though I have
tried not to violate current knowledge in any way, my interpretations go
beyond the current scientific consensus at several points. Call this
“philosophic extrapolation” or even “poetic license”if you will, but I felt
the liberties justified, since my purpose has been to gain a sense of where
the new paradigm is taking us: what it tells us about ourselves and about
the business of being human. Obviously, surprises are possible, though I
think at least the broad outlines of brain/mind science are fairly clear by
this point. Still, the reader should keep in mind that these fields are
progressing rapidly, and that the ideas advanced here are suggestions
only. It would be tiresome to keep saying this, so I do so only once, at the
beginning.
22
Talk #1 ecoDarwinian Psychology
Indeed, we have probably learned more about the brain in the
past 20 years than in all of recorded history.
– Alan I. Leshner 1
Thea: Now that we have a little time, maybe you can tell me what’s
been getting you so excited. You’ve been reading around in a lot
of fields – mine among them – and talking about paradigm shifts,
and intellectual revolutions. But I have to say that for therapists
like me, it’s still business as usual. For us, the revolution
happened a hundred years ago with Freud, the talking cure, and
the discovery of the unconscious.
Therapists know the world is changing rapidly; and, like our
clients, we are affected by so much change. But our role is
essentially a conservative one: Human beings and human needs
remain much as they have always been, and our job is to help our
clients get on with their lives somehow, despite the changes
happening around them.
Guy: I agree that your role is a conservative one. But I think a

revolution about how we understand ourselves is on its way. To
help your clients, you may need to assist them in coming to terms
with new ideas, with a whole new paradigm.
My sense is that people in the helping professions always
find themselves pulled in two directions when conceptual
changes are happening. On one hand, as licensed practitioners,
your ideas must abide by the prevailing theories and methods, or
at least stay on good terms with them. On the other hand, to help
your clients you have to meet them on their terms. In
comprehending and adapting to major change, you shrinks must
be near the front lines, right after the poets and philosophers.
1
Editorial in Science Magazine, May 18, 2007
Thea: Well, which changes are you thinking of? And how do they shift
our understanding?
Guy: In a nutshell, the revolution I have in mind is Darwinism, and its

impact on psychology and the social sciences.
Thea: But Darwinism is hardly news! Nietzsche, Freud and William

James were all aware of Darwin’s thought and heavily influenced
by it. Its influence on the development of psychotherapy was
profound from the beginning. Where’s the novelty?
Guy: Remember that Darwin’s thought is still far from fully digested.
In many religious circles, there is still bitter resistance to the idea
that human beings evolved from apes by natural selection. And
although some religious groups have accepted evolution by now,
they still avoid Darwinism’s central point – that no guiding hand
was necessary.
Moreover, controversial as Darwin’s theory still is for many
people, I think its major impact is still to come. It’s only within
the last thirty years or so that we’ve begun to understand how a
fertilized ovum develops into a multicellular organism with a
complex brain. It’s only within that time that we’ve begun to
understand the mechanism by which a functioning nervous
system weaves a mind. The Darwinian concept of spontaneously
accumu-lating order is the key to both discoveries, but proving
terribly difficult for many people to take on board and digest.
Partly due to the resistance that Darwinian ideas provoke, and
partly due to the fearful complexity of biological systems, the
human and social implications of the new discoveries have
scarcely begun to enter public consciousness.
Thea: All right. I think I see where you’re coming from. You see
announcements of some of this recent work in newspapers and
magazines, but I can’t say it figures much in the professional
literature of therapists. To read about it systematically, as you’ve
been doing, where would one look?
24
#1 ECO-DARWINIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Guy: There is no one source. For the primary research material you’d
need to consult the journals of a few dozen academic fields.2
Even the serious popular and semi-popular writings would fall in
several sections of a book store. A lot of it is on the Internet. A
lot of it has appeared in the Science section of the New York
Times and other serious newspapers and magazines. Some of the
best digestive work on the new discoveries is being done by
philosophers. Those who can overcome their classical training
sufficiently to stay abreast of the research findings are well
equipped to consider their human meanings.3
Thea: Does this new science have a name?
Guy: What’s happening is not just new science, but a new paradigm –
a new way of doing science, a different way of thinking about
change and cause. Aspects of this new approach are discussed
under various headings: general systems theory, information
theory, cybernetics, sociobiology, semiotics and neuropsychology
to name a few. But these names refer to areas of specialization,
not to the paradigm as a whole. I think of it as the ecoDarwinian
(eD) paradigm to emphasize the bottom-up, evolutionary
perspective at its core.
Thea: That’s rather provocative, don’t you think? You were just saying
a moment ago that Darwinism is still highly controversial in the
public mind.
Guy: Darwinism is controversial precisely because of the paradigm

change involved. I have no wish to offend; but it’s important to
be clear how our habitual ways of thinking are being challenged:
2
For an idea of the scope of this research, see Further Reading at the back
of this book.
3
Daniel Dennett, Owen Flanagan and Paul and Patricia Churchland, for
example.
25
Instead of thinking of the world as planned, designed intended,

and authorized from the top down, we are learning to think of it
as spontaneously configuring itself, and finding loose ecological
balance from the bottom up. It’s a radical change of perspective,
with implications everywhere you look.
Thea: You could drop Darwin and speak of “eco-psychology,” couldn’t

you? It would be more succinct and less annoying. It even has a
warm fuzzy feel that might diffuse some of the hostility.
Guy: Too warm and fuzzy for my purposes. That term

“eco-psychology” is already co-opted by Theodore Roszak and
others for a mix of psychotherapy with a save-the earth social
platform. But what we’re looking at, really is a new science – a
psychology re-grounded in biology and the theory of self-
organizing systems.
Thea: What’s a self-organizing system? I don’t begin to understand

what you mean.
Guy: A self-organizing system is one that shows increasing order

without patterned input. Without external design, in other words.
Even some physical systems are known to do this – not always by
natural selection. The Darwinian co-evolution characteristic of
biology is a special case of self-organization – a very important
case. Species of organisms and the domain of life as a whole tend
to become more and more complexly ordered, just from the effort
of creatures to survive and reproduce in an indifferent universe.
No “intelligent design” is needed.
Thea: And you think the mind is such a system?
Guy: That’s where the research seems to be going. More and more, we
understand the brains of organisms as configuring themselves
through cell specialization (into different types of neurons and
other brain cells), followed by evolutionary processes of neuron
migration and synapse formation. The mind too can be thought
26
of as a self-organizing ecology of competing desires, perceptions

and plans. Eventually, human culture and society as a whole may
be brought under this same paradigm as an ecology of
co-evolving ideas, artifacts, relationships and institutions – an
“ecology of mind,” in Bateson’s phrase.
Thea: I can’t imagine how we’d do that, and I doubt many people will
want to see themselves and their societies in those terms. I still
don’t really understand what you’re saying: What would it mean
to think of ourselves as ecologies rather than conscious agents?
Or to think of whole cultures or societies in those terms?
Guy: The concept is radical, but entirely consistent with the notion of
unconscious mind, already well-known to you shrinks and largely
accepted by the public. Taking the concept of unconscious mind
seriously, and seeing it from a biological perspective, we begin
to understand ourselves as complex, ecological systems in which
the contents of consciousness emerge on their own from mental
processes that are not conscious. All our feelings, beliefs, desires,
intentions, and actual behaviors are emergents of this kind. Your
thoughts are you. There is no “you” apart from them.
It’s not just that “existence precedes essence” as the
existentialists said. Rather, our concepts of self and agency – the
sense in which a metaphysically real self is conceived to imagine
and will and do things – is called into question. Conscious
agency becomes an emergent property, analogous to the blueness
of the sky or the liquidity of water. It’s an interpreted property
emerging from a complex process. It’s not a metaphysical given.
Thea: But this is scary. If we can’t think of ourselves as competent

agents who intend and plan and do things, then we are just
machines. We don’t exist at all.
Guy: I don’t think it’s quite that bad. On good days, at least, we can
function as conscious, competent agents, and can still think of
each other as such. Our sense of self is shifted but not overturned
completely. You still know who you are; and I still know. The
27
self-sensing, proprioceptive self and the narrative self are still

intact. But it’s clear, once you acknowledge that “a mind is what
a brain doing,” that there is no room for a separate, metaphysical
“self” apart from the physical organism with its thoughts and
feelings. William James said more than a hundred years ago that
“the thoughts themselves are the thinkers.” Today we’d add that
thinking is a self-organizing process, mostly unconscious, that
exists and sustains itself in ecological balance.
Thea: But that can’t be right. We are beings that have minds and
bodies, not bodies with brains that somehow spin their minds. It
doesn’t feel right to think of the self in those terms. Surely,
human beings are something more than biological organisms.
Guy: When you say that, what exactly are you claiming? If all you
mean is that there is more to a human being than the vital
processes of a living animal, then I (and all the neuroscientists I
know of) would agree. It’s surely true that to think of humans
merely in biological, homeostatic terms is to miss most of what
is characteristically human. On the other hand, if you want to
argue for some kind of dualism – with the mind not an emergent
of the body’s functioning, but a separate substance that somehow
“animates” the body – well, all our evidence points the other
way. There is no reason to think of mind as something other than
first-person experience of what a brain is doing – or better: what
the whole creature is feeling and doing.
science and folk psychology

Thea: To be honest, I’m not sure what I believe, or want to believe
about the nature of mind. I’m repelled by the reductionism of
these sciences that obviously appeal to you. I don’t want to think
of mind as an exercise in data processing, nor of life itself as a
matter of chemistry. On the other hand, I’m aware that all the old
stories seem thin and implausible by comparison with the story
that present-day science is telling.
As a therapist also, I find myself pulled in two directions, just
as you were saying. We like to imagine our field as solidly
28
grounded in science. We’d prefer not to think of ourselves as

witch doctors, practicing a modern form of faith-healing. At the
same time, we must accept that our clients come to us for help
with their problems as they perceive them, not for instruction in
scientific psychology. It would not be acceptable to most clients
to learn that their self-understanding is defective in light of
current knowledge about the mind and brain – even when such
knowledge might be helpful to them in principle.
There are things most people do not want to know about
themselves. As Freud saw, they don’t want to know about their
unconscious desires and impulses – which is one reason these
remain unconscious! They also don’t want to know that what
they feel and think are just results of their brains’ workings.
Guy: The free will problem seems to be the crux. When it suits us, we
want to think of ourselves as unconditioned beings – uncaused
causes of whatever we are doing. And sometimes we want to let
ourselves off this hook of personal responsibility by making out
that we are victims of life history and circumstance. My reply
would be that both these stories are self-serving in opposite ways,
and that neither accords well with the current science. The lines
of causation are really loops; there are no ultimate causes in the
story we are telling. It’s just as correct (and just as nonsensical)
to think of the mind as driving the brain as the other way round.
The fact seems to be that mind and brain are just alternative
perspectives on the same system.
Thea: Now, that idea – that there are no ultimate causes for what people
do – accords well with the therapist’s experience. We seem to
enjoy a degree of functional autonomy, but nothing like an
absolutely free will. But I doubt it would be possible to explain
this distinction to many of my clients.
Guy: I’m sure you’re right, but I suspect you’ll find yourself having to
explain certain aspects of scientific psychology to your clients in
much the same way that physicians have to explain something
about the medicines they prescribe, or the operations they
29
perform. You can offer the new self-understanding tentatively, on

a try-this-on-for-size basis. Indeed, I don’t see how else you
could offer it. But among the things troubling your clients will be
a barrage of new ideas in a changing society. At a minimum, I
think therapists will find themselves having to help their clients
adapt to the cultural changes taking place around them – among
these, suggestions from biology and the cognitive sciences to
understand themselves in this new way.
Thea: Suggestions about who they are?
Guy: More about what they are. What is a human being? What kind of
thing? “Who are you?” – the question of identity – is a social
and biographical issue. “What are you?” is a question of biology,
physics and physiology.
Thea: Yes, I see your distinction. But these questions of who and what
are not independent. Already, the metaphor of the brain as a
digital computer has replaced the Freudian image of the mind as
an overheating steam engine with valves that get stuck
sometimes. Now you speak of the human being as a kind of
Darwinian meat-robot, programmed first by evolution and then
by a culture.
You’re right. People’s identities are already being touched,
by this new psychology. They are threatened and frightened by
these changes, and angry at all the changes forced on them. The
potential for conflict is terrifying and, as you say, we therapists
are caught in the middle. I can tell you one thing we’re afraid of:
Like it or not, psychotherapy is seen by most people as aligned
with the progress of science against traditional beliefs and values.
Partly because of Freud’s theories, therapists came to be seen as
apologists and instigators of a new hedonism. Now we’ll
probably be seen as preachers of a biological determinism that
denies all that is special about human beings.
Guy: Of course, that will be a complete misunderstanding.
30
Thea: No doubt. But there will be plenty of radicals pushing

psychology in a scientistic direction at the expense of human
values, and plenty of fundamentalists screaming about our
blasphemous denial of the immortal soul. Between them, it’s hard
to see how sanity could prevail.
Guy: Unfortunately, you’re probably right. But this conflict has been
brewing since the Enlightenment – since the mid-18th century.
Now, once again, it’s coming to a head.
unconscious mind
Thea: I suppose so. Freud certainly made it clear that the folk
psychology, identifying the mind with its conscious beliefs,
desires and intentions, had serious problems. He forced
psychology to make room for an Unconscious that can resist,
sometimes completely stymie the conscious will. But to this day,
therapists still don’t know what to make of the unconscious. The
phrase “unconscious mind” still sounds like an oxymoron.
Guy: The idea of the brain as a processor of suggestion (rather than

information) may help a bit. The concept of unconscious
knowledge feels paradoxical, while that of suggestions
automatically turned down or acted on does not. We have no
trouble accepting that many actions are unconsciously initiated
and guided, not because of cognitive dissonance or repression,
but because they are done more efficiently without conscious
intervention. Driving and the detailed control of speech are good
examples: complex cognitive functions for which no conscious-
ness is needed.
Thea: When you stop to think about it, it’s amazing that you can drive
a car on a downtown street and carry on a conversation at the
same time. Clearly, in this case, a mind is managing two very
complicated activities at once, with the details of both completely
unconscious.
Guy: Yes. We should not have made the blunder of identifying mind
31
with consciousness. Most of what we do is coordinated and even

triggered beneath the level of consciousness. And it’s clear that
animal brains can handle very complex tasks without being
conscious in anything like the human sense.
Thea: But normally, we think of our actions as deliberate. We go after

something because we want it, or avoid it because we don’t. We
understand each other as doing things for reasons – usually, for
fairly rational reasons that we’re at least partly aware of. We
resist the idea that our thoughts and actions have causes. Or
worse, that those causes are hidden and irrational.
Guy: Reason and cause are different modes of explanation. Just like
causes, many of our reasons are conscious; some are not. We
seldom think about the ultimate causes of our actions. And when
we do, we find no clear answer.
Thea: Certainly, as a therapist, I know people often do things for

reasons that they cannot own or recognize. I’m aware of folk
psychology’s limitations. I’m just not happy with your
physiological replacement. I know this ecoDarwinian paradigm
excites you, but it leaves me cold. Its reductionist program is not
what therapists need! Our clients surely don’t want to hear that
their minds are disturbances in a soup of chemicals. Nor will it
help us to think of them in those terms. Psychiatrists, treating
physiological disturbances of the brain, may need that language.
We talking-cure psychotherapists need to think about our clients
in ordinary language terms.
ecoDarwinian psychology is not reductionist

Guy: But even the professional distinction you’ve just pointed to
depends on this new language!
Anyway, I think you miss the point if this physio-
logically-grounded psychology strikes you as reductionist. The
idea is certainly not to show that life and mind are nothing but
disturbances in a soup of chemicals – rather that the soup has
wonderful properties – much more wonderful than had seemed
32
possible.
Thea: Yes, the glass is either half empty or half full, depending on how
you look at it. But either way, there’s just half a glass to drink.
If your story is true, the concept of mind is much diminished – no
longer master in its own house.
Guy: Why would you think that any story scientists might tell about
the mind would spoil that word’s common usage? Why should
we drop such a convenient word, however much we learn about
its relation to the brain’s functioning? This conversation and our
whole relationship is a meeting and sharing of minds – surely not
a sharing of brains.
Thea: You can say what you like. The fact remains that science has
taken an idea of mind that was familiar, intelligible and comfort-
able, and put a very difficult one in its place.
Guy: That is true. But science has done that right across the board.
Many people think of science as a bag of tricks to help us live
more comfortably and kill more efficiently. Much more
fundamentally, however, science helps us understand what is and
is not possible, and it replaces a magic-filled world conceived on
the human scale with a world too vast and complex for human
comprehension. This replacement began with Copernicus and
Galileo, took shape with Newton, reached a turning point with
Darwin and is now in a gathering crisis (the crisis we call
“post-modernism”) because the cumulative progress of science
is overturning not just our world-view but our fundamental
self-understanding.
Thea: I thought post-modernism was rather passé by now.
Guy: I see post-modernism as a double shockwave. The first, hitting

intellectuals around the last decade of the 19th century and the
general public with the First World War and its aftermath, was a
cumulative outcome of Darwinism in biology, the scandal of
33
interpretation in philosophy, and relativity and quantum theory

in physics – (compounded by the exploding complexity and root-
lessness of daily life). It was the end of the Newtonian clockwork
universe; and of a rational world governed by a single master
narrative: Pluralism and relativism (not the same at all) were
common responses to it. By now, I think these ideas have mostly
been absorbed. Not that any consensus has been reached. Rather,
this first wave of post-modern ideas have become familiar, and
various positions toward them have been staked out.
But a second shockwave, from ideas still mostly in the
laboratory, is on its way. The impacts of ecology, bio-technology
and what I’m calling eD psychology and sociology have still to
make themselves felt. When they do, we’ll find that the old ideas
of ourselves, as soul, spirit, mind or will no longer serve except
as metaphors – poetic images. Good metaphors, useful metaphors
for most everyday purposes, but no more than that.
Thea: My fear is that we may be left with no coherent self at all.
Guy: We’ll have to give up the idea of the self as a metaphysical entity.
We’ll need to embrace ideas about the self-organization,
self-presentation and self-understanding of a human animal –
akin, in some respects, to the no-self doctrine of the Buddhists.
But the concept of self will keep at least two clear meanings:
On one hand, as a grammatical convenience, a way of pointing to
this human creature – this loosely stable living process with its
nervous system configured and functioning in some particular
way, as when we speak of ourselves in the first person. The same
word also refers to a self-concept – an idea that a human creature
sustains of itself – a cognitive construction that may be
life-furthering or life-constricting, realistic or deluded. In this
second sense, the self is a personal interpretation or story about
the first sense. It’s what you understand yourself to be. Of
course, these concepts are also invoked when we deal with or
refer to other selves – in the second and third persons. These
senses of the word “self” are the only ones left standing, but I
think they’re all we need. What disappears is the redundant
34
notion of an essential self – a perdurable self-within-the-self that

watches your life unfold and takes decisions for you.
Thea: That seems a pity if it’s true. Don't you think we’re poorer
without that idea of an essential and eternal self?
Guy: No. I think we’re better off without it, with more leeway to
understand and re-invent our lives. Besides, if you care to think
of it that way, the self remains as “eternal” – outside of time – as
ever. For all eternity, you always will have been what you are
now. And if you cherish the fantasy of an essential self – placed
and sustained by God, you’re free to keep it, like any other pet
fantasy. Just remember that it’s your own – or one you share with
a certain cultural community. The superstition and danger lie in
confusing cherished fantasies with universal truths.
Thea: Well, maybe. But what will it mean for us when mind is no
longer a mystery – just an ultra-complicated, dimly-understood
process?
the program of ecoDarwinian psychology

Guy: That I can’t tell you yet. No one could. The best answer anyone
could give now would be no more than a guess. We’re talking
about the outcome – and ultimate human meaning – of an
enormous, cross-disciplinary research program to understand
minds and societies as co-evolving ecologies, and ultimately as
a single self-organizing system.
Thea: That should take a good few years of research.
Guy: Obviously. Perhaps that may be the best answer to your question:
This eD paradigm is opening a research program that was not
previously conceivable with potential rewards, hazards and costs
that are only just now entering public discussion. This program’s
aim is probably too vast to be fully realized even by a whole
society’s collective effort; and it is surely beyond the reach of
any individual. But even knowing what questions to ask is
35
already valuable , powerful and dangerous.

Early scientists aspired to read the mind of God in the order
of Nature. Understanding the world of Mind as an evolving, self-
organizing system (however dimly this may be possible) is as
close as we’re likely to come to this tremendous dream.
Thea: At the price of removing the idea of a divine mind behind Nature.
Guy: At the price of conceiving Nature’s “mind” (if that is the right
word) in evolutionary and ecological terms, just as we’re learning
to understand human minds.
Thea: What does this research program involve? Can you sketch it for
me?
Guy: I can describe what I’ve understood of it:
1) Its basis is the eD paradigm itself. As the Bible’s creation story

already grasps, the emergence of order from chaos is the
fundamental mystery to be explained. We want to know how the
structures of the known universe – particles, atoms and
molecules, galaxies, stars and planetary systems, cells, living
organisms and ecologies – came to exist. It seems now that
general principles of self-organization govern the emergence of
structure at every level, so we want to understand those
principles, and how they work.4
2) In particular, the human body, in one finite, fragile envelope, is

a vastly complex self-organized system that we would like to
understand for medical purposes if nothing else. The key
question here is the relation between genes and traits – the
precise role of genetic information (and whatever else) in
specifying and/or building a living organism. The central
question is: how does a whole organism manage to build itself
4
See Talk #2.
36
out of a single fertilized egg?
3) One aspect of this same question is the riddle of organic

individuation5 : Why is the living world comprised (for the most
part) neither of separate individual cells, nor of a single
inter-cooperating mass? Why, in the biosphere as in human
societies, do we see so many individual organisms, like “profit
centers” of a vast business enterprise, with a high degree of local
autonomy and awareness of self-interest? To what extent and in
what ways is the organism’s autonomy constrained? What are the
strengths and weaknesses of autonomy vs. coordination as
biological design choices?
Thea: The Gaia hypothesis would have it that the whole biosphere
really is a single inter-cooperating entity.
Guy: In a sense, perhaps it is. In what sense, precisely, we don’t know

yet. But we can now say that systemic order of any kind depends
on communication – on the transmission and uptake of coor-
dinating messages. To get a handle on such communication we’ll
need a general theory of control and communication. My own
notion, (I’ll tell you about it sometime)6 , is that the concept of
suggestion is better suited than that of information to the needs
of biology and cognitive science.
4) But, however communication theory goes, the “hard problem” (as

neuroscientists call it) is this: How do cognition, adaptive
intelligence and consciousness arise through the inter-
ommunication of components that are not themselves intelligent?
The human organism as a whole is obviously more sentient,
versatile and intelligent, than any individual nerve cell. Barring
a supernatural, dualist explanation, sentience must be an
emergent feature of the whole system. We want to know how this
5
Discussed by Richard Dawkins in The Extended Phenotype.
6
See Talk #3.
37
happens. Even before we know the details, we need to see how

it is possible.7
5) Adaptive learning requires that our brains configure themselves

not only in response to the promptings of their genes, but in
response to the stimulation they receive, both from the external
world and from their intricate self-monitoring. There’s a
significant analogy between the adaptive learning of an
individual organism and the collective, genetic learning of a
species. In both cases, there is a process of trial and error, with
increasing frequency of some patterns and diminishing frequency
of others. The question then is: How are our skills and memories
related to physiological changes written by experience onto the
brain’s fine structure? How does it happen that some
neuro-cognitive patterns get reinforced – grow stronger and more
frequent – at the expense of others?
6) A related question concerns the functioning, predispositions and

predilections of a human brain, apart from any such personal
learning. What is the nature of human nature as such? Until
recently,8 the mind was thought to be a kind of reasoning engine
– a “blank slate” waiting to be written on by culture and
experience. Cultural relativism relies on such an assumption to
argue that different cultures are incommensurable, and that
cross-cultural comparisons and value-judgments are meaningless.
But this “blank slate” model turns out to be mistaken. Human
beings come equipped with numerous instinct patterns, albeit
diffuse and general ones, that shape (and are themselves
re-shaped) by the patterns of culture. In an increasingly global
society, we need an understanding of such pan-human instinctual
patterns as a basis for dealing and dialogue with persons of
different cultures. We also need a theory of human nature for the
purposes of psychotherapy and social science.
7
See Talk #4.
8
Following the ideas of John Locke.
38
Thea: Maybe so, but with a large reservation: The therapist has to take
her clients as she finds them, with human empathy and as few
preconceptions as possible.
Guy: I agree. But is it possible to do good therapy without some

well-worked-through understandings of human nature – shared
with the client as appropriate? I would guess not.
Thea: I don’t know. Go on.
Guy: 8) In support of our findings on human nature, we want an

account of hominid evolution and the selection pressures
driving it. We want to know not just what we are, but as
much as we can of the conditions that made us so.
9) Finally, then, under this new paradigm, the minds of

individuals, groups and even society at large can be seen as
ecologies of a sort – open systems of co-evolving cognitive
and relational structures. This approach may have much to
offer the social sciences, including many new questions and
ideas about culture, social organization, economics, politics
and government. We might then expect new approaches to
historiography, and even some not altogether fatuous theory
of history. All from looking at the human mind as a
biological process.
Thea: This program is, perhaps, just a little grandiose?
Guy: Admittedly. And much of it may be fantasy, rather than feasible

science. I doubt we will ever know in detail what is happening in
the brain of a person writing a poem, or even driving a car.
Similarly I doubt we will ever know precisely how a fertilized
egg with a particular genome develops into a particular
individual, or why two identical twins are ever so slightly
different. The necessary data collection and simulation may be
just too complex. But we may hope to understand such processes
in general terms. I would also reply that the aspiration of science
39
to read the mind of God in the book of Nature was grandiose

from the beginning.
Thea: I have my doubts, though, about Darwinism as an adequate

explanation of life and the biosphere. That’s not to say I believe
in a God who created the world in six 24-hour days and rested on
the seventh. But I doubt that random mutation and natural
selection alone, or even “self-organization” as you call it, can
account for the design of living organisms, and the complexity of
their interactions. I’d like to hear why you think they can.
Guy: In general, I’d like to tell you what I’ve been learning, and get
your take on this stuff – if you’re interested to talk about it.
Thea: I’m interested. If this new psychology is going to make a splash

in my field, I’d like to know about it. I’m not terribly happy with
it, is all.
Guy: Well, I’ll try to cheer you up, if I can. As I see it, the
ecoDarwinian paradigm brings at least two pieces of good news.
Thea: Namely?
Guy: First, the Newtonian idea of a clock-work universe running down

toward entropy is now history. In its place we have something
much more interesting and more receptive to life. It is likely now
that life – even intelligent life – is not just a freak accident,
although chance certainly played, and continues to play, a large
role. But there is reason to think now that life belongs in the
universe, and comes into being eventually when and where the
conditions are right.
Thea: That is cheering. And the second bit of good news?
Guy: That although we are not absolutely free spirits, neither are we
just “meat robots” programmed by our respective cultures. There
is such a thing as personal autonomy, and it is not trivial. Culture
40
is a crucial shaping influence but no more than that. Biology

makes us human; culture shapes us as acceptable members of this
or that tribe. But to be human entails a history of autonomous
responses both to one’s humanity and one’s culture.
Thea: Well, since we must all rejoice in something, that may have to be
enough. Please tell me more – but some other evening. I can’t
absorb any more tonight.
41
42
#2 ORDER WITHOUT DESIGN
Talk #2 Order Without Design

W henever Darwinism is the topic, the temperature rises,
because more is at stake than just the empirical facts about how
life on Earth evolved, or the correct logic of the theory that
accounts for those facts. One of the precious things that is at
stake is a vision of what it means to ask and answer, the
question “W hy?”
– Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett (1995)
The word ‘change’ has three meanings: These are the easy, the
changing and the constant.
– Eight Lectures on the I Ching, H. W ilhelm
Thea: Let’s pick up where we quit yesterday evening. You were saying
that Newton's clock-work universe is obsolete and that something
more interesting, and more receptive to life, is taking its place.
My own sense is that people today are looking at three
completely different worlds, not sure which one they are really
living in. Most people (right up to and including the Vatican)
can’t take the Bible's Creation Story literally any more. The
Newtonian world, as you say, is obsolete in advanced physics but
still works well in ordinary life. And Darwin’s story, that it all
just happened through random variation and natural selection is
scarcely credible to ordinary people, who fail to grasp why
scientists find it so convincing.
Anyway, that’s where I find myself against you. I don’t
believe that natural selection could have done the job alone.
There must have been some intelligence, some creative intention
guiding that process. And when you tell me, in the next breath,
that learning and intelligence themselves are products of
evolution, that sounds like pure confusion. If evolution is blind,
43
then where does adaptive intelligence come in? How can you
speak of intelligence and Darwinian evolution in the same
breath?
Guy: Please be careful here. I’m not saying Darwin’s natural selection
did the job alone. I'm talking about self-organization – a larger
concept – of which natural selection is just an important special
case.
Thea: Well, I’ll need some explanation of what you mean by

self-organization. And before that: What does the word
“evolution” actually mean? It seems to mean something more
than simple change, but I’m not sure what.
Guy: That’s an important point: Change can be random, or wholly

unintelligible. But when we say a system is evolving, we imply
a change process that is coherently patterned, self-driven and
self-consistent. To speak of biological eco-spheres, human minds
and our societies as evolving is to bring these three systemic
levels under a common paradigm of self-driven, self-consistent,
coherently patterned change.
Thea: Then I have to ask: What is the status of evolution in biology

today? Is belief in evolution the same thing as Darwinism? And
just how solidly established is it?
Guy: There’s a fair amount of confusion around the concept of

evolution, partly because Creationists are doing their best to
generate as much confusion as possible, partly because there
remain some genuine puzzles and controversies amongst
biologists about the nature of evolution and its role in the shaping
of life, and partly because the concept is increasingly applied
outside of biology although there is much uncertainty on how to
do this.
The point to grasp, I think, is that the word “evolution” refers
both to a theory in biology and to a paradigm – a whole approach
and mind-set – on the nature of change and the way that change
44
is to be explained. As a testable scientific theory, neo-Darwinism

proposes specific processes of change in the relative prevalence
of the so-called “genes” – certain molecular structures on the
chromosomes of inter-breeding plants and animals; and it uses
these genetic changes to explain differences in the gross structure
and behavior of organisms – to explain “the origin of species.”
This theory has been tested extensively and has stood up very
well.
But as a paradigm, the idea of evolution suggests that we
seek the explanation for any discovery of order or pattern in a
natural system not by appeal to an external intelligence (as in
Paley’s famous watchmaker argument), but in the normal
operation of the system itself. The paradigm of evolutionary
change is compatible with any number of specific theories about
the mechanism by which such change occurs – and with a variety
of systems in which change can occur. The Darwinian paradigm
can be invoked as an explanation for natural order wherever
found.
Darwinian Biology
Thea: Well, let’s start with biology. What is evolution’s status in that
field, as a specific theory?
Guy: In biology, the theory of evolution is about as solidly established

as a theory can be – both by the (admittedly incomplete) fossil
record and by laboratory experiment. Several areas of
controversy remain, but there is general agreement amongst the
scientists in this field that both micro-evolution (the changes over
time within a species) and macro-evolution (the emergence of
new species and classes) happen much as Darwin said they did
– through a process of random variation and natural selection.
Thea: What areas of controversy? And why do you speak of

“neo-Darwinism”?
Guy: Darwin’s theory has been revised several times since its
publication – mostly to take account of Mendelian inheritance
45
and the discovery of “genes” (the molecular basis of inheritance),

both of which were unknown to Darwin. Biologists speak of
“neo-Darwinism” to remind themselves that these discoveries
modify Darwin's picture a little.
As for the areas of controversy, these have to do mostly with
the precise role of genes and the genetic code in relation to the
living, metabolizing creature, with the relationship between
natural selection and other forms of self-organization, with the
precise meaning and role of ideas of “fitness” or “adaptation,”
and with the time-scale on which evolution occurred – whether
gradual or “punctuated.”1 But there is no serious doubt that life
on Earth is a genetic and ecological unity and not some number
of distinct and immutable species; that life arose on the planet
about 3.5 billion years ago; and that species and whole orders of
living creature evolved and are still evolving much as Darwin
suggested.
Thea: What about the origin of life on Earth? Once there was life,
evolution may have modified it continuously, as Darwin
suggested, but how did life first arise?
Guy: There are several possibilities. It may have appeared spon-

taneously through essentially Darwinian processes of
self-organization (but here, the fact that self-organization means
more than natural selection becomes important). Or, it may have
been seeded onto the planet by spores floating through the
inter-stellar void, or by garbage jettisoned from a space craft.2
Probably, we’ll never know for sure, though the discovery of an
older, carbon-based life form, with a genetic code similar to ours,
on a planet in our vicinity, would certainly tip the balance of
1
On the theory of punctuated evolution, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium and
http://geowords.com/histbooknetscape/f28.htm .
2
Though, obviously, these theories just push the problem back a step. How
did that life originate?
46
probabilities. We can say: life is an infection that some planets

catch. Our Earth may have caught it in several different ways.
Thea: So as you see it, the Creationists don’t have much of a leg to
stand on?
Guy: As I see it, they’re standing on the Bible, and thumping as best
they can. You can judge the level of intellectual integrity for
yourself by visiting their Creation Science Home Page or the
Institute for Creation Research.3 But now remember that the
broad concept of evolution extends far outside biology. The
Darwinian paradigm has been applied, so far with varying
success, at every level of organization in the natural universe
from atoms and molecules to cultural traits.
Thea: And as a paradigm, I take it , you do not use the word “evolution”
in its strict Darwinian sense?
science without skyhooks

Guy: The Darwinian paradigm is not a specific, falsifiable scientific
theory, but rather a methodological commitment: namely, that
complexity and adaptive fit have to be explained from the bottom
up, not from the top down – with cranes, not skyhooks as Daniel
Dennett put it neatly.4
Thea: Not being a construction engineer, I’ll have to ask you to explain.
Guy: In building a skyscraper, the components – girders, wall panels,

all the fixtures and materials – have to be lifted and maneuvered
into place. In principle, this can be done in two ways: either from
the ground up with some kind of crane, or by lowering from a
helicopter, or a dirigible, or (someday, perhaps) a satellite in
3
At http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/ and http://www.icr.org/
respectively.
4
In Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
47
earth-stationary orbit, with some kind of “skyhook.” Now, the

design of a living organism – or of anything else, for that matter
– may be likened to the ascent of a peak in the abstract space of
design possibilities, with higher peaks corresponding to more
advantageous designs. Dennett's point is that this ascent must be
accomplished with the equivalent of a ground-based crane
because in Nature there are no skyhooks. An appeal to purpose
or design cannot count as a scientific explanation. The order in
any system has to be explained as an emergent feature of the
system dynamics, not as an input from above.
Thea: I still don’t get the metaphor.
Guy: A “skyhook” in Dennett's sense is a source of “Intelligent

Design” – a god, for example. A “crane” is any process that
recursively uses either trial-and-error, or capabilities developed
through trial-and-error, to lift itself, as if by its own bootstraps.
Darwinian evolution is a crane. The creation myths in Genesis
and elsewhere are skyhooks.
Thea: So how could Dennett know there is no "skyhook" in the natural

universe to bring order out of the chaos?
Guy: It’s more a question of method than of Dennett’s knowledge.

Skyhook-type explanations only generate an infinite regress of
further questions like “What moved God to create the universe?”
and “Where did God come from anyway?” which are less
amenable to inquiry than the question we started with. To avoid
such regress, a scientific explanation of the natural universe and
life cannot appeal to external purposes.
self-organization
Thea: But I still find it difficult to accept that life was created through
random mutation and natural selection alone. I think that's the
sticking point for most people.
Guy: But as I’ve been saying, you don’t need to accept any such thing.
48
Other processes of self-organization seem to be at work as well.

It turns out that natural selection is not the only mechanism
available to a Darwinian paradigm of explanation. We now know
that systems can self-organize in other modes. Natural selection
is only one of evolution's tricks.
Thea: That's interesting. What are the others?
Guy: I can tell you a few of them. There may be others – possibly,
many others. A lot of work is being done in this field, and there
is no knowing where it will go.5
A first mode, the oldest known, should be called Tao, or the
yin/yang principle to honor the ancient Chinese who discovered
it. (Indeed, the Chinese had the idea of a self-organizing system
– which they called zi-ran – the “self-so” – a few thousand years
before W. Ross Ashby coined the term “self-organization” in
1947.) The yin/yang principle tells us that systems evolve toward
a balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces, or between
their processes of intake and outflow. The planets in their orbits
would be one example. The metabolism of a human body would
be another. The debits and credits of any business would be a
third.
Thea: Why did it take so long to re-discover the “self-so” in the

Western world?
Guy: That is an excellent question, for which I have no good answer.

What’s obvious is that the Western mind took a different
direction, focusing more on the dynamics of physical systems
than on organic growth.
Thea: Perhaps the very success of the Tao principle worked against a
deep application of mathematics to the problems of mechanics.
5
A good overview of the concept of self-organization and its applications
can be found at: www.physicsdaily.com/physics/Self-organization .
49
Guy: Perhaps. Or perhaps the study of physics was not stimulated by

a military interest in ballistics in China as was the case in
medieval Europe. It’s impossible to say. This result, like most,
must have been suggested by many factors rather than caused by
any one of them.
Another mode of self-organization: It’s been known for a few
centuries that many systems configure spontaneously to minimize
one of their parameters. For example, soap films on a twisted
loop of wire configure to minimize their surface area. Below a
critical temperature, bars of iron (and other materials)
spontaneously magnetize themselves because alignment of the
magnetic fields of their particles represents a “least energy”
configuration for the bar as a whole. The so-called “Bénard cells”
which appear in a fluid heated evenly on a flat stove element are
a third example. Indeed, the whole field of classical mechanics
can be formulated on a principle of least action.
Thea: A principle of economy in Nature?
Guy: In effect, yes. It was originally conceived by a French astronomer

and mathematician of the 18th century, Pierre-Louis de
Maupertuis, who wrote that “Nature is thrifty in all its actions.”
Thea: Like the good mother she is! Go on.
Guy: A third principle of self-organization, now known as teleonomy,

might also be called “the lobster trap effect,” as it has long been
used for just that purpose. The trap is a simple box with bait
inside and a funnel leading in, so that lobsters can easily find
their way into the box but cannot easily find the small opening
leading out. The general concept is that a change process can be
one-way only, or overwhelmingly more probable in one direction
than the other, so that random contributions from the outside
produce a steady accumulation of order. In biology, this simple
principle finds an amazing number of applications, and accounts
for the seemingly purposeful development of living organisms.
It ex-plains, for example why an acorn develops into an oak tree,
50
if into anything at all – a central problem in biology since

Aristotle, who conceived a kind of backward causality called
teleology, to explain it.
Thea: It seems a kind of miracle that an acorn could grow into an oak,
or woman's fertilized egg cell into a human baby. Without some
kind of teleology, or “the will of God,” it seems impossible.
Guy: That perception has been a stumbling block in biology. The

notion of teleology was jokingly called the biologist's mistress
because he couldn't live without her but didn’t want to be seen in
public with her. Now, under her new name and recognized as an
entirely respectable mode of explanation, he is happily married
to her.
Thea: I don't see what changed exactly. Except for two letters, what's
the difference between “teleology” and “teleonomy”?
Guy: “Teleology” is a philosopher's term for nature’s apparent
purposefulness – the idea that an intention for the future can
cause events in the present. We use it all the time to explain why
we are doing things: I am talking now with an intention to
explain this distinction to you. An imagined future state is
conceived as causing my present action. How could that
happen?
To explain mind as an effect of a brain's activity, part of the
problem is to switch this arrow of causation. In science, it is felt,
only causation from past to future can be allowed. That was why
the biologist could not be seen using teleology “in public” – as an
explanation of anything at all.
Now with teleonomy, the lobster trap effect, this problem
disappears. The lobster doesn't crawl into the trap because he
wants to get caught. From one perspective, he crawls in because
he wants the bait inside; but from another, he crawls in because
his sense organs suggest to him that there is something good in
that direction, and because his nervous system and musculature
propel his body accordingly. In this latter perspective, there is
nothing mysterious or scientifically disreputable. Indeed, you
51
demonstrate a very common one-way effect every time you stir

sugar into your coffee.
Entropy, the “second law of thermodynamics” about the
one-way dissipation of heat, seemed to forbid self-organization;
but without such one-way processes a real science of biology
could not get started. A breakthrough came with the recognition
that much of chemistry happens quite mechanically on this very
simple lobster trap principle.
Thea: Yes, all right. I see the difference now. Please go on.
Guy: A fourth principle of self-organization, the so-called avalanche

effect, governs the shape of snow slopes, sand piles, and similar
situations in which stuff heaps up until it reaches a critical point
of steepness. The slides which then occur are of varying size,
following a power-law distribution in which small slides are very
common while large ones are rare. The curious thing is that
disease epidemics, shake outs in the economic marketplace and
many other phenomena follow a similar distribution, and can be
seen as instances of the same effect.
Thea: Why is that? They don’t look much like avalanches.
Guy: At first sight, no. A similar dynamic seems to be at work, but the
short answer right now is that no one knows, in general, why
power-law distributions happen. They seem to occur in situations
where there is free choice amongst many possibilities, but also a
tendency towards agreement, however small and for whatever
reason. The Internet is a fine example of such a situation, and the
popularity of Web sites has a marked power law distribution. So
does our preference for rock stars and other celebrities, which is
why so many people seem to be famous just for being famous.
Thea: And getting richer because they're rich. Pareto’s law of income
distribution is well known in economics.
Guy: Yes. I deliberately avoided mentioning it. Pareto’s law and Zipf’s
52
law of word distribution in linguistics were among the first power

laws found. At that time, they were purely empirical findings. No
one had any idea that they were instances of a more general
phenomenon.
Thea: It’s a sort of clustering effect isn’t it? With the clusters likely to
break down after they’ve reached a critical point? It sounds like
a special case of that yin-yang book-keeping principle of balance
between aggregating and dispersive forces.
Guy: Perhaps. But I don't think anyone really knows. All these effects
of self-organization may be related on some deep level. We just
don’t fully understand them yet.
To continue: the last principle I need to tell you about is
self-consistency – or self-similarity in its more general version.
The idea is that a kind of dynamic stability is possible when a
system changes in a cyclic or nearly cyclic way. One very simple
way for a system to self-organize is to get itself in a loop. When
this happens, we may see a tremendous amount of activity going
nowhere. More interestingly, we may observe repetitive activity
that gradually goes somewhere. Such a system may be stable
insofar as it repeats itself; at the same time it may be unstable, or
only loosely stable, insofar as small changes accumulate until
some very large change results. The general form looks like a
spiral: basically cyclic, but with a tendency to expand or contract.
Thea: Yes. You can see that spiral growth pattern on a head of
cauliflower if you look carefully.
Guy: This principle of self-similarity explains it. For any growth

process – of plant from seed, of chick from egg – today's growth
always begins where yesterday's left off. Already Aristotle,
writing around 350 B.C., had noticed this pattern of self-similar
growth. In bio-chemistry, self-similar cycles of this kind are
called autocatalytic loops, and thought to be the origin of life
itself. More generally, they are called re-entrant, or autopoietic
loops. Their ancient symbol is the Ourobouros – the serpent
53
either swallowing or vomiting forth its own tail, depending on

how you want to see it.
Thea: That sounds like life! Days succeeding days. Mothers giving birth
to daughters who will in due course become mothers themselves.
Guy: That’s it. The wheels goes round and round, and the car rolls
forward. The days go round and round and a life goes forward.
The seasons go round and round, and Nature rolls forward.
“We're captives on the carousel of time,” as Joni Mitchell sang.
Except that in the real world, the cycles do not precisely
repeat. What we usually observe is not an exactly repeating loop,
but a loosely stable loop that cycles around what is called a
“strange attractor point” in a certain “basin of attraction.” Each
cycle begins from and is based upon the cycle that preceded it.
Each cycle makes the next one possible, often serving as a kind
of template for the next, which will not, however, be exactly the
same.
In many such systems, like your cauliflower, a small residue
or “gain” accumulates in the successive repetitions, so that the
trajectory is not a closed loop but a spiral as we were saying. The
system may experience small perturbations making it still more
irregular. As the result of an unusually large disturbance, or
eventually, after enough repetitions, the system may undergo
what we observe as drastic, qualitative change of state, crossing
a pass into a different basin. Providing only that some of these
basins of attraction are easier to get in to, and/or harder to get out
of than others, a kind of evolution may result. The system will
tend toward and linger in some basins more than others. As
Bateson put it, “Longer lasting patterns last longer than patterns
which last not so long.” So understood, evolution is no more than
a tautology – a necessity of logic.
Thea: A tautology? Is that all the Darwinian paradigm amounts to?
Guy: There must be more to it, because we still need to explain why
one pattern lasts longer or turns up more frequently than others
54
– why it becomes the direction toward which evolution is

tending.
There is so much we still don’t know about self-organization,
but here are seven known ways for order to appear
spontaneously: the balance of yin and yang, collection and
dispersion; the principle of least action; the lobster trap effect;
the power law that “the more you have the more you will get”;
the principle of self-similarity; and natural selection itself.
Thea: But what is self-organization anyway? It’s not a force like gravity
or electro-magnetism. It’s not a law of Nature. What is it?
Guy: It’s our name for something odd that happens when the
conditions are right: a spontaneous appearance of
unlikely-looking patterns that the laws of Nature not only permit,
but can make over-whelmingly probable. Though it may be that
these “laws” themselves evolved through cosmic
self-organization.6
Thea: And the phenomenon called “Life” is just an oddity of this sort?
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?
Guy: Signifying precisely itself. Wasn’t that always the chief attribute
of God? The Self-So; the “I Am That Am”? From one perspec-
tive, this science doesn’t abolish God, but recognizes him at last,
and begins to show how he works.
the Baldwin effect

Thea: But doesn’t life have any say in its own future? Can a regime of
self-organization, have purpose in any sense at all?
Guy: At least one strand of ecoDarwinian thought suggests there may

indeed be such a sense: In 1896, the psychologist James Mark
Baldwin pointed out that learned or imitated behaviors could lead
6
On this possibility see Lee Smolin's book, The Life of the Cosmos.
55
a creature to persist in some environment for which it was

organically ill-adapted. Whatever bodily or behavioral plasticity
the creature possessed could be exploited to cope with this
strenuous environment; and some of these adaptive efforts might
be successful. In time, selection pressure might increase the
required plasticity to make individual adaptation easier, or might
lead to genetic changes favoring the adaptive trait as a population
norm. A plant growing in a shady place might come to have more
chlorophyll in its leaves than a twin growing in a sunny place. A
proto-seal hunting around and in the water could learn to swim
and hold its breath in this way. We know in fact that a human
living at high altitude becomes acclimatized to the thinner air by
making more red blood cells, as a man who walks barefoot grows
callouses on his feet.
As one consequence of these personal adaptations, there will
be selection pressure to make such changes more effectively and
efficiently. In time, the composition of the gene pool will shift as
individuals who can adapt more thoroughly or readily leave more
offspring than those who adapt less well. What started as a
physiological adaptation of individuals gets taken up into the
genotype, making the species as a whole better adapted to this
lifestyle – or, in time, even creating a new species. In effect, the
creature’s acquired lifestyle, its learned way of coping with its
habitat, shapes the selection criteria that shape its reproductive
prospects.
Per this Baldwin effect, as it is called, the individuals of a
species colonize an ecological niche by responding to its
suggestions, and then by modifying their own bodies to respond
better, through whatever organic plasticity they possess. Then, as
an interbreeding population, they evolve to fill the niche as the
selection pressures (that they themselves selected) shift the
genetic heritage of their progeny.
In a sense, then, Lamarck was right all along, though not in
the way he thought. The giraffe’s neck did get longer from this
animal’s efforts to eat the leaves on trees. This did not happen
because the effort or habit of stretching upward was
communicated to the giraffe’s genetic material. It happened
56
because a longer neck carried reproductive advantage for

individual proto-giraffes that (for whatever reason) preferred
browsing in the trees to foraging on the ground. In the same way,
once certain anthropoid apes began to use sticks and stones and
other found objects as weapons and tools, imitating and
communicating with each other as they did so, they placed a
strong selection pressure upon themselves to learn such skills
quickly and well.
Thea: So there is a sort of indirect purposefulness in the evolutionary

process after all.
Guy: Yes, though the idea of purpose in Nature rightly makes scientists
nervous. It’s better to put it this way: To some extent, any
creature selects the selection criteria that act upon itself and its
offspring by the life it leads and the life-games it plays – the
strategies it uses to survive and reproduce. In Stuart Kauffman’s
language,7 change occurs at “the edge of the possible,” as random
perturbations cause a system (in this case, an entire species with
its gene-pool) to bump around in its design space of possibilities,
expanding to occupy every niche where expansion is possible.
The process is Darwinian, as it’s a Darwinian mechanism that
selects genetic winners. Yet at the same time it appears intelligent
and purposeful to the extent that individual creatures choose from
available options in their efforts to survive and reproduce.
Thea: So the system’s random exploration and exploitation of its

current habitat could be said to simulate purpose – give an
appearance of purpose – while being as blind as Darwin said. I’m
not sure if that makes the scientific vision less bleak or more so.
Guy: Speaking for myself, I like the idea that in exploring the edges of
its life-world, a creature makes suggestions for the future of its
kind, whether its venture succeeds or fails. It’s a pleasing thought
7
See At Home in the Universe and Investigations, Stuart Kauffman.
57
for me that the games that I and my fellows elect to play set the
criteria of our success as biological players? No creature is
entirely blind. Each is trying to pass its genes with such
equipment (including mental equipment) as it can bring to the
job. If you want a glimmer of intelligence behind evolution, that
is best I can offer.
Thea: I don't know what I make of this “Baldwin effect.” I’ll have to
think about it.
Guy: The Baldwin effect has one other feature worth noting here. As
we’ll see later,8 in one version it applies as much to cultural
evolution as to the biological kind. And with a similar result:
Selection criteria that shape the evolution of cultural patterns are
themselves shaped by the protagonists’ intentions, and by the
games they elect to play.
Thea: So what? Why is this worth noting?
Guy: Because our purpose in these talks is to explore the significance

and implications of the ecoDarwinian paradigm for Mind and the
works of Mind – not just for the origin of species, but for
psychology and the social sciences. We're going to think of brain
development, learning and cultural change as modes of evolution.
As we do this, you will constantly be asking, where is the
intelligence coordinating and driving these changes? And my
reply, in every case, will be that the intelligence you are seeking
arises spontaneously within the system itself – as a phenomenon
of self-organization, not of intelligent design.
ecology and evolution

Thea: I’ll give you this: Your ecoDarwinian paradigm is not nearly as
simple – or simplistic – as most people think. It seems that the
more you look at the whole idea of evolution, the more slippery
8
In Talk #11.
58
it gets.
Guy: Yes. Jacques Monod once remarked, “A curious aspect of the

theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it.”
From one perspective, each type of creature (or, more precisely,
the population of that type) adapts to its environment, in accord
somehow with the means by which it is already attempting to
thrive and reproduce. From another perspective, the natural
environment itself keeps changing, and dragging the evolution of
individual species in its train.
Thea: And is this how the concept of ecology comes into it? I don't
think you've explained that yet. How is an “ecology” different
from a population of interacting species and creatures?
Guy: In the same way that any whole is different from the parts that
make it up – as an alternative perspective on the same thing, with
emergent features added. The population view is a local
perspective emphasizing interactions and relationships between
distinct groups and individuals. The ecological view is a
systemic, contextual perspective emphasizing the contributions
and constraints of a whole on its constituent parts.
Thea: Just the opposite of the liberal, individualistic perspective of

classical capitalism. This is interesting: Where the original theory
of natural selection encouraged an ideology of "Social
Darwinism," the concept of ecology points in just the opposite
direction to an idea that everything is ultimately dependent on
everything else. But according to you these ideas are inseparable.
Guy: Indeed they are. Everything changes in an orderly way, beginning

as what it already is – what it has become to-date: That is
evolution. Everything that exists does so as a self-consistent
whole, with its parts mutually dependent on one another for their
continued functioning: That is ecology. Since everything we
know of changes but, at the same time, continues (for a while) to
be itself, evolution and ecology are just two sides of the same
59
process – twin aspects of existence, so to speak.
Thea: All right. But what is an ecology exactly? It’s a term that
everyone uses – but always in a vague, touchy-feely way, without
really knowing what they’re talking about. Now you seem to be
saying that everything, even the mind is a kind of ecology. So
what, exactly, do you mean?
Guy: You could define an “ecology” as an open system of inter-acting

components, loosely balanced and co-evolving on the edge of
chaos.
Thea: That doesn’t help much. What awful jargon!
Guy: It’s not that bad. Let’s take it step by step:
1) An ecology is a system of interacting components: in other

words, it is made up of parts that inter-communicate and
influence each other.
2) It is an open system, existing as an on-going, re-entrant

process within some larger world with which it exchanges
energy, material and information – or suggestions, as I prefer
to say.
3) It co-evolves: the system is understood through the

Darwinian paradigm of self-organization – through processes
of auto-poiesis, random variation, natural selection, and so
forth. Each kind within it changes adaptively and, in doing
so, shifts the selection criteria that affect other kinds. Strictly
speaking, it is the whole system that evolves (or co-evolves)
– not the individual kinds.
4) It is loosely balanced: the system cycles within a certain

“basin of attraction” until some disturbance or accumulated
change kicks it into a different basin.
60
5) It sustains itself on the edge of chaos: it is neither too

disorganized to function coherently nor too rigid to change
and adapt. In a chaotic regime the system's components
behave unpredictably. In an ordered regime its components
are locked into a structure which cannot change. “Edge of
chaos” is the critical region in which orderly change –
therefore adaptation – is possible.
Briefly then, an ecology is a loosely stable, open system. It

sustains itself by drawing energy and raw materials from its
environment; and it is fairly stable but not completely so. It
sustains itself (in a broad sense) even as it changes and adapts.
Thea: That phrase “edge of chaos” does sound like the world we’re
living in. Not a comfortable place to be!
Guy: Well, my impression is that our world today is in real danger of

tipping over into chaos itself. Edge of chaos is where we should
be: a fluid region between totalitarian rigidity and complete
disorder. “Edge of chaos” corresponds to ordinary water in its
liquid state – where interesting patterns – vortices, waves and
laminar flows – are possible. Ice is the rigid state of crystalline
structure. Steam is the state of chaos, where only statistical
regularities are found.
Thea: So “edge of chaos” is not really an edge. It’s the region where
fairly durable patterns are possible.
Guy: That’s right. It’s a regime or “phase” (as the physicists call it) in
which random change and stable structure coexist. Only in this
region will life and mind be possible.
Thea: But in common usage, ecology is just a word for the

inter-relationship of plants and animals in the earth's biosphere.
You’re pushing the concept much further, aren’t you? You’re
making it completely abstract.
61
Guy: The plants and animals on this planet are just one example of an
ecology. A nation’s economy, as Adam Smith pointed out,9 can
be considered as an ecology of self-interested business firms and
private individuals. The human body, or any other creature’s can
be considered as an ecology of cells. In due course, I’ll show you
that an individual’s mind too can be thought of as a kind of
ecology – as can organizations, cultures, and whole societies.
That is what Bateson was driving at when he spoke of the
“ecology of mind.” He was using much more than a pleasant
metaphor. He meant that cognition – for living creatures, human
individuals and whole societies – fits the definition literally. Each
mind is a pattern of physiological and social activity; and these
patterns co-evolve with one another and self-organize as they do
so: Viewed in this way, mind appears to be a vast open system of
inter-acting fragments, loosely balanced and co-evolving on the
edge of chaos.
mind as an ecoDarwinian process

Thea: That would mean we don’t really think our thoughts at all. Rather
our thoughts are just patterns in the brain, co-evolving according
to their own necessities?
Guy: And according to the inputs they receive. That’s right. We can’t
think our thoughts in the same strict sense that we move our
limbs because we are our thoughts. There is no locus of desire
and attention apart from our thoughts. If anything, our thoughts
think us!
Thea: Are you saying that thoughts are determined? Predictable?
Guy: Causally determined – yes, more or less, depending on how

exactly that concept is defined.10 The patterns of influence in a
9
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, (1776).
10
See Daniel Dennett’s discussions of free will in Elbow Room, and
Freedom Evolves.
62
brain are so complex as to make causality almost meaningless.

Predictable – no. Much less so than the weather – too unstable,
too complex, with too many variables.
Thea: But thoughts comprise an ecology, according to you; and

therefore co-evolve in a self-organizing, Darwinian way,
affording some degree of cognitive order?
Guy: Yes. That’s what I’m saying. We can think of ourselves as

suggestion ecologies in which new suggestions are understood,
evaluated and either taken up or rejected through a filtering
structure of old suggestions. Let’s save this for another evening,
though.
63
#3 THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
Talk #3 The Power of Suggestion

The world may be viewed as a myriad of “To W hom It M ay
Concern” messages.
– Norbert W einer
But such pre-set signs are, of course, only a part of the

communicative equipment of the dumb. Harpo M arx does not
need them. And dogs and horses, hawks and elephants, also
make themselves understood to those who are normally with
them, whether members of their own species or human beings.
And the human beings return the favour. “Making oneself
understood” is an immensely wider field than “talking.” It
supplies the context, and the only possible context, within
which human talking makes sense.
– Beast and Man, Mary Midgley, p 234
Thea: Now would be a good time to tell me about “suggestion,” if

you’re in the mood to talk. I know that’s a pet idea of yours.
Guy: I’m almost always ready to talk, as you know. And you’re right
that suggestion is one of my pet ideas. I like it a lot.
Thea: Well, let’s start with the transaction that just occurred: I made a
suggestion to talk about something. You accepted my suggestion.
Now I’m making another suggestion about where to start. How
does your notion of suggestion fit with the ordinary meaning of
this word?
Guy: It’s the same, really – but generalized to cover all communication
of whatever kind. It’s a convenient way to discuss the transfer of
65
meaning, as distinct from all material transfers of matter, energy

or force.
Thea: But not all communications are suggestions surely.
Guy: They are, you know, if you think of a communication in semantic

terms, with regard to the meanings it conveys. Any message
worthy of the name can be thought of as suggesting – not
necessarily causing – some pattern in the system that receives it.
The suggestion you just made to discuss the concept of
suggestion raised it as a pattern first in my mind, and then in the
conversation between us. Any sign or diagram or word performs
a similar function. For example, just by saying the words “blue
kangaroo,” I am suggesting that you imagine a blue kangaroo,
drawing upon whatever patterns would represent such an animal
in your mind and brain.
There. It worked, didn’t it? You wouldn’t have thought about
blue kangaroos just now, if I hadn’t mentioned them. We use
structured strings of words, to suggest patterns of thought to each
other’s minds.
You are suggesting that there is some important distinction
between suggestions and other types of communication. My
counter-suggestion is that individual minds, inter-personal
relationships, and society as a whole – can be conceived as
self-organizing systems of suggestion – as cognitive ecologies of
suggestion, in fact. By stretching this notion a little, and taking it
as the primitive of all communication, Gregory Bateson’s great
concept of an “ecology of mind” can be unpacked and realized.
Minds, cultures even whole societies can be conceived and
studied as ecologies of suggestion.
the power of suggestion

Thea: But why suggestion, rather than message, sign or information?
Why bring this new term into it? What’s wrong with the words
we use today?
Guy: Those words have their uses, but as primitive terms for a theory
66
of communication, they misplace the emphasis: The word

“message” stresses the physical entity and process of
communication. Well and good; but a given message can be
understood differently by different people – or by the same
person at different times.
“Information” can be true or false, and is supposed to tell us
what is the case. In the ordinary sense, information is pure
description, without causal power or influence. Confusingly, the
same word has a different, technical meaning as an engineer’s
term for the quantity of data stored in a file or sent through a
channel – as a radio signal, for example. In this sense,
information is meaning-less per se, until the correct interpretive
key is supplied. It’s just a measure of the amount of uncertainty
that was present before the message was received as compared
with the amount that remains afterward. It’s a statistical concept,
closely related to that of entropy in statistical mechanics.
Thea: But information is also used for control purposes. It’s a

cybernetic concept as well: a difference that makes a difference
as your hero Bateson put it.
Guy: Bateson had the correct insight, but was not as careful as he
needed to be about the meaning of his key term. “The difference
that makes a difference” is not a piece of information. It’s neither
a pure description nor a quantity of data. To be precise, Bateson’s
“difference that makes a difference” is a suggestion. The
suggestion is just precisely the difference that is made.
Besides, though suggestions may be carried by news of
difference, they may be carried by sameness as well. Persistent
cold carries the evolutionary suggestion that bodies should
insulate better or burn their calories faster. Persistent dryness
carries the suggestion to take up and use water more efficiently.
Sameness often carries a suggestion to seek interesting novelty.
That’s what boredom means.
Another point is that “the difference that makes a difference”
is stubborn and durable in a way that information in itself is not.
Information can easily be negated. In transmitting a message, you
67
can change a “1” to a “0” (or vice versa), or you can stick the
words “no” or “not” into a description to reverse its meaning. But
suggestions can only be deterred or discouraged in some fashion
or opposed by alternative, competing suggestions. I can tell you
that something is not the case; but a suggestion that you not think
about something draws it all the more strongly to your attention.
Don’t think about blue kangaroos now! I forbid you to do so!
Thea: The “forbidden fruit” effect. Telling Eve not to eat the apple
almost guaranteed that she would eat it.
Guy: Precisely. That story attests not to Man’s sinful nature, but to our
sensitivity to suggestions: the more sternly something is
forbidden, the more vivid it becomes and the more desirable it
must be. You never forbid children to do what they are not
inclined to do – what would never spontaneously occur to them.
Thea: As the Chinese said, when people lost sight of the Tao, codes of
morality and justice were created.1 What about signs? They
behave more like suggestions in this respect, don’t they?
Guy: Yes. A sign, like a suggestion, directs attention to what it

signifies, and does so even when it tries to do the opposite. But
the concept of “sign” is too narrow: While all signs are
suggestions, not all suggestions are signs. The firing of one nerve
cell suggests the firing of another to which it connects without
being a sign of that next firing. Imitative learning works by taking
the actions of a role model as important suggestions, though they
are not signs of anything but themselves. Also, while we can
usually observe what a given message suggests to a living
creature (or to a robot for that matter), we can only guess at what
it signifies.
Thea: If I understand you, the word suggestion focuses on the pragmatic
1
See the Tao Te Ching, translation by Brian Browne W alker .
68
content of a message, as those other words do not. A suggestion

means what it tells its recipient to do.
Guy: Right – provided you recognize that thinking or imagining is also

a kind of internal “doing,” so that a suggestion to imagine having
a beer is as “pragmatic” (in this sense) as the suggestion to
actually have one. The distinction is a crucial aspect of education,
however: art and literature suggest that we imagine many things
that they may or may not suggest we actually do. They may
suggest that we imagine something, precisely to suggest we not
do it – although that does not usually work well, as we just saw
with apples.
By contrast, words like “message,” “information” and “sign”
step around the question of semantic content – the meaning of a
communication to the person who receives it. This is unfortunate,
because meaning is the central dimension of communication. In
psychology and the social sciences, it’s what we really want to
talk about, and we need a word that gets at it directly.
Thea: Then why not just say “meaning”?
Guy: Because meaning is what we hope to understand, and because we

need a word that points to its transmission. Also because, in
ordinary language, the word “meaning” has too many ordinary
meanings to make a good technical term. By contrast, at least to
my ear, the word “suggestion” feels exactly right. On one hand,
this word carries a connotation of free volition and autonomous
judgment. The recipient needs to interpret a suggestion, and then
decide whether to follow it. But at the same time, a well-framed
suggestion seems to cast a little “spell.” Usually this “hypnotic
suggestion” can be rejected with some effort, but there is always
some bias toward compliance. Other things being equal, it’s
easier to go along than to resist. It is just because of this double
connotation that the word suggestion is apt for our purpose.
No other concept I can think of carries the necessary weight,
and none is sufficiently basic. A mother’s touch or a lover’s
certainly communicate, but what they communicate cannot be
69
called information.2 They communicate mood or feeling, we

would say. But no amount of information conveys a mood of
calm, or a feeling of being loved. By contrast, the quality of a
touch can certainly suggest calm or love – or their absence.
Similarly with signs and signification. A sign suggests an
idea or concept (what philosophers call its sense); and it suggests
some real-world feature (what they call its reference). It may also
suggest some action to be taken. In this way what we call a sign
is really two or three suggestions bundled together. Again, the
way a mother holds her infant suggests a very great deal to him
– first about the world he lives in and then about his mother’s
feelings; it cannot be called a sign at first, though it will acquire
that status in short order.
Thea: I think I see where you’re going. Even in its ordinary,

non-technical sense, information just tells what is happening in
the world. Signs point (or suggest) in two directions at once, and
thereby link a “signifier” with its “signified” as Saussure told us.
Instructions command. They flatly tell you what to do. But a
suggestion acts directly on the individual who receives it while
respecting his autonomy at the same time. It raises a possibility
and prompts toward it, without necessarily making it so. It carries
a certain influence without direct causal power.
Guy: You’ve got it. In general, a suggestion is not a command and not
a control-signal. It raises a value-laden possibility, in competition
with alternative possibilities (raised by other suggestions). It
proposes an idea, and gives it weight and flavor against others. It
casts a kind of “spell,” as we said before, in that absent
suggestions to the contrary, it’s easier to go along than to resist.
Thea: So for example, if I start casting “suggestive” glances, you’ll take

them as a suggestion to make love – and I hope you’ll find the
2
Except perhaps in a sense so vague as to distort the concept of
information.
70
idea difficult to resist. But those glances are more than just
information about what is happening in your world, and more
than just signs that your woman is available tonight. They are not
just suggestions to believe something – namely, that expressions
of interest will be welcome – but direct triggers that (I expect)
will arouse you, unless there are stronger suggestions from
elsewhere to the contrary. They are all of the above together,
wrapped in my very own brand of witchcraft.
Guy: And a very good brand it is. But maybe we should wait until after
dinner?
Thea: Oh, by all means. I don’t want to break up the conversation just
yet. I’m just suggesting an example of what we’re talking about.
Guy: And a most suggestive example it is.
Thea: OK. Let’s get back on track here. If I understand, you want to
make suggestion a central notion in communication theory and in
the theory of culture. I’ve heard you say that the world is more
like a flow of suggestions than “to whom it may concern”
messages.
Guy: Exactly. From every angle I can think of, suggestion looks more
serviceable as a core concept for communication theory than any
of the other candidates: All signs suggest, as we said earlier, but
not all suggestions signify. Information reduces uncertainty about
what is going on in the world (or what to do about it), but is
always relative to some pre-established coding scheme or system
of conventions (such as a language) that determines a relationship
between the message and what it is “about.” It depends too upon
some pre-existing alphabet of possibilities – whether discreet or
continuous. In itself, information is as meaningless as the array
of ones and zeros in a database. Or like the dots in a connect-the
dots puzzle from which the numbers have been removed.
Thea: That’s true. Raw information, whether in its mathematical sense
71
or even its ordinary language sense, does not yet have meaning.
If I start reciting statistics – on suicide, steel production, the
weather or whatever – I would certainly be giving you
information, but it would mean nothing, and you would wonder
why I was doing it.
Guy: Just so: Basing communication theory on the concept of

information leaves us unable to explain how meaning arises in
the first place, since information in itself is meaningless. Only
when information suggests some thought or course of action does
it become meaningful; and then it is the suggestion, not the
information per se, that carries meaning.
The conclusion must be that the notion of suggestion is
upstream of information. Information may or may not be
meaningful, but suggestion is pure meaning and a pre-condition
for information. The meaning of anything at all – from a tool or
a word or a situation to the whole world and life itself – is always
relative to some individual: to what it suggests that person feel or
think or do – with it or about it.
Thea: The suggestion, you would say, is the meaning of a message to its
recipient?
Guy: Yes, but I would define meaning in terms of suggestion, not the
other way ’round: I would make suggestion the undefined term
and say that the meaning of any thing or event is what it suggests
we do about it.
Thea: On that definition, I could ask about the meaning of your concept
itself. What does the idea of suggestion suggest one do with it?
Guy: With the beginnings of a solid grip on “meaning,” we get a

handle on the concept of “mind.” If the meaning of a thing is
what it suggests to us – what it suggests that we feel or imagine
or do – then a “mind,” can be thought of as a whole system of
such suggestions, with the suggestion processing involved.
Clearly, we are such systems, but many other creatures and
72
entities also evaluate and respond to suggestions. Thus we can

talk with some rigor about non-human minds. We can avoid the
question of whether plants, or insects or robots have true minds
by speaking very generally of “suggestion processors” – or
“suggers,” as I’ll say for short.
Thea: So human minds are really just suggestion processors. Is that

what you’re saying?
Guy: Not quite. Human brains are suggestion processors. Or, more
correctly, suggestion processing is a function of the whole
nervous system – actually, of the whole creature. What we call
“mind” is the processing itself, or the ecology of suggestions as
they are processed.
Also, your phrase “really just” is a mistake, I think. That
implied reductionism is not necessary. In fact, it detracts from
what’s being said. There are different strategies of perception and
understanding, suggested by this concept or that one. They are
not mutually exclusive, and what suits one purpose may not suit
another.
Daniel Dennett gets this right in one of his early books:3 We
can take what he calls a physical stance, and see ourselves (as the
surgeon and neurophysiologist do) as very complex organic
machines, as meat-robots of a human type. We can take the
design stance and see ourselves as (what we are calling)
ecoDarwinian suggers – suggestion processors. We can take what
he calls the intentional stance, and see ourselves as we ordinarily
do – as human selves who form purposes and take actions in
keeping with our beliefs and desires. These views do not
preclude, but rather complement one another. In particular, the
anthropologist, and other social scientists may find the design
stance useful as organizations and whole peoples can also be
thought of as “suggers,”possessing collective “minds” of a sort.
Even a clinical psychologist like yourself may find the design
3
The Intentional Stance .
73
stance useful on occasion. A client with existentialist leanings

may be asking something more than just “Who am I?” – a
question about his social identity. He may be asking the much
deeper question: “What am I – what kind of thing?”
Thea: I’m not happy with the position you are taking. It will be asking
a lot to expect my clients to accept that their precious selves are
just different ideas that they have of themselves. And I can’t
imagine how any of them would find it liberating or therapeutic
to regard themselves as “suggers.”
But let’s leave this complaint aside for now. Finish telling me
what advantages you see in a suggestion-based communication
theory before I start in with objections.
Guy: Well, here’s another point. If we think of the mind as a

suggestion processor, we get a handle on the so-called
“unconscious.” In turn, this helps make sense of inner conflict,
where a mind is divided against itself. It sounds paradoxical to
claim that we can know something without knowing it, or that we
can do things “against our better judgment.” By contrast, it makes
perfect sense to say that we can be influenced by suggestions that
we are not aware of, driven by competing suggestions that are
mutually exclusive, or actuated by suggestions that do not come
from our best selves.
It’s well known that most of the suggestions we take in are
handled automatically. For example, the processing needed for
the visual tracking of objects, or for balance correction in
walking, is inaccessible to consciousness. There’s nothing
paradoxical about such unconsciousness. Nor about the
well-confirmed hypothesis that minds are all the time making
suggestions to themselves that may not be consistent with one
another – most of which never reach consciousness. A conscious
mind tries to be coherent – rational and consistent – in its plans
and choices. The mind as a whole need not be and isn’t.
Thea: You know, therapists are still confused about the unconscious.
74
Guy: That’s my impression too, but what do you mean?
Thea: We’ve never agreed on what the unconscious is, and we don’t
know what to make of it. That over-states it a bit perhaps but,
broadly speaking, it’s about right. For Freud, the unconscious
was a seething cauldron of unfulfillable wishes and fantasies, and
a dumping ground for repressed feelings and memories. For Jung,
it was more like a reservoir of trans-personal wisdom.
Present-day clinicians mostly ignore it. The gestalt psychologists
pay attention to the quality of moment-by-moment consciousness,
but don’t say much about the unconscious (which, however, is
known to play a large role in determining the quality and focus
of consciousness). We know the unconscious is there, and we
know it’s important – but then what? The problem, perhaps, is
that all of us – clients and therapists alike – identify too strongly
with the conscious self at the expense of the unconscious.
Mostly, we think of mind as the conscious ego and tend to forget
there is anything else.
Guy: And there’s a price for that, isn’t there?
Thea: Quite a steep one sometimes. When you identify too strongly
with the conscious mind, then anything from the unconscious is
experienced as intrusion from an alien being. If it’s something we
like, we attribute it to a god, an angel, or a muse. If it’s something
bad or frightening, it becomes a case of witchcraft, or demonic
possession, or contamination by evil influences. In each case, we
fail to recognize the mind’s richness – that it contains multitudes,
in the most literal sense.
Guy: I wonder if the language of suggestion might help people to

understand that fantasies and wishes are merely expressions of
possibility, and not yet subject to requirements of decency,
ethics, judgment, or consistency. As suggestions only, our
thoughts and wishes may easily contradict one another. Certainly
they may conflict with what we like to think of as our “better
selves.” We hold each other responsible, and must try actually to
75
be responsible, for what we do – not for what we think.
Thea: Quite right. Therapists spend a lot of time helping people to

accept their inner conflicts and inconsistencies. Our culture
spends so much time teaching people to have self-control and to
be responsible that it mostly forgets to teach us how to know,
accept and keep faith with our own feelings, without doing harm
to others.
Guy: Just so. We expect of others, and even of ourselves, a coherence

that does not exist a priori, but only as a construct: “a face to
meet the faces that we meet.” Rather than think of ourselves as
coherent “selves,” or “souls” by nature, we might learn to think
of ourselves as suggestion processors who strive to be coherent
“selves” with only mixed success.
Thea: You know, the family is another entity for which coherence does
not exist a priori, but only as a great achievement. In couples
counseling and family therapy, we also find situations where a
certain amount of conflict – a competition of suggestions, as you
would say – is the normal state. Today, the language of
cybernetics gets a lot of play in analyzing family interactions. But
the cyberneticist’s idea of control doesn’t hit the spot. A family
does not literally control itself or its members in the same sense
that a space probe is controlled by electronic signals from Earth,
or from its on-board computer. It negotiates issues as they arise,
hopefully with some love, mutual understanding and more or less
adequate communications skills. You raise kids with good and
trusted suggestions, not with control signals. If your suggestion
theory helps to draw a clear distinction between healthy influence
and pathological control it would certainly be a contribution.
guidance and control

Guy: I agree. It was partly that objection to cybernetic psychology that
led me to the idea. Fruitful as the cybernetic approach seemed,
both information and control felt wrong as explanatory principles
of human behavior. I wanted a notion of loose guidance,
76
compatible with the autonomy of the system guided. The concept

of suggestion meets that requirement.
Thea: Can you say exactly why your notion of suggestion grants more
autonomy than cybernetic control? Of course, “suggestion”
sounds a lot looser, but it would be nice to have that spelled out.
Guy: A control signal commands. It flatly tells a system what to do,

with an expectation that it will be obeyed. Commands may be
incomplete or they may be garbled by noise in the
communications channel, but the notion of control does not
contemplate an active weighing of alternative commands from
other sources by a system with the capability to reconcile and/or
choose amongst them – except perhaps in a mechanical,
pre-programmed way, according to some higher-level command.
By contrast, a suggestion (usually in combination or competition
with other suggestions) prompts a system to construct an
appropriate response from its repertoire of basic possibilities.4 It
raises a weighted possibility, that must compete with alternatives.
Of course, some suggers have richer repertoires and more
autonomy than others. Some suggestions, perhaps, are so
powerful that they amount to compulsions; and these may be
acted upon almost on reflex as if they were control signals. But
conceptually, the distinction is very simple. When you drive the
car, rotating the steering wheel clockwise is more than just a
suggestion. You are commanding the car to turn right, and
controlling it in doing so; and you want as little doubt about the
car’s response as possible. But if I, sitting next to you with the
map, tell you to turn right at the light, that is only a suggestion –
which you might go along with or override for a dozen different
reasons.
Thea: So it is the multiplicity and potential for conflict among
4
Systems that do this are called production systems – having been designed
or evolved to behave autonomously along certain lines when they receive
a sufficient trigger (of suggestions) to do so.
77
suggestions that distinguishes suggestive guidance from

cybernetic control? You would treat control as a limiting case of
suggestive guidance?
Guy: When, and only when, the autonomy of the system being
controlled is negligible. In general, a relatively autonomous
production system constructs a suitable response to the mixed
suggestions it receives. For it to do something, it is sufficient that
there be a preponderance of suggestions to do it over suggestions
not to. Thus, “It seemed like a good idea at the time” is always a
sensible explanation. One may not be able to push it further, and
explain just why it seemed like a good idea.
When it seems worthwhile, we can distinguish between the
suggestive message and the suggestion itself for extra clarity.
Various suggers may receive the same message but draw
different suggestions from it. A message is suggestive or
meaningful to a given sugger because it prompts that sugger
toward doing something. Whether and how that suggestion is
followed is another question. It’s in the sugger’s discretion (as we
say) how the suggestion is understood, whether it is followed and
precisely how it is followed.
Thea: When you ask me to do something, you are not telling me how to
do it, nor in any way causing me to do it. But you are informing
me (or suggesting that I believe) that it would please you if I did
it.
Guy: Yes. The cybernetic paradigm of control leads us to think of

suggers as more coherent and less autonomous than we know
them to be.
A request is a suggestion to do something, combined with a
suggestion that the person making it will be pleased or displeased
depending on whether its recipient complies. A command in that
word’s ordinary meaning is a suggestion to do something,
combined with a suggestion that consequences will follow if the
recipient does not comply. A statement is a suggestion to believe
something. Even a question can be thought of as a suggestion that
78
a correct answer is possible and desired. Or, one might think of

the question as a suggestion that useful suggestions on this matter
are wanted. But suggestion itself is a primitive notion – too basic
to allow of definition. In general, a suggestion just raises a
possibility, giving it weight and flavor and value against other
possibilities raised by other suggestions.
Thea: I see what you mean. When you ask me to bring you a coffee, you
are not actually controlling me. You don’t tell me exactly how to
do it. You don’t tell me which mug to use, or whether to bring it
in a cup and saucer. And you assume that I know how you take
your coffee – and would be surprised if I asked.
Guy: And if you told me we were out of coffee and asked what I would
like instead, I wouldn’t feel you had gone out of control. This
point is important: In the work world, managers don’t actually
control their workers, and don’t want to. They need to rely on
their workers’ intelligence and active contribution to the purposes
at hand. When they need to give specific orders for every little
detail, the organization is in trouble. That’s why a work-to-rule
strike is effective.
Thea: All right. I see the distinction you want to make; and I see why
you want to make it. Where do we go from here?
Guy: Well, I’m suggesting that we discuss the minds and activities of
suggers, especially human suggers, in terms of suggestive
guidance rather than cybernetic control – so as not to forget the
autonomy they retain, however strongly they are influenced.
Thea: Do you mean, so as not to forget their “free will?” That’s the last
idea I would have expected coming from you.
Guy: It’s not a question of “free will.” I certainly do not believe that
our thoughts and choices stand outside of Nature and causality –
though in this area too I agree with Dennett that free will, as
such, is not a coherent idea, and that we have all the varieties of
79
it worth wanting.5 Nonetheless, consciously or not, we weigh and

choose between alternative suggestions – some put to us by other
people, some arising in our own brains, and some of these
originating in our very genes. The weighing and reconciliation of
suggestions happens spontaneously – which is why we speak of
ecology – but unless we feel compelled by some irresistible
desire or impulse, the choices we make feel like our choices. In
any case, others will attribute those choices to us and hold us
responsible for them and for their outcomes. Indeed, our
expectations that they will do so, and the training we have had in
taking responsibility for our actions are sources of suggestion that
we factor against our desires in actually making the choice. What
we mean by free will is more accurately called functional
autonomy – an attribute of any system with the capability to
decide and act on its own behalf, for its own reasons.
re-suggestive structures
Thea: You still haven’t told me what you mean by a cognitive ecology,
and you’re pinning an awful lot to that idea. Just what is that
supposed to be? What “species” comprise an ecology of that
kind?
Guy: The “species” are mental patterns: patterns of feeling, thought

and behavior that propagate and get reproduced reliably as
needed. Included too are the material artifacts that suggest and
subserve our mental patterns. We may think of them as
“structures of re-suggestion” (or as re-suggestions or suggestive
structures, for short) because whenever they are confronted or
engaged or utilized, they tender suggestions to the persons
(ourselves and others) who are doing so.
Some re-suggestions – for example, a word, an article of
clothing, or a recipe – are fairly narrow and specific. Others –
like a language, a branch of science, or a style of cuisine – are
5
See Dennett’s discussions of the free will issue in Elbow Room and
Freedom Evolves, previously cited .
80
broad and abstract. Like biological species, these structures exist

in dynamic balance with one another, and co-evolve through the
same processes of self-organization that we discussed the other
evening. To understand the social world and the patterns we live
by, we need to understand just how competing suggestions “gel”
or “curdle” into re-suggestive structures.
Thea: “Gel”? “Curdle”? Those are not very scientific terms!
Guy: Coin your own word if you don’t like them. The idea is that, in
a given area of experience, the suggestions (usually distributed
across many persons and occasions) can evolve or self-organize
into fairly durable artifacts, habit patterns and concepts that will
themselves serve as reliable sources of suggestion. The design of
a building or a new product are good examples. So is the writing
of a book. A writer gathers suggestions from people he meets and
speaks with, from his own life experience and his very flesh and,
of course, from other writers. In his mind and on the page, all
these suggestions work themselves together somehow into a
manuscript – a tangible artifact. Once published, these written
words become a text: a new source of suggestive influence on
whoever reads it, and a contribution to the discourse from which
it stemmed.
Thea: But surely that’s a deliberate act. The author writes the book.
Guy: From one perspective, of course he does. But to understand how

his mind works, we need to cut a little deeper. We need to
remember that his thoughts must have been suggested to him by
something or other. We need to think of these suggestions as
co-evolving into patterns that rubbed against one another and
became mutually compatible – hopefully, in some interesting and
valuable way – like co-evolving species in the natural world.
From that perspective, the “author” is just a warm body in which
the suggestions did their thing – forming themselves into
structures. The process is called “thinking” – but what the writer
is actually doing, mostly, is staring at his laptop screen, or out the
81
window.
Thea: So the thinking just happens somehow in the circuits of his brain.
Do we know how that works?
Guy: We’ll come to that question later – what is known about it today.
We’re not ready yet to discuss the parsing, weighing and
recombination of suggestions at the neural level. Let’s consider
a more tractable question: “What do our thinking processes
produce?” What re-suggestive structures get built to populate our
subjective worlds?
Thea: If I understand what you’re saying, these must be all the familiar
features of the world as we construe and understand it. All our
ideas – all our cultural artifacts and “mentifacts” – must be fairly
consistent sources of suggestion just to the extent they are
familiar to us, and that we know what to do with them.
Guy: Very good. To say that something is familiar is precisely to say

that we know how to relate and cope with the suggestions it puts
to us – what looks good (or bad) and possible from where we
stand. Thus we can say that all familiar situations, all the things
we recognize and interact with, are configurations of
re-suggestion, acting as fairly coherent and reliable sources of
suggestion to us each time that we encounter them. Daily life
might then be imagined as a kind of dance, to “chords” of
suggestion (analogous with musical chords) drawn from the
structures of re-suggestion around us. A date with a friend, a
family meal, a business transaction and whatever else gets
organized by these suggestive structures that make it the sort of
occasion it is, and instruct us on the appropriate behavior.
Thea: Your musical metaphor is rather neat. Those reverberating chords

of re-suggestion become the rich world as we experience it.
Guy: We can push it one step further, perhaps. Those structures of

re-suggestion correspond to printed notes in an orchestral score
82
that suggest how the musicians can recreate the same (or very
similar) music each time they play the piece. Then we might
liken the subliminal processing of unconscious mind to the
harmonics or “overtones” that give a musical chord its texture.
Thea: Your structures of re-suggestion are like Norbert Weiner’s “to

whom it may concern” messages. They need not have the same
meaning for everyone.
Guy: No, of course not. There may be areas of agreement, but also of
disagreement on the suggestions put by a given item. A tree may
be a source of valuable building material to one person, a source
of firewood to another, a lookout post to a third, a source of
shade or a purely aesthetic object to a fourth. It suggests the same
class label – “tree” – to each person; yet is a different kind of
thing for each. We must always wonder to what extent a given
thing is consistent in the suggestions it puts, as no two people
will see it in exactly the same way.
Thea: What you are saying agrees well with the object relations theory
of child development. It may take the infant some time to
recognize that the “good mother” who satisfies its wishes, and the
“bad mother” who frustrates it are one and the same person.
Guy: Not only do people become coherent, identifiable sources of

suggestion for one another as they connect to each other in
relationships. The types of relationship, reified into cultural
institutions like Marriage, or Motherhood, become powerful
structures of re-suggestion too. People seem to need the
orientation that such institutions provide. Lacking specific
instincts to situate us in our life-worlds, we cannot live without
such cultural structures.
Thea: Religious systems provide such guidance. From that perspective,

the question whether their teachings are true is really beside the
point. They would be understood in your terms as structures of
re-suggestion that suggest a certain way of understanding oneself,
83
orienting oneself in the world, and relating to others as a person.
Guy: All human culture serves such purposes. Religion purports to do

so at some ultimate level that ordinary experience cannot reach.
But even on a purely secular level, our political and economic
institutions tell us which games to play and how to play them.
Our tools and artifacts tell us how to use them to get things done.
Our signs and symbols tell us how to think. All these structures
are mutually inter-dependent, mutually supportive; and from this
ecological system, escape is scarcely possible. We can question,
evade or rebel against specific suggestions of culture, but further
suggestions and re-suggestive structures always provide the
means for doing so.
Thea: Your notion of re-suggestion sounds a lot like what I was trained
to call a script – a thoroughly familiar concept in psychology
today. We speak of sexual scripts and interpersonal scripts –
scripts for all the roles we play in our daily lives. As children we
learned scripts for using the toilet, and for tying our shoelaces.
We have scripts for all sorts of things. Does your concept of
re-suggestion really add anything?
Guy: Script is a somewhat narrower concept. You would not call the
Statue of Liberty a script, nor a cathedral, nor a song, nor the
English language as a whole; yet all of these are powerful
re-suggestive structures. A script tells you how to behave in a
certain situation. Re-suggestive structures may suggest specific
thoughts, feelings and behaviours, but most of them do not guide
your activities in any direct, step-by-step fashion, like the script
for a play or movie. They are just sources of suggestion,
persistent and durable enough to suggest roughly the same things
from one person and one encounter to another. A script is one
kind of re-suggestion. Certainly, the two concepts are closely
related; and I have no objection if you stretch the more
convenient word script for what I call a re-suggestion or a
suggestive structure. I may do that myself sometimes.
84
culture as a guidance system

Thea: Then personality, scripts of various kinds, and culture itself can
be seen collectively as a re-suggestive guidance system that we
take on board to orient ourselves in the world and cope with it.
For other creatures, the re-suggestive structures are mostly
hard-wired into their nervous systems as what we call their
“instincts.” But what is instinct, anyway?
Guy: As you say, instinct is defined as behavior that requires no

learning, but there are gray areas where it is not so simple. For
example, some birds, when raised in complete isolation, will not
learn the songs typical of their species. On the other hand,
allowed minimal contact with adults, they need very little cuing
to learn their songs correctly.6 Roughly the same observation can
be made on human children in connection with walking and
language. Kids are not born knowing how to do these things, but
have extraordinary aptitude and drive to learn, with only minimal
cuing from adults. So, in general, what we call “instinct” is partly
innate, but partly a pre-disposition to learn. It’s misleading to
think of instinct as wholly unlearned and involuntary. Humans
have very few behavioral predispositions that need no learning or
practice at all, and that cannot be suppressed voluntarily. On the
other hand, it’s undeniable now, that there is such a thing as
“human nature.”7 There are many behaviors that come easily to
us and others that are very difficult.
At the same time, without suggestive guidance from elaborate
cultures and personal relationships, we are extraordinarily
helpless in most respects. In fact, it’s possible to see human
biology and the human life cycle as organized around our need to
elaborate and extend the vague, generic patterns that evolution
has given us. We take our cues from artifacts, from language,
6
See The Symbolic Species , Terrence Deacon, p 228. See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_song#Learning.
7
For a discussion of human nature see Steven Pinker’s book, The Blank
Slate .
85
from the culture’s “conventional wisdom,” and from the social

roles that we assume – especially in work and family life –
finding ourselves under great pressure to perform our roles
coherently and “responsibly,” so that others can perform theirs.
When we say that a teenager needs to “get a life,” it’s the absence
of all this guidance that we’re noting.
Thea: When someone asked Freud what healthy people could do that
neurotics could not, he answered, “Love and work.” For most
people, that means a job and a family – just the stabilizing roles
that teenagers don’t have.
Guy: No – not for a few years yet, most of them.
86
#4 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
Talk #4 Collective Intelligence

W hat must something be such that it can act on its own behalf?
– Stuart Kauffman
Thea: Your approach seems based on two assumptions, neither easy to

accept. First, you insist that perception, consciousness, emotion,
memory – all the mental functions – are merely the workings of
a nervous system. At the same time, you insist on the Darwinian
view that this marvelous physiological machinery is itself a
product of mindless evolution. What we’re asked to believe then,
as you’ve said yourself, is that sentience and intelligence can
arise spontaneously, in a system whose components are not
themselves intelligent, with no injection of intelligence from the
outside, I find this inconceivable, frankly. Until you can show
how such a thing is possible, I will continue to prefer some
version of the dualist view that mind and matter are wholly
different substances that somehow interact. As will most people,
I think.
Guy: John Searle’s “Chinese Room” argument, makes the same

objection, as did Leibniz, 300 years ago.1 I agree that the onus is
on science to explain how mind can emerge through known
processes and functions of organic matter. Today, it’s on the
verge of providing that explanation. That’s what these talks are
about.
Thea: You really believe that today’s neuroscientists can explain the
1
In his Monadology. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-mind/.
87
human mind as the functioning of a human brain?
Guy: Not quite yet – not without some hand waving. But we are
coming very close. We now have a pretty good theory of how
such a thing is possible – one that seems to agree with what is
known about the brain. There are excellent books around now
that explain in layman’s terms how an intelligent mind might be
woven in the firing patterns of ten billion unintelligent neurons.
If you are willing to listen, I can give you the gist of what
these books are saying. Whether their ideas will convince you, I
don’t know; but at least you will see why their authors are
persuaded that “mind” (or better, “minding”) is a word for what
our brains do – much as “digestion” is a word for what our
stomachs do. In either case, we’re talking about a process, not a
thing – a process that we’re beginning to understand.
Thea: Oh, I’ll listen. But expect some stiff resistance. I don’t want to
believe that a mind is just a mush inside the head.
Guy: You should be careful with your words here. No one is saying
that. First, what looks like mush to the naked eye is actually the
most complex structure we know of – many orders more complex
than our most powerful computers. But second, the mind is no
more this complex structure of brain tissue than a Beethoven
symphony is just the ink marks in a score, or than the Sistine
chapel ceiling is just paint on plaster. The miracle of emergent
form is no less miraculous because we know how it was done, or
the medium in which it was done – or because we know that in
a sense, it composed itself (that is, self-organized), because
Beethoven and Michelangelo did their work by responding, as
they went along, to suggestions from the work-in-progress more
than anything else. The art always creates the artist as much as
the other way around. If you want miracles, focus on that!
Thea: Point taken. But I’m still skeptical that anything like a mind can
emerge from the electro-chemical interactions of those neurons
without some other principle at work. Show me how such a thing
88
is possible, even in principle.
swarm logic and “stigmergy”

Guy: Well, I can begin by pointing out that an ant hill or a termite
colony is much more intelligent than any single ant or termite. A
single ant is little more than an organic robot, responding to
various situations according to its program, with scarcely any
adaptive intelligence of its own. The ant hill, by contrast, has
remarkable intelligence: Collectively, many thousands of worker
ants patrol the area around their nest, dig, clean and defend it as
needed, and forage for food – making numerous choices as they
do so that depend on the availability of workers and resources,
weather, time of day, and other factors. Somehow, the tasks must
be allocated to available workers, and must be performed
efficiently for the colony to survive. No individual ant could
make the necessary judgments, but the ants collectively make
them.2 How is this possible?
Thea: That sounds like a child’s riddle: How is an ant hill like a brain?
Guy: Indeed it is a riddle, a very promising one; but it goes better the
other way: How is a brain like an ant hill? In fact, the ant hill
offers a beautiful clue to the brain’s working principle. And it’s
much easier to study.
Thea: I don’t see the connection yet. It’s not strikingly obvious.
Guy: It will be if you imagine the brain as a sort of colony of static

“ants” (the individual neurons) that form connections with one
another and with the body’s sensory and motor organs instead of
scurrying around as the ants do. While life continues, these cells
continually influence one another with electro-chemical
suggestions. As primitive suggers, they pass suggestions to one
2
The collective intelligence of ant hills is amusingly discussed by Douglas
Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, Bach.
89
other, responding as their evolutionary history shaped them to

respond. In both ant hill and brain, the intelligence of the whole
“colony” emerges from the interaction of a great many
unintelligent components.
Thea: Surely an ant is more intelligent than a neuron. Though I don’t

know if “intelligent” is the right word. The ant has more
autonomy at any rate – more room to maneuver, more choices to
make.
Guy: Indeed it does. But the ant has sufficiently little autonomy for its
colony to display certain of the principles on which a brain could
work.
Thea: Well, I admit you’ve made me curious. How do those little ants
know what to? The queen ant must be controlling them somehow.
Or the colony as a whole must do so.
Guy: No! That’s the key point, right there. The queen ant is just a kind
of breeding robot – specialized for laying eggs. She has no more
intelligence than one of your ovaries. And the colony as a whole
has no intelligence apart from that woven collectively in the
activities of the individual ants. The colony exists as an entity
and controls its individual ants only in the sense that all the ants
together create a context to which each ant responds in its own
very simple way.
Thea: Through self-organization you’re going to say.
Guy: Yes, exactly. The ant colonies, or those of termites, bees, and
other “social” insects are concrete, vivid examples of what is
otherwise a mere abstraction – an hypothesis. By studying these
creatures, we learn how one instance of cognitive
self-organization actually works. If thousands of dumb ants can
collectively comprise an entity as marvelously adaptive as an ant
hill, then we begin to see how trillions of individual nerve cells,
90
muscle cells, blood cells, liver cells, and many other kinds3 might
comprise a lobster, a squid, a chimpanzee . . . or a person.
Thea: I don’t know if I like to think of myself as a cell colony much

more than I like to think of myself as a data processing machine
or a chemical mush.
Guy: Dear, let me break this to you gently. How you like to think of
yourself doesn’t really matter. You are free, like everyone else,
to follow one or other of the existing, socially constructed stories
or to invent a story of your own. I am offering you a somewhat
simplified version of what seems to be the most accurate and
rigorous story that has been told to-date. Nothing more, but
nothing less.
Thea: Very well. And for the time being, I’m just trying to understand
that story without passing judgment. Please go on.
Guy: All right. But note that the question you asked a minute ago –
How do all those ants know what to? – must also be asked about
the cells of the body. And the answer is about the same as for the
ants: As I said, the so-called “queen” is just another ant –
specialized for laying eggs. She has no regulatory function at all.
Likewise, there is no Master Neuron, or Master Cluster of
neurons. We find no structure in the body that could be
co-ordinating its separate cells. Somehow, they coordinate
themselves. The ant colony shows us something of how this is
done – and shows us that it can be done, though the mechanisms
in the brain may be entirely different.
3
The human body has an estimated population of 10 14 cells, of about 220
different types. A typical mammalian cell may contain up to 10,000
different proteins. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology).
91
Thea: All right. For the sake of discussion, suppose I grant that there is
no such master controller, and no need for one – though the fact
that we have not yet found one does not prove that none exists.
What then?
Guy: Then I can introduce you to two powerful ideas, “swarm logic”
and “stigmergy,” which between them begin to explain how those
ants, and the cells of a body, know what do. They even begin to
show how human individuals – like you and me – know what to
do. But let’s stick with the ants for now.
Thea: By all means. But don’t forget, it’s in the analogy of people with
ant colonies that I’m going to have a problem.
Guy: I won’t forget, I promise you. The first idea, swarm logic, is a
way of thinking about the interaction of neighboring ants.
Actually, it can be seen more clearly with flocks of birds, schools
of fish, and herds of sheep, but the ants use it too. The principle
is just that each ant is influenced only by its immediate
neighbors. No awareness of the whole colony’s state is required
by any ant – not even by the queen, as it turns out. The principle
is that each individual is attentive to and influenced only by its
immediate environment and the actions of its immediate
neighbors. It mimics the actions of these neighbors, or responds
to them so as to maintain a certain position or relationship to
them.
Thea: The way birds or fish distribute themselves in space to maintain

a given distance from their neighbors?
Guy: Or the way that human drivers do, or fighter pilots flying in
formation. Yes. But those are simple examples. Swarm logic is
now being used extensively to target advertising to specific
niches in the market by examining the previous browsing and
buying behavior of people whose patterns of interest are similar
to yours. It’s used on the Internet by search engines like Google
92
to order the web sites selected by your query in order of

popularity (on the assumption that the sites visited or referenced
most frequently by others are likely to be most useful to you). It
figures in various forms of mass behavior, like war fever, lynch
mobs, and booms and panics on the stock market. It underlies our
need to “keep up with the Jones’s,” and, (remember “power
laws”), the odd phenomena of “celebrity” – people who become
famous mostly for being famous – and of the “happenings” that
draw vast crowds because word gets around that everybody who
is anyone will be attending. Man really is a social animal –
sometimes, in perverse, maladaptive ways.
Thea: Why did it evolve in us then? I can see how swarm behavior
helps ants and birds and fish, but what does it do for people?
Guy: As with other creatures, it relieves us of the need to pay attention

to “the big picture,” to our global situation and to the over-all
functioning of our social groups. It lets us focus on our little
lives, and our immediate relationships. In humans, a swarming
instinct also supports our propensity for culture-weaving by
influencing us to pattern our behavior on what we see around us;
and it influences us to feel shame (a characteristically human
affect) when we stand out from our fellows. In this way, it
contributes to the solidarity and coherence of human groups, and
thus to the configuration of human societies. Instinctively, we
“go along to get along” – and we prosper in doing so, more often
than not.
Human swarming has its dark side, however. It makes an
obstacle to original or creative work, and sometimes causes
people in crowds to behave in foolish, evil, or self-destructive
ways. One may doubt whether our swarming instincts are still
adaptive at this point in our history. Both the best and the very
worst of human beings can over-ride them from time to time, but
there is no doubt that they remain powerful sources of suggestion
to conform, and to enforce the conformity of others.
Thea: But swarm logic can’t be enough to guide even an ant or a bird
93
through its daily routine, let alone a human being.
Guy: No it isn’t. There’s also stigmergy, the second principle I

mentioned.
Thea: That’s a word I’ve never heard before. What does it mean?
Guy: It’s a very powerful concept formed from two Greek words
already available in English: “Stigma” means “sign” and “ergos”
(as in “energy”) means “work,” so “stigmergy” means “signs
provoking work.” It’s the name for a method of indirect
communication, first studied in connection with ants and termite
colonies.4 Their big trick works like this: Worker ants mill
around at random, but when they discover a source of food they
lay down a chemical trail of external hormone (called a
pheromone) on their way back to the colony. The scent of this
chemical summons other ants who find the food and do the same
thing. The accumulation of pheromone eventually recruits a
horde of ants who “mine” the food source until it is exhausted.
Thea: What happens then?
Guy: When no more food can be found, the ants misdirected to this site
leave no pheromone trail on their way back to the nest, and the
existing trails of scent soon evaporate. After a short time the ants
are no longer misled, and their labor is directed elsewhere, by
newer chemical trails. A similar scheme coordinates the labor of
termites and some other social insects.
Thea: I do see what you mean by “collective intelligence.”
Guy: It’s marvelous, isn’t it? No individual ant or termite has the
4
The term stigmergy was coined as recently as 1959 by a French biologist,
Pierre-Paul Grassé. Earlier work along the same lines had been done by a
South African, Eugene Marais, and described by him in a posthumous
book called The Soul of the White Ant, published in 1937.
94
intelligence needed for such a feat. The intelligence, such as it is,

resides with the colony as a whole.
Thea: In its stigmergy.
Guy: If you care to put it like that. But remember that stigmergy is only
the name for an indirect form of communication. We speak of
point-to-point communication in which one sugger passes sugges-
tions directly to another. There is broadcast communication in
which suggestions are just put out indiscriminately to all suggers
in the vicinity. We also recognize a kind of communication
between a sugger and its natural environment – that of ordinary
perception and interaction. But in stigmergic communication,
suggers leave sugges-tive marks on the environment for other
suggers to find and respond to.
Thea: So the intelligence of the system resides in the ever-changing

fields of suggestion that these simple suggers leave for each
other.
Guy: You’ve got it. Like a broadcast, stigmergic markings are put out
on a “to whom it may concern” basis. Unlike a broadcast, those
markings linger for an indefinite time (in some cases, a very long
time), but gradually lose their influence. And as the markings
linger, attenuate and are replaced, they comprise a field of
suggestive influence in the terrain the suggers scout, and in which
they operate. That field changes with time as the suggers interact
with their environment and leave their marks upon it. As it
sustains itself in dynamic balance, the field can be considered an
ecology unto itself, embedded in the larger ecology of the
colony’s whole environment. It’s this stigmergic field that tracks
and adapts to the colony’s environment, and is the locus of its
adaptive intelligence.
Thea: That is a difficult concept, and I’m not sure I can accept it: One
wants to think that intelligence is an attribute of minds. Here it’s
just the attribute of a communications network.
95
Guy: But look dear: Blurring, and finally erasing the sharp distinction
between mind and matter is just what we are trying to do. The
phenomenon of stigmergy shows how very primitive suggers can
collectively possess adaptive intelligence of much higher order
than they do as individuals.
Thea: But without at least some built-in intelligence, those ants or

neurons would not know how to respond to the suggestions they
are receiving.
Guy: That depends what you want to mean by intelligence. As you

would be the first to point out, those ants and the cells in our
bodies don’t really have what we ordinarily call “intelligence.”
They are simple suggers that just respond in stereotyped ways to
the suggestions they receive. The suggestions they pass each
other and the ways they respond to these suggestions have been
prepared for them by evolution. No sentient intelligence is
needed, and none exists at that level. The result, however, is that
the behavior of the whole is not stereotyped at all, but capable of
great flexibility. What we surmise is that as the size and
inter-connectedness of such a system increases, its collective
flexibility may also increase to a point where it must be judged
sentient and intelligent by our human standards.
Thea: You’re still ducking the question of consciousness completely –

talking about flexibility and “adaptive intelligence” instead.
Guy: I’m not ducking the question, just taking things one step at a
time. There’s still a fair bit of ground to cover. First, I need to
show you how much of what we call mind lies altogether outside
the brain and body, comprised by stigmergic structures of
re-suggestion like those we’ve just been discussing. Then I have
to tell you a little about the brain, which is not much like an ant
hill though it exploits these same principles of stigmergy and
swarming, among others. Finally, I have to talk about symbolic
processing and language. Only then can we begin to address the
nature of consciousness.
96
Thea: All right, then. What’s next?
the tuned network

Guy: The problem of distributed cognition – how intelligence might
emerge from a configuration of entities not at all intelligent
themselves – can be approached from a completely different
direction. Today we build devices called “nerve nets” (also
known as “neural nets” or “Boolean nets”) modeled on an
over-simplified conception of the workings of a real brain. They
are used in applications requiring the discovery of patterns in vast
amounts of data: face and speech-recognition, economic
forecasting, medical diagnoses, fraud detection, weather
forecasting, and the like.
Thea: How do they work?
Guy: Think of a great many very simple suggers (called binary

decision units) connected in such a way that each can receive
suggestions to turn on or off, fire or rest, from predecessors in the
network – in effect, passing either a 1 or a 0, (a single bit of
information), to suggers downstream of them in the network,
likewise to turn on or off. As we’ll see later,5 this is a highly
simplified model of what real neurons do.
What’s remarkable is that the network as a whole can learn
to convert complex input signals into appropriate output signals
for some given purpose. The learning happens basically by trial-
and-error, in good Darwinian fashion, because the network is so
configured that connections of its units are strengthened when
they produce appropriate results, and weakened when they do
not. In this way, the behavior of the network as a whole evolves
toward and stabilizes on output tailored to the input it is
receiving. We don’t need to go into the details of this technology,
which is still in its infancy – and which, in any case, does not do
justice to the complexity of real brains. For our purpose, only two
5
In Talk #7.
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things are important: First, these networks provide an idealized

model of the workings of a real nervous system, but one which
can already do useful cognitive work. A body of theory about
them has developed, and is developing further. The theory, in
turn, affords some groping insight into the properties and
performance characteristics of real brains, and is suggestive for
further research in neuroanatomy and physiology.
Second, these nerve nets lend themselves to experiment and
further engineering. We can make the individual suggers more
sophisticated, and we can refine their protocols of
interconnection – either to improve the network’s performance or
to approximate more closely to a real brain.
Thea: You promised a discussion of mind this evening, but what you’re
describing now is a kind of artificial brain. Where is the mind in
such system? Does a nerve net have anything you could call one?
Guy: It does – in roughly the sense that a radio has music. In this
respect, a neural net, and probably a real brain also, might be
compared to a radio or TV set whose circuits resonate in
sympathy with the broadcast program it is receiving. The circuits
of a radio are continually perturbed by electro-magnetic waves
jostling the electrons in its antenna. Those of a neural net or
brain, are continually perturbed by signals from its sense organs,
which are in turn responding to signals from their world. The
difference is that a radio merely amplifies those disturbances and
converts them into audible sound. But even a very simple nervous
system responds to disturbance by generating activities
complementary to what is disturbing it. A human nervous system
resonates (if that is the right word) both with the world around it,
and with saved fragments of its previous resonance patterns – its
“memories,” “beliefs,” “desires” and “habits.” It not only
generates “intentions” and activities complementary to its
immediate situation, but sometimes very subtle and intricate
patterns expressive of its internal state.
Thea: Whoa! Wait a minute here! “Memories,” “beliefs,” “desires,”
98
“intentions”? Where did they come from? Those are attributes of

a mind. You were talking about a complex switching circuit
resonating with its environment. That’s quite a jump you’re
making.
Guy: Admittedly. Creatures with primitive nervous systems probably

don’t have memories or beliefs, or even desires and intentions in
anything like the human sense. They do have brains – much more
complex than those artificial nerve nets – that respond to their
environments by resonating with them and controlling the
creature’s glandular and motor responses in the process. And
they have minds, of a sort, as I’ll show you tomorrow evening.
We’re still not able to explain in much detail how a human
sugger can mentally “stand back” from its world and represent it
– to the point of having what we would call “beliefs.” But that is
where we are headed. The humble cockroach already appears to
have a mind of sorts, constituted by the rhythmic firing patterns
of a neural net in its environment. It now seems likely that a
sufficiently complex neural net working on roughly the principles
I’ve described could have a mind approaching human
sophistication.
Thea: I’d be much happier if you’d put that word “mind” in quotes. I'll
freely grant that cockroaches can be thought of as suggestion
processors, but I doubt that they have minds in any reasonable
sense. If you want to say that they have “mind-like”
suggestion-processing capabilities, I have no objection.
Guy: All right. If the quotation marks help you, by all means put them
in. For myself, I don’t see what they add. I know a mind by the
mind-like things it does; and it seems both more natural and more
interesting to distinguish minds of different capabilities than to
distinguish between real minds and things that are merely
“mind-like” in their behavior.
Thea: I think there must be more at stake here than our use of words.
Ants and robots do things. Minds have feelings.
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Guy: You’re right. There is more at stake than the words. But we’d be
getting ahead of ourselves to argue about it now. We’ll get to
mind (at least, what I mean by “mind”) in our next talk. We still
have some ways to go before we get to consciousness, and the
feelings you want to talk about. The issue is as central for me as
it is for you. I won’t forget it, I assure you.
Thea: Fine. But there’s a phrase you keep using that I’d like you to
explain before we go much further. What exactly is this “adaptive
intelligence” that you attribute to ants and cockroaches? Does an
amoeba have it? Does a bacterium, a virus, a house-cleaning
robot? What are the minimum requirements?
adaptive intelligence
Guy: Stuart Kauffman wonders about design requirements for a system
that can act on its own behalf. I think your question – What does
it mean to have “adaptive intelligence”? – is another way of
asking the same thing. It’s a good question, bound up with the
definition of life itself.
Even the simplest living thing can thrive in some sense, and
can act on its own behalf (to whatever extent it can) because it
can be said to have interests: in staying alive, in
self-perpetuation, in growth and reproduction, etc. It need not be
sentient in any dim sense at all; it may be utterly incapable of
“caring” whether it thrives or not. But we can say, watching it,
that it acts as if it cared, because its activities have been
exquisitely tailored by evolution. In that sense, we must say that
even a virus “acts on its own behalf.”
Then, if a creature’s repertoire includes alternative activities
for different situations, and if it usually gauges its situation
correctly and selects its response accordingly, it may be said to
show adaptive intelligence.
Thea: So “adaptive intelligence,” for you, needs no subjectivity, or

ingenuity or foresight. No sentience even. No awareness of its
own existence. The functional competence of a plant in turning
toward the light is enough to qualify.
100
Guy: Yes.
Thea: All right. So long as we’re clear that you have a long way to go
in getting from the adaptive intelligence of an ant hill to that of
a bird, let alone a human infant.
Guy: We’re clear. We’ll discuss mind and sentience in our next talk,
and consciousness a few evenings from now, and you are
absolutely correct that what I mean by adaptive intelligence is
still nothing more than self-interested functional competence. In
regulating temperature, gathering food, avoiding predators,
whatever.
Thea: Fine. Then you have yet to show that the adaptive intelligence of
a termite colony or ant hill has any bearing on the nature of
human consciousness.
Guy: Clearly it has some bearing. If nothing else, it shows how novel
capabilities for the uptake and evaluation of complex suggestions
can self-organize amongst units whose suggestion-processing
capabilities are much more limited. It shows that a whole system
can be much more intelligent than any of its parts, with no extra
intelligence added from the outside.
I ask you to be patient and to follow the logic of these
discoveries one step at a time. And to trust me that the concepts
of this evening’s talk – swarms, stigmergic traces and neural
networks – are central to the emerging story.
Thea: To the story you are telling – whether this turns out to be a true
story, or not.
Guy: Again, correct. It’s true that our understanding of the emergence
of Mind in a mindless physical world is still incomplete – and
may be radically mistaken for all we know. It’s a magnificent
story nonetheless: magnificent in its scope, its intellectual
integrity, its ingenuity and its depth. It’s a magnificent
intellectual achievement – well worth getting your head around,
101
regardless of the outcome.
Thea: Fair enough. I can accept it on that basis. Can we break now? I
think I’m about ready for bed.
Guy: Can you hold on just a few more minutes? Before we quit for the
night, I’d like to show you that human society as a whole can be
thought of in these same terms. Swarm logic, stigmergy, and
sugger networks are key concepts for human sociology as well.
Thea: Oh? I can see how our society might be imagined as a

self-organizing system, as Adam Smith pointed out about the
economy. But our cities really aren’t much like ant hills, even if
they sometimes make us feel like ants. Cities are run by the
humans who live and work in them. They don’t run themselves.
society as a distributed intelligence

Guy: Yes and no. Much of our knowledge resides in books and
libraries and universities. Human competence resides as much in
our tools as in the people who use them. One could argue that the
adaptive intelligence of human societies is an emergent of
stigmergic communication – as much or more so than we’d say
about the ants and termites.
A group of engineers and construction workers stranded on
a virgin planet without their books and tools and equipment
couldn’t build a starship, and it might take many generations
before their descendants could do so.
Thea: Probably true, but what does it prove? You need to tools to make
tools to make tools. And making those tools would take time.
Where’s the analogy to the ant’s pheromone?
Guy: If you want to tell people not to use a reserved parking space,
what do you do?
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Thea: I put up a sign. Ahhh! And that sign is a stigmergic message to

whom it may concern – like the ant’s secreted chemicals.
OK. It’s obvious. If a sign is an example of stigmergic
communication, then so is a newspaper, or a book, or a whole
library. In our own lifetime, the World Wide Web happened upon
the scene as a stigmergic trail of information, cutting across
political boundaries as a global library and filing system.
Guy: Exactly. Now you are seeing it. Whatever else they do, the
material artifacts of a culture work stigmergically as
re-suggestive structures. The trails that hunters make by
trampling down the scrub on a forest floor are not much different
from the pheromone trails of those ants. The use of any such trail
marks it more clearly, thereby augmenting its suggestive power
and attracting further use. If hunters stop traveling that way, the
trail is eventually reclaimed by undergrowth. But if hunters
continue to take that path it becomes a dirt road, and then a paved
one – maybe, eventually, a superhighway. In any city at rush
hour, you can observe the stigmergic influence of the established,
slowly evolving, transportation arteries, and the stigmergic “pull”
from home to workplace in the morning, and back home at night.
Our homes and work places, our public buildings and our
monuments are also stigmergic artifacts; and as such, powerful
sources of suggestive influence. Likewise our books and our
works of art. Likewise, every tool and weapon that balances in
the hand, and teaches its user how to use it – just by feeling good
when it is held and wielded in the right way. Likewise every
“user-friendly” machine or program, transparent in suggesting the
uses it affords.
Thea: Books, roads, tools, buildings, electronic equipment, works of

art: We use stigmergy more than the ants! Even if we are
sentient and conscious as the ants are not.
Guy: We make more use of stigmergy and much richer use. All the
tools we use, all the artifacts we make, have stigmergic value as
103
an adjunct to their instrumental value. A gun can be used to shoot

people that we don’t like; by this very fact, it suggests we do so,
and that others might. Usually, of course, there are powerful
suggestions to the contrary, but we should be aware that
conflicting suggestions never fully cancel each other.
As suggers we have much more autonomy than the ants – far
greater responsive repertoire, and subtler means for evaluating
suggestions. But great as this autonomy is, it is not unlimited. We
are a social species, specifically adapted in many ways to swarm
with our neighbors and respond appropriately to the stigmergic
cues they lay down for us.
Thea: How does swarming figure in our social behavior?
Guy: We worry about status and follow leaders. We want what our
neighbors want; we copy their habits and mannerisms; we crave
their approval and feel shame when we don’t have it. We
evaluate and respond to suggestions less on their merits than on
the social status of those who make them, and on their
relationship to us. We are susceptible to various forms of mass
emotion and mass behavior – from stock market booms to lynch
mobs to waves of panic on a battlefield.6
Thea: This is just why your biologically-grounded psychology is scary.

I know you do not say human beings are just like ants, mindlessly
following each other’s trails. But other people will say that. Some
already are. And some will use these ideas to tighten the control
that elite groups already exercise over the rest of us through
advertising and clever marketing.
Guy: I can’t disagree with you. Although it may be that people’s

awareness of the sinister uses of swarm logic and stigmergy will
6
See, for example, Charles MacKay’s book Extraordinary Popular
Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and Elias Canetti’s Crowds and
Power, classics on this subject.
104
make them more resistant. Probably both effects will happen. It’s
not easy to see what these new ideas will do with us, in the long
run. That’s what I’m trying to understand.
Thea: And what conclusions have you come to?
Guy: Stick with me. That’s what these talks are about.
105
#5 THE CONCEPT OF MIND
Talk #5 The Concept of Mind

The [mind-body] problem in a nutshell is that since people are
composed of chemicals, they must be physically explicable, but
yet since they have consciousness they can’t.
– Michael Huemer 1
The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not

know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of
division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected
the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and
science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both
from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in
education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the
aloofness of “intellectuals” from life, in the whole separation
of knowledge and practice – all testify to the necessity of
seeing mind-body as an integral whole.
– John Dewey
Thea: Before we get started this evening, there’s a point I’m having
trouble with: Your notion of suggestion seems to cut in two
directions at once. Sometimes it’s a mental event – a
communication that prompts a person to think or do something .
But sometimes it’s a physical event in the brain, like the firing of
a neuron that prompts another neuron to fire. Can a scientific
concept really have two such different aspects? How can
suggestions be mental and physical at the same time?
Guy: Why should this be confusing? A suggestion suggests patterned

activity of some kind to a system prepared to respond in that way.
1
See http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/mind.htm
107
Typically, such patterns will have both physical and mental

components. For example, if you extend your right hand, thumb
up, to a stranger you have just met, he will probably take it as a
suggestion to shake hands. If he accepts, the physical movement,
and its social meaning will blend together, giving rise to further
suggestions of amicability and whatever else – depending on the
precise situation and the way the handshake is performed. The
movement of body parts and the communicative gesture are just
different aspects of the same event. I think this spanning of the
mind-matter distinction is a real strength of the suggestion
concept. Without some such notion, the emergence of mind in a
lump of matter seems absurd and impossible. But it need be
nothing of the sort. We can overcome the illusion of paradox by
shifting our concepts a little.
To describe the workings of a brain, we have to think on
several levels at once; and these are always physical and mental
at the same time: The emission of various neurotransmitters at a
synapse are not just electrochemical events, but also suggestions
to their contiguous neurons to fire or hold. Conversely, our ideas
and feelings can be shown to correlate with neural patterns of this
kind. That is what it means to say that “a mind is what a brain is
doing.” Ideas of every kind – feelings, desires, beliefs and so
forth – suggest intentions and plans, which in turn suggest actions
of the body – movement of the limbs, vocal apparatus, etc.
Conversely, body postures and facial expressions can suggest
states of mind and appropriate actions to oneself and to others.
My words, I hope, suggest ideas in your mind and,
simultaneously, electrochemical events in your brain.
There are layers upon layers of complexity in a brain/mind
system, and to call it confusing is an understatement. But the
basic point – that patterns at various levels are responses of a
physical and cognitive system to suggestively meaningful
messages – is simple enough. In this way, the notion of
suggestion connects the mental and physical levels of discourse,
and helps us see these as alternative descriptions of a single
process.
108
Thea: So your claim is that the suggestion concept builds a bridge

between the languages of brain and mind. The nerve cell is a
primitive suggestion processor; the person in whose brain it
functions is a very sophisticated one. The nerve cell, like the
person, “decides” what to do next by weighing the suggestions it
is receiving. Any physical event may have direct, physical
consequences and, at the same time, cognitive and emotional
ones.
Guy: That’s the idea. The firing of a neuron is much more like a
suggestion to another neuron, to a muscle fiber or to a gland than
like a mere transmission of information. Likewise, the patterns of
sensory stimulation to an organism are naturally seen as
suggestions to that creature to perceive, feel and/or act in
appropriate ways. Likewise for the words of one person to
another. In each case, there is a physical event putting meaningful
suggestions that may or may not be accepted.
It seems natural to think of suggers at every level and of
whatever kind as systems that “do their thing” more or less
autonomously, guided by the suggestions they receive. Doing so,
it becomes clear that “mental” and “physical” are just alternative
viewpoints or “stances” toward a suggestion-processing system.2
If I think in a language of feelings, beliefs, desires and intentions,
I am talking about that system’s “mind.” If I describe it in a
physical language of chemicals, electric charges, and mechanical
forces, I am talking about its “body.” But it’s a single system I am
speaking of. Minds are found in bodies, and nowhere else.
what is a mind?
Thea: But not all bodies have minds. People obviously do; stones do
not; everything in between is problematic: Many people want to
say that chimpanzees and whales and dolphins have minds of a
sort. But then what about dogs or mice? What about fish? What
about those ants and termites? What about trees?
2
See Talk #7.
109
Guy: It will depend on your definition. The ancient vitalists believed

that all living things had minds of a sort. Descartes thought that
only people had them. Panpsychists extend the concept to
inanimate nature. If you define the word too broadly, then
everything has a mind. If you make the definition narrow enough,
then most people won’t.
My own thought is that the word is most useful when
approached through the concept of suggestion: Then we can say
that all suggers, all environmentally responsive production sys-
tems, have minds of a sort – some more complex and interesting
than others. The mind you have will depend on the complexity of
the suggestions you deal with, the responses you produce, and the
evaluation-and-production that happens in between.
Thea: That makes you a kind of panpsychist, does it not? Mind is

everywhere, and even the humblest creatures have it?
Guy: I’m an emergentist.3 I believe that what we call “mind” emerges

bottom-up in primordially mindless, but richly self-organizing
Nature. Mind is not endowed or “breathed into” things from the
top down. It evolves in systems that have become sufficiently
complex, and loosely organized. If it eventually turns out that the
cosmos as a whole can fruitfully be thought of as having mind,
this will be a remarkable emergent property, not a First Cause.
In the same way, I reject (except as a lovely myth) the Hindu
notion that all minds, emptied of content, are of one pure
substance, as sparks of a single cosmic conflagration. I think the
idea of mind as “substance” is a category error.
Thea: So how would you define this four-letter word? What is a mind
exactly, according to you?
Guy: I’m asking you to drop the notion that minds are things in any
3
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism and
www.brynmawr.edu/biology/emergence/stephan.pdf.
110
sense at all. To think them so is a nasty trick of language which

can only treat them as nouns, grammatically equivalent to bodies.
Minding is a process: the sort of thing that brains do. The word
“mind” is a high-level abstraction that helps make sense of our
own and other people’s behavior, as a locus of feelings, beliefs,
desires, and intentions – the whole menagerie of folk psychology.
Attributing these abstractions to ourselves and to each other helps
us to understand, and even predict each other’s actions. Our habit
of attributing minds to other people works so well that evolution
has probably hard-wired it into our brains. But there is no such
thing as a mind, in the sense that there are stones and stars.
Thea: So that’s all mind is for you – a useful concept?
Guy: Yes, but a complex and confusing one, because we use the word
in at least three senses. It’s a locus of mental content, as I was
saying. It’s also the word we use for our processing of
suggestions – what we think of as the stream of consciousness,
which now must include the stream of unconsciousness as well.
And, to make things even more confusing, we also use this word
mind as a synonym for “personality” – for internalized structures
of re-suggestion that originate some of the suggestions we deal
with, and evaluate all of them.4
Thea: What will you make of the obvious asymmetry: the fact that we
have privileged access to our own minds, but not to the minds of
others? I don’t know for sure that you have a mind; you don’t
know for sure that I have one. We treat each other as “minds”
because it’s useful to do so, as you are pointing out. But this is
only a matter of politeness – a social convention. A relatively
fragile convention, that’s easily dropped when we go to war with
other people, or abuse them in some way.
other minds
4
To be discussed further in Talk #10.
111
Guy: Full recognition of the minds of others is fragile as you say, but
it’s something more than a convention. I think it’s at least partly
instinctual – innate for normal human brains and nervous
systems. Except as a philosophical exercise, I don’t think there is
an “other minds” problem. We tend to see people in two ways:
either as subjectivities equivalent to our own, or as objects of our
desires and actions. Often as both together. What’s clear is that
infants come pre-equipped for sociability, able to recognize and
relate to other minds and to learn complex skills for doing so.
Subject to idiosyncrasies of temperament, they’re even more
predisposed to relate to other minds than to get up on their hind
limbs and walk.
Thea: That’s true enough. Actually, young children seem to discover

their own minds in complement to what they encounter in others.
They encounter others first, before they recognize themselves.
Guy: Right. Various models of infant social development have been

proposed, and there is still heated debate. But the infant’s cry and
smile, her fascination with human faces and voices, her
propensity to mimic, her tendency to mold to another body when
being carried or nursed and to fall into rhythms of interaction in
vocalizing and play are well-known to every parent, and
well-documented by child psychologists.
The contagion of positive affects like excitement and joy,
and of negative ones like fear and anger is also well known. Our
attribution of subjectivity to others must also be confirmed and
reinforced by this empathic transference of affect and emotion.
Primordially, we experience other minds as givens. Only much
later do we rationalize that significant others could not have the
beliefs, desires and intentions we confront in them without
subjective experience analogous to ours.
Thea: In psychopaths or sociopaths (or whatever we decide to call

them) that empathy breaks down. There is no agreed label for the
disorder, because no one is quite sure what it is.
112
Guy: Well, if we think of empathy as a functional property of the

normal human brain, then the psychopath would be someone with
a tragic deficiency in that function – tragic for himself and for
everyone who becomes involved with him. His disorder may be
more a matter of neural architecture and chemistry than of bad
parenting and social maladjustment. Of course, there would be
that social dimension as well, since relationship with this
individual would be difficult from the beginning.
Thea: Well, it’s a theory. It sounds consistent with the clinical findings,
though I don’t know enough in this area to say for sure.
Something else is grabbing at me. One assumption of
traditional psychology as of most religions, has been that all
minds, emptied of content, are fundamentally the same. But for
you, there can be no such thing as pure mind, emptied of content.
Instead, there will be temperament – the congenital pre-
dispositions of a brain. You would expect each baby to be born
with its own neural configuration of strengths and weaknesses,
and to weave its mind accordingly – pursuant to, or in reaction
against the suggestions of its genetic and physiological
temperament.
Guy: Well, psychiatry has been going in that direction, hasn’t it?
Thea: Psychiatry yes. But the talking cure psychology of shrinks like
me has a built-in reluctance to re-adjust our client’s brains with
drugs. Such interventions strike us as de-humanizing, however
necessary sometimes. Though we accept that there are
differences of temperament, our bias is that people have common
human needs, and can be reached in the same ways – through
empathy, genuineness and positive regard.5
Guy: I think you’re right to be concerned. A potential for abuse of

psycho-active chemicals and other direct neural intervention
5
The triad of client-centered therapy, articulated by Carl Rogers.
113
certainly exists. As you agree, though, such interventions clearly

have legitimate medical uses. This controversy will play itself out
eventually.
Thea: Yes, I think it will. The problem lies mostly with the health
insurance schemes that favor a quick fix for all mental health
problems, and would much rather pay a psychiatrist to prescribe
some pills than pay a therapist to spend many hours listening to
a client get his head together.
But the linking of mind to neurophysiology and brain
chemistry does have theoretical implications for our work. As
soon as one gets serious about the idea of temperament, it
becomes impossible to think of all minds as fundamentally the
same – made in the image of God, the Atman, or whatever. We
can no longer think of all minds as having the same emotional
needs. We can no longer believe that mental health is basically
the same for everyone.
kinds of minds
Guy: I’d say the theoretical problem goes even deeper: When you take
seriously that minding is what brains are doing, and that different
brains do their minding differently, you can no longer justify the
prejudice that only human beings have minds. You must then
consider seriously that even dogs and cockroaches and paramecia
have minds of a sort – that even our present-day computers do.
You can no longer think of mind as an all-or-nothing proposition.
You have to recognize that it comes in different degrees . . . in
different flavors.
Thea: It still bothers me that mind, for you, has nothing to do with
consciousness. In discussing mind, you make no mention of
consciousness at all!
Guy: We’ll get there. I surely agree that the role of consciousness is
crucial for us humans. We have no argument about that. But I
keep postponing the issue for several reasons: First, we now
know that consciousness is not a simple property, like a beam of
114
light that goes on or off when you flick the switch. It seems to
involve several distinct faculties that may be present in varying
degrees, and are at least partially independent of one another. We
need to get a little further along before we’ll be ready to talk
about them. Before doing so, we need to develop a notion of
mind distinct from mechanical computation on one hand but from
consciousness on the other. The mind of a hungry cheetah
chasing a gazelle (or of the frightened gazelle fleeing the cheetah)
is clearly of a different order than any computing device we can
build today, but it neither needs nor has the consciousness of a
human poet or philosopher or four-year-old child. For that matter,
as we know, most of an adult human’s mental processes are
unconscious. It seems urgent to develop a concept of mind that’s
able to capture these distinctions.
Thea: So for you, the low priority this psychology assigns to

consciousness is actually one of its virtues?
Guy: At this stage, yes. Very much so. We need to grasp the full
capabilities of unconscious mind before we can be in a position
to see what consciousness contributes. Above all, we must stop
imagining consciousness as a magical entity that runs the mind
from some imaginary corner office on the top floor. There is no
chief executive in the brain/mind system. That bit of
folk-psychology is at odds with everything we’ve learned.
Thea: But mind without consciousness is just information-processing

– or suggestion processing, if you prefer. It isn’t what we mean
by mind. It isn’t what we want to mean.
Guy: And that’s just where folk psychology goes wrong. It thinks of
consciousness as driving the mind and forgets how much a mind
can do when consciousness is asleep, or focused elsewhere. It
insists that human minds are basically all alike, and the only
minds there are. And it refuses to see that consciousness is not
the mind’s boss, or commander-in-chief, but rather more like a
Quaker clerk who articulates, records and seeks implementation
115
for a consensus already reached.

But I still want to postpone this discussion a little longer.
We’ve still got some ground to cover before we’re ready for it.
Thea: Fine. Then let me ask this: If humans and dogs have minds, and
even cockroaches have minds – if even single cells have minds
of a sort, then there’s a tremendous range of mental
sophistication. Do you have some way to grade these minds, or
classify them?
Guy: Not yet. Dennett wrote a book called Kinds of Minds that
distinguishes several levels of cognitive sophistication in the
animal kingdom, but it’s very far from a complete taxonomy.
Thea: How does Dennett’s scheme work?
Guy: It’s based on the creature’s aptitude for learning and abstraction.
The very simplest minds are just organic mechanisms. They have
a repertoire of behaviors available to them and the ability to
trigger those behaviors when appropriate.
Thea: Like eye blinks.
Guy: Right. Even brains as sophisticated as ours use “reflexes” of this

kind, when a correct response is needed quickly and reliably.
Thea: But why think of such reflexes as acts of “mind”?
Guy: Because the important word in my last sentence was “correct.”

Simple as these judgments are, it takes a lot of evolution (many
deaths, to say it bluntly) to tailor an accurate response and
correctly recognize the situations where it is needed. This
evolution should be understood as a kind of learning – of the
whole gene pool, to be sure. Its outcome is a primitive mind.
Thea: Not a mind – only a suggestion processor, I still want say.
116
Guy: Indeed. But if you don’t want to call this a simple mind, you will
have to say exactly where mind appears as the suggers grow more
complex. You must remember that as behaviors grow more
complex, so does the problem of coordinating them properly. For
example, a kind of mind is needed not merely to trigger a frog’s
fly-catching behavior, but to match it precisely to the trajectory
of the fly. Even a paramecium already has its version of the same
problem. At what point in evolutionary history did mind first
appear?
Thea: All right. We’ve been around that loop already. What other kinds
of minds are there?
Guy: Dennett refers to the very simplest suggers – living mechanisms,

really - as Darwinian creatures. The next step is a capability for
personal learning. The sugger can learn to trigger its response
more promptly and control them more accurately by keying it to
situations which it has leaned to associate with the automatic
trigger. Like Pavlov’s dog, it begins to salivate before the meat
is in its mouth, before it even smells the meat, because the bell’s
sound has become a sufficient trigger. Dennett calls these
“Skinnerian creatures,” after B.F. Skinner who explored the
possibilities of this type of learning – which he labeled “operant
conditioning.”
Thea: Skinner and his behaviorists thought that operant conditioning

could explain any kind of learning.
Guy: That was a mistake. Operant conditioning is an important mode

of learning in all creatures above the Skinnerian level, including
us. So it was tempting to speculate that it could account for any
type of learning. But adaptive intelligence can get much fancier
than that. More sophisticated than the creatures that learn only
through operant conditioning are (what Dennett calls) “Popperian
117
creatures”6 who learn by forming conjectures (hypotheses of a

sort) and refining these through experience. Most of the higher
mammals must be Popperian to some extent.
Thea: What makes us think so?
Guy: A Skinnerian mind learns by pure trial-and-error, but a Popperian

can generalize from its experience, and jump to conclusions.
These may or may not turn out to be correct, but they are not
merely random. A cat prowls its neighborhood, and makes
informed guesses as she does so. Much more than a pigeon can,
probably.
Thea: Then what kind of creature are we? Obviously we are Popperian
– much more so than a cat, or even a chimpanzee. But there must
be something else as well. What distinguishes us from the other
Popperian mammals?
Guy: Our minds make extensive use of Darwinian reflexes, Skinnerian

operant conditioning and Popperian abduction. But we are also
what Dennett calls “Gregorian creatures,”7 who offload much of
our learning onto symbols, tools and other artifacts. We learn as
individuals, of course – but our cultures also learn, and carry us
along with them.
Thea: Stigmergically, with all those suggestive artifacts that we build

up around us?
Guy: Yes, with a special role for language – a unique artifact that we’ll
6
After Sir Karl Popper, and his concept of science as a process of
falsification. See Popper’s book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
7
After psychologist Richard Gregory, the author of Mind in Science: A
History of Explanations in Psychology.
118
save for another time.8
Thea: This scheme seems to identify mind with learning. That’s a

scientist’s view of things, and may be a little too simple. Some
might say that other faculties are at least as important.
Guy: Admittedly. Dennett’s scheme is a very preliminary effort. No

one would give it more importance than that. We are years away
from having a generally accepted taxonomy of mind. We may
never have one, because the problem is so complex and the issues
at stake so controversial. But his scheme is interesting
nonetheless. It breaks the spell of consciousness – a late
development in the evolution of mind, as we now know. It helps
us see that any production system capable of evaluating and
responding to suggestions already has mind of sorts.
Thea: I’d like to push that issue a little further, if you’ll let me. What do
you mean by learning?
Guy: It’s much the same as the “adaptive intelligence” that we

discussed the other day. We can see learning as progressive
improvement – through a kind of evolution – in a system’s
capability to recognize, evaluate and respond to suggestions. Do
you have a problem with that?
Thea: I do, actually. Consistent with your whole approach, you seem to
define learning in strictly operational terms, as an evolving
capability to handle suggestions. Others might define it
differently – as a heightening of sensitivity and consciousness,
for example. I detect a circularity in your argument. By defining
mind and learning as you do, you make the whole discussion
come out a certain way.
Guy: I won’t dispute that charge. You can argue, if you like, that the
8
See Talk #8.
119
end of any project is implicit in its beginning. I could reply that

the scientific project has a special intellectual authority because
it is open-ended and reflexively self-critical, and because it’s
grounded in publicly verifiable and replicable procedures. You
would answer that I am doing more of the same: choosing
self-serving criteria that tend to validate my project at the
expense of others. I say that everyone else does this too – more
flagrantly, and with less tangible fruit. You will say, “There you
go again . . .” And at that point, the argument becomes a stand off
– a waste of time for all parties. No one can win. Everyone might
lose, if this argument gets bitter enough. We would all do better
to get on with our respective projects leaving others to do the
same.
Thea: You are consistent, at least. I’ll give you that. You don’t believe
in truth at all – only in better and poorer suggestions. When you
say a statement is true, all you mean is that it should be relied
upon provisionally until a better suggestion comes along.
Guy: True. That’s exactly what I mean.
Thea: But if mind is just a processing of competing suggestions that

never settle down to any definitive truth, how do you account for
the relative stability and coherence of our activities – for the
activities of any organism, let alone for a human creature who
believes as you do? You said the other evening that it’s the
mind’s coherence, not its conflicts, that call for explanation. I
know you’re going to talk about ecology and self-organization,
but those notions sound as mystical as the Holy Spirit. Just
waving them at the problem of coherence doesn’t really solve it.
Guy: You’re surely right that “self-organization” isn’t a magic wand.

But that is just the point: it’s not supernatural. We can admit that
a system is too complex and unstable to be predicted or
understood in detail, and still have a general understanding of
how it works.
120
Thea: OK then. Show me what you can do with that issue of stability.
How do all those competing suggestions and impulses amount to
a coherent life?
how a mind makes itself up

Guy: The short answer is that even bottom-up structures can achieve
a type of order that sustains itself from the top down. In
discourse, we call this context. In Nature we call it ecology. In
society, we call it government policy. In ourselves, we call it
taking a decision and sticking to it. The same principle is at work
in all these cases.
Thea: Can you spell this out for me please. You’ve got four different
concepts here. I don’t see the connection yet.
Guy: It’s a well-known principle of literary interpretation that words

and texts take much of their meaning from the contexts in which
they appear. A famous example is the saying “Time flies like an
arrow”9 whose meaning is clear although its first three words
carry multiple meanings, while the last makes a fancy metaphor.
Obviously, the meaning of the whole sentence depends on our
understanding of its individual words, yet the meaning of each
word is stabilized only in our understanding of the sentence. In
literary theory, this mutual interdependence of whole on parts,
and of parts on the whole is called “the hermeneutic circle.” In
the biosphere, the same effect is called “ecology.”
Thea: The same effect? That I don’t see.
Guy: Yes, the same. Because the“fitness” of the individual organism

is depends on its ecological niche within the system as a whole,
just as the meaning of a word depends on the text that surrounds
it. That is why we so often have to speak of co-evolution – of
two or more species evolving together – sometimes
9
Twisted by Groucho Marx to “Fruit flies like a banana.”
121
symbiotically, sometimes in a kind of arms-race. Similarly, if you

imagine the alternative meanings of a word as so many
competing suggestions, then the meaning they make together
represents a kind of equilibrium amongst them – a kind of
ecological balance.
Thea: Yes, I see where you’re going now: In an eco-system, the

competition for survival amongst the individual species translates
into stable anatomical structures in the various species, and into
patterns of relationship amongst different species at the higher
level. Similarly, the alternative meanings of words in a text
compete as suggestions, but quickly stabilize – most of the time
– as we discover a meaning in the whole.
Guy: Most of the time. Yes. Exactly. A coherent meaning jumps out at
you and dominates your understanding – but not always. Only
most of the time. Puns, jokes, literary criticism and law suits are
possible because the competition of meanings never settles down
once and for all. As with these verbal suggestions, so with others:
Beneath the apparent coherence of a personality, or a life, or a
whole society, the competition of suggestions continues, usually
in rough balance – a working equilibrium. But swerves, leaps,
breakthroughs and breakdowns are always possible.
Thea: How does this balance in the mind emerge? As you say, it doesn’t
always happen. Some minds are pretty unstable.
Guy: Will you accept (just for now) what I am aware is still to
demonstrate: that “mind” is the word we have for what our brains
are doing? Then I can answer that the stability of a mind emerges
from a corresponding stability of its brain, which we now begin
to understand as a network of nerve cells passing suggestions to
one another, loosely coordinated by swarm effects and stigmergy
as outlined the other evening.
Thea: All right. Suppose I grant your case – just for now.
122
Guy: Then I can point out that the stability of a such a network is
conceptually similar to, but somewhat different from the stability
of the more familiar cybernetic systems governed by negative
feedback.10 A cybernetic system is stable because displacements
from its attractor point give rise to forces pushing it back toward
that point. The existence of such forces is what make that an
“attractor.”
In a distributed network of suggers the situation is analogous,
but slightly different. The network as a whole is stable because
it has found a self-consistent pattern with the remarkable property
that deviations by individual suggers give rise to compensating
suggestions (rather than forces) to restore the pattern. The deviant
ones are prodded back into line because their neighbors tender
suggestions to that effect.
Thea: As deviant individuals in society are made to feel the disapproval

of others around them.
Guy: The Japanese have a saying, “The nail that sticks out will get
hammered in!” Take away the idea of disapproval or punishment,
and the over-all coherence in a brain is achieved in much the
same way: Neurons that depart from pattern pass suggestions to
other neurons leading to counter-suggestions to revert.
Thea: OK. I can see how that might result in a loose over-all stability,
like the ecologies we’ve been discussing. But you are speaking
brain language now. How does this relate to mind?
Guy: Actually, I am speaking both languages at once because

suggestions, as we were just discussing, are mental events as well
as physical ones.
Thea: How do we take decisions then? How do we commit to one
10
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback.
123
particular intention out of the possibilities suggested to us? Your

point (if I understood) was that an emergent pattern sometimes
becomes strong or stable enough to sustain itself top down by
blocking alternative patterns. How would that work?
Guy: Take an example. Suppose you and I are talking about going out
for dinner tomorrow evening. There are half-a-dozen restaurants
that we often go to, we could try a new one, or we could eat at
home. How does that decision get taken? We discuss it, maybe
argue if there is disagreement; but how does a choice finally
emerge?
Thea: It’s your example. That’s what you’re going to tell me.
Guy: I see three stages to the process: First, we make suggestions and
talk about them. Eventually, we come to a tentative agreement,
but remain open to further suggestions (out of left field, as it
were), and further discussion. But finally, we are committed. We
have our hats and coats on and are in the car, or walking to that
Thai place that we both like. Or we are taking food out of the
fridge. Barring some real upset, a decision has been taken, and
we feel locked into it. And the most common reason we feel so
is that neither of us want to disturb the other’s expectations or
nullify some moves that have already been made.
Thea: So you want to draw a distinction between tentative decisions

that might still be altered and relatively firm ones that might still
be changed, but only at some cost that people are reluctant even
to propose. But clearly, that is a matter of degree. Any such cost
will be proposed and eventually paid when the costs of
persistence become unbearable.
Guy: Yes. But once locked into a decision, we persist in it – keep

throwing in good effort and money – for a long time before we
are willing to call it quits. We get locked in too because some
actions are irreversible, but for my purpose, a quantitative
commitment is good enough. I think most decisions get taken
124
because one option comes to dominate all others to a point where

the others get locked out, even as possibilities.
Thea: For individuals as for groups.
Guy: Exactly. What I’m suggesting is that the brain/mind system works
much like a married couple or committee in this respect. Up to a
certain point, alternative patterns compete for dominance in the
neural circuits. Then a tentative winner emerges. Finally, this
tentative dominance gets sufficiently established to block other
patterns as contenders. Only at that point has the solid decision
been made; but, once made, it can be very stable. Many people
lead lives which are not merely coherent, but downright stagnant
– barring drastic disruption from outside.
Thea: Hmmm . . . Interesting. So that in the brain as in an organization,

we have the illusion, and some of the functionality of top-down
decision making although the reality is quite different. The
patterns of perception and activity re-combine and agglomerate
from the bottom up, as much or more than they are mandated and
implemented top down.
Guy: That’s the idea: an on-going cycle of local initiatives and hap-
penings pruned by an over-all demand for coherence. It seems
that in the brain, as in human organizations, there’s this perennial
tension: A degree of local autonomy amongst competing values
and options contributes flexibility. Stable exclusion of weak
contenders makes for relative coherence around the dominant
patterns. Hopefully, the result will be a viable system.
Thea: All right. I can see how such a system might be capable of
mind-like suggestion processing, with consciousness as an
emergent “extra” that most creatures can do without. But
mind-like suggestion processing isn’t the same as mind.
Guy: Why not? What have I left out?
125
Thea: Only the most important thing of all: our subjectivity: our sense
of being minds who deal with other minds.
Guy: I’ll discuss subjectivity a bit further on11 when we finally get
around to consciousness. I haven’t forgotten it, I promise you.
Thea: Very well. I can’t say that I’m happy with all this, but at least I
see where you are coming from. This approach to “mind”
obviously raises many questions and suggests many lines of
research. One can see why scientists are excited by it. What it
offers to ordinary people, or to therapists like me still isn’t
obvious.
Guy: It’s not obvious to me either, though I have some ideas on the
subject. That’s why these talks with you may be useful.
looking ahead
Thea: Can you offer a bit of preview now? Of where these talks are
going? I must admit, I’m starting to feel lost. You’re throwing a
great many unfamiliar ideas at me, and it’s hard to see how they
fit together.
Guy: Well, here’s how they fit for me: I know I seem to be rambling all
over the map, but my aim is simply to unpack Bateson’s notion
of an ecology of mind in the light of current science – to
understand where it comes from, and where it leads.
In our last talk, I showed you how a termite colony achieves
collective intelligence far surpassing that of any individual
termite, and I suggested several ways in which complex minds
might be built from relatively simple ones. In principle, this
shows how it might be possible for a human nervous system to
achieve collective intelligence far surpassing that of any
individual cell.
In this talk, I offered you a definition of mind as suggestion
11
In Talk #9.
126
processing, well suited to the program of explaining how

conscious minds could evolve, and finally emerge as features of
inanimate Nature.
Thea: I don’t know that I accept your definition.
Guy: Perhaps you never will. But if you don’t, I invite you to find a
comparably fruitful one of your own. What you’ll discover, I
think, is that in order to make progress in explaining
consciousness, you must start with a concept of mind that does
not depend on consciousness. As the neuropsychologists have
been doing, and as I am doing here.
In our next talk, I need to introduce some general ideas about
pattern, in relation to the concepts of suggestion and information,
since what we ultimately hope to understand is the relationship
between the firing patterns in our brains and our experienced
world.
Then we’ll have to spend at least one evening on what we
now know – and do not know – about the brain as an organ of
adaptive intelligence and cognition. Before we can say much
about consciousness and personality from an ecoDarwinian
perspective, we’ll need some facts about the brain’s architecture.
And then, we have to say something about the features of human
brains that make language possible.
Thea: Do we know what these are? Do we know what makes language

possible?
Guy: Again, I’d say we are beginning to know. We’re beginning to

understand what distinguishes human brains (which acquire
language irrepressibly) from chimpanzee brains, so similar to
ours in many ways, that can be trained in the rudiments of
language, but only with great difficulty. We mostly know what to
look for in the laboratories. brain/mind research today has a new
sureness to it – a sureness it lacked only a couple of decades ago.
Thea: At a guess, the features of the brain that make language possible
127
will turn out to be what makes human consciousness possible.
Guy: In fact, much of what we call consciousness may be a by-product

of language. Consciousness and personality will surface on our
agenda after I explain what we know of how the brain and
language work.
Thea: And that will bring our talks to a close?
Guy: It could. Perhaps it ought to, because what comes after goes
beyond currently accepted science. But to do justice to Bateson’s
notion of cognitive ecology, we must take the discussion to
another level, and use the concepts of swarm and stigmergy to
talk about culture – how the contents of human minds are
configured and re-suggested outside of brains and individual
minds. For that purpose, it’s fruitful to deploy the notion of
suggestion yet again, and think of human individuals as nodes of
suggestion processing in the vast self-organizing system called
society.
Thea: You’re going to tell me that individuals play a role in society

analogous to that of ants in an ant hill or neurons in a brain.
Guy: The analogy isn’t perfect, but in general terms . . . yes, that is
where I am going. It would be better to say simply that the
concept of suggestion and of entities responsive to suggestion
applies at all levels, and that at every level, the same general
principles of co-evolution and ecology can be observed. Human
societies are no more exceptions than individual humans are. The
same principles of self-organization apply throughout the natural
world – in particular, to individual human minds, to groups and
organizations, and to whole societies. That’s why “ecology of
mind” is such a powerful notion.
128
Talk #6 Pattern and Structure
A pattern is a form, template, or model (or, more abstractly, a
set of rules) which can be used to make or to generate things .
. . The detection of underlying patterns is called pattern
recognition.
– W ikipedia definition
Self-similarity is a newly discovered symmetry in nature by
which parts of fractal objects relate to their wholes. That is, the
overall pattern of a fractal is repeated at multiple size or time
scales, from small to large scale. Sometimes this repetition is
exact, as with a linear fractal. M ost often, especially in natural
fractals, self-similarity is approximate or statistical. This
nonlinear property allows fractals as they appear in nature to
embody irregularity, discontinuity, evolution and change.1
– Fractal Dynamics of the Psyche, Terry Marks-Tarlow
You were going to talk about pattern tonight – pattern as opposed
Thea:
to chaos, presumably. That’s a pretty basic distinction, isn’t it?
The Bible begins by saying that all was chaos at the beginning,
before God divided the Light from the Darkness.
I was thinking that if the patterns in the world were
God-given, you might expect them to be more reliable. Why are
the patterns of life – the patterns we depend on – dependable
much of the time, but apt to betray us when we least expect?
Guy: That question is timeless. In one form or other, philosophers and
theologians have been asking it for millennia, while witch doctors
propitiated gods and spirits to keep the patterns on track. We
need to explain why the world is as regular is it is. We also need
to explain why it is not more regular – why its patterns change
and break down. And then there is the question of how our brains
can track the world’s patterns – and within what limits they can
do so?
1
www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2002/FractalPsyche.htm
Thea: Do you have an answer?
Guy: The eD paradigm takes us some way toward an answer. To begin

with, it teaches us to think about patterns as natural phenomena,
without putting ourselves speciously at their center – without
seeing them as designs intended for our punishment or benefit. It
explains how patterns can arise by themselves, and why they tend
to be fairly reliable but not perfectly so. It helps us understand
why we are very good at recognizing some patterns, but much
less good at others.
what is a pattern?
Thea: Let’s start with the concept itself: I know what a dressmaker’s
pattern is, for example; but I’ve never seen a general definition.
From your perspective, what is a pattern anyway?
Guy: The shortest answer might be that “pattern” is another word for
re-suggestive structure – a source of intelligible suggestion. You
could define the concept as a type, or class-designator, of which
repeated instances can be recognized. Patterns are found
everywhere in nature – and at all levels, from sub-atomic
particles and atoms to galaxies and galactic clusters. If we could
not recognize underlying similarities amongst things, there would
be no things – only hopeless chaos. So patterns are just
recognizable similarities in the world – recognizable from place
to place, and from time to time. Patterned “things” – instances of
familiar patterns – make up the world as we know it. What’s
striking here is that a pattern is not just a feature of the world, but
a match between our brains and the environments they deal with:
an evolved “fitness” enabling us to notice and respond
appropriately to more-or-less reliable regularities in our
environments.
Words like “structure,” “system” and “organization” refer to
patterns of patterns. Order is a word for the quality of being
patterned. Systems may be organized from the outside, by the
130
#6 PATTERN AND STRUCTURE
transfer to them of some external pattern but, as we’ve seen,2

some systems show a remarkable tendency to become
increasingly patterned all by themselves.
Thea: Let’s stick with the bare concept for now. You say a pattern is
anything of which repeated instances can be recognized. But a
pattern can also be used to generate repeated instances?
Guy: Of course. As you said, a dressmaker’s pattern is one type. So is

a recipe, or a blueprint for a house. I should have said that a
pattern is anything of which repeated instances or iterations can
be recognized or created.
Thea: So which comes first, a pattern or its instances? It can go either

way, can’t it?
Guy: Ahh . . . That’s an interesting question, with a long history. Plato

thought that the patterns came first; and, in some form or other,
his doctrine of “natural kinds” – the metaphysical reality of
patterns – held sway for almost two thousand years, though the
issue was hotly debated. Only with Darwin and the rise of
modern biology has the balance tipped the other way: Scientists
now find it more fruitful to see patterns as abstractions by human
minds from specific cases – in fact, from modal instances that are
particularly good at reproducing themselves (or getting
themselves reproduced) and then at persisting for a while.
Thea: Your ecoDarwinian paradigm.
Guy: Exactly. Darwin was the first to suggested a way in which certain
kinds of patterns – the species of biological organisms – could
come into being spontaneously, as a consequence of the life
process itself. Since then, it has proven fruitful to explain many
other patterns in a similar way. Natural selection (later
2
In Talk #2.
131
generalized to other forms of self-organization) became a very

successful pattern of explanation.
In biology, the notion of species (a recognized pattern of
living creature) gives way to clade3 – a group of organisms that
includes the most recent common ancestor of selected individuals
and all des-cendants of that common ancestor. For it turns out
that the notion of species is incoherent: Not all the members of
some species can interbreed, while interbreeding between species
is sometimes possible.
Thea: Yet we do still continue to talk about different species. Cats are
cats and dogs are dogs, despite the many breeds and mongrels of
each. In general, when things are sufficiently alike, we regard
them as being of the same kind. That’s what it means to belong
to a set, is it not? We recognize a set by the definition that all its
members must satisfy.
Guy: In mathematics, yes. In ordinary language, no. In fact, there is

evidence that the categories of ordinary language – even the
common biological categories like cats and dogs and birds and
trees – are not generated by definitions involving properties that
all their members share, but in a different way entirely. Children
learn to use such words correctly without being able to define
them. Even an adult might be hard pressed to give adequate
definitions of some very simple words like “glass” and “mug”
and “cup.” It seems that most word meanings are not given by
definitions at all, but by prototypical mental images – mental
patterns, in other words – to which current occurrences are
assimilated as they are happening.
Thea: Then where do the prototypes come from? And how do we

recognize what we see as falling under one prototype rather than
another?
3
From the Greek klados, meaning branch or twig.
132
Guy: Our prototypes are taken from the culture that surrounds us, and
from personal experience. That’s why one child thinks dogs are
cute and friendly while another is terrified of them. Their ideas
of “dog” have been based on very different experiences. In your
field, the point is a truism. At least since Freud’s time,
psychotherapists have explained to clients that their expectations
and responses to other people are patterned on childhood
experiences with “significant others” – people important to them
in their earliest years.
In connection with these cognitive patterns of early
childhood, it may be worth mentioning Carl Jung’s idea that
some prototypes (the so-called “archetypes”) are shared by all
human beings, perhaps because they’ve been hard-wired into our
nervous systems. It’s possible: Some birds respond with obvious
fear to anything that looks like a snake. Vervet monkeys use three
distinct alarm calls to warn each other of different kinds of
predator. We humans may have our own hard-wired categories.
Jung’s idea may deserves more attention than anthropologists
have given it.
Thea: But how does prototype recognition work? Why do we see

something as one kind of thing and not another?
Guy: In the history of philosophy, that is another ancient question – the

problem of similarity and difference. Given that things in the
world keep changing, how different must a thing become before
it is no longer itself but something else? When does it become a
different kind of thing? Such questions are the basis for
Aristotle’s distinction between essential and inessential
properties: Things that differ in essential properties must be
considered different kinds of things. Things that differ merely in
their inessential properties are considered to be the same kind of
thing but with different “qualities.” But you have only to think of
an Escher drawing, which turns one image into another, or the
graphics software that can transform any image into any other
through imperceptible changes, to realize that this simple
distinction doesn’t hold water.
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In Nature, the boundaries of sets are not so well defined as

they are in math. For this reason, Lofti Zadeh’s “fuzzy logic” is
very useful as an approach to such practical uncertainties of
classification.
Thea: But fuzzy logic won’t help if people are working from different
prototypes, or different definitions?
Guy: No. And I don’t think fuzzy logic does much for the problem of
interpretations – the willful self-interested character of human
perceptions. It was designed to apply in situations where there is
agreement on definitions, but inadequate knowledge of whether
their terms are met; and for this it is successful. It helps us
recognize recurrences in space or time of things that are
imperfectly described when we are agreed on what we are
looking for. Or it helps us to recognize instances of a certain kind
of thing whose particular specimens may differ greatly.
Situations of this kind are common in Nature, where typical
configurations recur spontaneously, but subject to variation. At
different scales, snowflakes, hurricanes and stars are good
examples. So are human beings, human families, human
organizations. At every level of the cosmos, we see recurring
similarities – not absolute identities. It is these similarities that
we need to recognize and respond to appropriately; and it is these
that our sciences hope to explain.
Thea: Recurring similarities, not absolute identities! We don’t make

enough of that distinction, do we? It’s as if all Nature were like
a great composer, writing dazzling variations on a few basic
themes.
Guy: For a long time, that was the best theory of

difference-in-similarity we had, and as a poet’s dream it may still
have value. One objection is that composers try to write only
lovely and interesting variations. Nature writes all kinds, and then
selects what is viable.
134
Thea: Well, we’ve talked about that, and will again. It’s that
randomness, that sublime indifference that people find so
upsetting about your eD paradigm. Where thinkers once aspired
to read the mind of God in the patterns of Nature, they now tell
us merely to ask how the patterns copy themselves, and why
some patterns fare better than others at doing so.
the propagation of patterns

Guy: Remember that when we speak of patterns being copied, or
copying themselves, the metaphor is only roughly correct. Literal
copying is done by an external agency – for example, manually
by a scribe, or automatically by a photocopier. What happens in
Nature is not always a literal copying process; so that term can
give a false impression. It would be more accurate to speak of the
propagation or transfer of patterns – remembering that in Nature
several kinds of propagation are found, of which literal copying
is only one.
Thea: Aren’t you being a bit pedantic here?
Guy: Perhaps I am. But it seems important to focus attention on the

process, rather than its outcome: a thing that more or less
resembles its source or sources. To call that outcome a “copy” is
bad enough – though nouns like “copy,” “duplicate” and
“replica” are hard to avoid. But to speak of the process as
copying is misleading unless the process resembles literal
transcription. And quite often in Nature this not what happens at
all.
Thea: I feel a little old to ask for a lecture on the birds and bees, but
how does this propagation take place, according to you? And
before you get started, you might explain what you mean by the
“propagation” of a pattern, if not the making of more-or-less
accurate copies.
Guy: Any growth, extension, ramification or re-duplication of a pattern

is a kind of propagation. Any process that leaves a pattern larger,
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or more intricate, or more numerous than it was before. The

concept of patterns propagating (in this broad sense) points to a
powerful and very general tendency in Nature that words like
copying and even reproduction easily overlook. Patterns do
something more than replicate, or get themselves replicated. They
also tend to grow, vary, and swell their influence by branching
out and specializing along different lines. In doing so, they come
into competition with other patterns for whatever scarce
resources they may need or want. In particular, to speak of an
ecology of mind, we need to remember that the propagation of
cognitive patterns involves something more than “reproductive
fitness” – unless that concept is taken in a much broader sense
than usual. Ideas and cognitive patterns expand and propagate in
many ways.4 Mere copying does not begin to describe the
possibilities for doing so.
Thea: Yes, I can see that. The ways we influence each other, and what
happens to us as we assimilate the influence of others is more
complex – and, frankly, much more interesting. Theories of
cognitive copying are dull, compared with the common-sense
story of intentional influence and conflict.
Guy: You may be surprised that I agree with you on this. I think the
new ecoDarwinian psychology has to do much better than it has
to-date with the common-sense notions of beliefs, motives,
intentions and influences. I think it has a potential to do this, but
not in any simple-minded reductionist way. Replacing the
concept of information with that of suggestion in the mind
sciences may be one step in the right direction. Talking about the
transfer or propagation of patterns, rather than simple copying,
may be another.
Thea: It sounds to me like you are trying to have your cake and it eat it.
On one hand you are applauding a biological, Darwinian
4
See the discussion of meme theory in Talk #12.
136
psychology that treats the mind as a by-product of

electrochemical processes in the brain. On the other, you hope to
retain at least some aspects of folk psychology and the intentional
stance. Don’t you see a contradiction? Either we have some free
will or we don’t. Either we choose and tailor our ideas to suit our
purposes, or they infect our brains like viruses, and run us like
computer programs. Which is it?
Guy: Perhaps the contradiction is not as big as people fear. Perhaps all
these metaphors are defective, and that our folk understanding
has been approximately (but only approximately) true all along,
though it is only now that we are beginning to be able to express
it with any sort of precision. Or perhaps, the new psychology
does shift our self-understanding in significant ways, but not to
the exclusion of older views that still have their uses. The latter
is the idea that I’d defend.
Thea: And good luck to you! But I’m not yet convinced it can be done.
Guy: Let’s keep going. Perhaps a deeper understanding of pattern –

and the propagation of pattern – will resolve some of these
issues. I think it’s already clear that patterns can propagate in
very complex ways, and that cause-and-effect models of their
propagation are inadequate.
In fact, patterns propagate by a variety of means, of which
replication or direct copying is only one. Patterns also propagate
by accretion as when an infant, or any young creature, grows and
thrives on the food it eats. They propagate (in time, as an
extension of life span) by replenishment as when resources are
expended and replenished, and as component parts wear out and
are replaced. They propagate by adaptive complementation, as
when a participant in any relationship takes on the traits
appropriate for dealing with fellow participants. Biological
evolution is an example of pattern transfer from the environment
to the species. Personal learning – facial recognition, skill
acquisition, memories of events, and so forth – are pattern
transfers to the individual creature.
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We are far from a complete understanding of how patterns

propagate, and how they can originate by themselves. But it
seems clear, at any rate, that the general concept of pattern is
sufficient to account for the richness of the world we know –
given the further thought that propagation of patterns can be
conceived as an interplay and ecological stabilizing of competing
suggestions. The idea that science can and must try to reduce all
explanation to mechanical cause is obsolete even in physics. In
biology, it’s very shaky. In the cognitive sciences, it makes no
sense at all.
Thea: Bravo! But then what takes its place? A science of pattern?
Guy: Hopefully, yes – a general systems theory, complete with a

general theory of pattern, influence, self-organization and
ecological stability.
Thea: Do we have such a theory?
Guy: We begin to have one. Translating the concepts of biological and

cultural pattern into suggestion language may help a little by
encouraging us to think beyond the physical level of messages
and information to the more abstract level of form and meaning
– what a message means to the system that receives it, what it
suggests that system become or do in response.
Thea: So your point is that an ecoDarwinian language about the

propagation of patterns should replace the classical language of
cause-and-effect?
Guy: That’s it. You have to begin by looking at the different ways that
patterns can propagate, and by seeing growth, replication,
behavioral influence, and so forth as an uptake of suggestions as
well as raw materials. But the point was Gregory Bateson’s not
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mine. 5
Thea: What about the growth of crystals in a super-saturated solution,

or the processes of star or galaxy formation? Many growth
processes are driven by purely mechanical forces. It seems odd
to speak of suggestions when the recipients are not suggers.
Guy: Perhaps we should think of molecules, atoms, and even more

fundamental particles as very primitive suggers, moved by forces
that we regard as trivial suggestions. I don’t know enough
physics to judge whether such an approach would be useful in
quantum mechanics, for example. But it’s clear that for complex
chemical, biological or social systems it is hopeless to think of
observed effects as produced by a single “cause.”
Clearly, the notion of suggestion – and of organization as
suggestion ecology – applies most naturally to complex
production systems that possess significant autonomy. The
mechanical systems you mention are troublesome borderline
cases – like viruses, which may or may not be thought of as living
things. My claim, once again, is that the notion of “copying” does
not begin to describe all the ways that a given pattern may seek
to organize its environment as an extension of itself.
Thea: “To organize the environment as an extension of itself.” That’s

a suggestive phrase! Therapists are often concerned with what
you’d call the transfer of patterns between our clients and their
life-worlds. Family therapists are concerned with pattern
transfers between family members, and from the family’s social
environment.
5
See Bateson’s Steps To an Ecology of Mind and Metapatterns: Across
Space, Time and Mind by Tyler Volk.
139
Guy: We need to look at psychological causation as a propagation of

cognitive patterns subject to various constraints. People and
groups are autonomous systems, with considerable but not
unlimited freedom to organize adaptive, sometimes really
creative responses to the suggestions we receive. Our cognitive
adaptation is never purely passive; on the other hand, it is not
completely unconditioned either. In general, it will be an
outcome of cues and nudges from all quarters – all indicative (in
the literal sense of “pointing”), none definitively controlling. At
one extreme, the totality of suggestions acting on a system might
be what we think of as a vector sum of forces. At the other, it
might be some vague policy by which specific actions are guided.
Thea: Could you give an example?
Guy: Easily. Why are we having this conversation? Why are we living
together, for that matter? What it comes down to is that for both
of us, the suggestions that we stay together are stronger than the
suggestions that we break up. Or take a great historical event like
the outbreak of World War I. Probably a few million pages have
been written about how and why the assassination of an Austrian
duke by Serbian nationalists led to general war in Europe, but
there is no clear answer to the question of what caused the war.
There had been serious tension amongst the European powers
since . . . well, since the end of the last major war; and there were
any number of diplomatic crises over one thing and another.
What was special about this particular crisis? Why was it not
resolved or contained as the crises before it had been?
Thea: Tell me.
Guy: Not just now. My point is that the general answer to a request for
explanation must be a loosely stable patterning of suggestions. In
the case of World War I, what’s needed is not just an account of
the events that led to war, but of the meanings of those events
(that is, the suggestions they conveyed) to two dozen statesmen
140
and their political audiences. In the same way, suppose you want
to understand why a client is having a certain problem; or why
the fertilized egg of a cat develops into a kitten and not a puppy.
Questions like these cannot be answered in causal terms, nor yet
in statistical terms; they demand some other kind of answer
entirely.
It will be fruitful, I believe, to approach such questions
through a language of ecology and suggestive guidance. Human
activities – the activities of living things in general – are shaped
in response to a myriad of cues and nudges, toward outcomes that
we cannot predict in any strict sense, but that we can sometimes
anticipate with fair reliability. For example, we can anticipate
that a pregnant cat will have kittens if she has anything at all. We
know she will not have puppies; but we do not know for sure that
she will bring her kittens to term; and we don’t know what kind
of kittens they will be. We can’t predict their markings or their
personalities, for example.
Thea: That’s an interesting distinction you draw between prediction and

anticipation. Certainly, when it comes to human development or
behavior there are all kinds of things we reasonably anticipate
that we can’t actually predict. Yet I don’t see how you would
draw the distinction except on a statistical basis. Even that would
be awkward. How probable does something have to be to
graduate from a mere anticipation to a real prediction?
Guy: I don’t believe the distinction is a matter of probability at all.

Astronomers predict when the sun will rise tomorrow morning
and at which point on the horizon it will appear. But I anticipate
that event in general terms without ever looking at their
calculations. I anticipate another sunrise mostly on the basis of
hearsay and my own experience, and partly from a scientific story
I’ve been told about the Earth’s rotation. But I have no idea how
to calculate when the sun will come up. Though I’m familiar with
Kepler’s Laws and with Newton’s Theory of Gravitation, I don’t
normally think about the sunrise in astronomical terms. Similarly,
at the beginning of the last century, many people anticipated a
141
European war sooner or later. Because they anticipated war, they

prepared for it; and their anticipations and preparations were
among the factors that made it happen. Their anticipations were
factors suggesting war, I would say, against competing
suggestions to keep the peace. All this is common knowledge, but
no one has any idea how to calculate the probabilities involved
or the details of the war’s coming, so we cannot really speak of
prediction.
Thea: After the fact one can usually explain what happened in terms of
suggestion and anticipation. But what can we say that’s useful
about correct anticipation before the fact? About what we should
anticipate, and what our anticipations should suggest we do?
Guy: We may never be able look at an ecological situation, collect data

on it, and compute its likely outcome. Ecological systems are
usually too complicated, with too many layers and variables. But
we may sometimes be able to anticipate a rough outcome, or
range of possible outcomes, based on our understanding of a
system’s dynamics, and of the factors influencing it.
The best approach we have at present is to build computer
models of a system, set up initial conditions that interest us, and
watch the models run. At present, what we are mostly learning is
how to build better models. But that may change as we learn to
trust our simulations – as these approximate more closely to what
is observed, and our anticipations become more reliable.
Thea: In effect, the models themselves are evolving.
Guy: Yes. And in time, may be able to do so by themselves, based on

data supplied or gathered by them automatically, without explicit
human programming.
Thea: Such evolving simulation programs would be just as difficult to

understand as the world itself.
Guy: True. But if we can write programs that evolve then, possibly, we
142
could write them to document and explain themselves. These

simulations would be discussed on the World Wide Web, of
course, so we could anticipate a Net gain in our understanding.
Thea: Instead of responding to that atrocity, I want to go back to your

statement earlier that the general answer to any request for
explanation will be a pattern of suggestions that compete and
reconcile. I have to agree with you about this. Therapists know
that the features of our clients’ personalities do not have
straightforward, simple causes, and are not readily predictable
from parenting and early experience. Whatever risk factors can
be found are seldom either necessary or sufficient. I fully agree
that for human beings, and probably for any system of sufficient
complexity, the whole idea of cause is more confusing than
otherwise.
But it’s such a difficult idea to give up! We are completely
accustomed to think of ourselves as agents who cause things to
happen – sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. It’s hard to see
how we could do otherwise.
Guy: Here’s a simple example – well within your and my and every
adult’s experience. In the phase of life called adolescence, young
people explore a larger world – beyond the boundaries set for
them as children by their immediate families and authorized
teachers. In doing so, they are subjected to a wide spectrum of
suggestive influences – some wholesome and potentially
life-enhancing, others not. The problem they face is, first, to
evaluate all these suggestions, accepting some and declining
others; then to survive and learn from the experiences they
undergo; and then to shape their personal manifolds of
experience, competence and relationship into some kind of adult
life.
All of us remember the difficulties of this period. People our
age remember watching and trying to be helpful as our children
went through it. This is a perfect example of the problems of
anticipation, explanation and pattern ecology in a system no
bigger than an individual life.
143
Thea: If the mind is an ecology, then adolescence is a jungle of weird

growths struggling for existence. It’s scarcely possible to get at
the causes of adolescent life-choices. All we can see are the
various influences on a young boy or girl – what you call the
patterns of suggestion. And yes – it seems much more hopeful to
ask how these patterns propagate and interact with one another
than to ask the causes of the choices made. But what can you say
about those spreading patterns? That’s the root idea of
suggestion, isn’t it? – how patterns spread from one system to
another?
Guy: You probably know as much or more about such transfers than I
do. The cybernetic concepts of symmetry and complementarity,
calibration, feedback and feedforward, triangulation and so forth
are pretty well understood by family therapists. All I want to add
is that we should think of communication as a propagation of
suggestion rather than information. But that is just a refinement
of concepts, not a change of direction.
My point is that a suggestive influence does more than
inform, but less than control. In combination with other
suggestions, perhaps competing or conflicting ones, it guides the
receiving sugger in constructing a pattern of response from its
available repertoire. Such response patterns in turn send
messages that are received and parsed as suggestions by other
suggers, as they’ve been prepared by their life-histories to do.
Instead of causes, we should imagine ripples of influence that
cross and re-cross until a holon sub-system finds some kind of
loose balance.
Thea: What will we say about human agency, then, if events in the
world (including other people’s actions ) are not directly caused
by what we do, but only more or less successfully influenced?
Guy: Beyond the local level – what we can directly manipulate with
our own bodies – it doesn’t always amount to much. Sometimes
the ecological effects can be neglected and we achieve our
intended results. Sometime they can’t be neglected, and we
144
encounter systemic effects that may run completely counter to

our wishes.
Thea: “Man proposes but God disposes,” as the saying goes. That’s
such a difficult lesson to learn.
Guy: Well, ecological relationships can be weird, but at least they are
not supernatural. Though we can’t usually predict how they will
play out, we can sometimes anticipate – get a feel for their
possibilities through model-building and direct experience. They
are at least potentially intelligible.
Thea: The most confusing feature of these ecological relationships is

the combination of inter-dependence and ferocious competition.
We try to know our friends from our enemies; and biologists try
to distinguish between predators and symbionts; but so many
people and species seem to be both at the same time. Some plants
rely on the animals who eat them to distribute their seed in the
stool. I remember reading that Arctic caribou follow the Inuit
peoples who hunt them, as much as the Inuit follow the caribou.
Human workers depend on bosses who exploit them to give them
jobs.
Guy: Remember what we said a few days ago about the politicious
quality of ecological interaction? It’s characteristic of ecological
relationships that they are usually cooperative and competitive at
the same time. Patterns in general must thrive with each other’s
help, but also at each other’s expense. They sustain themselves
in balanced configurations of mutual dependency and
encroachment to the extent they endure at all.
Thea: Dare I ask, configurations of what? The things and beings we

find in Nature always turn out to be configurations of patterns
which are themselves configurations of patterns. Nothing is solid.
When you look closely at anything it dissolves into components
which themselves dissolve when looked at.
145
the re-combinant holarchy

Guy: Here, Arthur Koestler’s notion of holarchy is useful: The cosmos
can be seen as a hierarchy of entities that he called holons
because they exist as wholes-in-themselves at the same time that
they are parts of something else. The coined word serves to
emphasize a group of properties that all discernible entities share:
• Holons are Janus-faced: they exchange suggestions with
holons above, below, and on the same level in the hierarchy;
and they are bound into relationships by the suggestions they
exchange.
• Holons are “greater than the sum of their parts,” in the sense
that they typically show emergent properties that their
components do not possess. Lower-level holons are typically
more mechanical, routinized and predictable in their
behaviors. Higher level holons are usually more flexible, and
more abstract.
• Holons are mutable: They can preserve an integrity as wholes
even as their components are altered or replaced.
• Holons are re-combinant: They can serve as component
parts of various holons above them in the hierarchy; and they
can transfer their participation and service from one superior
to another.
• Holons are inter-permeable and open-ended: It may be
convenient to analyze them separately, or to treat them as
interwoven with other holons. Also, while it may be
convenient to think about and study holons with a lowest
and/or highest level, we can always decide to analyze them
further, or consider them as parts of a still larger whole.
To summarize: The cosmos reveals itself as a re-combinant
hierarchy of Koestler’s holons that we are calling “suggers” to
emphasize how they respond to and are guided by each other’s
suggestions. Each holon, as much as the wholes of which it is
part, is a hierarchically-structured, multi-layered system. To the
extent that a holon subsists in quasi-stable equilibrium with itself,
we can regard it as an ecology. Whatever we call such entities,
they are the systems and structures that we encounter at every
level of being. We ourselves, our groups, human society, and the
146
universe as a whole are systems of this kind.
Thea: My head is spinning. I think I need a few aspirins. More than

two, probably.
Guy: I don’t blame you. J.B.S. Haldane once remarked that the
universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but may be queerer
than we can suppose. It’s not at all clear to what extent human
minds can encompass such complexity. Our brains, after all,
evolved for survival on a savanna, not for contemplation of the
cosmos. It’s amazing that humans have managed to learn and
understand so much.
Thea: Amazing and frightening. I doubt that a world view of such

complexity can gain acceptance by more than a fraction of the
world’s people. It’s not surprising that the wars of religion are
coming back, and likely to get worse before they get better.
Making wise use of this kind of knowledge is yet another
question. What only a few can understand affects the lives and
prospects of everyone. We may very well destroy ourselves
before we learn how to live with it.
Guy: I’m forced to agree. I think there are legitimate concerns on both
sides, but the quarrel today between the naturalistic and
traditional world views is pursued so ignorantly, for the most
part, that the result is unedifying, to say the least.
Thea: Well, I hope you and I can do better with those concerns than the
global conversation is doing. What I take from this holon concept
is that the patterns in our lives combine and re-combine with
other patterns, and that our world is built like a set of Russian
dolls – level within level within level – with the difference that
there are many dolls, not one at each level, and that the
components of the dolls keep changing. The possible
combinations of patterns into larger patterns and the potential for
chaotic change are practically infinite; however the patterns are
stabilized to some extent by the principles of self-organization
147
that you’ve described.
Guy: Very good. Basic chemistry affords the clearest and best
understood example: Just a little over a hundred different types
of atoms can produce a practically unlimited number of chemical
compounds, each with characteristic properties that could not
have been predicted just by a knowledge of their component
atoms. The same principle can be seen in human social
arrangements – for example, when various job skills are brought
together in a business organization. Similarly, within the brain
itself, patterns of neural firing re-combine with one another to
produce the mind’s sensations, thoughts and feelings. Adaptive
intelligence is possible because the recurring patterns of our
environment are matched somehow by patterns in the brain and
mind.6 Wherever we look in Nature, we find this same
meta-pattern of re-combinant holons, arranged hierarchically and
guided by each other’s suggestions.
Thea: Why do holons have to be structured hierarchically? Why not

some more egalitarian relationship?
Guy: Actually, there are good reasons why hierarchical arrangements

are favored by evolution. It’s basically a result of the power laws
that we discussed in our second talk, and the principle of
re-combination that we just discussed. Evolving systems must
deal with change selectively. They must resist some changes but
accept others; and they must preserve their patterns in some
respects, while accepting change in other respects. Hierarchical
structure is a simple way, and perhaps the only way, to meet this
requirement for relative stability in the face of change. As Robert
Michels and Herbert Simon recognized some time ago, hierarchy
allows for an efficient blend of local adaptability with over-all
6
As will be discussed further in Talk #7.
148
coordination.7 It allows potentially disruptive changes to be

contained and localized. It allows for easy re-combination of the
modular components when their high-level organization is
disrupted.
Thea: Why would a self-organizing system require over-all

coordination? Why not rely on the “Invisible Hand” of evolution
to provide coordination?
Guy: That is a very good question, and a vexed political one, which
needs an evening to itself. I suggest we put it aside for now, and
come back to it later when we are ready to talk about the
relationship between society and government.8
Thea: Just one more question then: You seem to be using the words
“system” and “structure” almost interchangeably – describing
them both as networks or hierarchies of suggestion processing
holons. What’s the difference between a system and a structure?
Guy: So far as I can see, those words just invoke different

perspectives: A structure is an assembly of parts. The concept of
structure is synchronic, pointing to the static relationships
amongst the parts at a given point in time. The concept of system
suggests a diachronic perspective. It asks us to look at the
configuration as a dynamic, functioning entity – subject to
change and interaction with its environment. Normally, we’d
think of an office building as a (relatively static) structure, and a
living cell as a (dynamic) system; but the building includes
systems for heating, vertical transportation, and other functions,
while the cell contains various structures: a cell membrane, a
nucleus, and so on. The usage of the words is not always
consistent, but so far as I can tell they are synonymous, except for
7
See Robert Michels’ book Political Parties and Herbert Simon’s The
Sciences of the Artificial.
8
In Talk #13.
149
these different perspectives on time and change.
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Talk #7 An Organ that Minds
So let us stand back and imagine our brain with its hundreds of
trillions of synaptic connections. Each synapse is potentially a
unique computational unit with its own molecular tool kit,
history, memory and function. The neurons and their synapses
are in a constant state of flux – the connections are dynamic,
changing their size, strength and location; being formed and
unformed. Every second, millions of electrical impulses course
along the fine fibrous extensions of the neurons, carrying
electrical and chemical messages through a gelatinous
interconnected circuitry that is more complex by far than that
of any computer. . . . There are as many as 100 glial cells for
each nerve cell and we are only beginning to understand just
how important they are, not simply carrying out housekeeping
jobs but participating in the brain’s computations regulating
synaptic transmission, among other ways.
This then – the neurons and their connections and their
history, their companion glial cells, the multitude of chemical
messengers and receptors – is basically all there is to the brain.
W e are far from understanding how it works as a whole but
there is nothing more, no magic, no additional components to
account for every thought, each perception and emotion, all our
memories, our personality, fears, loves and curiosities.
– The Brain: A Very Short Introduction,
Michael O’Shea (2005)
Thea: Tonight, you were going to tell me about the brain.
Guy: I’ll tell you what I can about it. It’s the most complicated system
in the known universe; and one great thing we’ve learned about
the brain is how much we still don’t know. But there is reason to
think we are at last on the right track: that we are asking the right
questions, after all these years.
Thea: Many old ideas about it have been shot down. Why do you think
the present ones will fare better?
Guy: Previous ideas were based on crude analogies with water pipes,
steam engines, digital computers; and were mostly pure
speculation. Those of today are based on a very considerable
knowledge of the brain’s physiology and cognitive anatomy
(which mental functions are performed where). We have a solid
grip on the functioning of neurons and other brain cells, and on
the physics and chemistry of neural interaction. And, as I’ve
already shown you, we are beginning to see how mind-like
capabilities could emerge in the ultra-complex activities of
components which themselves have only rudimentary minds, if
any at all. Though there are still many pieces missing, the ones in
place now are probably more or less correct.
Thea: You’re sure of this?
Guy: I claim no certainties at all. It is not the way of science to do so.

By now, though, there is a large body of precise information on
the brain’s workings, and the areas of controversy are pretty
narrow. Barring radical discoveries that force a further change of
paradigm, our understanding of the brain looks pretty solid at this
point. And even in the event of such discoveries, the new ideas
would necessarily be built on the debris of present ones, and
would have to take old data into account. Across the board, that
is what science delivers: Theory may change, but understanding
deepens and advances, precisely because some minds (too few,
unfortunately!) have learned to live without specious certainties.
Thea: I’ll grant that we know a great deal about the brain by now, and
quite a lot about the mind as well. But what do we actually know
of the relationship between them? To begin with, why do we
think there is a relationship? That a mind is what a brain is doing,
as you like to say?
brain science
Guy: Actually, the relationship of mind to brain is by no means
obvious. The ancient Egyptians didn’t see it. For all their
knowledge of human anatomy, their embalmers prepared clients’
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#7 AN ORGAN THAT MINDS
livers and hearts with great care, but removed their brains
entirely, packing the skull with cloth. It would seem that they
attached no great importance to that organ, and saw no use for it
in the afterlife. By about 500 BCE, however, a Greek named
Alcmaeon dissected the optic nerve leading to the brain, and
inferred its role as a center of perception. Around 350,
Hippocrates, presumably on the same evidence, stated that the
brain was involved with sensation and intelligence. He probably
imagined the nerves as little pipes, carrying sensations from the
eyes and ears to a central site of consciousness.
Thea: OK. That seems reasonable. But just because sensory messages
are carried to a central location doesn’t tell you anything at all
about the way they are handled there: how the world is
experienced, how choices are made, how concrete intentions are
formed and carried out.
Guy: True. We’re only now becoming able to address those questions
in any serious way. In one form or other, a doctrine of the mind
as “soul” or “vital spirit” prevailed for nearly 2000 years. It still
lingers in common speech and consciousness, and is still useful
in certain fields like acupuncture, yoga, and martial arts.1 Of
course, “vital spirit” does not explain life and mind any more
than the word “gravity” explains gravity. But the concept made,
and still makes a convenient file drawer for ignorance – a
convenient way of thinking when real explanation isn’t needed.
It was only in the late 18th century, that the electrical
character of nerve impulses was discovered when Luigi Galvani
found that he could make a frog’s leg twitch by stimulating the
nerve with an electric current. With refined technique it was
shown a little later that the same effect could be produced by
stimulating an individual nerve fibre – even a single neuron as
one of the long cells found both in nerve fibres and brains came
to be called.
1
Notably, in aikido and tai chi.
153
By 1870 Camillo Golgi had developed a staining technique

that permitted microscopic imaging of the anatomy of the
individual nervous cell, and had established that neurons in the
brain received information through neurons coming to the brain
from sense organs, and in turn sent information through neurons
to the muscles. He went on to propose that the nervous system
was an elaborate network of such neurons, with electric charges
flowing continuously from one neuron to the next. A few years
later, however, a Spanish neurologist named Ram¢n y Cajal
showed that neurons did not comprise a continuous network but
were both separated and linked, each to the next, by a minute gap
that Charles Sherrington called a synapse. By the last decade of
the 19th century, Ram¢n y Cajal and others were already
speculating that learning and memory were emergent features of
the brain’s plasticity – specifically, of the change and growth in
the pathways of neuron and synapse. However, some neurologists
refused to accept this synapse theory and clung to Golgi’s
reticular theory of the brain as a continuous net.
Thea: But this controversy has since been settled, hasn't it? Chemical
neuro-transmitters that carry nerve impulses across the synapse
are getting a lot of attention these days.
Guy: Indeed they are; but the brain’s fine structure is far from settled.
Ram¢n y Cajal was mostly right, but recently certain regions
have been found with the reticular structure that Golgi posited. In
the early years of the 20th century, it was discovered that a
chemical substance called “adrenaline” could help an electrical
pulse cross the synapse from one neuron to another. By mid
century, another neurotransmitter – noradrenaline – had been
discovered, and by now some 41 different substances are known
to carry, or modulate the carrying of electrical impulses across
the synapse from one neuron to another.2 As well, there are those
2
A table of these substances can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter#Common_neurotransmitter
s
154
so-called “glial cells”3 outnumbering neurons by a factor of about

10 to 1, which turn out to be much more important than was
previously thought. All-in-all, the more we learn about the brain,
the more complicated it appears.
Thea: Aren’t you contradicting yourself a little here? A short while ago,
you said our current understanding of the brain was probably
more or less correct.
Guy: No contradiction. I said there was reason to believe we’re on the

right track about the brain/mind system – not that all questions
have been answered. Learning that we had underestimated those
glia actually increases our confidence more than not. Prior to
these new findings, it seemed strange that so many glial cells
were doing so little. At last, their role is becoming clear – and in
a way that confirms and enriches the picture we’d had before.
We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves a bit. The take-away point
from this talk so far is that by the end of the 19th century, both
neurophysiology and psychology/psychiatry were both
well-established branches of investigation; and it had become
clear to the leaders in each – to psychologists like Charcot,
Breuer, Freud and William James, and also to neuro-anatomists
and physiologists like Wilhelm Wundt, Hughlings Jackson,
Camillo Golgi, Ram¢n y Cajal and Sherrington – that they were
studying the same system from different points of view.
Thea: What brought them to that conclusion? You still haven’t told me
what made them think so.
Guy: Just the accumulating evidence that physical events and

conditions could influence mental ones and vice versa; a growing
awareness that mind and body were thoroughly inter-linked. On
the physical side, they knew about reflex arcs producing
unintended movements of the body. They knew that diet and
3
The name comes from the Greek word for “glue.”
155
drugs and fatigue and pain could produce emotional and

attitudinal changes. They knew about the cognitive and emotional
results of various types of brain injury. On the mental side they
knew that hypnotic suggestion could produce astonishing
physical effects. They knew about placebos: how a sugar pill
could alleviate pain and bring about inexplicable cures because
the patient believed in the medicine. They knew of certain
puzzling ailments with no discernible cause that produced
impaired cognition, weird physiological effects and great
emotional suffering. What other conclusion could they draw?
The problem then became to understand the relationship
between these twin perspectives: how the mind is produced
through the body’s functioning, and how mental events like
memories, emotions and volition itself could affect the body’s
functions.
Thea: I’m glad you added that last bit: Science-minded types sometimes
talk as if they’d forgotten that the conscious and unconscious
mind can influence the body.
Guy: Indeed, there is that risk when the mind’s dependence on the
brain is taken seriously. Yet we now understand clearly that the
arrows of influence are circular in the brain, as in any
eco-system. The whole is made up of its component parts, but in
turn strongly influences its parts by setting the context in which
they work. Society too, and what we call “culture,” and the
natural world itself, set an even larger context for the firing
patterns of the individual’s brain. So, to be accurate, we have to
ask neither how brains produce minds, nor how minds direct their
brains, but rather how brain/mind systems evolve and stabilize
and change in the entire holarchic context.
Thea: But you – people like you – always talk as if the brain explained
everything.
Guy: It’s true that we hope eventually to understand the connection
156
between mental events and neural ones in detail, down at the

neural level and synaptic level; and yes: we reject “skyhook”
explanations – appeals to “Intelligent Design” and the super-
natural – and think of mind as a collective consequence or
outcome of the activities of people’s brains. But we are not
behaviorists. We freely grant that ideas and desires and feelings
are legitimate objects of discourse and study, and have to keep
reminding ideologues of all stripes that causation in the brain
goes in re-entrant loops. We know very well that cognitive
content and context (global effects at the social and organismic
levels) can influence specific physiological processes in much the
same way that our understanding of the meaning of a text affects
the meanings we assign to its ambiguous words. There really is
no genuine argument here. The quarrel exists only among the
simple-minded on both sides.
Thea: All right. I surely don’t want to be counted among the simple
minded. But I’ve pulled you ahead of your story again. You
haven’t told me how the neurons work, and how the neural
electricity is produced and used.
Guy: For that discovery, two English physiologists, Hodgkin and

Huxley, shared a Nobel prize in 1963. In effect, each neuron acts
as a tiny battery, building up a small voltage – a difference in
electrical charge – between the outside and inside of the cell.4
When the neuron fires this difference breaks down, and an
electrical pulse propagates along the length of the cell – out to the
synapses where the cell comes almost in contact with others.
What happens at the synapse, I’ve already described. Various
neurotransmitter molecules carry suggestions across the gap to
receptors on the other side – suggestions to the receiving cell to
fire or wait.
4
See, for example,
www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/anatomy/brain/Neuron.shtml
157
Thea: So a neuron discharges when suggestions to fire outweigh the

suggestions not to?
Guy: Actually, neurons fire fairly spontaneously from time to time, just
to let off their accumulating charge. But the suggestions they
receive across the synapses influence how often they fire: their
firing frequencies. As Francis Crick put it, what one neuron tells
another is just how much it is excited.5 Which, in turn, is taken by
that next neuron as a suggestion to get more or less excited. We
know that a single neuron may be influenced by suggestions from
a thousand or more other neurons – by the neurotransmitters
crossing all those synaptic gaps. But even deprived of such in-
fluences, an isolated neuron still discharges from time to time,
and then regenerates a potential difference by pumping sodium
ions out of the cell in exchange for potassium ions taken in.
In effect, then, the neurons can be thought of as suggers with
their own, simple repertoires of behavior – firing when they feel
like it, and emitting various neurotransmitters in doing so. Their
readiness, however, is influenced by suggestions from other
neurons – passed either through those neurotransmitter molecules
or by direct electrical contact. And their firing may also be taken
as suggestions by other specialized cells – by muscle cells to
contract, or by gland cells to release digestive juices or
hormones. And this activity, in turn, feeds back as suggestions
influencing the central neurons. In this way, the whole system
resonates – falls into rhythms of neural firing and bodily activity
– in sync with itself and with the world around it.
Thea: So the brain as a whole works like those nerve nets you were
telling me about?
Guy: Put it the other way: Those artificial nerve nets were designed6
5
See discussion of the patterns of neural firing at
http://www.cwa.mdx.ac.uk/chris/talks/maastric/CANT.html.
6
By Frank Rosenblatt.
158
back in the 1950’s to model the brain as it was then beginning to

be understood7 . That early model needs updating now to fit what
is known today.
Thea: Updating how?
Guy: Let’s put that question aside for the moment. Before we talk
further about the brain as a neural network, I’d like to introduce
a different perspective – a functional one. We can strip away the
physiological detail (about the firing of neurons, and neural
networks), and think of the brain as comprised of numerous
modules or sub-systems, linked together and collaborating
somehow. Each module performs its specialized function, and
each communicates somehow with other modules. The
functionality of the whole brain will then be seen as emerging
from the specific functionality of its parts in much the same way
that a computer program calls its subroutines.
Thea: Parts made up of hundreds or thousands of neurons, connecting

one to another in a way allowing some coherent functionality for
this assembly within the system as a whole. Is that what you are
saying?.
functions and agencies

Guy: Yes. The neural network as a whole is too complicated to
understand in its entirety. But we can simplify it, at least
conceptually, in the same way that programmers design a
complex system by isolating its high-level functions and
progressively decomposing these into more specialized functions.
Like those holons we were discussing the other evening. What
we get, hopefully, is a hierarchical block diagram of functional
modules that an engineer might try to build, or that a programmer
might try to emulate on a fast computer.
7
By neuro-scientists like W arren McCulloch, W alter Pitts and Donald
Hebb.
159
Think of it this way: Mind/brain research is proceeding on at

least three fronts: For some time now, philosophers and
psychologists have been working out the functionalities of mind
from an external top-down perspective. Neuro-anatomists and
neuro-psychologists have sought to locate recognized functions
of mind in specific structures and neural circuits that we can trace
and diagram. Since the 1950’s, engineers engaged in artificial
intelligence (AI) research have been attempting to simulate
aspects of a brain’s functionality on their computers, and with
artificial neural networks. When and if these lines converge, we
can regard the brain puzzle as solved.
Thea: I don’t have to ask you how this three-pronged project is coming
along. I know you think it’s doing very well.
Guy: It is doing well – although, as I keep saying, there’s still plenty of

work to do. But today we can give a functional account of the
brain down to levels at which a physiological implementation is
plausible – and, in some cases, actually duplicable with
engineered components.
Thea: What you’re saying then is that we can think of the mind as
software of a kind, that runs on the brain the way a program runs
on a computer. We can think of our minds as calling specialized
functions as it needs them – the way a computer program calls its
modules and sub-routines.
Guy: That approach has been explored by the Artificial Intelligence

people, and probably taken about as far as it can go. Forget
conventional computer software that executes one instruction at
a time. Real brains seem to work more in the way that Marvin
Minsky described, in a famous book called The Society of Mind.
His idea was that the mind/brain can be thought of as an
association of semi-autonomous agencies, comprised of mindless
agents that perform their specialized tasks in parallel, with little
regard for what the others are doing. These agents are not
logically coordinated like the modules and sub-routines of a
160
computer program. Each just “does its thing,” competing for

influence within the system as a whole. Like a kind of ecology,
in fact – as Gregory Bateson had suggested.8
Thea: Was Minsky influenced by Bateson?
Guy: Not that I know of. He may have been. But Minsky was coming
at the problem as an AI researcher, not a biologist. He actually
proposed a number of mechanisms – programmable mechanisms
– by which the mind’s agencies could work together – through
which the competitions amongst them could be resolved.
Thea: Before you explain how the agencies of mind could work
together, don’t you need to describe how they are built?
Guy: No, not really. For a purely functional description, we don’t care
how the modules are built – how their functions are actually
performed. Instead, we can take what engineers call a "black box
approach," thinking of each module as performed by a
component whose relationship to other components is specified,
but whose internal workings remain unknown.
The thing about a black box is that we don’t need to worry
how it is implemented. It might be a computer program, pieced
together from modules and sub-routines. It might be a dance of
angels on a pin. Eventually, of course, we hope to understand the
mind’s agencies and agents as neural circuits.
Thea: So then, it will turn out that Minsky’s agencies are implemented
in the brain as chains and loops of neurons that pass suggestions
to one another, getting each other more or less excited.
Guy: And settling down into more or less stable rhythmic patterns that
8
In Minsky’s words, “The power of intelligence stems from our vast
diversity, not from any single, perfect principle. . . . they emerge from
conflicts and negotiations among societies of processes that constantly
challenge one another.” The Society of Mind, Chapter 30.8.
161
propagate through the brain, recruiting the collaboration of other

agencies as needed, but competing with one another to do so.
Thea: Seeking a loose stability, analogous to the eco-systems of living

organisms – and never really controlled, but only influenced.
Guy: You’ve got it. Minsky conceived his agencies in computational

terms, but they might be better understood as suggestion
processors, each with its repertoire of responsiveness and
activity, competing for resources across the brain as a whole.
Thea: You know, I can see the beauty in all this work. But what you’ve
shown me so far is just an organ that converts stimuli into
activity, input into output. But it doesn’t feel pleasure or pain yet,
much less beauty or reverence. It doesn’t have beliefs or desires
or intentions. It may have skills – perhaps very complex ones –
but it has no memories or plans or hopes. You’re still a long way
from showing that such a network is capable of consciousness.
By now, I don’t doubt that the brain works much as you
describe, and that it can weave something like a mind in doing so.
But your reduction of mind to neurophysiology still seems like a
confusion of categories. Mind and brain, as you’ve acknowledged
yourself, are two different languages. The burden is still on you:
How do you find mind in the workings of a brain?
traces of thought
Guy: I can make a start at an answer to that question, but little more
because the brain/mind connection, what we know of it, is
fearfully complicated. The research is very difficult, because the
patterns we seek are temporal ones, and because in living brains,
many events are happening simultaneously. As well, the neurons
implicated in some particular mental event are threaded around
the brain, not found at one or a few locations that could be
studied easily.
But progress is happening. We know in some detail, now,
how light falling on the retinas of your eyes is converted into
neural firing rhythms which are then associated with each other,
162
with other sensory data, and with neural patterns corresponding

to relevant memories and concepts, to assemble a mental picture
of the world around you. We know, quite accurately where
different parts of your body are represented in your brain. On the
output side, we are beginning to understand how motor activity
is assembled and coordinated to produce complex, highly skilled
movement.
Thea: What about learning? What about memory? What about

motivation and emotion?
Guy: One thing at a time. Emotion is a hot area of research just now,
partly because its significance was not understood until quite
recently, and partly because the crucial distinction between affect
and emotion was not understood.
Thea: You know, I’ve never been clear on that distinction. Most
therapists use the terms interchangeably. Can you explain the
difference between affect and emotion,9 and why it’s so
important?
Guy: The distinction is a simple one: Affect is a matter of physiology;

emotion is learned – and is already a form of cognition. Every
healthy infant comes equipped with a functioning affect system,
signaling distress, contentment, interest and so forth with
stereotyped physiological program that are the same everywhere.
For genetic and ontogenetic reasons linked to foetal development,
the affect triggers may vary in sensitivity from one individual to
another – those variances comprising a large part of what we call
temperament.
Affect tends to be involuntary. It is highly communicable,
and tends to be contagious, especially in social animals like
9
See Donald Nathanson’s Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex and the Birth of the
Self or my precis of that book, Affect Theory, Shame and the Logic of
Personality on my web site at www.secthoughts.com.
163
ourselves.
Thea: And the emotions are built upon those physiological affects?
Guy: Right. By the time the infant is a few months old, the affects are
already grouping together and becoming linked with familiar
situations. These associative clusters are not innate and
automatic. Already, they are individually constructed responses
to recog-nized groupings of stimulation.
Where affect is a kind of program hard-wired into the
nervous system, emotion represents an elaboration and
interpretation of one or more affects in a perceived situation.
Emotion is cognitive, and will come to involve the categories and
concepts of a life-history and a culture.
Thea: What affects are there?
Guy: Nathanson identifies nine of them – in addition to pleasure and

pain which, for technical reasons, are assigned to a separate
system of their own. Their names are interest-excitement,
enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, distress-anguish, anger-rage,
fear-terror, dissmell, disgust and shame-humiliation. The
compound, hyphenated names were intended to distinguish these
raw affects from the emotions they underlie, and to which they
give rise. There’s no agreement yet on just how many and which
affects there are, though the affects of fear and anger have been
widely studied. But for our purpose, a definitive catalog of
human affects is less important than the concept itself.
Thea: Then what we call desires or motivations are built on

pleasure/pain and the emotions?
Guy: The crucial point here is that beliefs, desires, intentions and
bodily actions are outputs of specific sub-systems – “agencies”
in Minsky’s language. There is no reason at all, why these
outputs need be consistent or even mutually intelligible to one
another.
164
Thea: So there really is no mystery about the conflicts between "heart"

and “head” – reason and emotion?
Guy: The brain’s competing agencies explain such conflicts very

nicely. It’s not only possible but completely normal for us to
want things that are mutually incompatible, and to believe
inconsistent ideas. That’s just the way the system works.
Thea: To the point that wholly different “personalities” can develop

around such complexes of emotion and attitude. It’s not even
pathological, until the rival complexes lose touch with one
another, as they do in multiple personality disorder (MPSD).
Guy: Right. MPSD is not caused by demonic possession. It’s not even
terribly mysterious, once you accept the fundamental autonomy
of a brain’s agencies, and their on-going competition for
dominance in this or that situation. Likewise with “Freudian
slips,” psychosomatic symptoms, non-accidental accidents, and
other cases in which a mind appears to work against itself. The
ecoDarwinian paradigm explains such errors and conflicts very
nicely.
learning
Thea: What can you say about learning? I remember that in a previous
talk10 you said a little about Darwinian trial-and-error learning in
artificial nerve nets, but you haven’t said anything at all yet about
learning in real brains. Does human learning work that same
way?
Guy: In general the answer is “yes,” though there is still debate on the
subject. But the general picture is clear enough. A brain in its
body evolves toward attunement with its environment. And with
itself, of course. What we call “learning” is this evolution.
10
Talk #4.
165
Thea: Well, it would have to work in some such way, wouldn’t it? By
getting rid of behaviors that don’t work and experimenting
further with those that do. The behaviorists called the process
“reinforcement.” But they said nothing about the physiology of
learning at the neural level. So far, neither have you.
Guy: There’s not much more I could say now. The human brain is very
good at some learning tasks and not so good at others, and we are
still a long way from understanding the protocols it uses or their
physiological implementation.
Check out the Wikipedia articles on real and artificial neural
nets.11 You won’t find them easy reading, but you’ll get a sense
of where we are now – the current state of neurophysiology and
neural net engineering.
Thea: One objection: It’s true that some human learning appears to
happen gradually – plausibly in the evolutionary fashion you are
describing. But some learning occurs instantaneously. You meet
someone briefly and then recognize her a week later. You walk
around in a strange neighborhood and somehow, in doing so,
build a mental map of it. A month later you can find the
convenience store, or the post office, or that nice little restaurant
with no trouble at all. You have a flash of insight like
Archimedes in his bathtub, and suddenly know how to solve a
problem that’s been bugging you for weeks. These cases sound
like something more than the random building and tuning of
neural connections.
Guy: You’ve just raised what is probably the strongest argument

against “connectionism” – this model of the brain as a
sophisticated nerve net. It just does not seem possible that all
types of learning are achieved by a gradual formation and
adjustment of synaptic connections. There must be more to it
11
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network respectively.
166
than that – or so many researchers feel.
Thea: And what would you say?
Guy: That it’s an area of hot debate between specialists, where I’m
scarcely entitled to an opinion. My guess is that both sides are
right: At the lowest level, learning may be no more than a
formation and tuning of synaptic connections, as the connec-
tionists maintain. But that process is probably much faster and
subtler, at least in certain areas, than has so far been established.
One thing that does seem clear now is that learning is not
simply a generic capability that works the same way across the
board, regardless of content. On the contrary, the ability to learn
is domain-specific: we learn some things much more easily and
rapidly than others. There are things that we learn only with great
difficulty. We may be unable even to notice that there’s a pattern
to be learned; we may not be able to hold a pattern’s elements in
working memory for long enough to make the connection
between them. But, at the same time, there are things (like a
native language) that we seem pre-disposed to learn – in
physiological windows of opportunity, with remarkably sparse
prompting. Other cases of rapid learning may well invoke and
build upon the power of language to pre-structure new experience
through previously learned categories and metaphors. We don’t
fully understand these processes yet; but they seem to modify the
connectionist model in certain respects, while leaving its basic
concepts intact.
Thea: All right. I’m ready to concede that a physiological perspective

on the mind may indeed be valuable. I certainly agree that the
folk psychology tends to see people as more coherent, conscious
and rational than we really are. But Freud already knew that.
Guy: Freud started out as a neurologist if you recall. This physiological

perspective would not have been strange to him. It confirms some
of his greatest insights, and replaces some aspects of his
mythology with hard science. He would have seen himself as one
167
of its forerunners – as, indeed, he was.
folk psychology vs. neuro-psychology

Thea: This may be a silly question, or a naive one, but I’ll ask it
anyway: On the bottom line, what does the brain actually do? Is
there any simple way to explain its function?
We’ve spent hours talking about brain science, but if a child
asked me what the brain is for, I still wouldn’t know how to
answer; and all the information you’ve given me would go right
over her head – as much of it, frankly, goes over mine. So, if the
question makes sense, answer it as you might answer a bright
10-year-old: In the physiology of a living organism, what precise
function did the brain evolve to serve?
Guy: Actually, I think you’re asking a very good question. It isn’t silly
at all. You could tell this kid that the stomach digests, that the
heart pumps blood, that the kidneys filter waste products. You
could tell her that the lungs take in air, and supply the blood with
oxygen; but a brief explanation of the brain, at that level of
simplicity is not so easy. For example, we often say that we use
our brains to think with, but actually we use them for much more
than that. Conscious thinking, so far as we know, is limited to
human brains – and remains the least part of what human brains
do.
Reading in this area, I’ve asked your question myself. The
best answer I come up with is that the brain creates and maintains
a serviceable interface between the needs of an organism, and the
opportunities and threats of its world. It tailors a creature’s
behavior to the environment in which it has to function.
Fundamentally, it is as much an organ of survival as any other
part of its body. Otherwise, it would not have evolved.12
The outstanding feature of a brain is its plasticity – and you
can think about the Baldwin Effect in this connection. As the
12
“The brain is not an organ of thinking but an organ of survival, like claws
and fangs. It is made in such a way as to make us accept as truth that
which is only advantage.” Albert Szent-Gyorgi
168
kidneys are specialized to filter the bloodstream, and the lungs to

exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen, so the brain evolved to
configure and re-configure itself to meet the challenges of a
creature’s environment. It needed a capability to change, to keep
up with a world that is itself perpetually changing. And it had to
become unique because, and to the extent that no two creatures,
even of the same species, have identical personal worlds.
Thea: Would you say that is true of all brains, and all species? Can we
tell our 10-year-old that the brain is an organ of interface and
adaptation of the individual creature to its life-world?
Guy: I dare say, yes. That fits with what I know of my own brain and
those of other people. It fits everything I have observed and read
about the brains of animals. And it makes sense, because it
accounts beautifully for the fact that frogs and fish and birds and
cats – and above all humans – behave similarly as members of the
same species, but differently (to varying degrees, of course) as
individuals.
Thea: Accounts how?
Guy: It’s obvious. If you see the brain as an organ of interface between
the creature and its world, then perception and behavior must be
similar for all the members of a species because each has similar
sense organs and a similar body, facing similar problems of
survival and reproduction. But, at the same time, each individual
of a species must cope with a local habitat of its own: A fish
swims in its own pond; a bird lays in its own nest; a tiger hunts
on its own hill. Humans live in many different environments
around the globe, and further tailor these to our own liking.
Each species evolves the brain it needs to accommodate a
range of similarity and difference typical for its kind. And the
brain of the individual creature then configures itself further,
under the cognitive selection pressures of its daily experience, to
lead its unique (but still more-or-less typical) life.
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Thea: I see what you mean. Much of the fascination of my profession

is the uniqueness, yet fundamental similarity of people’s lives.
We have different beliefs and somewhat different hopes and
wishes – but always as variations on the same themes.
Guy: We tend to oscillate on this issue – between two poles, both of

which are wrong. Either we see people as brothers and sisters
under the skin, wanting the same consumer goods and driven by
the same ultimate social and spiritual values. Or else we see them
as driven by radically different cultural programs.
Our present understanding of the brain gives a much clearer
idea of how people can be so different, and yet so fundamentally
alike. We begin to see ourselves as evolving our brains and minds
under the pressure of individual and cultural circumstance to be
sure, but always from a starting point of biological humanity and
temperament that is increasingly well understood – in
professional literature at least, if not by the individual
themselves.
Thea: Individual circumstances can vary very greatly, especially when

you consider that two children, even of the same sex and within
the same family, may grow up with very different parenting,
saddled with very different family roles and expectations.
Guy: Leading to great differences in the way their brains get wired up.
Thea: And that is what boggles my mind: this claim that all our cultural
and psychological differences ultimately reflect differences in the
way our neurons are hooked together – differences in the
configuration of all those synaptic connections. Or should I say
it boggles my brain?
Guy: Why can’t it boggle both?
growing a brain
Thea: It’s a good story you’re telling. I must admit that. But how do
these wonderful brains get built? Their development inside the
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womb between conception and birth still seems miraculous.
Guy: Awe and wonder are fully appropriate responses, but no miracle
is needed. Our brains get built in much the same way as other
organs – through cell division, specialization and migration under
the influence of proteins that individual cells secrete, as guided
by their genes and by their local cellular and chemical
environments. It’s a complex process that we’re just beginning to
understand, but it’s not a mystery any more.
Thea: Still, the brain must be orders of magnitude more complicated

than any other organ, and its architecture – the connections it
needs to function properly – must be correspondingly more
precise. The coordination required for that development is
inconceivable.
Guy: The neurons of a young brain migrate and wire themselves

together in response to three levels of suggestion: from the genes,
specifying which proteins can be produced, under what
conditions; from an internal, electrochemical environment
switching genes on and off, and thereby suggesting which
proteins to produce now, in a given local situation; and from the
environment of the whole organism, influencing the local
environments of cells through the nourishment and stimulation
they receive. Every young neuron groping for location and
contacts in the developing brain is guided by these cues – and
only by these, so far as we know.
The usual ecoDarwinian process of self-organization and
ecological balancing also seems to be at work. We know that
many more neurons are produced than actually survive in the
newborn’s brain, so there seems to be some kind of selection
process going on – a form of programmed cell death known as
apoptosis.13
The brain configured through this process acquires the
13
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis.
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architecture proper to its species, construing and acting upon its

world in its typical way. At the same time, each brain adapts in
a unique way, to match the idiosyncrasies of its unique,
individual world – never exactly the same as for another
individual. With brains as complex as ours, the scope for cultural
patterning and personal idiosyncrasy is practically infinite.
Thea: When you describe it like that, it’s hard to see how embryos get
it right as often as they do – how they contrive to grow their
brains with as few defects as actually occur.
Guy: You can see why embryology has become biology’s key area. We
begin to understand the genetic code; and we more or less under-
stand the organism’s gross physiology. But we don’t know nearly
enough yet about the connection between these levels: It scarcely
seems possible that the fertilized egg could grow itself so
reliably, with only its genes to guide it, into a complete,
functioning organism. And yet that is what happens, almost every
time.
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Talk #8 Language
A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly
substituting for something else. This something else does not
necessarily have to exist or to actually be somewhere at the
moment in which a sign stands in for it. Thus semiotics is in
principle the discipline studying everything which can be used
in order to lie (author’s italics). If something cannot be used to
tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot
in fact be used ‘to tell’ at all.
– A Theory of Semiotics, (1979), Umberto Eco
The techniques of autostimulation are extremely various. Just

as one can notice that stroking oneself in a certain way can
produce certain only partially and indirectly controllable but
definitely desirable effects (and one can then devote some time
and ingenuity to developing and exploring the techniques for
producing those desirable effects in oneself), so one can also
come to recognize that talking to oneself, making pictures for
oneself, singing to oneself, and so forth, are practices that often
have desirable effects. Some people are better at these activities
than others. Cognitive autostimulation is an acquired and
intimately personal technique, with many different styles.
– Elbow Room, Daniel Dennett
Thea: You have to say something about the relationship between

suggestion and language. I don’t see how any number of
suggestions could add up to a plain statement of fact. A
suggestion is one thing; a statement is something else entirely.
How do you get from one to the other?
Also, I’m not clear on the difference between signs and
symbols, as both, obviously, have suggestive power in your
terms. I’ve read somewhere that symbols make the difference
173
between human language and other types of communication in

Nature, but I have no idea what that difference is.
Guy: You ask good questions. All living things are suggers.
Responsiveness to suggestion is a characteristic of life. But
amongst the creatures on this planet, we humans are in a class by
ourselves, and it’s language that makes us so. The human animal
is a “time binder” in Alfred Korzybski’s apt phrase. With
language we recall the past and conceive imaginary futures as no
other animal can do.
Thea: So far as we know.
Guy: Admittedly. We don’t know what other creatures are thinking.

But if they have anything like human consciousness, we find no
sign of it. Even with persistent and ingenious efforts, success in
teaching even some sign language to chimpanzees has been
modest, while research on the communication of whales and
dolphins remains inconclusive. By contrast, every normal child,
raised by normally caring human adults, acquires the rudiments
of competence in its family’s language by the age of four or so;
and the works of language-based culture are obvious everywhere.
We humans are animals, but remarkable animals; and there’s
no denying that language, for our species, is a central, biological
fact. We could not be the kind of animals we are without it. Most
of what appears specifically human depends on language, in one
way or another.
Thea: All right. I’ll grant all that. But tell me how you get words and
factual statements from the bare concept of suggestion. I can’t
see how that is possible. Suggestions and statements seem to
belong to entirely different categories.
Guy: The answer isn’t obvious. We’re talking now about an

evolutionary development that took millions of years, a biological
threshold that only one species has clearly crossed, a strange
ecological experiment whose results are not yet in. There were
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a number of steps involved.
Thea: You’re going to explain how simple suggestions like animal

cries, body posture and touch concatenate and structure
themselves into signs, then into symbols and then into true
statements – words linked by the grammar of a full-blown
language. Is that right?
Guy: I’ll do my best. I have to begin by reminding you that signs and
symbols and eventually the statements of a language are not just
suggestions, but re-suggestive structures: reliable sources of
suggestion to an entity (a sugger) capable of receiving and
responding to them as such.
Thea: All right. But first, please remind me why you are introducing
these notions of suggestion and re-suggestive structure to begin
with. Why not start with signs?
the sign
Guy: Because the sign is already a complex affair: a stable structure of
some kind, that tenders fairly consistent suggestions to various
suggers who encounter it. The unit of communication must be
something much more primitive. I call this a suggestion because
its attributes seem very close to that word’s ordinary meaning.
Thea: I remember you saying that the quality of a mother’s touch is a

suggestion, not yet a sign for the infant. But you added that it will
soon become a sign. Could you expand on that?
Guy: A sign is a special kind of suggestion, in which one thing (called

the signifier) is taken to represent, substitute, or “stand for”
something else (the signified). That concept of “standing for” is
left rather vague in what I’ve seen of semiotic theory. Umberto
Eco just says that a sign can be used to lie – to stand for
something that isn’t there. I would say that the signifier
re-suggests the signified – comes reliably to suggest it. The type
and quality of this re-suggestion corresponds to the various types
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of sign.
Thea: There are many different types, are there not? We have words
like cue, portent, trace, icon, emblem, symptom and symbol for
different kinds of sign. A thesaurus would give many more.
Guy: Yes indeed. And I think one of the strengths of the suggestion
paradigm is that it allows us easily to characterize these different
types. For example, a cue is a suggestion to say or do something.
A portent or omen is the suggestion conveyed by a small event
that something important is about to happen. A trace is the
lingering suggestion left by an event that occurred in the past. A
symptom is the manifest suggestion that something not directly
visible is occurring. An icon is a graphic re-suggestion of a
concept or scheme of concepts. And so on.
Thea: Where does the concept of information fit in?
Guy: Well, when you ask that question, you need to remember that the
word “information” is used with several different meanings. In
the engineer’s sense it is just a measure of variability with no
semantic content at all. In the manager’s sense, it is meaningful
news of what is happening in his world. I have yet to see a
coherent account of how this gulf is bridged: from the raw
measure of potential variability to the “meaning” (whatever that
is) that managers and everyone live by.
Thea: I remember you saying that information is a difference that makes

a difference. Doesn’t that definition bridge the gap?
Guy: Indeed it does, but only by muddying the distinction between the
ordinary and technical senses of the word “information.”
Bateson’s idea was sound, but it would have been more precise
to say that a suggestion is a difference made or presented to a
sugger’s body that suggests a difference in its understanding or
activity. The “meaning” of that change (to that sugger at that
time) is the change suggested.
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Thea: Isn’t that circular? “A suggestion is a difference that suggests?”
Guy: Of course it is. Suggestion is the primitive concept here. I don’t

think it can be defined in simpler terms. Difference (and
sameness) are themselves suggestions. But a sign, now, can be
defined as a material or cognitive structure that acts as a reliable
source of suggestion. And information (in the ordinary,
managerial sense) is a sign – or concatenation of signs – that
suggests one understanding and/or course of action rather than
another.
Thea: What is a symbol then? That’s the difficult concept that I’ve
never really understood. What turns a mere sign into a real
symbol?
from signs to symbols

Guy: For human biology, that is the crucial question. Suggestions and
signs are common throughout the natural world, but symbols are
rare and special. True symbols – as distinct from signs – make
language possible, and vastly extend the possibilities of
transmitted “culture.” No other species, in its natural lifestyle,
communicates with true symbols, so far as we know.
Thea: That seems strange. Many species have some form of

communication. You’d think some creatures would have at least
simple languages, like the animals in children’s books and Walt
Disney movies. But they don’t, do they? Why not?
Guy: That is just the question Terrence Deacon raises in his book, The
Symbolic Species, the best biological account of language I’ve
seen. Why do we observe complex and effective signing systems
in the non-human natural world, but no true languages at all, not
even simple ones? Deacon reports that an 8-year-old stumped
him by asking this when he was giving a talk on science at his
son’s school – and that this question set him on the path he takes
in his book
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Thea: How does he answer it?
Guy: Deacon’s argument makes two main points:1 First, the human
brain accounts for only about 2% of our total body weight, but
roughly 20% of our total energy budget.2 From that perspective,
far from being biological generalists, our species has chosen a
most extraordinary specialization, based on a massive
commitment of metabolic resources to that particular organ and
its functions. Second, our facility with symbols differs not just
quantitatively, but in qualitative terms from the handling of signs.
True symbol processing is a complex and rather strange effect
requiring a specialized, sophisticated brain. It represents much
more than a simple enhancement of the common sign handling
capabilities that other species enjoy. In Deacon’s view, symbol
processing actually impedes the response to signs, and is a
different process entirely.
Thea: Why? What is the difference? What is so special about symbols

that even a creature as human-like as a chimpanzee has trouble
grasping what comes so naturally to a human two-year-old?
Guy: Deacon defines the symbol as a sign that points to other signs
rather than to events in the real world. In my terms, a symbol is
a re-suggestive structure that suggests other such structures.
Either way, a symbol’s referential power derives from its position
in a network of other symbols. It is not just a correspondence
between a signifier and signified. Rather, the symbol works as a
sort of cognitive “seed” round which any number of associated
symbols may collect. It is “understood” by the way it stands in
association and contrast with the other symbols in its network.
Even a simple language, Deacon argues, would require such
indirect and abstract pointing of symbols to one another, rather
1
See Deacon, p 99, 408.
2
See Appraising the Brain’s Energy Budget, Raichle and Gusnard at
http://www.jsmf.org/meetings/2003/nov/PNAS_Commentary.pdf.
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than to direct referents, and would set a heavy evolutionary

premium on this specialized capability. For this reason, he says,
language will be an all-or-nothing proposition: As a species,
either you have it or you don’t.
Thea: I think I see what you’re driving at. One senses that qualitative
difference in the contrast between a religious symbol and an
ordinary sign – for example, the red octagonal STOP sign at a
street corner. The cross of Christianity, the crescent moon of
Islam, the Jewish star of David, and the re-entrant yin-yang of
Taoism, are understood as representing different clusters of belief
and practice that stand in contrast to one another. By contrast,
the red octagon at the corner is just a simple command to stop.
Guy: The most ordinary words of English, or any other language, must
be understood in the same way. The simplest words – like “tree”
or “table,” “run” or “sit,” “blue” or “yellow” – are understood by
association and contrast with the names of other objects and
processes and qualities: “up” in contrast with “down;” “go” with
“stop”; the color names in contrast with one another. Like signs,
words serve as loci of re-suggestion for your, my and
everybody’s experience of what they name, but the significant
differences that they invoke are anchored to one another.
Every word we use might be said to “drain” a certain area of
experience (as a valley collects the run-off from an area of the
earth’s surface) by suggesting some typical instance of the thing
or event at point. You could say that language organizes the
landscape of suggestion into separate basins in contrast with one
another. It does so by providing the appropriate word (not some
other word) when an event within its catchment area occurs.
Thea: An example, perhaps? Your metaphor of “drainage” is losing me.
Guy: Any word in any language is an example: A word like”cat” drains

your experience of cats (in a manner of speaking), by collecting
your and everybody’s total experience with cats under one label.
Conversely, to use that word “cat” is to suggest to a listener
179
or reader to recall his own experience with cats. Unless some

more urgent suggestion overrides, his prototypical image of a cat,
supported by all his experience of cats, is brought to mind. Your
word communicates to the extent, and only to the extent, that
your listener’s experience with these animals is similar to your
own.
Or take Isaiah’s great metaphor, “All flesh is grass.”3 (I think
Gregory Bateson discusses it somewhere.) Ordinarily, the word
“grass” just refers to the little plant that covers a golf course. But
with this comparison, the prophet is not saying that flesh is green
and needs watering every few days. Rather, in placing our
experience of flesh within the catchment area of “grass,” he
brings out and draws upon more subtle properties: The fragility
and transience of grass, its withering, its unity with the earth, etc.
In speaking of areas of experience drained by a certain word,
I am playing the same trick: forcing a word beyond its normal
meaning to catch and channel a “flood” of suggestions about
some other matter entirely. The availability of metaphors like
these is not an incidental property but a core feature of language.
If you define metaphor as the raising of analogy, then all
language is ultimately metaphoric in nature insofar as it lumps
individuals that are only roughly similar into the same category.
language as system and structure

Thea: But where do our words come from in the first place? A word’s
meaning is just a matter of convention, is it not?
Guy: For the most part. There are a few words whose sound appears to
have been suggested by the phenomenon they name: The word
“whisper” sounds a bit like a whisper; the word “slam” sounds
more like a slamming door. This is probably not an accident. But
there is nothing noticeably cat-like about the word “cat,” nor
spade-like about “spade.”
3
Isaiah 40.6-8.
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Thea: But surely, even in such cases, something must have suggested
the connection between the word’s sound and its meaning?
Guy: No. Or, if at all, so long ago that the connection has been
completely forgotten. Both the sounds and the meanings of words
evolve and (more-or-less) stabilize in ecological fashion. For
example, no one ever took a decision to call a spade a “spade.”
Or if they did, it was so long ago and so anonymously that it
scarcely matters. What established that word and every other was
a kind of spontaneous consensus within a speech community.
Language, like culture as a whole, and like a natural eco-system
of living creatures, is made by all but not by any.
Thea: A neat example of cognitive ecology.
Guy: Indeed. Any human language is a re-suggestive system of

inexhaustible wealth, allowing the expression of thoughts as
infinite as the sentences that can be formed. But it has no
particular author or designer, and it is stabilized more by the
spontaneous convergence of usage than by the legislation of
grammarians and lexicographers.
Thea: How does this convergence happen?
Guy: Language authorities and dictionaries play a role today, but

mostly the convergence of speech must be a swarm effect, based
partly on the desire to be understood, partly on a brain
predisposed by its architecture to mimicry, and partly on a desire
to sound cool and original but not too much so. As in a swarm,
each speaker is influenced mostly by his own personal speech
community, though there will certainly be broadcast and
stigmergic influences as well.
Basically, though, what happens is that young children
imitate the speech sounds they are hearing, learn new words and
then generate language by over-generalizing from what they take
to be grammatical rules. They are corrected by adults. People
(both kids and adults) pick up on each other’s speech mannerisms
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to define themselves as a group. How language got started in the

first place, we may never know, but once proto-humans took to
making vocal sounds as they worked or played or nursed their
babies or just sat around, it’s not hard to imagine how speech
communities might converge to make and expect particular
noises in particular situations. I think the expectations of others
must have been as important for the evolution of language as our
simian penchant for imitation. There is a pull as well as a push
for reliable conventions – in language as in other areas of culture.
The streams of suggestion flow both ways.
Thea: And your emphasis on suggestion helps keep both directions in

mind.
Guy: I would say so. Our brains are so wired that the behavior of
others is taken as a suggestion to do likewise: “Monkey see,
monkey do!” as we say. And at the same time our performances
always offer positive or negative feedback to our social
counter-players, who in turn provide suggestions to us. It is
indeed a kind of cybernetics – though based on loose suggestion,
not tight control. The conventions of language are indeed a neat
example of cognitive ecology: loosely stable, varying subtly from
one neighborhood and city to another, and drifting gradually over
time.
Thea: All right. I can see how language evolves. But how did it get
started?
Guy: How could we know? To coordinate effort? To rouse group

spirit? To intimidate enemies? To soothe children? To impress
lovers? To appease gods? For all these possibilities together?
There are lots of theories, but no way to decide between them.
One conjecture is that language must have been closely
connected with tool making, though it would have been quickly
used for every other purpose as well
Thea: Why do you think so?
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language and tool making

Guy: Remembering the Baldwin effect, the crucial question is this:
Given that the brain needed for symbol use and language was
huge and metabolically expensive, what sort of life style, made
the investment in such a brain worthwhile? I think it was our
ancestor’s preparation and use of tools that made those bigger
brains worth what they cost.
Thea: You might think intelligence would need no justification. that

greater intelligence would be worth having under any
circumstances.
Guy: But not at any price. If you keep in mind the enormous energy
budget of a human brain and, historically, the high death rate for
women in childbirth – squeezing the huge craniums of their
babies through that narrow birth canal – then it’s obvious that our
intelligence is costly. So you have to ask what our simian
ancestors were already doing, that made them evolve an
exaggerated brain as the giraffe evolved an exaggerated neck?
Our best guess is that they were already using simple tools – as
chimpanzees do today: A twig to winkle grubs out of the tree
bark. A stick or rock to dig up roots or as a weapon.
Thea: And that would be enough? Other creatures use simple tools or
weapons, without developing language.
Guy: Other creatures use found objects as simple tools and weapons.
Few, if any, alter the sticks or rocks they find to improve them for
an intended purpose. The guess is that it was tool-making, and
the teaching of tool-making and using, rather than just tool use,
that drove the evolution of language. Indeed, it’s possible that our
gift for abstract symbols and language is already implicit in
tool-making, to some extent.
Thea: How so? You’ll have to spell that out.
Guy: To prepare a tool for an intended purpose is to move indirectly –
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perhaps very indirectly – toward a desired result. That requires

implicit recognition that the shortest way to your goal is not
always a straight line – both in physical space, and in a
conceptual space of possible action as well. First, to prepare a
tool, you need to contemplate alternative possibilities. That is
already to enter the realm of hypotheticals – our peculiar human
specialty.
Second, and even more suggestively, to prepare a tool you
must relinquish your main purpose temporarily – put it on a
mental stack, as programmers say – in order to do something else
first. And, as I just explained, a similar relinquishment, or
temporary letting-go, is precisely what symbols require. You
have to let go of the signifier’s direct association with its
signified to permit indirect associations with other signs. Along
these same lines, the intention to shape this tool to augment its
effectiveness for action toward that imagined goal already has a
kind of instrumental grammar to it. Since modern chimpanzees
are known to adapt found materials as simple tools, it seems
likely that our primate ancestors were already doing so – thereby
placing upon themselves (per the Baldwin effect) an evolutionary
pressure to do it better. At first, symbol processing may have
been a happy by-product of virtuoso tool-use, but it could then be
selected for in its own right. A vocal tract adapted for clearly
audible modulations of breath would have been the last stage of
the process.
Thea: You lost me back there. When you said that tool use already has
a kind of instrumental grammar, what did you mean?
Guy: I’m only speculating here. But recall the point I made earlier: that
the cognitive detachment needed to make a tool (before you get
around to doing what you really want to do), is the same as that
needed for language. In both cases, you have to let go of your
immediate focus – put your real goal on a mental stack– so as to
attend to something else first: the tool in one case; the web of
associated symbols in the other.
We could also say that in preparing and using tools, we make
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a cognitive separation between subject and object, and between

purpose and instrument that did not exist before. We must
envision a self doing X to Y with, or by means of Z. We must
consider the alternatives of doing X to Y both with and without
Z. Then, when it seems worthwhile, we can delay X and Y long
enough to reach for Z, or to prepare Z for our purpose.
The actions of animals and very young children have an
immediacy to them which adults regain only on rare occasions,
or with a good deal of training. The key problem about the
evolution of language is to understand what made that loss of
immediacy worthwhile. But once it had evolved for the
preparation of tools, it would be available for other uses as well.
Thea: Language, then, is a by-product of increasingly sophisticated

tool-use – tools not just conveniently found, but crafted for a
purpose.
Guy: I’m suggesting that as a hypothesis, yes. Clever primates already

using simple tools. Imitating one another in doing so (as
non-human primates are known to do) would gain adaptive
advantage – a superior capability to consider, decide among and
communicate alternative possibilities. They would have shifting
social relationships to keep track of as well. The Baldwin effect
would place an evolutionary premium on doing better and more
consistently what this promising beast was already doing crudely
and haphazardly. Language, tool-use, imitative learning, unsocial
sociability – the whole anthropoid complex – would then advance
and refine itself as an integrated package. Probably, it is still
doing so – we modern men and women, languages and literatures,
tools and technologies, society as we know it, being just interim
results.
Thea: Yes, I can see how this evolution could happen. You’re winning
me over, I have to admit. This whole story is sounding more
plausible to me now than when we started these talks.
185
language as a medium of suggestion

Guy: Here’s another turn of the argument: We can also think of
language and tool use as media – in Marshall McLuhan’s sense.
Then, as media, they would themselves be messages carrying
strong suggestions of their own, apart from their various uses and
contents. The central message of weapon-and-tool use would
have been a kind of arms-race for more and better weapons and
tools. The central message of language would have been for more
language – improved articulation and discrimination of sounds,
richer vocabulary, more elaborate grammar. And finally, as you
say, the modern human body and brain.
Thea: You could almost describe the Baldwin effect as a generalized

version of McLuhan’s law that “The medium is the message.” In
this case, it is the life-game you are playing that has the crucial,
long-term effect.
But this raises some interesting questions: How are
suggestions passed through language different from those
transmitted in other ways – through pictures, for example? Or
through gestures, or by example? Apart from that “arms race” for
better linguistic and tool-using skills, what other “messages” did
our ancestors receive from their use of language? How did the
nature of language shape these creatures’ thinking?
Guy: Yes, those are very good questions. A lot of ink has been spilled
on the cognitive implications of language and our addiction to it.
Art students have to train themselves to paint the distinctly bluish
snow before their eyes, not the white snow that language has
made their brains expect. Some people practice meditation to turn
off the flow of language in their heads. Thinkers like Pierce and
Whorff and Nietzsche have emphasized how words shape the
way we think. Nietzsche wrote about “the prison-house of
language” (which didn’t stop him from writing). Wittgenstein, in
the same vein, sought to liberate philosophy from what he called
“the bewitchment of language.” It’s a truism that philosophy in
German, French and in English have three distinctive flavors – at
least partly due to the different flavors of the languages
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themselves.
Language is a very powerful medium, but it does have its
traps for the unwary and its limitations for everyone. Still, it’s
hard to separate the biases and limitations of language from those
of its human speakers. There may be a tendency to blame
language for what are really human weaknesses.
Thea: Of statistics it’s said that figures don’t lie, but liars figure.
Something similar might be said of words.
Guy: That confused and misled people use them. Yes. But there must
be more to it than that. There’s no doubt that some ideas are
more difficult to express in one language than another.
Thea: What interests me is not so much the moods and cadences and
concept-repertoires of various languages, as our dependence upon
language itself. If we were two deaf mutes without sign language,
with all communication between us limited to touching and
pointing, our relationship would be quite different, I imagine. Or,
at the other extreme, if we had direct access to each other’s
thoughts – again, our relationship would be very different. In
either case, we wouldn’t be having these conversations.
Guy: No, we wouldn’t. In one case, we wouldn’t be able to have them.

In the other, we wouldn’t need to. Language is for creatures who
are divided one from another, but need to communicate as best
they can. And who have complex communications needs that are
worth the biological costs involved. If all you have to say is
“There’s food over there!” or “Watch out for that predator!” or
“I think you’re very attractive, and I want to mate with you!” then
you don’t need language, or a brain capable of handling it.
Thea: Apart from tool-use then, what did we need language for?
Guy: One can only speculate, based on the things we use it for today.
We use language to gossip – to tell stories which may or may not
be truthful. We use it to make promises that we may or may not
187
intend to keep. We use it to frame rules and commands as well as

casual suggestions to do this or that – or to direct and color
attention. Our hominid ancestors probably did all these things as
they had means to do so.
Most importantly, perhaps, they may have used language to
give themselves suggestions – as you hear young children doing
sometimes.4 We adults do it too, when we think that no one is
listening, and writers do it a lot. Until quite recently, language
was conceived and studied mostly as a medium of inter-personal
communication, with the inner “stream of consciousness”
considered as parasitic on language as we know it today. But
inner speech, even with grunts and monosyllabic exclamations,
may have aided hominid cognition long before true languages
evolved, and before there was a neural architecture capable of
handling them. Indeed the selection pressure for that evolution
may have been partly the cognitive advantage of some auto-
suggestive capability. Tool-use, social living, language and
consciousness may have evolved together as our hominid
ancestors gave themselves pep-talks and running pre-linguistic
commentary on what they were doing, or on what was happening
to them.
Thea: You’re saying that our ancestors may have used language not
only to pass suggestions to one another but to pass suggestions to
themselves.
Guy: Yes. If we take Minsky’s model seriously – with all those mental
agencies competing for influence – then techniques for passing
complex internal suggestions could be extremely useful. One part
of the brain could provoke another to do what otherwise could
only be triggered from the outside. The advantages of such
cognitive auto-stimulation are obvious. We use it all the time,
even today.
4
See, for example, Talking to Oneself as a Selective Pressure for the
Emergence of Language, Mirolli and Parisi, (2006).
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Thea: But why would this auto-stimulation be handled through

language? And, given that language is its medium, what would
the cognitive consequences be?
Guy: Language permits a cognitive dissection of one’s immediate

situation, and a cognitive transcendence of it. Animals and very
young children seem to experience their world as an immediate
suchness – an over-all state of affairs. Their senses inform about
various aspects of current reality; and their eyes jump around,
gathering and collating visual details; but they experience the
scene around them as a whole – an immediate present. Through
the medium of language, for older children and adults, objects do
not appear so much as unique particulars but more as instances
of familiar types. The same happens with actions and processes
and qualities. We no longer see that situation; we see a tawny cat
stalking a red bird pecking at something on the lawn.
Nor are we limited to the present. With language we can
self-stimulate the kind of internal “seeing” that we call memory
or imagination. I can remember the black cat eyeing the yellow
bird that I saw yesterday. I can imagine a mauve cat with purple
polka-dots stalking an orange bird with blue stripes. And I can
suggest that you do the same, and have just done so.
Thea: Are you saying that memory and imagination depend on language
– that creatures without language do not remember or imagine?
Guy: That is disputed. They clearly remember in the sense of learning

from experience; and they can imagine in the sense of wanting
something and going after it. But it is highly doubtful that their
subjectivity in doing so is the same as ours.
Thea: There are big gains, but also losses from this trick of
categorization. For fighting, or making love, or just sitting in the
park watching the grass grow, it’s good to turn it off sometimes.
But that’s not so easy. It has to be taught as a special skill, in
disciplines like Zen or Yoga.
189
Guy: True. The medium of language, once you’re in the habit of using
it, sends a powerful message of categorization. It sends other
messages as well. A painting shows you a whole scene at once,
with details that you can examine as you will. By contrast,
language is sequential, and sends a powerful message of analysis
and seriality – a rendering of events into serial narratives. Like
music, you must follow language through time, (though the new
medium of hypertext is changing this to some extent), as
narrative, as dialogue, as argument. To use language well takes
patience and leisure – more than most people have these days.
Thea: What you’ve just said may be the central issue of psychotherapy
as a talking cure. Few people have the time or money to invest in
it, even if they have the inclination. Since Freud’s time, various
efforts have been made to make it cheaper or faster – not entirely
without success. But there are limits here. It may take only one
therapist to change the light bulb, but the process takes quite a lot
of two people’s time.
Guy: There’s at least one more message: Language provokes strife by

its very nature. To open your mouth on any subject is to tempt
someone else either to disagree with you, or to push your thought
a bit further. To put a thought into words is either to join an
argument or start one. And this feature of speech is still more the
case with literature. As a writer, I know this only too well.
Thea: It doesn’t stop you. You love language, and you love to talk. All
the more when someone is sure to disagree. And never more than
when you’re talking about something deeply controversial, as
we’ve been doing.
Guy: Guilty, your honor. Language can be used for dialogue, but it
provokes debate. When you have a text that is supposed to be
authoritative – like a constitution, or a bible, or even a textbook
– you either need a pope, or a supreme court to expound (with
more words) what its words mean, or you must live with
permanent argument about their meaning.
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Thea: Who was it who said, “You should never speak unless you can
improve on silence?”
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#9 CONSCIOUSNESS
Talk #9 Consciousness1
Consciousness is not some extra glow or aura or “quale”
caused by the activities made possible by the functional
organization of the mature cortex; consciousness is those
various activities. One is conscious of those contents whose
representations briefly monopolize certain cortical resources,
in competition with many other representations. The losers –
lacking “political clout” in this competition – quickly fade
leaving few if any traces, and that’s the only difference between
being a conscious content and being an unconscious content.
– Daniel Dennett, interview with Chris Floyd
Guy: Well, I think we’re finally ready for the discussion we’ve kept
postponing – the one on consciousness I mean.
Thea: Tonight you’re going to tell me how a brain makes it?
Guy: I’ll tell you the gist of what is known. I think most of the pieces
we needed are now in place.
Thea: Which pieces?
Guy: Well, we’ve come quite a distance by now. We’ve seen how
patterns and relationships can organize themselves
spontaneously, with no need for input from an “intelligent
1
In this discussion of consciousness, I have relied heavily on Daniel
Dennett’s paper Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?, (August, 2000),
available on the W eb at
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/cognition.fin.htm.
193
designer.” We’ve discussed a notion of suggestion that goes some

distance toward bridging the conceptual gap between the mental
and the physical. We’ve seen how swarm effects, stigmergy and
networking can support the emergence of collective intelligence
in a system of components possessing no intelligence of their
own. We’ve seen how a “pandemonium” of specialized modules
competing for influence in a global workspace might support at
least the functions of adaptive intelligence and consciousness.
We considered the phenomenon of language as a medium for
rendering suggestions of all kinds into discreet, mutually
intelligible categories. With these elements in place, I can at last
try to make plausible for you that human consciousness and
selfhood require no supernatural components, but can be
understood in biological and natural terms.
Thea: I have to admit that doing so no longer seems as weird and

impossible as it did at the beginning of these talks. I can see how
much thought and work has gone into this program. At heart,
though, I am still an unrepentant dualist. I don’t see how the
subjective quality of human experience can be analyzed away,
and I don’t believe it should be.
Guy: Let me say once more that none of this will deprive you of your
precious subjectivity. What I’m presenting here is just a
description, a way of looking at things, that does not alter the
phenomenon itself. Your consciousness remains just what it was
before we started these talks – or this research, for that matter.
Understanding how consciousness and subjectivity are
biologically constructed makes them more marvelous not less so.
Perhaps the most difficult idea in the world today is that our
beliefs may or may not be intellectually honest, or consistent with
one another, or usefully descriptive and/or predictive of
experience, but they are never absolutely true in the classical,
eye-of-God sense. Beliefs (including this one) form and sustain
themselves through an eD process, much as life-forms do. For
that reason, new modes of understanding never fully replace old
ones that are still useful and convenient. The sun still rises and
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sets; and engineers still use Newtonian physics for most

purposes. In a world as complex and various as ours has become,
epistemological sanity is impossible until we grasp that divergent
interpretations compete, but also complement each other. Their
relationship is politicious, not simply adversarial. So you remain
a conscious being, free to go on thinking of yourself as such. But
you can also understand your consciousness in biological terms,
when there is reason to do so.
Thea: Perhaps this new understanding will just confuse people yet
further – more than they are already confused?
Guy: More than likely, I admit. The price of knowledge has always
been a loss of innocence, with strange, new concepts, and
difficult choices to make. Please recognize, though: You or
anyone can forego knowledge as a personal choice. Willful
ignorance is a feasible strategy and a highly popular one; and
there may indeed be things that it is better not to know. That is
why so much of our mental life is not conscious. But for
humanity as a whole, the choice was made long ago – when Eve
bit into that apple, in the poetic way of speaking. It’s too late to
ask that we not learn how the brain/mind system works. But you
and I can end these talks right here, if you wish.
Thea: No. It’s too late even for that. You’ve piqued my curiosity. I have
to hear the end of your story. I want to finish this tasty apple.
functionalism and subjectivity

Guy: Very well. Then let me give you the conclusion first, and then try
to answer your questions. Here we go:
We’ve seen that the firing patterns in a brain self-organize in
response to the suggestions it receives from the external world,
from its own body, and from re-suggestive structures previously
built. These patterns ripple around the nervous system, where
they reinforce and cancel each other, and compete for expression
through the body’s glandular and motor resources. In this
ongoing competition of patterns, those of greatest “clout” prevail
195
for a while until displaced by other patterns. In this ecoDarwinian

process, successful patterns continue to reverberate, while losing
patterns fade away. The patterns that reverberate widely and long
within the brain are just those that we are conscious of. Without
remainder, consciousness is that prevailing reverberation – in the
brain’s short term memory, language centres, pathways of motor
coordination and affect, etc. What we experience as
consciousness is the predominant influence that some neural
patterns acquire in their competition with other patterns, as
stabilized by the feedback loops of a sophisticated brain’s
self-monitoring.
Thea: That’s not what consciousness is. That’s a description of how it

works, or of what it does – not of the thing itself!
Guy: But that’s just the point. Functionalists argue that consciousness
is not some abstract property that a creature might or might not
possess, but rather the capability to function in all the ways that
we expect of ourselves and other conscious beings.2 To act like
a conscious being is actually to be one. Patterns of suggestion
that reverberate sufficiently broadly and persistently in the neural
circuits are experienced as “consciousness,” which is simply the
feeling of what it like to undergo that neural reverberation. Itself
a part of that reverberation, of course.
Thea: Once again, you’ve ducked the question. Until you explain how
that feeling arises, and why we feel those neural reverberations
rather than merely have them, you haven’t explained anything at
all.
Guy: We feel what we ourselves are doing – what the tissues of our
bodies are doing. What we experience as subjectivity is this
process of self-monitoring. To possess functioning neural circuits
that warn you that your body is being damaged, that cause you
2
For a discussion of functionalism, see
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/functionalism/#1
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urgently to do something to alleviate what is causing the damage,

that leave an aversive memory trace of the situation so it can be
avoided in the future, is actually to feel pain. Likewise, to have
neural circuits currently in the spasms of a sneeze or an orgasm
or an epileptic fit is to feel the sneeze or the orgasm or the fit.
When those reverberative processes are fully understood, there
is nothing left to explain.
Thea: I think that is completely wrong. Stories have been written about
the “undead” – about soulless “zombies” whose souls were
somehow stolen from them. You can imagine a zombie or robot
that does everything a man can do, that passes every possible test,
but has no conscious feelings at all.
Guy: Can you really? Perhaps you only think you can. Imagine some
horrible disease that turned its victims into zombies, but left them
unchanged in every other respect. Who would know? Certainly
not the zombies themselves. What I am saying is that life itself is
such a “disease.” The “zombies” you think you are imagining are
just we ourselves.
Thea: If I think I can imagine something, then surely I have already

done so. To imagine that I am imagining zombies who lack a
faculty of consciousness that we ourselves possess is the same as
to imagine them.
Guy: Not clear! It can be argued that only a conscious being could
produce conversation and behavior indistinguishable from those
of a real person. If engineers built a robot that could fool every
one into thinking it was conscious, then consciousness would be
a by-product of its functionality, as a logical requirement. If this
is correct, then the zombie fantasy is incoherent.
Thea: I can’t see why. You can program a computer to play chess at the
grandmaster level. It will not know that it is playing, and will
have no real understanding (no authentically cognized
understanding) of the game. In principle then, why could you not
197
program a robot to produce human conversation and behavior? I

can certainly imagine doing so, whether it is actually feasible or
not. In fact, merely by talking about it, I have already done so. As
have you.
Guy: Not really, because what we have imagined may be a logical

contradiction – like the barber in Seville who shaves everyone
who doesn’t shave himself. You can delude yourself that you are
imagining such things – until you consider the full implications
of what you are imagining. Then it turns out that you have not
imagined them at all.
Thea: Where exactly is the contradiction in imagining a zombie?
Guy: Hugh Noble has argued that to be convincing, the zombie would
have to have to believe in its own consciousness.3 Within its
neural circuits, it would have to have convincing representations
of a world and of itself, including such concepts as belief,
knowledge, intention, sincerity and truth. For the zombie, truth
will be a correspondence between its representation of the
environment, and its re-presentation of its own beliefs. It will
report to others that it is consciously experiencing its world
(since if it did otherwise, it would not be accepted as conscious);
and it will report to itself that it is truthful in this reporting (since
the reporting would pass its own internal criteria for sincerity and
truth). In deceiving others as to its consciousness, it would at the
same time deceive itself. In doing so, it would be as conscious as
you or I; and would be convinced of its own consciousness in the
same way and for the same reasons that you and I are convinced.
Thea: Ouch! So, if I understand, you’re saying there’s really nobody

here but us zombies, fooling ourselves that we conscious beings,
and unaware that we are doing so.
3
See Noble’s article at www.tartanhen.co.uk/mind/zombie.htm.
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Guy: Precisely – Except that in doing so, we are performing as

conscious subjects, and by that very fact, indeed are conscious in
the only sense that can coherently be attached to this word. Thus,
we are not really fooling ourselves at all.
Thea: If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck If it walks and talks like a
conscious subject, it is one.
Guy: Right. But it’s more than just a question of labels. It seems that
what we experience as consciousness is the “clout” of a given
neural pattern in its competition with other patterns – its “fame
in the brain” as Dennett puts it.4
Thea: I don’t see that connection. How are clout or fame analogous to
consciousness?
Guy: To explain his metaphor, Dennett offers the comparison of a man

who has just published a first novel that excites terrific
enthusiasm. As of Tuesday, his picture is about to appear on the
cover of Time Magazine, and he himself is scheduled for Oprah’s
television show. On Wednesday morning, San Francisco is
devastated by an earthquake, and the world’s attention is diverted
elsewhere. “All the dispositional properties normally sufficient
for fame were in place,” Dennett says, “but their normal effects
didn’t get triggered, so no fame resulted. The same . . . is true of
consciousness. The idea of some information being conscious for
a few milliseconds, with none of the normal aftermath, is as
covertly incoherent as the idea of somebody being famous for a
few minutes, with none of the normal aftermath. Jim was
potentially famous but didn’t quite achieve fame; and he certainly
didn’t have any other property (an eerie glow, an aura of
charisma, a threefold increase in “animal magnetism” or
whatever) that distinguished him from the equally anonymous
4
Dennett’s metaphor, making still more vivid the concept of “multiple
drafts” competing for influence. See Sweet Dreams (2005) or Dennett’s
essay Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?
199
people around him. Real fame is not the cause of all the normal
aftermath; it is the normal aftermath.”
Thea: Neat! I don’t know that I can buy this story, but it certainly is
clever.
Guy: If the earthquake had not come along to swamp it, Jim’s novel
would have been the talk of the nation. Everyone would have
heard of it, gotten a copy, read it, talked about it, and been
influenced by it in their various ways. Similarly, a successful
neural pattern reverberates in the brain, and influences relevant
specialist modules; to some extent, human brains can monitor this
reverberation – can track which patterns are currently influential
and take decisions based on this tracking. That self-monitoring is
our consciousness. If we understand the mind as a suggestion
ecology, then consciousness is a kind of user-friendly display of
the current state of that internal eco-system. How exactly that
display works, and what purposes it serves are questions we are
just beginning to answer.
Thea: Still, like the little man upon the stair, the mind-body problem
won’t go away so easily. You still owe some account of feeling
itself: what it is, where it comes from, how it is possible. Without
a convincing answer to that question – and you still haven’t given
one – your whole program cannot answer our most urgent
question.
Guy: In the year 2000, Nicholas Humphrey wrote an essay called How
to Solve the Mind-Body Problem that seems to me fully worthy
of its title. I’ll try to summarize it for you, but the essay itself is
brief, beautifully written, and readily available.5 I cannot do
justice to it here, and would urge you to read it for yourself. In a
nutshell, Humphrey’s solution is based on a careful distinction
5
On the W eb at www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/2000MindBodyProblem.pdf,
and also in Humphrey’s book, The Mind Made Flesh, (2002).
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between sensation and perception, and on an argument that raw

sensation may be considered “physical” and “mental” at the same
time – in the same manner I would say that suggestions are.
Thea: There! I’m suspicious right from the start. Why is this not just
another reductionist gambit to reduce feeling to function and
sweep the problem under a rug?
Guy: I don’t think that's a fair description of what he’s doing. Rather,
what Humphrey attempts, as I do, is a reduction of the conceptual
distance between the “physical”and the “mental” by showing that
the most primitive cell already has properties that partake of both,
with no clear distinction between them. He begins by discussing
alternative approaches to the known correlation between mind
states and brain states: We can opt for some version of Cartesian
dualism; we can take what Owen Flanagan called a “mysterian”
stance and insist that the matter is beyond human comprehension;
or finally, we can adjust our understandings of both the mental
and physical, to remove the illusion that these are
incommensurable. Only this last, as he points out, offers much
chance to advance our understanding.
Thea: Suppose I accept that bringing the categories of mental and

physical closer together is the way to go. What then?
Guy: Humphrey shows how sensation (carefully distinguished from

perception) already has both “physical” and “mental” properties,
and so might have been a basis for the evolution of a sentient
brain. His central point is that raw sensation is already present in
one-celled creatures, far too primitive to have “minds” in the
common sense. Yet even to them, it must feel like something to
be alive in a way that my laptop is not.
Thea: Go on, then. What is the difference between sensation and

perception, and why is it important?
Guy: Sensation is direct news of what is happening to one’s body.
201
Perception is an inference – from sensation, of course – about

what is happening out in the world. Where sensation is an utterly
primitive feeling, accurate perception requires sophisticated
processing and representation. But they are closely related: It is
the grounding of perception in sensation that makes for what
Damasio calls “core consciousness”– the feeling of what
happens6 – and that I prefer to call “sentience.”
Sensation is a direct suggestion to respond in some way to
what is currently happening in, or at the surface of your body. By
contrast, perception is a “best guess” at the event or thing that’s
causing what is happening to you, affording opportunity to
choose or plan an appropriate response. For example, when you
see a red rose, there is, first of all, a sensation of redness
happening at the retina; and this occurs faster, and at a different
neural location, than your perception of a rose. The latter requires
comparison and assimilation of present experience – not only the
sensation of redness, but all other current sensations as well – to
previous constellations of experience. In humans, of course,
categorization as “a rose” requires the brain’s language centres
as well. But all this represents many additional layers of
processing on top of the primary layer of raw sensation: the
feeling that something red is happening to me. Even the amoeba
can feel that something acid or salty or edible is happening to it,
and respond appropriately.
Thea: It’s rather neat to distinguish between two logical types of news:
of what is happening directly to me, and of what is
happening out there in the world that might be causing
happenings to me. But the amoeba’s responsiveness is still
just a matter of observable behavior. It’s not clear that it feels
anything at all.
Guy: For Humphrey, as for all the functionalists, the organism’s
6
cf. Damasio’s distinction between Extended and Core Consciousness in
The Feeling of What Happens (1999).
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feeling is an amplification and reverberation of raw sensation in

its neural circuits (if it’s complex enough to have circuits) but, it
is first of all, a mere “wriggle” (Humphrey’s word) in its very
protoplasm. For one-celled organisms that’s all there is: that
“wriggle” at the boundary between the creature and its world.
Later, something like a reflex arc develops from the site of local
stimulation to a proto-brain and back again. Later still, the neural
feedback loops combine, prolong and amplify the raw sensations,
and provide the organism with “user-friendly” read-outs about
the happenings to itself. When further neural circuitry draws
inferences about the world beyond the organism, complex
perceptions become possible – grounded, and distinguished from
dream and fantasy by their congruence with sensation. As all this
occurs, sensation is no longer “raw,” but becomes more and more
like what we willingly acknowledge as sentience – as the rich
core consciousness that humans enjoy.
Thea: Is Humphrey’s account the accepted theory now?
Guy: More or less. Put it this way: Among neuro-psychologists and

philosophers who think the problem of consciousness admits a
naturalistic solution, there does seem to be emerging a consensus
that what I am calling “sentience” is a kind of
moment-by-moment feeling of being alive. In these circles, the
unbridgeable gulf between “mind” and physical functioning now
looks much narrower than it was even ten years ago. If and when
a full account of sentience is given, it will probably go along
Humphrey’s lines.
Thea: All right. I’m not sure I’m ready to concede this argument, but I
can at least see where the functionalists are coming from.
Suppose I grant your case for the sake of argument. You still
have a lot of work to do.
Guy: Indeed we do. There’s much we still don’t know, and I doubt
these arguments will convince anyone not already disposed to be
convinced. Mysterians can insist forever that the subjectivity of
203
consciousness remains to be explained even when all the

functions of mind, including feeling itself, have been accounted
for. But I think the question they wish to keep open is a purely
metaphysical or religious one, beyond the competence of science.
Whereof we can’t say anything publicly disconfirmable, we can
go on talking as long as we like.
the functions of consciousness

Thea: From a purely functionalist perspective, we often speak of
consciousness as if it were a kind of mental searchlight that can
be turned on or off, or trained this way or that. But that can’t be
right, can it? It sounds too simple, even to me.
Guy: It’s pretty clear by now that the searchlight analogy is hopelessly
inadequate – not least because it makes it easy to fall into the
error of thinking that we have the light while other creatures
don’t. We now must say that infants and many animals are
conscious in some senses, but not in others, and that the quality
of consciousness can vary greatly from one occasion and person
to another. The upshot, I think is that our word “consciousness”
is too vague to be useful for any purpose beyond the everyday. At
a minimum, we need a distinction between sentience (Damasio’s
“core consciousness”), the mindfulness of an animal or a human
baby, and what I think of as linguality – the symbolic,
conceptual, narrative consciousness that evolved along with
language, perhaps as a prerequisite for language. The upshot is
that “consciousness,” as we begin to understand it, is not even a
single function (still less a single substance or quality). “Fame in
the brain” subserves a number of functions that cannot be
handled as local, background processes but require the
organism’s full resources.
Thea: What would those functions be? As you’ve pointed out,7 nothing
like human consciousness is needed to get around in the world.
7
In Talk #1.
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The most complex sensory-motor coordination is possible

without it – actually works better without it. In dance or martial
arts, you train to move “instinctively” – with fluid, unconscious
skill. In creative work of any kind, the role of consciousness is
largely negative: to criticize, organize and edit what the
unconscious brings forth.
So why do we have consciousness? Surely there must be
more to it than the mere requirement to catch a meal or avoid
becoming one.
Guy: That is a very good question. As we’ve seen, human

consciousness and language processing are very costly in
metabolic terms.8 As well, the sheer size of the infant’s brain and
skull is a substantial risk for human females and babies in
childbirth; and our specialization in elaborate culture imposes an
extraordinarily long period of helplessness on the babies, and of
care-giving on their parents. In meditation, intelligent adults
practice deliberately to extinguish the lingual, narrative
consciousness temporarily, to abide in pure sentience for a short
while. So what was it, precisely, that justified all that biological
investment and risk? Unfortunately, without detailed knowledge
of the selection pressures on our ancestors, we can only
speculate.
Thea: Go ahead then. Please do so.
Guy: As we’ve seen, consciousness, language and tool-making seem

to go together, without being different names for the same thing.
So we can ask what it is that links them? The answer might be, a
gift for abstraction – the ability to recognize critical features
(differences that make a difference), and to generalize from these
to imagined, hypothetical situations. The capability of a “mind’s
eye,” to play variations on the properties of things, imagining
8
See Talk #8 and W ikipedia article on the brain at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_brain.
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possibilities that never happened, and perhaps never will. The

capability of a mind to change itself on the fly in response to a
conceptualized past and future, and not just to a changing
situation.
Thea: Would such a brain really be worth the energy cost and the risks
that came with it?
Guy: For our primate ancestors, it obviously was, as our existence

makes clear. Why especially for them and not for other creatures,
we may never know.
But for those proto-humans, the capability to evaluate and
respond to mere possibilities must have been worthwhile – to
correct a blunder, avoid a trap, detect when a plan was going
wrong and make appropriate changes. Instinct or well-trained
habit (which we also use a lot) could see the creature through a
familiar situation – even one requiring great skill and flexibility.
But when it needed to plan for an unfamiliar situation, and/or to
change its values and desires in real time to take account of fresh
information, instinct and habit would not avail. At that point,
even a dim imagination of possibilities must have made the
difference between life and death, allowing the creature to
change intentions on the fly – in the heat of its immediate
situation, but in light of its past experience and its imagined
future.
Thea: For that, it would need a brain capable of representing relevant

memories and anticipations in the here-and-now.
Guy: Exactly. Gerald Edelman has written of consciousness as

“remembered present.”9 There must be a strong connection
between what we call “consciousness” and the physiological
sub-systems of “working memory.”
9
In The Remembered Present, Gerald Edelman, 1989.
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#9 CONSCIOUSNESS
Thea: Analogous to the distinction between CPU memory and mass

storage in a computer.
Guy: That’s right.
Thea: I like that phrase: “remembered present.” It calls to mind the

work of anamnesis – “unforgetting” – in therapy: making
significant, but highly negative past experiences available to
present consciousness. But then what? On your model, how
would my clients be helped by this recovery of repressed
memories?
Guy: Whatever else it does, consciousness seems to establish an

over-all context for a brain’s suggestion processing. As we’ve
already seen,10 that context has suggestive influence both on
external events and in the brain itself, affording top-down
coordination for what is otherwise a bottom-up self-organizing
process. With repressed events recovered, that context would
become more accurate, more honest. For better and for worse, I
suppose.
Thea: That’s true. Anamnesis isn’t always helpful – or not in any

simple way. It tends to raise new issues that a client may or may
not be willing to work on.
Guy: Another feature of this model is to make clear why the kind of
therapy you do must be primarily a talking cure, whatever other
forms it takes. The key to our extraordinarily rich remembered
present is the linguality I mentioned earlier – which has been
compared to a serial information processor running on a
massively parallel one.
Thea: Yes. It all fits very neatly. Except for one thing, perhaps: Is there
anything left of the self, for those who accept your story?
10
In Talk #5.
207
the self
Guy: Your self is simply you – all of you, body and mind together,
with the mind experiencing and attempting to manage its body’s
activities and fate. In this respect nothing has changed. But now
we see clearly that there need be no extra, metaphysical “self”
inside you, controlling your mind and thinking your thoughts.
Consciousness does not emanate from some “corner office” in
the brain, where high-level reports are tabled and commands are
issued. Rather, there are “modules,” “work groups” or “agents”
doing specialized jobs, and patterns competing for influence over
these modules. Among other things, there is competition to
influence the stories you tell about yourself; and so, from this
perspective, the self is a loosely stable ongoing story.
Thea: Building upon itself as experiences and memories accumulate

over the course of a lifetime.
Guy: Just so.
Thea: Then what story will we tell ourselves now? Or, more precisely,
how will the stories we tell about ourselves be altered when this
novel understanding of consciousness is taken on board?
Guy: Too soon to tell, I’d say. We’ll have to live with this new
psychology for awhile before its implications become clear.
Thea: Well, you’ve been living with it for awhile. What impact have
these ideas had on you? That’s a fair question, isn’t it.
Guy: It’s a fair question. But I’d like to postpone discussion of it till
almost the conclusion of these talks,11 after we’ve talked about
this new paradigm from a developmental and social perspective.
Thea: You might give me a hint. You obviously know where these talks
are going. What’s next?
11
To Talk #15.
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#9 CONSCIOUSNESS
Guy: We haven’t talked yet about individual personality – how the

re-suggestive structures that guide us as unique persons are
themselves evolved and stabilized through a socializing process
which is itself ecological in nature. That must be our next step.
Only then will we gain a just sense of individual men and women
as ecological patterns rooted in larger patterns – cultures and
societies – which are themselves ecologies of mind.
Thea: Patterns rooted in larger patterns? You make us sound like plants.
Guy: Yes, that image has occurred to me. We could do worse than see
ourselves as sentient, perambulating plants, each thriving as best
it can in a definite historical soil, making what it can of the
cultural nutrients it finds, and altering its cultural “soil” by
having lived there. Of course, we are all plants of the same
species. Beyond that, no two of us grow in exactly the same spot,
make the same choices or develop in the same way.
Thea: Why do you call us plants? Why not animals, at least?
Guy: Because it may be good to emphasize that a human creature puts

down roots, draws nourishment and forms itself always in some
specific social and cultural habitat. Animals too have their
individual territories, but that very word “animal” puts emphasis
on the power to move about and choose. We tend to forget that
for all our autonomy and versatility, a human organism is more
“planted” than mobile with regard to its ambient culture; and that
it suffers anything from culture shock to stunted development or
total disorientation when “transplanted” to an alien cultural soil.
Thea: But . . . what kind of choices can a sentient plant make? What are
the limits of its sentience? What kinds of thinking can it do?
Guy: All the thinking that we do. My point is that as a cognitive

ecology unto itself, the human organism is an open system that
draws upon and contributes to a native cultural environment, or
“soil,” from which it is not easily displaced. It’s important to be
209
clear that human consciousness is not a purely individual matter

any more than just a matter of algorithmic computation. Human
beings are massively inter-connected suggestion processors in
dynamic equilibrium with each other and with their
environments. The individual will reflect that environment in
many ways and cannot be shifted without trauma and drastic
re-organization – if it can be shifted viably at all, as is not always
the case.
Thea: I have to tell you: this notion of a “conscious plant” sounds like
an offensive oxymoron.
Guy: It shouldn’t. After all, it does no more than take seriously John
Bowlby’s notion of an attachment system – extended from the
infant’s primary caregivers to all the relationships and
involvements, in childhood and later, that nourish its life. An
individual cut from his roots is not much more viable than a
flower in a vase. Apart from the broadly conceived attachment
system to other systems that satisfy a person’s material and
psychic needs, how long could that person live? How intelligible
would he be?
Thea: But we are not plants, after all. We roam around in the world,
today more than ever. You can buy a ticket, board a plane and be
transported half way round the globe in less than a day.
Guy: Transported, but not transplanted. That’s just my point. Today,

we need to understand ourselves as creatures whose powers of
mobility greatly exceed our powers of adaptation – creatures that
suffer damage and deprivation when shifted too drastically, or
exposed too recklessly or forcibly to the re-suggestive structures
of an alien culture. The cognitive materials that nourish one
person may easily prove toxic for another.
So long as people were rooted in a single culture, regarded
only their own tribe as real people, and felt free to slaughter the
threatening stranger, they could not and did not need to think
about cultural differences, and had no more use for the
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#9 CONSCIOUSNESS
relativizing notion of culture than the fish needs a concept of

water. So long as people could keep mostly to their own cultural
kind, meeting sometimes with strangers, but holding alien
influences at a safe distance, they could think of themselves as
autonomous atoms in a “civil” marketplace. Today, however,
when all peoples and cultures are exposed and over-exposed to
one another whether they (and their authorities) like it or not, the
concept of a civil public space has become a battle ground whose
very definition is up for grabs. Under these conditions, we need
to understand that no person reaches adulthood without taking on
a lot of cultural “earth” that clings inextricably to his roots,
wherever life takes him. We talk about globalization and the
rapid pace of change, but a large part of what this means in
practice is that many people’s cultural niches are being stressed
or obliterated, with consequences that fill the newspapers.
Thea: No argument from a therapist that our sense of self these days is
much shakier than most people are willing to recognize. My fear
is that this ecoDarwinian paradigm of yours will make it shakier
still.
Perhaps this need to understand and explain everything is
itself a kind of pathology. Perhaps the mystery of life is better
taken on faith. Perhaps it’s the examined life – at least, the overly
examined one – that’s not worth living! Perhaps we need a
measure of what Keats called “negative capability” to be sane
and happy in this world.
Guy: That may be so. For most people, lacking time or inclination to
look deeply into things, it may well be so. But there’s no way to
unlearn what we now know. There’s no way to stop learning
more as we try to cope with the situation that now exists.
Thea: With those ideas of consciousness and cultural rootedness,

there’s not much left of “free will,”is there?
211
Guy: As we’ve discussed at several points already, human suggers

have rich autonomy, but I don’t think we have “free will” in
anything like the classical sense. There’s some evidence12 that the
unconscious mind makes its decision and starts an action going
before consciousness has the chance to intervene. Apart from its
context setting function, the role of consciousness may be more
like “free won’t” than “free will,” blocking impulses from the
subconscious, or letting them ride.
Thea: A kind of veto power, in other words?
Guy: Maybe. We’re at the frontier now. We don’t yet fully understand
the role of consciousness within the mind as a whole.
12
From the Libet experiments and follow-up. See
www.consciousentities.com/libet.htm.
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#10 A MIND OF ONE’S OWN
Talk #10 A Mind of One’s Own
A personality is a socially developed person, one who is part of

a certain specific historical and natural context, one or another
social group, a person possessing a relatively stable system of
socially significant personal features and performing
corresponding social roles . . . The central feature of the
personality is world outlook. A person cannot become a
personality without evolving what is known as a world outlook
or world-view, which includes his philosophical view of the
world.
– A. Spirkin
Ask not what’s inside your head, but what your head is inside of.
– J. J. Gibson
Thea: One area of application for this theory of mind might be the
concept of personality. That field still lacks a solid foundation;
and there have been almost as many theories of personality as
first-rank psychotherapists. Do you have any thoughts about this?
Guy: I don’t know of any work in personality theory from an eD

perspective. Forty years ago, Bateson suggested that we
understand mental structure in ecological terms, and I believe that
is where personality theory should go; but, so far as I’m aware,
it has yet to do so. How do therapists understand the concept of
“personality” today?
Thea: Gordon Allport defined personality as “the dynamic organization

within the individual of those psycho-physical systems that
determine his unique adjustment to his environment.” Other
213
definitions have been proposed,1 but Allport’s version remains as

good as any. “In practice,” one website says, “personality is how
we see ourselves and others.2 It is how we describe a person as
noisy, thoughtful, decisive and so on.” With your concepts of
ecology and suggestion, can you get any further?
the mind’s ecology

Guy: Perhaps. At least, we can understand Allport’s “dynamic
organization” more concretely than before, as a system of
re-suggestive structures maintained and deployed by the
individual to evaluate and respond to the suggestions his world
presents. There will be threats, opportunities, demands and issues
of all sorts – of course, with different suggestions and mixtures
of suggestion offered to each individual.
As the word suggests, personality was originally conceived
as a kind of mask, a “face to meet the faces that you meet.”
Today we can think of it in re-suggestive terms as an habitual
structure of patterns through which the individual constitutes
himself as an effective agent, copes with his world, and presents
a coherent face to others.
Thea: I know we discussed this once already,3 but I still don’t see why
you insist on speaking of “a system of re-suggestive structures,”
when we already have the concept of a script. We speak of sexual
scripts, scripts for mothering and fathering, scripts for parties, for
eating in restaurants, for buying and selling in various situations.
We have scripts for all kinds of things. What is gained by
1
Personality: A psychological interpretation, Allport, G.W . (1937) More
recently, Carver and Scheier (2000, p.5) defined personality in essentially
the same way as “a dynamic organization, inside the person, of
psychophysical systems that create a person’s characteristic patterns of
behaviour, thoughts, and feelings.”
2
http://changingminds.org/explanations/personality/personality_is.htm
3
See Talk #3.
214
re-labeling these as “re-suggestive structures”? A much clumsier

term, it seems to me.
Guy: A script is one kind of re-suggestive structure, but the reverse

isn’t true. For example, you don’t usually think of your language
or the house we live in as scripts though they certainly are
powerful sources of suggestion. Also, I think that words like
script or program give a misleading impression of the structures
of personality, implying that we are more robotic than is the case.
Thea: So your quarrel is with the word “determine,” in Allport’s

definition? For you, the structures of personality are sources of
suggestion, not controlling rules.
Guy: Yes, exactly. My point is that we should think of personality

neither as a permanent structure, nor as a mere assortment of
traits, but as an eco-system of co-evolving sources of suggestion,
in competition for air time and influence even as they collaborate
to produce a lifestyle – hopefully, a viable and satisfying one.4
There may be “conversion” episodes in which the personality
system flips over from one mode of organization to another. But
apart from these, personality remains loosely stable over the
course of a life-time, changing gradually through a re-entrant,
evolutionary process while co-constructing more or less durable
social relationships.
Thea: The crucial point, if I understand you, is in the analogy you want
between personalities, polities and eco-systems. Talk about “the
inner committee” is something of a commonplace, but the
implications of this metaphor have not been much explored by
personality theorists, so far as I know.
Guy: That’s my impression too. We tend to think of personalities, like
4
By “air time” (a metaphor from the broadcast media) I mean opportunity
for expression, subject to the motor constraints of a human body.
215
government regimes, as more unified, but also as more chaotic

than they really are. And we tend to overlook the irreducible
mixture of collaboration and strife by which such systems are
constituted and maintained. A generalized concept of ecology
(along the lines Bateson recommended) would avoid both errors.
Thea: Doesn’t the notion of personality point rather at the resolution of

internal conflict? You’ve said that the structures of personality
provide a context for the evaluation and reconciliation of
competing suggestions, but what does that actually mean?
Presented with suggestions to go to a party or stay home and
study, the ambitious or conscientious individual makes one
choice; the “party animal” makes another. In either case the
concept of personality corresponds to the choice this individual
typically makes, in such a situation. How does that gibe with the
concept of personality as a politicious internal committee?
Guy: Personality indeed works to resolve inner conflicts, but can rarely
do this seamlessly as it is itself conflicted. Moreover, it is
precisely this inherent politiciousness of personality that makes
room for adaptive change. That’s why we speak of these systems
as hovering on “the edge of chaos.” In your field, when there is
too much stability you speak of a rigid personality. With too
much conflict, you speak of an impulse-driven or fragmented
one.
Thea: A healthy personality, we agree, must be one with some conflict

but not too much.
Guy: A healthy personality contains and lives through its conflicts

without repressing one side or the other. For example, it can
acknowledge temptations as attractive, even when it does not
give in. And it can pay the opportunity costs of its actual choices
without crying “sour grapes” – without denying that some real
price was paid.
I think Jung was right about the need to come to terms with,
and integrate what he called the “shadow.” I would go further,
216
and describe at least some aspects of personality not as a simple

quality or trait, but as a dialectic or polarization along an axis.
Thea: You remind me of that story by Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, about the man who wanted to get in touch with his shadow.
Guy: But Jekyll didn’t just get in touch with his shadow. He was
consumed by it. That was the point of Stevenson’s parable, I
think. It was certainly Jung’s point. The task is to befriend and
domesticate one’s shadow, without letting it take over.
Typically, there are many areas of ambivalence in a
personality. In principle, there is conflict whenever divergent
suggestions prompt to different lines of thought or action. In a
healthy personality, such conflicts are contained and constrained
by some global context – a conception of oneself, complete with
self-image and hopes and projects.
But, just as the apparent serenity of a meadow or forest glade
conceals a Darwinian competition for survival, so the coherence
of a relatively stable personality conceals a competition of
cognitive “takes” and motor “impulses.” As we find everywhere,
ecology and evolution are two sides of the same coin – ecology
being the system of inter-relationship, while evolution is the
principle of orderly, systemic change. Personality is the loosely
stable structure that anchors and is manifested by the
mind-system.
Thea: Fine, but obviously then, you need to say a whole lot more about
that structure: How does a personality – your system of
re-suggestive structures – form and stabilize? Having done so,
how does it guide the individual moment by moment in coping
with her world?
personality as a guidance system

Guy: Let me take your second question first. Once we’re clear about
the structures that are needed, it will be easier to see how they
form.
The crucial work of personality, we can say, is to set a
217
context for the reception, evaluation and uptake of suggestions

from an environment – especially a social environment. In doing
this, personality acts as a kind of filter, loosely analogous to the
lens filters that photographers use to select the colors of light that
enter their cameras. Your second question, then, amounts to this:
What happens when suggestions from the outside world are met
with evaluative suggestions superposed by the individual
himself?
Thea: Well, what does happen?
Guy: The only way to answer that question in detail may be with
engineered systems that simulate the workings of an actual brain
– a feat that’s certainly beyond us today. The principles of such
a system are becoming clear, however. We’ve already discussed
how the neural wetware of a brain functions as an adaptive
system, and how in doing so, it tracks the world, learns from
experience, forms concepts, retains memories, and sustains a
personal consciousness. We have a general idea how the firing
patterns that make this wonder possible might correspond to
Allport’s “psycho-physical systems” or to my re-suggestive
structures. You may remember our image of the brain as a kind
of radio receiver, sympathetically resonating to the suggestions
it receives, and adaptively tracking its world in doing so.5
Thea: Yes, I remember. But it’s a far cry from a resonating radio
receiver to the dynamic, loosely stable structures of a human
personality.
Guy: Not so far, perhaps, if we imagine the real-time resonance of this

“radio” as expressively self-stimulating and re-entrant as much
or more than it is externally driven – and as self-organized
over-all into recurring patterns.
A simpler image – this time, from geology – occurred to me
5
From Talks #4, 5 and 7.
218
the other day. We might liken those re-suggestive structures of

personality to the tectonic plates of volcanic rock that make up
the earth’s crust. Then we can compare the evolution of
personality over a lifetime to the very slow movement of those
plates, now known to be responsible for continental drift, the rise
of mountain ranges, and other geological changes.6 We might
liken the interaction of re-suggestive structures to the drifting and
grinding of these tectonic plates. Then we can imagine the
re-suggestive structures building up in layers like igneous rock,
each layer formed upon and supported by the layer beneath. And
we can liken the unconscious to the core of molten rock, the
magma, that spills over the earth’s surface when its crust is
broken.
Thea: What a tremendous image!
Guy: Dangerous to push it, obviously. But it may help us imagine how
the re-suggestive structures of personality can evolve, like the
geological features of a restless planet.
Thea: We use something like a volcano metaphor when we speak of a

stressed individual who “blows his stack,” but I’ve never heard
the elements of personality compared to tectonic plates. It’s apt,
though, in suggesting how elements of personality shift and clash
under the stress of life.
Guy: The crucial point is that personality is not to be confused with

temperament – the physiological parameters and predispositions.
Rather, we can imagine it as a layered – that is, tectonic –
structure of suggestions that evolves on top of temperament,
construed from the suggestions it is receiving.
Thea: The sticking point for me is that there must be some essential
6
See http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/Fichter/PlateTect/synopsis.html for an
introduction to geology and plate tectonics.
219
mind, some nucleus of self, already in place to do this construing.

The idea of a mind that bootstraps itself out of a body’s
physiological potential is just inconceivable.
Guy: It isn’t really, once some familiar ideas and fantasies get turned
around. For example: Have you ever wondered why you are the
person that you are, and no one else? As a child, I remember
imagining that having the body I did, the family and childhood I
did, the life history I did, was purely accidental.
Thea: Yes, certainly I’ve had that fantasy many times. And most of my
clients have mentioned it. I think everyone, at one time or
another, must have imagined she was a changeling – trapped in
this life and body though destined for something else entirely.
Buddhists believe that they earn the bodies and parenting they
receive through good karma in previous lives. You’re right:
Those fantasies are very common. What of it?
structures of personality
Guy: Well, actually, it’s just the other way around: You are who you
are – have the particular self you do – just because you have this
particular family and body and life history. You are conceived
and born as a little animal with a human genome and body, but
what we think of as our selves – our personalities – bootstrap
themselves from the suggestions this little creature receives from
its own body, and from the people and things that interact with
that body. It’s no coincidence that your self has landed in this
body, with these parents, these circumstances and this particular
life history. That self evolved to enjoy, suffer and cope with its
particular situation. Given a different situation, it would have
become a different self.
To say it once again, there is no metaphysical self that just
happened to have landed in your body but might have been
incarnated somewhere else. On the contrary. A zygote with a
particular set of genes was conceived by particular parents at a
particular time and place, and developed into a human foetus,
waiting to be born. Within a few weeks of birth, that tiny creature
220
had already begun to turn itself into a little human person with a
mind of its own that gradually developed into the person and self
you are today.
Thea: A Mind of Its Own . . . That sounds like the title of a novel.
“Call me ‘Thea.’ I was conceived at an early age, and the
resulting foetus gradually developed a mind of its own. It was a
pretty good mind, though not an outstanding one. It was not
especially brilliant or distinguished in any way, but it was mine
– and as such, important to me. It got me around in my little
world. It kept me out of trouble most of the time. It even kept me
amused, when nothing much else was happening, as the subject
of its own thoughts.”
Guy: Ah . . . You should write that novel some day. When you do,
make sure your readers understand that although a potentially
human organism got its start at the moment of conception, Thea-
the-person only got started when she was welcomed and nurtured
by other people in a human community. Even then, it took years
before she was ready to function as a complete person amongst
other persons.
You’d have to write something like this: “I was conceived at
an early age, and gradually, in my little body, a mind developed
– based on lots of suggestions from my genes and body and
world. From the beginning, that nascent mind was very busy,
evaluating all those suggestions and forming itself by taking
some of them on board as re-suggestive structures while learning
to reject others. At last, it could boast a full-blown personality,
standing on its own cognitive feet, and presenting an adult face
to the world.”
Thea: You seem to regard personality as a sort of distillation or

encapsulation of a life history lived in a given culture. Is that
correct, or am I missing something? Usually, we think of culture
the other way round, as a kind of field generated by the
interaction of minds and personalities.
221
Guy: Whether you think of mind as internalized and personalized

culture, or of culture as the collective interaction of many minds
is a chicken-and-egg question with no right answer. Later, when
we talk about culture, I will tell you that I prefer to think of
culture at the personal level first; but that is a matter of
intellectual convenience, and nothing more. It makes no more
sense to think of human beings apart from their cultures than to
think of termites without their elaborate tunnels or of spiders
without their webs. The human children brought up by wolves
turn out neither wolf nor human – unable to develop as normal
humans after the acquisition windows for human sociability and
language have closed. As Gibson said, the important question for
you and your clients (once it can be assumed that the brain is
working properly) is not what’s in the mind, but what that mind
is in. And, in every case, what it’s in is a physical environment –
including its own body, its family situation and society, and
finally its whole life history. In the end, it makes little sense to
consider a human mind and personality apart from some cultural
matrix – the system of re-suggestive structures that gets taken on
board.
Thea: OK. Now we’re getting down to it. What does that system of
re-suggestive structures look like, and how does it get built?
What story can you tell about the development of personality?
Guy: Quite a good one, I think, but nothing very startling. This is to be
expected, I’d say, as we’ve been watching and commenting on
the development of human personalities for thousands of years.
Parents, and the experts who advise them, have a pretty good idea
how infants turn into children, and how children grow up.
However, this familiar story, as we’d tell it today, has at least
one novel feature: The theory of self-organization suggests that
we think of personality not as a pool of acquired traits but as a
holarchy. What we call “personality” must have distinct levels of
structure and sub-structure, each supported by levels beneath it
and shaped contextually by levels above.
222
Thea: Why is that?
Guy: Remember that “edge of chaos” principle that we mentioned

early on.7 A separation of levels seems to follow from the
boot-strapping, re-entrant character of self-organizing systems,
and from the competing requirement of such systems for stability
and adaptability both. Separation of levels means that change can
be confined to the highest levels of organization, while more
basic levels are left relatively intact. It means that lower-level
structures can be re-combined in novel ways to serve new
functions with the same basic elements.
Thea: Yes, I do remember. How does this principle of holarchy and

re-combination apply to personality development?
Guy: It suggests that we think about and describe personalities as built

layer on layer out of recombinant patterns, and that we attempt to
understand personality change as a re-combination of such
patterns, evolving gradually under the selection pressures of an
individual’s life and life-choices.
Thea: What does this holarchical perspective do for the theory of

personality development? Have you thought about this at all?
Guy: Yes, because personality development seemed crucial for the

question I started with: the implications of the eD paradigm for
the self-understanding of our species. It seemed clear from the
beginning that the question of identity undergoes a sea-change:
It is not so much “Who am I?” but “What am I?” – “What kind of
system or thing?” One answer now seems clear: I am the
personality that flourishes as best it can in this particular human
body and life-world: I am that self-creating system – and what it
imagines itself to be.
We start from the point just mentioned, that a personality –
7
In Talk #2.
223
yours or mine or anyone’s – seems to grow in layers by processes

of accretion and recombination. At its base is an affect level of
“visceral” likes, dislikes and physiological responses which
develop into what we call emotion – patterns of cognition, affect
and affect display linked to triggering situations evolved through
experience.8 The most basic of these patterns are formed early in
life, and set a background for all that follows.
Thea: Very well. I have no problem with this. What’s next?
Guy: If we take the first level of personality to be comprised of learned

emotive appraisal of situations based on temperament and its
affects, then the second is comprised of all those familiarities,
capabilities and specific skills that support not just our actions,
but every intention and plan we entertain. For example, young
children in our culture learn to drink from a cup, eat with a knife
and fork, cross city streets, and hundreds or thousands of other
elementary skills. In other cultures, the kit of basic skills can be
entirely different. Most obviously, every normal toddler learns to
speak a particular language or languages, in the dialect of its
particular region and neighborhood, but in an individual way.
This whole repertoire of basic skills amount to a second level of
personality.
Thea: This I don’t see. What do skills like speaking English instead of
Japanese or eating with a fork instead of chopsticks have to do
with personality? They are aspects of what we call culture – not
personality.
Guy: I believe culture and personality are more closely related than we
tend to think. In fact, I am inclined to think of personality as a
personal culture – or better, of culture as a collective
8
See Talk #7.
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standardizing of personality.9 It’s clear, in any case, that the

specific competences and deficiencies of an individual both
shape and set limits to what that individual can become.
A speech defect, inappropriate dress or grooming, poor table
manners, and other skill deficiencies will set limits to an
individual’s career and social destiny. Conversely, in Bernard
Shaw’s Pygmalion,10 two linguists teach a Cockney flower girl to
pass as a duchess by refining her speech and manners. In learning
to talk and move like a fine lady, her whole personality is
changed. By the end of the play, she is neither one thing nor the
other, but must invent a life to suit the hybrid she has become.
Thea: Speech therapy in the literal sense! Actually, you’re right about
this. We often find ourselves working with clients who don’t
have necessary social skills, or work skills to make satisfactory
lives for themselves. To help them, we either have to teach them
the skills, or coach them through the process of learning
elsewhere. OK. What’s your third level?
Guy: The re-suggestive structures of capability link up into broad areas

of competence. With the right second-level inventory of skills,
one can pass as a competent flower-girl – or a competent
duchess. You can think of this third level as a social role or
station in life.
Thea: Why treat that station as a separate level?
Guy: Because, like good holons, the second-level skills are

recombinant. Many of the skills of a carpenter, will be found in
the skill set of a locksmith or a plumber. Conversely, I have
known very gifted people whose skills do not add up to any
recognized competence whatever. Here as elsewhere, the whole
9
See Talk #12.
10
On which the musical comedy My Fair Lady was based.
225
is greater (or tragically less) than the sum of its parts. To occupy
a social niche, it is not enough to have all the requisite skills. One
must know how to apply those skills in relation to one another,
and to the situational demands. Becoming a carpenter is more
than gaining competence with all the tools of carpentry.
Thea: Yes, I can see that. A personal toolkit of skills is something more
than a sum of particular skills; and it’s the combination that
makes a unique social actor. What next?
Guy: You’ve just said it. On a fourth level, the personality’s skills and
areas of competence are applied to the problem of drawing
material and psychic sustenance from some particular social
niche. A competent carpenter needs a specific job or contracts to
turn his skills into a livelihood. This is the level that John
Bowlby and his followers call the attachment system – an apt
name, highlighting the ways in which a given individual is
attached and anchored in his world – how he becomes, as you
just said, a social actor.
Thea: Originally, Bowlby was just talking about the quality of the
child’s relation to her mother.
Guy: True, but the notion is completely general. The attachment

system of a foetus is to its mother’s womb, through the placenta
and the umbilicus. The attachment system of an adult typically
includes a job, a family, and a whole social milieu. The
individual’s attachment system evolves over the course of
lifetime – sometimes gaining, but sometimes losing – gradually,
or abruptly and catastrophically.
If all goes well, the individual’s attachment system expands
throughout youth into early and middle life, but then contracts in
old age. As in the biosphere, this evolution is usually fairly
gradual – with some abrupt transitions, often marked by rites of
passage in which the individual’s new status is strongly
suggested to him by the elders and/or his new peers.
226
Thea: But surely, an attachment system is one thing; personality is

another. Again, why mix the two concepts together?
Guy: Because they can be separated only through an over-rigid

distinction between the individual and his environment.
Remember Gibson’s dictum: “Ask not what’s inside your head,
but what your head is inside of.” The clothes you wear, the car
you drive, the house you live in – are these aspects of your
attachment system or your personality? What about your family,
or your career or anything else in which you are significantly
invested? I would say the attachment system must be treated as
an aspect and expression of personality which, in turn, evolves to
fit the attachment system as living creatures evolve to fit their
ecological niche. It’s a version of the Baldwin effect: The
individual mind continues to learn and develop to fit situations
that it has in part selected for itself.
Thea: You realize that none of the levels you’ve mentioned correspond
to any familiar version of personality assessment? That of Jung,
Myers Briggs, DSM IV – whatever?
Guy: Patience. We’re getting there. The levels I’ve mentioned so far
are foundational for the higher-level traits more usually thought
of as personality. After the features we’re born with – our genes
and bodies, and the affective disposition that goes with them,
they form a basis for traits of attitude and belief that make up the
familiar personality types.
Thea: If that link could be demonstrated, it could be very interesting.

We’d have the beginnings of a real theory of how personalities
develop.
Guy: That’s what I’m hoping. In any case, all those chronic attitudes,
pre-dispositions and core beliefs comprise what I’d call the fifth
and sixth levels of personality. The fifth level is that of habitual
social orientation. Tendencies to be depressed, fearful, angry,
exploitative, or whatever, are either matters of temperament or
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re-suggestive structures evolved and carried over from previous

attachment systems. These are often thought of as assumptions
we make about ourselves and other people; but might be better
understood as recurring suggestions to feel, imagine, and act in
specific ways. People do not so much believe crazy notions, as
act habitually as if they believed them. This distinction is
important because it allows us to account for the phenomena of
akrasia, repression and willful ignorance without falling into
confusion or paradox. Whereas, if we follow folk psychology in
thinking of people’s actions as driven by their beliefs, we are
quickly forced to conclude that their beliefs are contradictory.
Thea: I see where you’re going: It really makes no sense to say that an
individual holds contradictory beliefs, while it makes perfect
sense to say that she is driven by contradictory suggestions.
Being driven by contradictory suggestions, she might easily act
against what she thinks of as her “better” (albeit weaker)
judgment; or she may block out unpleasant thoughts with more
powerful safe ones. In our society, compulsive work, numbingly
loud music and pornographic violence are commonly used in this
way – as sources of pre-emptive suggestion, to provide
comforting distraction from things we would prefer not to notice
or think about.
Guy: Indeed, the sixth level of personality, an individual’s
trans-personal orientation (if he has one) toward Life, Nature and
the Cosmos as a whole may develop as a distraction of this kind
– as a defense against personal relationships that are experienced
as burdensome or intrusive. We often find such orientation in
persons with a sense of “calling” or “mission” – in many
religious people, but also in some complete secularists. Indeed,
many artists and scientists and philosophers thoroughly hostile to
religion share an outlook that is more cosmic than social.
Thea: Are you saying that the social and cosmic orientations preclude
each other, and that one comes to the cosmic as an escape?
Guy: No. I wouldn’t say that strong cosmic orientation is always a
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defense against social demands and intrusive personal

relationships – only that it can be used that way. Actually, I agree
with a position I’ve heard you take: that human personalities
mature from a preoccupation with the ego to a concern for
society, and thence to some relationship with the cosmos and life
as whole. My point is simply that a “cosmic level” (whatever we
decide to call it) is worth considering in the theory of personality,
where it will be found to stand in some relationship to the other
levels.
Thea: In my work, we must do more than consider that level. We must

often deal with the spiritual and religious dimension of our
client’s personalities, and with the family issues that may arise as
a result. Often we encourage development of that level (in some
version or other according to the client’s own leanings) as a route
to healing or re-integration.
Guy: Yes. That’s one reason why I think you and your colleagues
cannot afford to be indifferent to this new paradigm. Like it or
not, issues and concepts that were formerly the province of
shamans, mystics and theologians are now within the scope of
science.
Thea: Yes, I’m beginning to see that. And I have to admit that your
discussion of personality structure stirs my interest for its own
sake. I like your geological metaphor of personality as a crust of
re-suggestive structure built up in layers over a core of affect,
sensation and impulse. You’ve got a lot of interesting theory
here. Its direct clinical applications aren’t obvious though.
Guy: That will be your department. I don’t know enough about clinical
work to say much. Suppose we began to think of ourselves as
structures of the kind I’ve been describing. And seeing the
development of each mind as a re-entrant, self-similar process –
apt to get stuck, just as evolving species do, at some local “peak,”
where a drastic personality change is needed, because no small
change would be an improvement. For the psychotherapist, what
would follow?
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growth and change

Thea: I can only guess, as you admit that you are doing much of the
time. So, all right, but let me start by saying that I have no idea
what the consequence for therapists and their clients will be, and
then make my best guess.
Guy: In the true scientific spirit, you might add.
Thea: Yes. Push comes to shove, that’s what science is, isn’t it?
Educated guesswork that can stand up against systematic
criticism informed by systematically collected experience.
You’ve taught me that. And I can see why you insist this is the
best knowledge to be had. So all right then: Here’s my guess:
To begin with, your story reinforces something we already
know – that neurotic cognition and behavior is always adaptive
in some way, and that our clients fear and resist the very
personality changes they hope to achieve in therapy. The neurotic
syndrome is self-protective – usually, in some crucial ways that
our clients have good reason to be afraid of giving up.
Your story recasts this point in biological language: The
traits and attitudes and behavior patterns that comprise a
personality must hang together ecologically, like species in a
biosphere. They must amount, somehow, to a life – however
destructive, painful or impoverished.
Guy: Right. You can see the craziest pattern as a brain’s best attempts
to spin a coherent mind – a mind intelligible to itself, at least.
Thea: What follows for the therapist is that such patterns might be
better understood as a dynamic balance amongst competing needs
and impulses than as static “traits” of personality. They reflect a
kind of homeostasis: Just as the human system monitors and
adjusts itself to maintain an even temperature and blood
chemistry, it also monitors and adjusts to regulate its cycles of
arousal, release and relaxation, and to keep an emotional balance.
Mothers learn to handle their babies with this cycle in mind. You
want to give the infant lots of interesting stimulation while she is
230
awake and eager for it; and you want to tire her out so she will
sleep for a few hours between feedings – and let you get some
sleep also. But you don’t want the child over-tired, wound up and
cranky before bed-time. You must help her to calm down, and
allow herself to sleep at regular times, until it becomes a habit.
Your story and our experience suggest that this cycle of stim-
ulation and relaxation continues throughout life, and that we
learn to manage it by ourselves (or, most of us do) without
mother’s help. We use many tricks for doing so: One person
listens to music. Another plays video games. A third sits around,
munches on chips and watches television. A fourth has sex
several times a day, with or without a partner. A fifth drinks
addictively, and becomes “an alcoholic.” A sixth just sits around
and takes a certain satisfaction feeling mistreated by life.
Guy: Very good. In eD language, we’d say each mind evolves to

sustain a loose, dynamic equilibrium against the random jostling
and change of its environment. We’d speak of tricks like those
you mention as comprising a maintenance repertoire for the given
individual. And we might speak of each instance of such a trick
as a maintenance fix – as we speak of getting a drug fix, or a
chocolate fix, or whatever. Then we would see drug addiction,
for example, as a highly self-destructive maintenance fix, while
my aikido and your volunteer work – on top of all you are already
doing as a working woman and mother – would be more positive
addictions, playing a similar role. Maintenance fixes are modes
of re-creation, in the most literal sense. Everybody needs them,
and has his own reliable favorites.
Thea: Actually, the phenomenon is quite familiar to therapists and

physicians. We already speak of self-medication in just this way,
for any thing a client uses to compensate for some personal
deficit, or for the insults of life. Alcohol, compensatory eating,
and gratuitous, inadequately provoked rage are typical examples.
You are only generalizing the notion a little to cover hobbies and
regular indulgences of all kinds. What does that get us?
231
Guy: Well, it might be useful to remember that addiction, and what

you pejoratively call “self-medication,” are special cases of
something more general. Our minds need to keep themselves on
an even keel; and they acquire these little devices for doing so.
This may help us understand not only self-destructive behaviors,
but many other activities that become important to us although
they serve no obvious practical purpose. Thus religious
observance, of whatever kind, might be considered a “fix,” a very
important one in many lives. So is any art or sport. So is my
writing a fix, through which my mind self-organizes a little, with
the help of a word-processing program and a laptop computer.
Work per se can be a maintenance fix, apart from anything it
achieves, or any income it brings. I am not mocking, you
understand. Obviously, I think some of these activities are
healthier or more productive than others, just as you do. I only
point out the similar roles they play in our mental ecologies.
Thea: Taking that perspective, the goal of therapy might be shifted a

bit: It would become less a changing of character traits, and more
a teaching of specific balancing skills . . . better ways to get
pleasure and excite-ment, or to get comfort and calm. Less a
talking cure (though talk with the therapist could easily be a part
of it), and more a training to understand, accept and satisfy
emotional needs in some more feasible and positive way. Since
a lot of this work can be done in groups, it could be more
economical than one-on-one therapy, as well.
Guy: You know what this reminds me of? All those spiritual practices
from the East, like Yoga, or martial arts, or Zen. Alan Watts
recognized these as forms of psychotherapy quite a long time ago
. . . as Jung did too, for that matter. But mainstream
psychotherapy has had little interest in integrating these
approaches, so far as I know.
Thea: Several existing schools seem to go in that direction.

Bio-energetics, play therapy and Morita are three that come to
232
mind. But they are not mainstream – at least not here in North
America – and I know little about them. They did not really catch
here on for some reason. You think they should get another look?
Guy: I have heard those names, but little more about any of them. The
general point would be that for personality change and
development, whether in formal therapy or not, the learning of
specific skills may be of greater long-term benefit than great
insights or resolutions. The point that Shaw makes in Pygmalion
– that it would be life-changing for a Cockney flower girl to learn
to speak “proper” English – is a forerunner of this approach to
personality.
Thea: Support groups of all kinds have sprung up – with or without

professional guidance – and many of these have caught on. There
is AA. There are gurus and sifus and senseis of all stripes
teaching yoga and martial arts. Not to mention religious teaching
and counseling of all kinds. But talking-cure therapists like me
have not regarded them as colleagues, nor paid much attention to
them as alternative modes of therapy. Perhaps we should look at
them more closely.
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#11 CULTURE AND RELATIONSHIP
Talk #11 Culture and Relationship
. . . those working in social theory, I suggest, should be

concerned first and foremost with reworking conceptions of
human being and human doing, social reproduction and social
transformation.
– The Constitution of Society
Anthony Giddens – Introduction p XX
“. . . a child doesn’t think: I will now let go of the finger in

order to grasp this other thing. Completely unself-consciously,
without purpose, it turns from one to the other, and we would
say that it is playing with the things, were it not equally true
that the things were playing with the child.”
– Zen in the A rt of Archery, Eugen Herrigel
Thea: What are you going to do with the notion of culture? With your
concepts of suggestion and re-suggestive structure, can you
sharpen that concept at all? People cling to ideas and habits –
even silly or harmful ones – as if they themselves would
disappear if they let go of them; and they speak of their cultures
as fragile possessions in need of protection from alien influences.
As a therapist, I spend half my time helping people to disentangle
their identities from self-defeating “cultures,” whether of the
family or the big world.
Guy: It’s surely true that people identify with their cultures, and have
the greatest difficulty in detaching from them. The human animal
depends on that internalized guidance system, as we’ve seen.
Without it we are scarcely human.
235
Thea: But, what is culture anyway? Conceived informally as lore and

lifestyle, the notion seems clear enough; but when the
anthropologist tries to speak of culture as a coherent system, the
inconsistencies and conflicts are obvious.
It turns out that the concept is hopelessly circular. We define
groups by the traits they have in common, and think of culture as
a shared repertoire of attitudes, traits and tools. But when we
invoke that concept to explain why people behave in a certain
way, we find that it explains nothing at all: The Ougabou culture
is what the Ougabou do. The Ougabou do what they do because
they are Ougabou. You can describe what most Ougabou seem to
be doing most of the time, but as soon as you try to specify which
practices are essential to the Ougabou culture, or to describe the
quintessential Ougabou personality, the arguments get started.
This is deeply embarrassing both for anthropologists and psycho-
therapists.
Guy: I can see why anthropologists would have a problem. Why

therapists?
Thea: Because usually it’s neither feasible nor desirable to separate

people from the cultures they belong to and identify with. An
adult Ougabou cannot be understood as a generic human who just
happens to be running the software for Ougabou culture. In some
deep sense, and however you conceptualize identity, he is an
Ougabou. Especially in your account, he has not only an
Ougabou mind and personality, but an Ougabou brain, nervous
system and body. Whatever common humanity he or she
possessed as an infant has been re-shaped, if not altogether
swamped by his Ougabou upbringing and customs.
Similarly, my clients really are the totality of their feelings
and beliefs and habits – including the ones they feel badly about.
Including the dysfunctional ones.
Guy: This may be why Bateson found himself having to conceive of

psychology and cultural anthropology in ecological terms. He
saw that there can be no clear distinction of the mind of a single
236
person from that of the groups to which he or she belongs. As the

ecology of a pond is scarcely separable from the forest around it,
the ecology of a single mind is not separable from its society and
relationships.
Much as we cherish personal self-hood and autonomy, we
know that minds are shaped by the groups they belong to, and by
the cultures they grow up with and take on board – as these in
turn co-exist and co-evolve with one another.
Thea: But when you speak of “cultures” now, in the plural, you don’t
mean those relatively self-contained structures that ethnographers
have tried to document – the cultures of those distinctive tribes
in the literature of anthropology?
Guy: No indeed – and it’s important to be clear about that. Scarcely

any culture in the world today is self-contained and homo-
geneous. A modern society is comprised of many overlapping
cultures, only partially accommodating to one another and not at
all self-contained: There are the ethnic cultures that one
encounters in any metropolitan city. There are professional,
corporate and religious cultures. Readily available on the Internet
there are numerous sexual cultures. Any group you can think of
has a culture of its own – itself a confection and compromise of
diverse influences. People today grow up amongst all of these
and, in varying degrees, are either influenced by them or in
reaction against them. That is one reason why a language of
suggestion and re-suggestive structure is needed.
We need to think of culture not only as a common repertoire
of artifacts and mentifacts but as a system of suggestions and
relationships that people create on-the-fly by living in each
other’s faces. In some circles, Bateson’s notion of cognitive
ecology gets invoked a lot, but we still don’t have anything like
a coherent psychology or social science grounded in the eD
paradigm.
Thea: Why not? What is the problem? Steps to an Ecology of Mind was
published almost forty years ago, you told me.
237
Guy: My sense is that Bateson’s vision needed a better theory of

communication than we had, because the ecology he conceived
cannot be comprised of messages or information or control
signals. These concepts are not fundamental, as we’ve seen.1
They depend on prior understandings, and already gloss most of
the co-evolution and ecological ordering that characterize a living
culture. We can get further if we conceive of cultures as
comprised of co-evolving structures of re-suggestion – of
co-evolving memes, to use Richard Dawkins term.
memes and suggestions

Thea: I’ve heard that word “meme” before. It sounds very scientific, but
I have no idea what it means. What is a meme, exactly?
Guy: Richard Dawkins coined the term in 19762 to call attention to

some interesting analogies between biological and cultural
evolution. The analogies are not as strong as he first thought, but
they are still interesting and worth exploring – with just a grain
of salt to avoid getting carried away by them.
Thea: Which analogies did he see?
Guy: Dawkins introduced the concept of a meme as a unit of cultural

inheritance, comparable to the gene as a unit of biological
inheritance. I prefer to think of them as re-suggestive structures
that resemble genes in some respects, but not in others.
Like the gene, a meme can be conceived as reproducing itself
by imperfect copying, and as competing against alternative
possibilities3 for “market share” – that is to say, for influence in
a population of potential carriers. The carrier population will be
1
In Talk #3.
2
See www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/formerly-hyper-weird/memetics.html.
3
Called alleles in genetics.
238
a scarce resource for the meme, insofar as the time, attention and
energy of potential carriers are limited. From the human carrier’s
perspective there is an opportunity cost in buying into this meme
rather than that competing one; but from the meme’s perspective,
it must survive against fierce competition from alleles (alter-
native memes) also in search of carriers to influence.
Further, like the genes, our memes must be imagined as
“selfish” – in that their reproductive success depends on their
tenacity and deftness in propagating – and not directly on their
contribution to our welfare. Indeed, like genes, some memes (for
example, gambling and extreme sports) may be dangerous or
positively harmful.
Finally, like the genes, our memes evolve. That is to say, by
a process of imperfect replication, natural selection and
Baldwinian choice of the selection criteria that act upon them
they gradually transform and re-combine to produce novel
effects. When people speak of cultural evolution, this evolution
of the meme pool is what they have in mind.
Thea: Those are striking analogies! But you say they should be taken
with a grain of salt?
Guy: Yes, and again for several reasons: First, the meme is not a
discreet or coherent entity in the way that genes are, nor is it an
all-or-nothing proposition. One either does or does not receive a
copy of a certain gene from one’s parents, but one can be
strongly or only mildly influenced by a certain meme, as well as
totally unaware of it. Second, in meme theory, the absolute
distinction between genotype and phenotype cannot be sustained.
We do not find packets of cultural information insulated from a
person’s cultural life, as a gene is insulated from the life of the
body. Third, the variation and selection of memes is and must be
experienced (at least partly) as a matter of conscious design,
however we come to understand consciousness. Memes may be
conceived as selfish propagators but their propagation isn’t
“blind,” as genetic propagation is. We have a degree of autonomy
in our cultural choices. We consciously pick and choose amongst
239
the possibilities on offer, and construct novel possibilities in

doing so. This has not been true of genetic propagation to date –
although technology for such choice is now available. Fourth,
much more radically than genes, a given meme may suggest
different attitudes and activities to different people, or to the
same person at different times. For example, the meme for a
given ideology or religion attracts devotion from some human
suggers but bitter hatred from others. Genes can switch on or off
but, so far as I know, when they’re on they usually do their thing
in a pretty straightforward way. Though we know of exceptions,
where a gene’s phenotypic effect depends on its environmental
situation.
Thea: So the comparison of cultural transmission to the biological kind

is not very good at all.
Guy: No, it’s not. And yet, if we don’t push it too far, the analogy is
significant. It is correct to think of cultural patterns as subject to
processes of imperfect propagation and selection – therefore, to
a version of evolution; and it is roughly correct to think of them
as grounded in transmissible seed-ideas that re-shape themselves
over time. To that extent, the meme analogy is natural and useful;
and it draws attention to the important fact that some cultural
patterns manage to thrive despite the harm they work to people
who practice them.
Thea: All right. I can see that.
Guy: As well, the meme concept breaks culture into separable chunks,
and encourages us to think of cultures not primarily as coherent
structures (though they may evolve a degree of coherence, given
the chance) but more as repertoires of independently trans-
missible chunks. The point is: culture is not an all-or-nothing
proposition. People commonly accept and internalize some parts
of their natal cultures while rejecting other parts. We accept
memes uncritically at first because humans are born with an
aptitude for imitation and no basis for criticism. But as we grow
240
up, we learn to evaluate, choose and recombine the fragments of

culture on offer to us. A given culture is comprised of any
number of such fragments – each with a degree of cohesion that
encourages onlookers to recognize that fragment as a whole, and
with affinities for other fragments that complement it in some
way. Think of sausage and eggs, over easy, with baked beans,
toast, marmalade and coffee on Sunday morning for an example
of independent memes that often cluster with one another as
recombinant elements of the larger meme called “brunch.”
Of course, when you decompose a culture into such
fragments, you must abandon the ethnographer’s notion of
culture as a homogeneous canopy of tribal custom. It no longer
makes sense to think of culture as a unitary, structurally coherent
inheritance from the ancestors, though some memes may have a
traceable lineage and though they will tend to co-evolve toward
ecological compatibility. In a modern society, culture is like a
personal toolkit. Each individual lives in and through a personal
culture of his own.
Thea: But the very idea of culture was invented to describe what the
people of some group have in common – making them the people
they are. Isn’t that what the anthropologists want to study?
culture need not be shared

Guy: It’s what they wanted to study. Fifty years ago, anthropologists
could still write meaningful ethnographies, describing what the
Arapesh, the Yanomamo, or some other other small tribe had in
common. Today this is scarcely feasible for the most remote and
isolated peoples, and certainly not for persons in the thick of a
post-modern world, where no two individuals have identical
cultures. Today, I think we can get further with the idea of
culture if we tackle it from the other end. Rather than starting
with an idea of culture as a shared way of life, we can define it as
the system of re-suggestive structures, that guide a given
individual. We can think of culture as a personal inventory –
241
basically, as a synonym for personality4 – before we ask whence

that inventory came, or with whom it is shared.
Thea: But there are still many traits that the Japanese have in common
by virtue of being Japanese. There are even traits that we
Canadians have in common as Canadians.
Guy: Perhaps true, but they’re not easy to identify. We can talk about
tendencies that many Canadians share, but it’s hard to go further
than that. There are cultural traits that computer programmers or
dairy farmers or civil servants tend to share. There are traits that
you and I share as a couple. It’s easy to find groups of people
with significant culture in common. But in no modern city is it
possible to find even two people with exactly the same culture.
For that reason, it will be simpler and more fruitful to think of
personal culture as the system of re-suggestion that guides a
given individual, and then look for overlaps amongst such
systems in the groups we want to study.
Thea: I don’t necessarily disagree, but what you are saying now sounds
odd from a man who also wants to insist that the elements of
culture are not the work of single persons as such, but always an
evolutionary product of some group as a whole. How can you
turn around and say that culture should be considered first of all
as a guidance system of individuals?
Guy: Of course the elements of culture evolve, and always as the

collective effort of some group. But, so far as I can see, we
actually find culture in only two places: stigmergically encoded
in cultural artifacts, and written onto the brains of living
individuals as components of personality. In Japan, the masters
of a craft or “Way” are honored as “national treasures” because
they re-suggest a portion of their national tradition. But in a
humble way, everyone does this: We transmit culture in the act
of living it and being guided by it.
4
See Talk #10.
242
For a given individual it makes sense to ask which

meme-bearing artifacts she is exposed to, and on how frequent,
regular and exigent a basis. It also makes sense to ask which
memes she has internalized, out of those potentially available.
There’s no contradiction in pointing out that culture is
instantiated only in particular artifacts and particular persons,
though it evolves through group interaction.
I’m surely not denying the collective nature of culture. As
you say, I’m insisting on it. But I’m also saying that it must be
internalized and owned by individuals to exist as anything but
data for archaeologists – as buried relics of cultures no longer
lived by anyone. I’m saying, we should think of culture as the
guidance system of individuals before we ask who shares it.
Thea: OK. I see where you’re coming from. And I take your point that
it may be more convenient in this post-modern, global society to
speak of culture as the possession of individuals before we ask
how it is shared. But I’m not happy with the idea of memes as
species in a cognitive ecology, co-evolving to possess us as their
hosts. I’d rather think of culture as an expression of human
creativity. I think most people would.
Guy: It’s a question of purpose, isn’t it? For most purposes, it’s
convenient to take a common-sense, folk-psychology stance and
think of ourselves as autonomous agents, deciding what to do as
we go along. But for psychology and social science, we may do
better to think of memes that drive us only as they prevail in
competition against other memes.
Thea: But which idea is true? They can’t both be right!
Guy: The argument keeps coming back to that same mistaken question:
“Which idea is the unique truth?” Why is it so difficult to grasp
that interpretations are just alternative ways of seeing, and that it
is nonsense to ask which one is true? Interpretations are only
suggestions; there is always room for a contradictory suggestion
that may be more appropriate in some other situation, or for some
243
other purpose. Here: I make a suggestion that we go to a movie

tomorrow night, and another that we stay home and talk. We need
to make a choice on any given occasion, but no one would say we
must always do one or the other. Similarly, when competing
interpretations are in play, how you see something involves a
choice which may become habitual as a matter of speed and
convenience, but which need not always be made the same way.
An interpretation is just a cognitive strategy; and there may be
great advantage in learning to deploy and use a variety of
strategies as the occasion suggests.
From this perspective, culture is both an expression of human
creativity and a super-personally evolving eco-system.
Sometimes we may wish to stress one aspect, sometimes the
other. If you like to think of culture as an expression of human
creativity, by all means continue to do so. I do myself, most of
the time. But if you ask for an explanation of existing cultural
arrangements, you need a different approach, because these
arrangements are beyond the control of any personal will –
beyond even the collective will of a powerful social group. They
are memes in an impersonal ecology.
Thea: Perhaps that is the real issue: I don’t think I want to know why
our arrangements are as they are. I am afraid to question them too
much – afraid of what I might see if I look too closely. I have to
live by these cultural patterns, and I need to trust them. I need to
think of them as the right and proper way to live, – preferably, as
given us by wise, benevolent gods or ancestors. Of course, I
know what you are going to say. You’re going to say that refusal
to question is the attitude of an ostrich with its head in the sand.
Guy: Well, since you know that, I don’t have to say it. I’ll only say that
to keep a reputation for integrity, the anthropologist must be as
steadfast and skeptical in the study of his own society as of any
other. In your field, of course, the same point is made: that the
therapist’s first and last case study must be himself. But there’s
no denying that many people – probably most – would rather
keep the veil of mystification that science progressively strips
244
away.
Thea: What can I say? There are many hero-projects and each person
has his own.5 For science-minded types like you, the project is to
face the world’s complexity and dispense with comforting
mystifications. By contrast, for the religious, the hero-project is
precisely their faith in the absurd. We therapists have a foot on
both sides of this issue, and often one in our mouths as well.
Let me ask you this: If you treat culture firstly as the
guidance system of individuals, then how does the sharing
happen?
relationship and culture

Guy: Quite simply: Culture gets shared as it is negotiated between
individuals in their relationships. My hope is that the language of
suggestion will help us cut beneath the surface of fictitious
substances like “relationship,” “culture” and “love” without
falling into the mechanical language of “drives”and “scripts” and
“rules.” It might then be possible to describe how we are formed
by the relationships that engage us – not in a rigid, causal way,
but as a matter of affordance, and suggestive influence. For
example, everyone knows that children are shaped by their
parenting and family backgrounds – not just by significant people
in their lives, but by their physical environments as well.
Everyone knows that a person’s beliefs on some matter are
strongly influenced by the lived relationships and interests that
touch upon it. It should be possible to take analytic account of
such influences without falling into a specious determinism.
Thea: Yes, I can see how that might be useful. Therapists are constantly
faced with the problem of understanding why some people
transcend abusive backgrounds or situations magnificently while
others succumb to them. Clearly there are influences at work,
5
On hero-projects, see Ernest Becker’s truly heroic book, The Denial of
Death.
245
sometimes with strong correlations to their apparent con-

sequences. Yet these are influences only – no more than that.
Hopefully other influences, including those of a successful
therapy, will prove more important in the long run.
Guy: The point is, we’re now in a position to see relationships and
cultures as self-organizing processes, not as static entities. We
can think of ourselves as “making up our minds” under a barrage
of suggestive input, or we can think of innumerable suggestive
influences co-evolving into loosely stable ecologies of
personality. We can look at an individual mind (yours, mine or
anyone’s) as family therapists do, thinking of it as one co-adapted
node in a history of inter-personal relationships.
Thea: What will you say about the causal power of culture? In what
sense can we use culture as an explanatory principle?
Guy: I think we can do better by talking about the influence of strong

and frequently repeated suggestions than about the causal power
of culture. There is no such “thing” as a culture. What we call
“culture” goes the same way as “mind.” As brains are minding
systems, groups and societies are culturing systems. “Culture” is
just a sloppy, but sometimes useful word for re-suggestive
structures that are widely shared amongst the members of a
group.
Thea: But where does that leave anthropology then? If culture cannot
be understood as the shared possession of a tribe or a whole
society, there may be nothing left for it to study. Your
ecoDarwinian paradigm puts anthropology at risk in the same
way as it does psychology – robbing both fields of their subject
matter.
an ecology of suggestions
Guy: I can only repeat: It’s a misunderstanding to think that either
concept – mind or culture – becomes less useful because we
begin to understand how they work. I can’t see that the
246
psychologist’s notion of mind is in any danger at all. The case of

cultural anthropology is somewhat different, as this field has
been losing its traditional subject matter to modern history as the
old tribal cultures lose their identities. Correspondingly, the
discipline itself seems to be dissolving into ethnography (a kind
of sociological history) on one hand, and into social psychology
on the other. Cultural anthropology’s focus today must be on two
great questions that apply perfectly well in our own society: How
do groups develop and maintain their shared cultures and
identities? And, how do these shared cultures stabilize (more or
less) as coherent systems? To these questions, the notion of
suggestion ecology seems our most promising approach; and the
eD paradigm may be just what anthropology needs to study the
sharing of chunks of culture – the so-called “memes” – in a
post-modern, globalizing world.
Thea: I’m still not sure what this ecological perspective tells us about
relationships and cultures that we didn’t already know.
Guy: It gives a new perspective, leading us to ask new questions, or to

ask some old questions differently. It sees culture more as a
dynamic system than as a structure of static inter-relationships.
It sees culture as defined less by roles and rules than by its
semi-durable stigmergic features and by the interests, issues and
conflicts that stem from these. As the Zen master might say, we
can see culture as a set of rules for playing ball. But we can also
see it as the dynamic outcome of a large ball, the earth itself, as
it plays with us.
Thea: Interesting. I must admit: there is a pleasing common sense in

seeing culture always as an imperfect compromise of human
animals with their physical environment, history and local
situation.
247
Guy: Yes. And it is pleasing too that the approach will work on any
scale of social organization from individuals to couples to
corporations and countries. What is personality, after all, but
personal culture: the imperfect compromise of a human animal
with its body-type and history? And what is a relationship – of
whatever complexity, with however many players – but a kind of
loose game, played by the suggestions of its participants on a
stigmergic playing field.
The approach also works well for our global society as a
whole. You can imagine all mankind today as sharing a single,
deeply troubled suggestion ecology, painfully knitting together
into a self-consistent system.
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Talk #12 Society
Although societies are composed of human beings who engage

in intentional action, the outcome of the combination of human
actions is most often unplanned and unintended. The task for
sociologists is, then, to analyze and explain the mechanics of
this transformation of intentional human action into unintended
patterns of social life . . .
– Norbert Elias and Process Sociology,
Robert van Krieken
Central social hierarchies are preserved or reproduced through

broad patterns of acquiescence. In other words, people
generally act in accordance with common social norms, even
in cases where those norms run against their self-interest, their
spontaneous empathic feelings, or their moral commitments.
Thus, people do not generally challenge the fundamental
economic principles of a system that skews the distribution of
wealth to a tiny minority; they accept and even celebrate a
political system that minimizes their participation and allows
only marginal space for the consideration of their needs; they
fight in wars that, even with the best outcome, cannot benefit
them or anyone like them.
– Patrick Colm Hogan
Thea: All right. Where are we? What’s on our program for tonight?
Guy: We talked about the notion of culture yesterday. I thought we

might tackle “society” next. I want to show you what it might
mean to think of society as a suggestion ecology.
Thea: You know, “society” is a concept that’s always bothered me.

What is a society, anyhow? It’s a word that gets used a lot
without any clear idea of what it means.
Guy: From one perspective, a society is just a lot of people, doing

things with, for and to one another, and thus connected to each
other through a network of relationships. From another
perspective, it’s a system – an entity in its own right – with
coherent identity and emergent properties of its own.1
Thea: But look: The cells of your body cooperate to keep you alive.
Human beings don’t cooperate to anything like the same degree
to keep society running. If we did, it would be a wonderful world.
In fact, most people don’t see themselves as component parts of
a coherent, functioning whole. I know I don’t, though I wish I
could. I don’t feel that this society deserves much love or loyalty.
I doubt that any society ever did. The functionalist view of
society as a Leviathan – a kind of vast organism – exaggerates
the coherence of the beast and glosses over its internal conflicts.
In a politically self-serving way, one might add.
Guy: True. The functionalist perspective is often abused for

propaganda’s sake, both by the right and left. But remember:
there’s more to an ecology than cooperation, balance and
harmony. Underlying its inter-dependence and systemic
coherence, there’s a Darwinian competition for survival. To
comprise a system, there is no requirement that the component
parts should love one another, or cooperate consciously, or be
confined to specific inter-collaborating functions by some master
designer. We can think of societies as politicious systems, and
then consider how to describe and study them in systemic terms.
Thea: Look: I can surely see that society is simultaneously collaborative

and competitive, as you are saying. It’s collaborative in that the
wresting of human goods from Nature requires cooperation. And
it’s competitive insofar as members contend to take a lion’s
share of the goods produced. But if our society is a system, it’s
a highly dysfunctional one – on the verge of wrecking its habitat
1
See discussion of holons in Talk #6.
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and its own structure. If it’s an ecology, it’s on the verge of

committing suicide. It’s not that I have a problem with any point
you’re making now, but I fail to see how your paradigm gets at
the issues facing society today. To begin with, why do we want
a concept of society at all?
Guy: Not everybody does. Remember Margaret Thatcher’s statement

that there really is no such thing.2 Against Thatcher and her ilk,
many people, including me, want such a concept for its
descriptive and explanatory power. Also, we want to distinguish
between wholesome and destructive societies, and between sick
and healthy ones. We want to be able to say that a destructive
society distorts and wastes the lives of its citizens, and that a sick
society is in danger of collapse or conquest because too few
people feel a stake in keeping it going.
Thea: I’d like to make such distinctions, if you can show me how to do
it. My job is only partly to help my clients adjust to society, but
partly to help them insulate themselves from it when they need to
and build a capability to fight it off.
Guy: I think you can best do that by conceiving society as a suggestion

ecology that includes and influences its people much as a forest
includes and influences but often kills its trees. Like a forest,
society is an open system that draws resources from its
environment and dumps waste-products into it. Like a forest,
society is a highly politicious system characterized by
simultaneous collaboration and competition amongst its
members. Like a forest, society self-organizes, building structural
inter-relationships, and sustaining a dynamic process of
self-renewal and change. Like a forest, society cares little about
the welfare of individuals, nor even consciously about its own
stability to any significant extent.
2
See
www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=10668
9.
251
society and the individual

Thea: All right. Suppose I grant that societies can be seen this way.
What does that mean for us as individuals? How does it help –
you or me or anyone – to lead her life, and understand the world
she lives in?
Guy: It helps us see how society manipulates us with innumerable

suggestions, that it claims we cannot or should not refuse, and
how these turn out to be deceptive, both in their promises and
their demands. Their rewards rarely live up to the glitter with
which they’re advertised. And people nearly always have more
options than they are able to recognize, and more liberty than
they are able to take. Thus, my problem becomes clear: As an
individual, I have to choose amongst the suggestions on offer (the
only options on the table), but avoid being played for a sucker.
Thea: Honestly, my sense is that “society” is too big a concept to be

useful – to anyone except politicians and policy makers, perhaps.
My experience is that no two of my clients live in the same
society. We need a word that gets at the idea of a social world as
it acts upon, and is experienced by specific individuals.
Guy: Let me suggest one: Years ago, when I was working in the
government, we spoke of “rattling someone’s cage” – disturbing
him in some way and (hopefully) prodding him into action. That
image of a personal “cage” gets at the concept you want. The
image of a baby’s playpen, or of a playground for older children,
might be even better. These are relatively safe, predictable
environments, fenced off from the rest of the world and equipped
appropriately to meet the young child’s need for stimulation and
a manageable domain of activity – scaled down versions of those
social spaces that adults maintain for themselves and each other,
convenient for specific purposes, with needed equipment ready
to hand.
Thea: Oh, I like that. Which shall it be, “playpen” or “playground”?
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Guy: For a useful distinction, let’s refer to an individual’s personal

habitat as a playpen, and to our shared environments as
playgrounds. In this usage then, a personal workspace or
bachelor apartment are playpens which can become playgrounds
when visitors arrive. In our home, your desk and our daughter’s
room are playpens for individuals, while the living room and
dining room are common playgrounds. A bed is a playpen when
you sleep alone, but it becomes a playground when you sleep
with a friend.
Thea: Whether you play or just go to sleep?
Guy: Either way. The idea is just that of shared, suitably equipped,
convention governed space. My point is that we live nearly our
whole lives in such spaces insofar as we are not wild animals
who live in Nature as we find it.3 The distinction between
playpen and playground merely comments on the flow of
suggestion in such spaces: In a personal habitat, the suggestions
in a playpen are stigmergic. The baby bats her toys around, and
responds to the stimulation they provide. In a playground,
inter-personal communication is often more important than that
between the individuals and their shared environment. You could
speak of solitary and shared living space if you prefer. The words
we choose don’t really matter.
Thea: The words you’re using are fine. Just tell me: How do they relate
to the concept of society as a whole?
Guy: A playpen is a subset of the world appropriated or assigned for

personal use. My desk, my laptop computer . . . even other people
to the extent we can think of them and use them as reliable role
players. A playpen has to be built or claimed, and must often be
defended in some way against undesired encroachment. Most
3
For a discussion of society as a project aimed at improving on nature see
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s book, Civilizations.
253
people have several, separate playpens like their home, their desk
and cubicle at work, their car – whatever. You can be consigned
to a playpen by others, as when a prisoner is locked in his cell.
But typically, playpens are socially recognized and respected.
You would avoid infringing on another person’s playpen. When
you do so, you are expected to make amends, or at least say
“Excuse me!” To infringe deliberately and without apology or
proper amends is very rude, and there may be serious
consequences – perhaps a fight, a lawsuit, or a criminal
prosecution.
Society as a whole constrains the playpens you can set up
around yourself, and issues strong suggestions on how you
should do so. It also makes nasty suggestions about you to others,
when it does not approve of your playpen.
Thea: Now what about playgrounds?
Guy: With playgrounds, the situation is more complicated, because the

playground is already a miniature society. Playgrounds have to be
negotiated with others; and, once in place, are constitutive of our
social identities. As are playpens, for that matter – especially at
the beginning of life when just find ourselves in them, without a
say in how we got there. But with playgrounds, social negotiation
is of the essence, while playpens are solitary.
Thea: All right: Now that you have these concepts, what do you plan to
do with them?
Guy: I want to use them to get a handle on the relation between a

society and its persons, and between the person and his or her
roles. I want to avoid the chicken-and-egg question of whether
the person is created by his roles and relationships, or the other
way round. I want to see person and relationships as arising
jointly in the negotiation and maintenance of these structures.
Thea: If I see where you’re going, your point will be that human
animals are created and born through the familiar biological
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process, but that each new person, her parents and the name they
give her, her basket or crib, her home, and everything that comes
to her . . . all these things evolve together. The person as such
does not exist, nor is anything “hers,” except as she lives with
them and uses them, and is confirmed by others in doing so.
Guy: That’s it. It may sound paradoxical, because our daughter was
already a person to us even before she was born. But to herself,
not yet! A social identity accrued to her only gradually as became
involved in relationships with people and things, and as she came
to be aware of those relationships and learned to set a value on
them. The crib we bought her did not become her crib until she
bonded with it and made it hers – just as she made herself your
baby in accepting the identity we offered her, and bonding with
you.
My point is that social identity depends on such bondings and
unbondings, which occur with everything around us. To the
extent we respond to the suggestions that something affords, it
becomes a part of us – a feature of a playpen and a source of
social identity. On this account, even animals with private nests,
burrows, pair bonds or staked out ranges and hunting grounds,
enjoy a degree of social identity vis-a-vis others of their kind.
Thea: On this way of thinking, the concept of “identity” gets opened up

and spread across a landscape of relationships with people and
objects. Literally you are constituted as a person by your
relationships – and nothing else. The car we pay for, maintain
and drive is not just a car. It is our car – making a contribution to
our identities as individuals and as a family. And you are my
man, (not just a man). And I am your woman.
Guy: I surely hope so, and it’s good to hear you say it.
Thea: OK. Where does this get us as amateur sociologists?
Guy: It gives us means to analyze our family (should we wish to) as a

social entity – a structure of relationships not only amongst its
255
various members and non-members, but with the house,

neighborhood and city we live in, the work we do, the money we
make, the books we read, the stuff we talk about – with all the
things, important and less so, that furnish our social identities and
make us who we are. We can talk not only about these things in
themselves, but about the suggestions we draw from them, and
the ways we negotiate the uptake and implementation of these
suggestions.
And then, because we can now describe a family in such
detail, we have means to make a very rich comparison of
ourselves to other families, and to frame and test hypotheses
about families of different ethnic and religious backgrounds,
income levels, and so forth, as sociologists do. I think it gives a
much richer view of the individual as a social actor: neither game
player nor role player, but embedded sugger, responding
autonomously to the suggestions it receives. This may be what is
needed to help social science get off the ground. Or not. At least,
it will eventually teach us that something more is needed.
Thea: But how does one think in these terms? How does it help us
guess what another person is likely to do? If I think of you as a
role player, I will expect you to behave toward me in various
husbandly ways. If I think of you as a rational agent, I can take
what you and Dennett call an intentional stance,4 and make a
shrewd guess at your intentions from my knowledge of your
beliefs and wishes. But as an embedded sugger, you might be
capable of anything! Who knows which suggestion might get the
run of your brain and body because it “seemed like a good idea
at the time”?
Guy: It’s true that any suggestion at all might strike my fancy. People
really are unpredictable to that extent. It’s no weakness but a
strength that this theory can recognize that fact and work with it.
At the same time, it can say that we are usually rather predictable
4
In Talk #3.
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because suggestions “from left field” are discarded most of the

time. Most of the time, we can be counted on to behave like good
role players, barring strong temptations and opportunities to the
contrary. At which point, fidelity to role is tested – and may
prove wanting, alas.
In a given situation, this theory might help you decide
whether the individual is more likely to follow the suggestions of
role, or of immediate desire or of long-term self-interest. It tells
you that he might do any of these, depending on which
suggestions are strongest, which in turn will depend on the
suggestions of his temperament, his social history, and his
immediate social situation. As the notorious Milgram and
Zimbardo experiments have shown.5 Are you familiar with them?
Thea: Vaguely. They came up in one of my courses, I recall. The

Milgram experiment showed up a human willingness to hurt
other people out of obedience to authority. Zimbardo’s
experiment was even nastier. It showed the tendency of people
placed in a position of power over others to push that power to
sadistic extremes of abuse and degradation.
Guy: That’s right. I needn’t go into the details here. They’re easily
available on the Web, if you want to refresh your memory.
Zimbardo’s experiment was played out for real at Abu Ghraib –
that infamous prison in Iraq. The point I want to make is that
suggestion theory can account for these behaviors (and for those
at an opposite pole of heroism and human goodness) much better
than role or self-interest can. In general, methodological
individualism – the habit of reducing collective action to the
choices of rational, utility-maximizing individuals is
over-emphasized in North American social science. It’s useful
and interesting to see how far that game-theoretic approach can
go toward explaining group choices and behaviors. But I think
it’s mistaken to insist that group effects do not exist, or are of
5
See www.LuciferEffect.com.
257
negligible importance. Indeed, that preference for reducing group

effects to the rational choices of individuals, congenial as it is to
the ideology of our capitalist society, might itself be seen as a
group effect – a prime example of what social psychologists term
normative conformism – conformism arising out of the desire to
be liked or accepted.
Thea: There’s a dilemma here, I think. One would like to acknowledge

those group effects – and the inter-connectedness and mutual
dependency of people on one another. “No man is an island,” as
John Donne said. Yet, to acknowledge this truth and take it
seriously must pose a serious threat to civil liberty and freedom.
Every nasty totalitarianism, whether on the left or right, begins by
affirming the reciprocal interdependency and obligation of
citizens to one another, and moves on from there to assert the
logical priority of society over the individual, and the irreducible
debt of each individual to society and the state. From there it’s
only a step to some form of “Führer prinzip,” and the notion that
it is sweet, proper and glorious to die for one’s country. While
killing lots of people from other countries in the process.
Guy: I couldn’t agree more. That’s a point I need to be careful about.

Just as Darwinism was easily misunderstood and twisted into
“social Darwinism,” so the concept of an “ecology of mind”can
easily be misunderstood to subordinate individuals to the group
– or, in practice, to a self-serving elite and leader.
Thea: Are sure that’s a misunderstanding?
Guy: Yes, because the individual’s dependence on others – and on

suggestions from others – does not detract from his autonomy as
an evaluator and negotiator of competing suggestions. In growing
up, we learn to take responsibility for the ecologies of suggestion
in our own heads – learning that we are, after all, their owners,
and that we must live with their consequences. Learning to be
empowered by the suggestions we receive, rather than hypnotized
by them.
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Thea: In your story, the individual is primarily a negotiator, it seems:

internally, a negotiator amongst the competing suggestions she
receives; externally, a negotiator of playgrounds created and
shared with others. Negotiation of some kind is happening
everywhere you look.
Guy: That’s an interesting perspective – and a useful one. There’s been

a lot of research on negotiation that social science could co-opt
and use for its own purpose. Also, the interplay between power
and problem solving in any negotiation process corresponds
nicely to the dual aspect of suggestion as a possibility and a spell.
Thea: How do you mean?
Guy: Well, as we saw early on, a suggestion both raises a possibility

and casts a little “spell,” prompting the recipient in its direction.
Correspondingly, the negotiation process is a problem-solving
exercise that creates value for its participants. But it is also a
competition to distribute value among participants according to
their bargaining power. So we could say the negotiation process
is both cognitive and coercive, in the same way a suggestion is.
You might liken the negotiation to a game of go,6 conceiving
each suggestion as a stone laid down – adding to the pattern
created on the board, but planned to influence that pattern to
one’s own advantage. As in a go game, negotiation gets started
out of the need for commonly understood arrangements on a
common playing field. The negotiation, like the go game, turns
the playing field into a shared playground. One important
difference is that the values at stake in real-life negotiations are
not fully specified in advance. In a go game, the players fight for
territory, and there is only a fixed amount to share between them.
In a real negotiation, the game is not zero-sum. Value may be
created through cooperation, and new values – derived from the
6
A complex board game with very simple rules, invented in China over
three thousand years ago. See http://senseis.xmp.net/?GoHistory.
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players’ life-situations – may be discovered. Or conversely and

tragically, value may be destroyed as the players fight each other
for a larger share.
Thea: I’m intrigued by your point about the playground as a source of

values. Outside the therapeutic encounter, we normally think of
values as completely personal or cultural – beyond discussion.
They couldn’t be, of course. But there’s something approaching
a taboo against asking why people want the things they want.
Guy: Of course, our playgrounds can’t be the only source of value. The
organism, with its physique and temperament, makes its desires
known. But if you start from an assumption that human bodies
are much alike, then our playgrounds, and life history of
playgrounds, must be the major source of difference in our
attitudes and values. In these existential playgrounds we not only
experience emotions, but learn to expect them: the feelings of
satisfaction, mastery, frustration and so forth. And it is these
expectations of pain, pleasure and emotion from recognized
situations in our playgrounds that form our values and attitudes.
Thea: With an implication that we see other people primarily as less or

more reliable role players in our playgrounds?
Guy: To some extent. But most of us also learn to see others as

individuals in their own right, with their own playpens, and their
own agendas for us. Always, we look at people with this double
vision: as game players in their own playpens, and as role players
in ours. A nice example might be the negotiation of space on a
highway. Insofar as other drivers stay in their lanes at the speed
of the traffic, we have no reason to think of them as
counter-players – just as so many objects in our space. Insofar as
we know them to be willful, erratic people like ourselves, we
practice defensive driving to negotiate the highway’s common
use.
Thea: And of a driver who does not conduct his side of this tacit
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negotiation with due respect, we say: “He must think he owns the
road!”
Guy: Yes. Kant thought we should treat people as ends, and never as
means. In fact, we treat each other all the time both as means to
our ends, and as separate individuals with ends of their own; and
it is only because, and to the extent we do this that civil society
is possible. If we could not use others as role players in our
playpens, there would be no society. If we saw each other only
that way, as sociopaths do, there would be that permanent war of
Hobbes – of all against all. Civil society comes about to the
extent that we are willing and able to negotiate a public space as
its playground.
civil society
Thea: Civil society. That’s a phrase one hears a lot these days. What
does the concept mean, really? What is “civility”? What is “civil
society”?
Guy: Many definitions have been attempted, with a general idea of

distinguishing the voluntary and spontaneous association of
individuals from transactions conducted under the state’s
authority.7 Literally, the word “civility” means “behavior
7
Here’s one definition, from the London School of Economics: “Civil
society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared
interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct
from those of the state, family and market, though in practice, the
boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often
complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a
diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree
of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by
organizations such as registered charities, development non-governmental
organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-based
organizations, professional associations, trade unions, self-help groups,
social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups.”
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_society.
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appropriate to the city.” I think of it as a kind of default culture

that allows strangers to come together, to explore any tastes or
interests they might have in common, and to develop
relationships and specialized cultures based upon these. It begins
with a climate of trust, usually protected by a Hobbesian
sovereign, that allows people to walk in the streets, buy and sell
in the marketplace, and meet together for their own good
purposes, with little fear of being robbed or killed. It comes to
include all the little customs associated with public behavior –
the way we dress for various occasions, the way we do (or do
not) queue up at bus stops, the way we do (or do not) hold doors
for one another, or step aside to let one another pass. It sets a
limit on smoking around non-smokers, the volume at which we
play car radios, and generally on behaviors that encroach on the
personal space of others. Under such conventions, society can
then segment itself for different occasions, still without formal
control by anyone, granting safety for specialized institutions and
cultures to flourish.
Thea: This civil culture may be very weak – may scarcely exist. It may
not have evolved yet. Having evolved, it can break down. Or may
become contentious to a point where you need laws and formal
procedures to defend it.
Guy: Social historians have shown all these processes at work. In

Europe, for example, from the Renaissance until the First World
War, norms of “good manners” and “civilized” behavior evolved
at court, in business practice, and in aristocratic and then in
middle-class homes. After the world wars, and then abruptly in
the sixties a new ethic of individualism began to erode the norms
of civility in middle-class society. Those norms today seem vague
and weak compared with middle-class norms at the end of the
19th century.
Thea: Well, it seems clear that civil society is under stress these days.
Why is that, do you think?
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Guy: Chronic war, long and bitter historical memories, polyethnic

cities, huge discrepancies of income and the scramble to get
ahead must be part of the explanation. But in simple fact, the
world’s cultures are no longer insulated from one another by
distance and slow communications. They inter-penetrate and
enrich and vex each other. Of course, they evolve by doing so –
but the process is not an easy or a comfortable one, especially for
people who expect economic loss, as well as loss of identity from
the globalizing changes, and feel resentment accordingly.
Governments and multinationals look to social science for
advice on how to sell their products and manage their people’s
discontents, while ignoring an all but universal consensus that
social fabrics around the world are fraying badly.
social science
Thea: Is there even such a thing as social science? So far as I can see,
there isn’t yet. There are university departments and projects
studying various aspects of social life but no coherent, unitary
science of society as such.
Guy: That is true. Until recently, we lacked the unifying conceptual

framework for such a science, but I believe that is no longer the
case. I see the eD paradigm as what’s been missing. With a new
way of understanding order and change as outcomes of a
bottom-up, self-organizing process, and with a solid grounding in
human biology, the knowledge that various faculties have already
collected about “Man in society” begins to comprise a coherent
structure.
Thea: You think so?
Guy: Yes, but with two large reservations: First, the numerous specific
questions and areas of study will continue to require different
methodologies and angles of vision. As knowledge grows it
becomes more specialized. This is inevitable in any area of study,
not just social science. Second, much more than most fields –
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except yours, perhaps – the social sciences will remain theaters

of conflict for various political concerns and causes. Until war,
racism, sexism, and all forms of economic exploitation are no
longer issues – no longer painful memories even – people will
seek to draw intellectual ammunition from these sciences, and the
scholars themselves will enlist on opposing sides.
Thea: Don’t hold your breath!
Guy: I know better than that. I expect social science to remain deeply
contentious until people learn to negotiate their conflicting
concerns and interests instead of fighting about interpretations.
It remains the case that for all we know about human
societies, all the information that’s been collected, and all the
books that have been written, even those who really want a
comprehensive social theory have lacked the tools to build one.
I think these tools are now available – along the lines we’ve been
discussing.
Thea: For those who can accept your eD paradigm.
Guy: Admittedly. The reception of these ideas has been mixed. Many
sociologists have questioned whether an evolutionary approach
to social change is valid, or whether it adds anything useful.8
Thea: But you think it does.
Guy: Yes. Provided we are careful in formulating its key concepts, and
resist the temptation to spin sociological ideas into ideology, I
think the eD approach has much to offer. Deployed with due
caution, it is a strong paradigm for social phenomena as for so
much else: framing issues of cultural stability and change in
terms of a self-organization and ecology; providing a conceptual
8
For example, see Anthony Giddens’ discussion in his book The
Constitution of Society.
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language to describe the “pull” and reconciliation of competing

suggestions on persons, groups and organizations; linking our
contradictory views of social actors as dutiful role players or
self-interested game players. Seeing ourselves instead as needy
human suggers who live by evaluating,, responding to and
internalizing the suggestions we receive.
Thea: Even with these strengths, given the contentiousness of its

subject matter, what real knowledge can social science offer? I
know the same question can be raised about my own field. But
psychology, at least, can be practiced and applied in an open
market. Whether as therapist or client, you get to choose the style
and the ideology that suits you. By contrast, the market for social
research (apart from oddball intellectuals like you) is comprised
of large corporations and government agencies with products and
programs to design, sell and evaluate.
Guy: We “oddball intellectuals” may be the only real market for

authentic social science. What the organizations want is not
disinterested knowledge, but more like a technology – to help
them deal with their various publics and with their own
personnel. I think this manipulative technology will backfire,
because the clever people using its methods are outsmarting
themselves: The long-term effect of their manipulations will be
to make society ungovernable, as people become aware that they
are being systematically herded and hoodwinked, and thus
increasingly suspicious of what their leaders are telling them. The
signs of this are everywhere. It’s already happening.
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#13 GROUPS AND GOVERNANCE
Talk #13 Groups and Governance
Man has an inclination to socialize himself by associating with

others, because in such a state he feels himself more than a
natural man . . . He has, moreover, a great tendency to
individualize himself by isolation from others, because he
likewise finds in himself the unsocial disposition of wishing to
direct everything merely according to his own mind . . . [This
mutual antagonism] . . . impels him through the desire of honor
or power or wealth, to strive after rank among his fellow-men
– whom he can neither bear to interfere with himself, nor yet let
alone.
– Principles of Politics, Immanuel Kant
Thea: You were going to talk about government this evening – the role
of government in a self-organizing society. That’s a bit of a
contra-diction, isn’t it? If you have a central government taking
and enforcing decisions on society, how can you speak of self-
organization?
Guy: It’s the same paradox, if you care to see it so, as self and
consciousness in a human brain. Or global meaning in a text
made up of individual words. There’s no real contradiction.
Thea: Well, that’s something you’ll have to show me.
Guy: In part, I already did when we talked about context and the
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hermeneutic circle.1 The ecological stability of thought patterns

in a brain bears about the same relationship to individual
suggestions that the meaning of a text bears to its words. In both
cases, the parts comprise the whole, but acquire their exact
significance only from the context in which they occur. The same
is true of society and government. The actions of its innumerable
persons and organizations derive their public meaning from a
context that they themselves comprise. Government articulates
and codifies this context, and enforces it to the extent it can. If
you think of government as a reflexive action of the society upon
itself, the contradiction disappears.
Thea: Not much consolation when you get caught in some

money-grabbing speed trap, and the cop is giving you a ticket.
Government feels alien enough then.
Guy: Or when it demands that you pay taxes to finance hare-brained

military ventures that make you less secure and poorer year by
year. Sure. Many feel robbed or subjugated by their
governments. Many feel that vital needs are being ignored. Many
feel, often correctly, that their governments are acting with
disastrous folly. Nonetheless, our governments and their policies
must be seen as the current outcome of our collective action and
inaction. What else could they be?
Thea: Perhaps. But on the surface, at least, we perceive that societies

are manipulated from the top down, often against their
spontaneous tendencies and clearly articulated wishes, by
powerful individuals and factions that compel the rest of us go
along.
Guy: No argument. But such individuals are themselves the products

of a society and its socializing processes, installed and removed
through a social game that we call politics. Too often, these
1
In Talk #5.
268
individuals and their organizations forget their limitations – how

they are shaped and constrained by the societies they hope to
govern. Political hubris is all to common. What’s clear though is
that bottom-up and top-down processes of social life and
government reinforce and interfere like ripples on a pond.
Government works best when it channels and expedites the
spontaneous trends of a society. It’s at its worst – most dangerous
and least effective – when it seeks to thwart those trends. Soviet
Russia’s attempts to collectivize agriculture and those of the
United States to curb the use of recreational drugs like alcohol,
marijuana and cocaine are notorious examples of what can
happen when governments intervene clumsily to effect social
change against the customs and trends of the society itself.
Thea: It’s true, of course, that every action of government has undesired
side effects. But your examples show precisely that governments
are not effectively constrained by their societies. Any faction that
captures the machinery of government can run the state for its
own agenda or to fill its own coffers. In the long run, there may
be the devil to pay – but only in the long run. In the short term,
there’s hardly any constraint at all.
government as an industry
Guy: I surely do not deny that fanatical or kleptocratic governments are
all too familiar. In fact, what Samuel Finer called “the
extraction-coercion cycle” is a central function of the beast.2 If
a goodly portion of what is extracted finds its way into the
private bank accounts of the rulers and their supporters, that is
only to be expected. The political system does well to keep this
within limits, under some reasonable control. It is impossible to
prevent.
My point, rather, is that despite all fantasies to the contrary,
governments do not really control the societies they govern.
Governments receive suggestions from their societies as societies
2
The History of Government, S. E. Finer
269
do from their governments. In both directions there is influence;

in neither is there anything approaching real control, partly
because the individuals concerned, even threatened with torture
and death, are never wholly deprived of autonomy, and partly
because the whole cultural ecology (society, government and all)
cycles and changes unpredictably on the edge of chaos.
Thea: If governments don’t really control society, then why do we have

them? What real function do they serve?
Guy: I think we should regard government as a peculiar industry within

society, specialized for the production of various public “goods.”
And we should not forget that much of the governance of any
society is carried on outside the official institutions of
government by lesser organizations, groups and individuals
which, of course, must face the task of governing themselves.
The governance of society self-organizes spontaneously in the
construction and maintenance of its social relationships
(including those of rulers and ruled), and in the feedback loops
of relationship.
Thea: That concept of a “public good” has always bothered me. The
productions of government are not always good, and never
benefit all citizens equally. A beautiful park benefits the rich
people who can afford to live around it much more than poor
ones who live miles away in slums.
Guy: No argument. By definition, public goods are facilities and

services that cannot be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis in the
way that people buy their groceries. The textbook example is a
lighthouse which warns a fisherman off the rocks whether or not
he helped to build it or keep it running. Street lighting and police
protection are further examples. If the streets are well policed,
they are kept safe for tax evaders and tax payers alike. The
ultimate public goods are things like territorial defense and
security of life and property, that require a monopolized
capability for effective, organized violence.
270
Such goods are not called “public” because everybody wants

them. Indeed, the “goods” produced by government may be very
great evils that only a powerful few really want. They are called
“goods” strictly in the economic sense that people are getting
paid to produce them; and they are “public” because they must be
collectively agreed and planned and paid for through some
political process. For that reason, they always entail an element
of coercion against dissenters who do not want these alleged
“goods” at all, and against “free riders” who would prefer to have
the benefits without paying their share of costs. Both these
problems will appear to varying degrees in any group of any size,
as a downside of the cooperation, sense of community,
heightened identity, and whatever else, that the group affords to
its members and welcome guests. Accordingly, some form of
sanctioning is needed in any group to ensure that members “pay
their share” by observing the group’s norms.
Thea: In any group? That I don’t see. I don’t see what your “public
goods” have to do with private groups – like our relationship, or
like one of my therapy groups, where each client has paid to be
there. Whatever “goods” such groups produce are surely
financed pay-as-you-go.
Guy: Not entirely. It’s true that your therapy group is financed by
clients or by insurance plans that pay directly for your services.
But it also observes a group culture that represents both cost and
benefit to the members themselves – much like the safety of a
public street. In any group,”going along to get along” is a cost
that members pay for the benefits of membership. We could say
that any group exists as a pattern of suggestions, promising some
mix of public and pay-as-you-go benefits if its norms are
observed, while threatening sanctions if they are not.
We can think of any group, any association of individuals, as
a kind of local public – private against the rest of the world, but
public amongst its members. Society is fractal in this way – self-
similar on every scale, as the predicament of the individual in any
group is essentially the same, be it his family, the organization he
271
works for, or the entire nation. At every scale there is a

permanent tug-of-war between centripetal suggestions urging
greater commitment to the group and its values, against
centrifugal suggestions prompting toward withdrawal with
greater autonomy and self-interest.
Thea: Do you think of personal relationships in this way? Our marriage,

for example?
Guy: Why not? At a minimum, a viable friendship or love relationship

involves the “production” of pleasant time spent together. But
nearly always in a marriage, there will be other locally public
goods as well, involving all the familiar kinds of marital coercion
– nagging, cold shoulder, shouting matches, and even violence.
That’s why it is so much more difficult to live with people than
just to love them. Love wants good time spent together – no more
than that; cohabitation needs many other locally public goods,
always requiring negotiation, compromise and sanctions against
defection from explicit or tacit agreements. A love affair is
relatively free; marriage is a politicious relationship.
Thea: Then why do we enter into it?
Guy: Economists ask essentially the same question: Why do people

band together in organizations instead of dealing with each other
at “arms length,” on a contractual basis – ad hoc and
case-by-case. Part of the story is that permanent employees have
much more opportunity to develop a group culture and
knowledge base than would be possible with sub-contractors or
temporary help. Of course, that group culture and knowledge
base represent locally public goods for the individuals concerned.
Also, good organization reduces the cost of individual
transactions, making them more efficient.
Thea: Your emphasis on sanctions and the free-rider problem seems

over-stated. What about group members who do more than their
fair share: exceeding the norms, policing the group’s norms,
volunteering when there is work to do? Some people join and
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participate in groups as expressions of their individuality. Far

from regarding the discipline of group membership as an irksome
constraint, they experience it as an expression of their freedom.
Guy: Well, why not? There is no claim that everyone will dissent from
group projects, or try to freeload on them – only that some people
may. The point is simply that people join and participate in all
kinds of social groupings from motives that remain essentially
private and personal. They hope to share in such goods as the
group affords, but may not be eager to pay their share of the costs
– like showing up for a work party or a battle. For this reason,
even the most voluntary groups defend their norms and customs
with a variety of sanctions, deployed either on a formal or on a
casual and customary basis by the group members themselves.
Your therapy group is policed not only by the clients but also by
you, the therapist; accordingly, it may be said to have a form of
“government.” But even kids playing stick ball in a field will
police each other sufficiently to keep the game going – and will
do so quite spontaneously when no adults are present. They act
as players, but sometimes as informal umpires as the occasion
warrants.
Thea: So, as you said last night, they sometimes behave like role
players and sometimes like self-interested agents, but are
primarily neither.
Guy: Primarily they are suggers who contribute to, but also exploit or
withdraw from groups they belong to, as the suggestions move
them.
Thea: All right. But then one still must ask: If groups can regulate their
members spontaneously, then why is government needed, and
how did it evolve? Perhaps there is no paradox, but there will be
permanent tension between a central power and the
self-organizing processes you speak of. How this tension plays
out, and why formal governments arose to begin with, are
questions you’ll have to answer.
273
Guy: The short answer is that formal government evolved because it

could, and because it was needed.
Thea: Needed for what?
Guy: To suppress conflicts and set a context, as we’ve already seen. In

groups as in single persons, there are competing suggestions –
competing demands arising from competing interests. On any
large scale, the conflicts are more easily suppressed and
competing suggestions more easily integrated through a
Hobbesian state with a near-monopoly on violence than through
any informal arrangement. Through such integration, and much
as happens in the brain itself, government performs a crucial
context-setting function, providing a framework for the private
lives and private transactions of its people.
Thea: The notion of government as a device for containing conflict is

pretty well understood. Its role in social context-setting is still
pretty vague. At least, our expectations are vague in many areas.
We expect government to make and administer a body of law –
the rules under which people’s economic and private lives are
conducted. We expect it to maintain harbors, roads, bridges and
other public facilities. Most people today expect that it will play
some role in regulating the economy – though precisely what it
should regulate is disputed. There is no consensus on the terms
of that context – on what exactly it should specify or leave free.
Guy: Government’s context-setting function traditionally began with

and focused on the seizure and defense of some national real (or
royal) estate. In time, its functions came to include protection of
life and personal property, establishment and maintenance of the
public infrastructure you were just describing, and a degree of
leadership – or rather a focusing, financing and exemplification
– in the direc-tions toward which people’s aspirations and
energies are turned – in war, religion, colonization, research, art,
and whatever else.
Leadership is the wrong word, really. Governments seldom
274
lead, but rather mark as salient the directions a society is already

pursuing – blessing some enterprises, hindering others, raising a
standard and pointing a way, making strong suggestions to go one
way rather than another.
Thea: And all this is what you mean by “setting a context”?
Guy: Yes. The infrastructure of harbors, roads, and other facilities; the
codes of law; the marking of salience; the administrative
machinery. Yes. As I’‘ll suggest in a moment, all these features
and facilities comprise what may be conceived as a form of
capital – public capital.
Thea: I could buy that. But there is a further question here: If

government is a kind of industry as you are saying, then who are
the industrialists? For that matter, who are its customers? How
did societies come to form and submit to governments in the first
place? Political theorists talk about some kind of tacit “social
contract,”but it couldn’t have happened that way!
the political entrepreneur

Guy: It didn’t. Forget the “social contract” myth. There never was such
an agreement anywhere. At most, there is often a rough
consensus that the existing structure of power, authority – and
yes, exploitation – is preferable to the chaos and bloodshed
entailed in replacing it. Hobbes was correct that rational men
should prefer a single tyrant to the lawlessness of competing
tyrants. Usually, they will do so.
To get at the origins of government, we must imagine not just
one monopolist of violence, but a variety of “political entre-
preneurs” who, from whatever motives, take various aspects of
public business upon themselves – including collective
protection, of course, but other tasks as well. A group acquires
the rudiments of formal government when even one such
individual is in business. The history of government is a history
of political entrepreneurship.
Thea: Which tasks? And what does “in business” mean in this context?
275
Guy: The tasks need not appear all at once, nor be combined in a single
person. Notoriously, as Hobbes said, there are tasks of defense,
peacekeeping and adjudication. There are numerous tasks of
leadership. There are priestly tasks of suggestive authority, and
the sovereign’s symbolic task of standing for and representing the
group as a whole. These and other tasks present themselves in
due course.
For a political entrepreneur to be “in business” means simply
that the task(s) he is performing are recognized as his
responsibilities, and that compensations and prerogatives for
performing them are conceded to him accordingly.
The thing to be clear about is that government, however it
emerges and whichever prerogatives it claims, is a matter of
arrogation and acquiescence, not of contract. A political
entrepreneur takes certain powers to himself, and (unless he runs
a pure protection racket) performs certain recognized tasks and
produces some public goods. Others become his customers
insofar as they submit to his demands and benefit (if they do)
from his “goods.” There is no contract. Contract would imply a
symmetrical bargaining process that rarely exists between
political entrepreneurs and their constituents.
Thea: For just that reason, I doubt that people can be said to “buy” the
services of their elected office-holders – still less of hereditary
monarchs or dictators.
Guy: You are right, of course. I’m using the market as a convenient
metaphor. But it’s not hard to unpack, nor to correct when it
becomes misleading. What we can say is that there is are felt
wishes for public goods of every description; and corresponding
offers to organize for the satisfaction of such wishes. It is true
that these offers are often accompanied by violence and threats
of violence, as is not the case in an orderly market. In politics, it
is routine to make Godfather-type suggestions that people cannot
refuse. But there are also bids for allegiance, exchanges of favors
and promises, explicit and tacit bargaining, and other forms of
market behavior. There is even a generalized law of supply and
276
demand, insofar as an individual’s desire for something will

propagate through society through the promises and threats that
he will make, and the work he’ll do to obtain satisfaction. The
economist’s “law of supply and demand” is the special case (for
an organized market) of a more general law of “propagating
wants.”
Thea: You need to explain that last point. I didn’t follow it.
Guy: Efforts that you will invest to get what you want will always
suggest motivations to others, either to supply your desire or
thwart it. The work you then do, or promise to do, represents a
“price” you are willing to pay. Since others also have desires, the
resulting flow of suggestions tends to settle into loose
equilibrium – a kind of semi-stable market.
Thea: What you’re saying is that despite obvious differences between

the political arena and the marketplace, you can treat them in
similar language, with almost identical concepts.
Guy: Yes. I think the separation of economics from political theory

was at best a mere academic convenience – at worst an
ideological fraud. Markets have always needed political services
– contract law and protection from thieves and bandits. The
modern marketplace, treating land and labor as alienable
commodities is definitely a political institution in an historically
conditioned, political context.
Conversely, as a matter of historical fact, our present political
order of more-or-less liberal and democratic nation states was the
invention of a rising “middle class” of craftsmen, merchants,
industrialists and bankers, who could no longer be excluded from
government by a land-owning aristocracy of knights and clergy,
the traditional political classes.
My sense is that the history of government is seen most
277
clearly as a reflection of the history of capital.3 A rising global

population led to conflicts for access and control of the Earth’s
resources. Both conflict and the need for increasingly efficient
exploitation of resources drove advances in technology and
science, which in turn, stimulated the accumulation and diffusion
of capital equipment. The expanded production that followed
intensified the competition for resources and led to a further
struggle for markets. As well, the more powerful and complex
the capital equipment, the greater the problems of financing,
deploying and utilizing it to best advantage, and of distributing
(or not distributing) the wealth produced. Social conflicts and
wars became larger, deadlier and more expensive – necessitating
further concentrations of power and advances in the techniques
of government. Our world today is the result.
Thea: Now this is interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen government
discussed in those terms before. What exactly is capital, and how
does it relate to government?
Guy: Capital is wealth used instrumentally in the production of further

wealth. From that perspective, good government is itself a form
of public capital, insofar as its products – protection of life and
property, transport and communication, the acquisition and
dissemination of knowledge, and so forth – contribute to
production.
Thea: Yes, I can see that. From the perspective of a whole society, most
public goods will be forms of capital, and political arrangements
for their production likewise. So, much in line with the social
contract theorists, you’re saying that people gave authority to
others and acquiesced in their own domination because it made
them safer and richer.
3
As Marx believed, though he was dead wrong that under communism the
state would wither away. Quite the contrary, in fact. W hen all goods are
public goods, the state must be ubiquitous.
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Guy: Rather, what happened was that bandit chiefs and war lords who
organized the more-or-less voluntary obedience of a relative
handful of followers could use this cadre to extort involuntary
obedience from a whole population not so organized. Then, in
alliance with priests, and by subsidizing the work of artists and
intellectuals, they could shape habits of mind in their subjects,
making a virtue of docility and precluding any thought of
alternatives.
Notice that bandits and war lords have a long-term interest in
their peasants’ prosperity, up to a point. Until the peasants are
rich enough to organize resistance to their rulers, the more
prosperous they are, the more can be taken from them. Hence the
concept of the “plantation state” – run by its masters to maximize
their profit. As Colbert put it, “Taxation is the art of plucking a
goose to obtain the most feathers for the least squawk.”
Thea: Those same techniques remain the basis of every modern state.
Guy: It was the basis of the state as we knew it, though dumb
submission to a governing elite went much further in some places
than others. But today, the habit of submission is breaking down.
Politics was always a precarious business, but today it is
becoming more dangerous and less profitable to all but a very
few. Governments all over the world today give an impression of
thrashing around – often, of losing their grip.
Thea: Why is that?
Guy: One reason, probably, is that the world keeps getting more
complicated, and that the demands on government to “do
something” are now far beyond any consensus on what needs to
be done. Another reason is that there are safer and easier ways to
make money these days. With the ethic of public service also
waning, ambitious players may be choosing other venues, leaving
politics to smaller, sillier, more driven ones. Still another reason
is that the education requirements of a modern economy have
made it harder to keep the public docile and submissive, even as
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new techniques of mass manipulation have made it easier. These

are just guesses. My serious point is that government is one
industry and one route to social advancement among others, and
that the political process can be seen as a kind of marketplace.
The analogy is fairly strong.
Thea: How, exactly? You’ve been saying this all evening now, but I
still don’t really see it.
Guy: As in any market, there are potential “buyers” for public goods,
and suggestions regarding their production. These buyers create
opportunities for potential producers, the “political
entrepreneurs,” who in turn seek to maintain and expand the
markets for their products through the political equivalents of
advertising, packaging and other marketing choices.
Also, like any ecology, this market co-evolves toward loose
equilibrium: The offerings of political vendors adjust against the
wish-lists of prospective buyers; and the suggestions coming
top-down from government must encounter and stabilize against
those coming bottom-up, from society at large. Under any
political system, “democratic” or not, there will be political
entrepreneurs mounting displays and making speeches to
ordinary folk. There will be flows of suggestion in both
directions, and a rough balance between them – on the top, a
more or less stable regime and state; on the bottom, a
fragmentation and marginalizing of rage.
Thea: What I don’t see is how your political entrepreneurs contrived to

organize all the institutions of modern state. That isn’t obvious.
Guy: It didn’t happen overnight. The tribal headman governs mildly,

by suggestive influence, because he has no real power other than
that which his fellows accord him voluntarily. A modern regime
backs its suggestions with an army, a police force and a penal
system that its subjects are compelled to finance for their own
subjugation. Modern government is scarcely possible until
deference and obedience to a central state become a matter of
habit.
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Thea: You could say that government is a form of addiction.
Guy: Indeed. An addiction not easily cultivated, because people are

jealous of their autonomy. The government meme was as
successful as it is because wars are much easer to start than to
end, and because human suggers fall into paralysis when
suggestive guidance is lacking. Even so, the evolution of modern
government was a long, bloody business.
Thea: But, as you’ve said, modern government is a formal organization
and infrastructure, not just a crew of entrepreneurs in competition
for influence. How did that organization come about?
Guy: At first, there is no real organization – only the entrepreneurs

with their henchmen, contending for political market share. But
in time, there must be organization because these rival
entrepreneurs cannot be everywhere, and have to delegate to
subordinates. They also have to deal with each other, and with
their counterparts elsewhere. In doing so, they find it preferable
to share the pickings rather than fight to the last drop of each
other’s blood. Doing all this, they become more knowledgeable
and politically astute than their fellows and, correspondingly,
their suggestions acquire greater authority. In time, despite their
rivalry, they tend to become a privileged class within society,
with class prerogatives and class interests that they guard in
common.
Thea: You will say the relationship of these entrepreneurs to one

another is highly “politicious,” an inextricable tangle of common
and conflicting interests.
Guy: Just so. In the pursuit of common interests, the elite may allow
itself to be organized and led by a chief of chiefs – a king. The
mobilization of loyalty, obedience and discipline becomes a
public good in its own right. And, of course, the political process
here only mirrors of what is happening there. Organization of one
state forces countervailing organization by its neighbors. In this
way, the society as a whole may self-organize as a state system
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of mutually hostile, sovereign powers.
Thea: You’re saying that concentrated power, under some conditions,

may itself be seen as a good – not just by those who wield it, but
even by those who submit. Or if not by all of these, than at least
by many.
Guy: By a sufficient following. Yes. Look at it this way: If we measure

a man’s power by the scope and weight of his suggestions, then
it’s obvious that nearly all that power must be given him by
others. His suggestions have weight because other people give
them weight; he is obeyed because people expect him to be
obeyed, and expect his orders to be enforced. Before he can
enforce obedience, a cadre of supporters, administrators,
men-at-arms, with significant power of their own, must have
hitched their wagons to his star. His power, finally, is the
outcome of a feedback loop – an expanding spiral of investment
by others. The language of suggestion may help us understand
how the shifting perceptions of power are bound up with its
reality.
Thea: We are all political investors, aren’t we? We cannot live except
by investing in other people, and in the relationships we develop
with them. Through such investments we form and maintain our
attach-ment systems. We draw the support – material and
emotional – by which we live. I invest much of my time,
attentions and hopes for happiness in you, as you do in me.
Guy: I’d say that political investment is a special case of this more
general kind. The political entrepreneur puts forth suggestions at
two levels: To society at large he suggests that people entrust
themselves to his policies, and that they contribute to and enjoy
the public goods that he holds up before them and promises to
deliver. This is the sort of investment we make in all our
relationships. But the political entrepreneur also invites and buys
the allegiance, collaboration and complicity of a cadre of
henchmen – persons with substantial power of their own. To
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these he offers opportunity: Through him, they can merge their

several powers, form a regime, and dominate the rest. Both these
suggestion streams are in the nature of politics as a game – of
government as an industry.
Thea: We don’t like to think of those who govern us in these terms –

any more than we like to think that our parents made us for
reasons of their own: reasons private to themselves and their
relationship, having nothing to do with us. But what you say is
obviously true.
Guy: And we should not forget that politics is about the assembly and
deployment of wealth and power. Disinterested politics,
altruistically benevolent governments are figments of utopia – not
of the real world. Those who contribute substantial time, energy
or money to politics will almost always have some personal stake
in the way that public business is conducted. We should not
expect otherwise. Just as in business, the political entrepreneur
is self-interested, and must attract the investment of
self-interested supporters and employees. If we hope to be well
governed, we must find some way of harnessing these various
private motives for the public good.
Thea: If all this is true, and if wealth and power tend to concentrate
according to a power law, why does this concentration not
continue until all wealth and power are controlled through a
single regime and individual? Attempts at universal dominion
have certainly been made. They are being made today. But, for
some reason, they have never come off. Is there a reason? Or is
there bound to be, sooner or later, an Emperor (or President) of
the World?
the reach of government

Guy: I don’t think there will be such a regime any time soon. In the
past, the reach of government was limited by available
technology. The means of transport and communications were
just not good enough. Today the technology for world
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government may be available, but the political conditions to

create and submit to one are nowhere in sight. Also, there may be
reasons in principle why no government can monopolize the
suggestion marketplace, nor even attempt to do so, without
wrecking its own long-term prospects.
Thea: Which reasons? What are you thinking of?
Guy: When you get right down to it, what we might call the reach of
government – its ability to influence society – is rather limited.
It is one thing to build working consensus for a certain policy
amongst a governing elite. It’s entirely another to shift public
perceptions, values and behaviors to make that policy effective.
Anyone who has worked in government is surprised at how blunt
its tools and weapons actually are.
Thea: Blunt and heavy-handed.
Guy: Yes, exactly. In itself, a government can do nothing. To

accomplish anything at all, it must get people to do its bidding by
issuing effective suggestions that prevail over suggestions to the
contrary. And when you come right down to it, there are only
three ways to do this. You can try to persuade people, you can
threaten them, or you can buy them – offer them money to do
your bidding. When persuasion fails, as it usually does when a
government attempts to move society against its spontaneous
wishes or trends, rulers soon discover that large-scale purchase
of cooperation is prohibitively expensive, and that threats always
have unintended consequences.
Thea: When you put it like that, it seems strange that governments can
accomplish anything at all.
Guy: It is strange, when you think about it. The only recourse
governments have is to bureaucratize the behaviors it wants to
influence by setting up what is called a “program.” Typically this
will involve all three classes of suggestion. It will demand some
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forms of cooperation with salaried civil servants, whose activities

can be managed directly – up to a point, anyway, since these
officials can be bribed and will, in any case, have private agendas
of their own. Then it will use some combination of threat,
payment and persuasion to get people to cooperate with the
program. Finally, it will have to carry through on some threats,
so that it is at least feared, if not respected or loved. If you
imagine an autocrat or dictator, with theoretically limitless power
over the lands and peoples he rules, that is still the utmost that he
can do.
Thea: One of the Tsars is said to have remarked on his death-bed: “I
never ruled Russia. Ten thousand clerks ruled Russia.”
Guy: Perhaps one ought to sympathize with tyrants, at least with some
of them. They may have a clear idea of what needs doing but still
find themselves, for all their supposed power, unable to get their
people to go along.
Thea: You’re being facetious!
Guy: Only a little. With the best will in the world, the creative reach of
government is extremely limited. For a man whose notional
power is absolute, how frustrating it must be to discover that his
practical power is rather small. He can kill people, if he chooses.
He can kill a lot of people, but he still cannot really get them to
behave – never mind think and feel – as he would wish. How
frustrating it is proving for politicians in modern democracies to
make the same discovery.
Thea: If you put it that way, is there anything at all that governments
are good at? Or good for, if it comes to that? If governments are
so clumsy and heavy-handed, perhaps the anarchists are right.
Perhaps society would be better off without them.
the future of government

Guy: I doubt that option is open to us. I think governance and formal
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government evolve because they can and must in some form or

other. Certainly, having evolved, they cannot simply be wished
out of existence. Government in some form will probably be
around as long as we are, and might as well be accepted as a
feature – an odd by-product – of human biology, along with
language and tool use.
Since we cannot do without government, we must learn to
govern ourselves better; and to do that, we need to understand
government much better than we do. I think political science is
still in its infancy. Everywhere you see people who want more
government, and people who want less; and everyone wants it to
control the bad behavior of someone else; but there is remarkably
little willingness to think clearly about government’s relationship
to an increasingly global society – about what government can
and cannot do.
Thea: Well then, what can it do?
Guy: In the end, government simply articulates the collective will of its
society, and sets a context (really, only part of the context) for the
life-choices of its people. In doing so, it acts as a kind of air bag
or shock absorber. It can organize the production of some public
goods that can be produced at a political profit. But, above all,
it’s in the business of containing and defusing social conflict,
“spreading the discontent” as thinly as possible, and pushing it
downward onto those who lack the means to protest. When
government is working well, that is the end result: a fairly
tranquil civil society, in which people who do not like each other
much can still tolerate each other’s presence and get along. When
government breaks down, what you get is civil war.
Modern government has become a very difficult problem,
looking more difficult every day. It must be global and local at
the same time. It must be technically competent, democratically
accountable and minimal in its interventions. And it must exist in
ecological balance with the society around it, and with Nature
itself. I don’t think we have the first idea how to think about
government in the society that we’ve become. How to respond to,
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hold accountable and ultimately manage all those political

entrepreneurs who are trying to manage us! In self-organizing
society, the central question of political theory is not “How to
govern?” but “How to be governed?”
Thea: How to be governed in such a way that society’s self-

organization can produce a humanly acceptable result . . .?
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#14 AT HOME IN THE COSMOS
Talk #14 At Home in the Cosmos
In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in

delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has
looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we
thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said,
grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater
than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a
little god, and I want him to stay that way.”
– Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan
I would define [the Gnostic] position as a return to the
fundamental, virginal interrogation of man faced with the
problems of his life, with his need to escape from the yoke of
systems and to arrive, in every instance, at a point of absolute
zero in knowledge. . . W e can see quite clearly where the task
of a contemporary Gnostic would lie: in attacking the new . . .
faces which evil is forever putting on and which today we call
ideology.
– The Gnostics, Jacques Lacarriere, p 122
Thea: Are we ready for that talk about religion’s quarrel with science?
Guy: Probably as ready as we’ll ever be. I guess now is the time.
Thea: At least we understand each other’s positions pretty well by now.
Guy: I’m not sure we do. We agree on so much. The issues dividing us
are not so easy to grasp. Can you state clearly what we don’t
agree on?
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Thea: I doubt it. But then intellectual clarity is not so important to me

as it is to you. I think Pascal was right that “The heart has its
reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” The wisdom in that
remark is confirmed every day of my working experience.
Guy: That’s all very well, but it’s hard to have a sensible discussion if
you won’t take a clear position.
Thea: Well, I can’t say I have any really clear position – just a fuzzy
one. When you come right down to it, what is life, according to
your science, but an infection that some planets catch? True or
not, this is just not acceptable. The only thing I’m certain of is
that people can’t live with knowledge of this kind. At least, most
people can’t. We need a story that gives our lives some meaning.
Guy: I understand that perfectly well. We all tell ourselves hero-stories

to turn our lives into some kind of quest. Philosophers use
philosophy that way; scientists use science. The quest for
knowledge makes a very fine hero-story.
Thea: For the scientist, perhaps, but not for the ordinary man or woman.
Few people have the luck to find “a path with a heart” in their
daily lives – a game that absorbs their passions, and that truly
feels worth playing. Dedicated scientists may find such a path in
their research, but that is little comfort for the average citizen. “I
lived, struggled suffered, maybe grabbed a little fun along the
way; and died” just doesn’t cut it as a life story. But that’s all
your science seems to offer to those of us not passionately
committed to tearing down the veils of mystery. Which is why,
as fast as scientists tear down old veils, people are replacing them
with new ones, often sillier and more superstitious than the old.
house and home

Guy: I wish I could say you’re wrong. But clearly, most of the public
does not just ignore the scientific world view, but actively rejects
it. It clings to mysteries where there are none, just to avoid seeing
what is before their eyes. It seems to need those mysteries to
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reassure itself, against all evidence, that the universe really cares
about human beings, and is mindful of our welfare.
Thea: I think you’ve just conceded my case. That’s what I’ve been
arguing.
Guy: I think you want something more, though I am not sure what. If
that is indeed all you are arguing, we have no quarrel at all. In
general, I think the conflict between science and religion would
go away if people could accept that humanity’s need for meaning
and its need to understand how the universe works are constraints
on one another. Honestly conducted and kept within their
spheres, science and religion are doing two different jobs – both
necessary – which need not oppose each other.
Thea: Which jobs?
Guy: If we think of the world as a house we live in, then a house is not
a home as the saying goes. Exploring the house you’ve just
moved into is one legitimate function; turning that place into a
livable home is quite another.
When you buy a house, you get lawyers to do a title search
to make sure there are no liens on the property. You get an
engineer to report on the structural soundness of the building.
You get a surveyor to verify your boundaries. Such activities aim
to establish the relevant facts, as objectively as possible. They
have the feel of science. But when the keys are handed over, you
move your furniture and belongings in, and begin the process of
turning the house into your home. You decide which rooms to
use for what purposes. You might repaint the walls, or restore old
woodwork. You sew some curtains and hang a few pictures.
These activities may exploit your knowledge of the property, but
they have a different purpose: to appropriate the space as your
own.
My suggestion is that art, music, poetry and religion are
home-making activities that work from, and try to make the best
of the world as we find it. When we go exploring we may not like
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what we find. It may not be the house we would have bought if

we’d had a choice. But we have to make the best of it somehow
– preferably without wishful thinking. Change what we can
change; live with what we can’t change; have the wisdom to
know the difference.
Thea: The AA prayer. . . Staying sober one day at a time with the help
of a Higher Power. Can science find room for such a Being?
Guy: Just drop the idea of a Being. Otherwise, we all live one day at a
time with the help of a Higher Power. Whether that power is
money or family or knowledge or political power or whatever,
there is for each of us a Key Idea or Master Value – one or more
of these – that gets us through the day, and through some long
nights. I know this as well as you do. It’s a finding of
anthropology, if nothing else. Explicitly religious people who
call their Higher Power “God” need not be superstitious about it.
At least they are aware of, and able to think about this shaping
factor in their lives, as many cannot.
Thea: Knowing how staunchly committed you are to a scientific

epistemology and world-view, I’m surprised to find you so
generous toward religion. Most science-minded types seem to
regard it as nothing but superstition.
Guy: Well, organized religion has a dismal history of living

parasitically and with willful ignorance off that human need for
meaning. Science has fought some bitter battles for its freedom
of inquiry and these have by no means ended. It’s not surprising
that so many of us “science-minded types” now regard religion
as an enemy. But I would say, the polarization of loyalties
between “science” and “religion,” both properly understood, is
itself a major superstition.
Thea: Then what would not be superstition, according to you? And

what do you mean by superstition, anyway?
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Guy: As the etymology suggests, superstitions are beliefs and practices

that stand over us: that run our lives, immune to critical
examination. Any idea or practice or opinion that we are
unwilling or unable to question is superstitious. Our consciously
chosen, critically considered commitments are not superstitious,
especially once it is understood that they are just personal
commitments and not universal truths. But myths or theories that
demand to be taken on faith and/or authority most surely are
superstitions, especially when contradicted by others that merely
ask for tentative allegiance after an honest review of the evidence
and argument.
I would say that religion per se need not be superstitious,
though many religious people are extremely so – partly from
sheer wishful thinking, partly because they lack philosophical
sophistication to use concepts accurately, and draw some
necessary distinctions. Organized religions, unfortunately, have
institutional motives for encouraging superstitious belief in their
flocks, even when the shepherds themselves know better.
Gordon Allport, once defined religion in a way that makes
superbly clear what intellectually respectable religion is about.
He said: “A man’s religion is the audacious bid he makes to bind
himself to creation and to the Creator. It is his ultimate attempt
to enlarge and to complete his own personality by finding the
supreme context in which he rightly belongs.”1 Now, an
ecoDarwinian universe, as a self-organizing system need not have
a Creator. But the task of finding a context for one’s identity and
binding it back to the Cosmos remains as valid as ever.
Thea: For me – for most people, I think – a religion without God would
not feel much like a religion.
1
Gordon Allport, The Individual and His Religion.
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Guy: As a term for Allport’s “supreme context,” the word “God” is

convenient, familiar and short. With that definition, no one is
asking you to do without God; and indeed, it then becomes a
category error to ask whether someone believes in God, or
whether God exists. The context of your life, and of the universe
as a whole, is what you understand it to be. One person may take
that context to be the Biblical God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Another may take it to be the laws of physics (as we understand
them) and/or the theory of self-organizing complexity (as we
understand that). For both, there is a God in Allport’s sense. Just
different Gods, is all.
Thea: I think you’re missing my point. Most believers understand quite

well that the God they believe in is not Michelangelo’s geriatric
superman on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. They understand
that God is ineffable, and beyond human comprehension. But a
God conceived as self-organizing complexity doesn’t cut it for
us. The God we believe in is a coherent, loving Self, whose
preferences and commands provide a ground for moral choices,
values and meanings. He is a reason to will and do the right
thing. He gives meaning to the concept of sin as transgression
against His will. Though we can acknowledge that people
understand Him differently, He must be the same God for
everyone.
Guy: Two points: First, to insist that a being that no one can observe,
and that people understand and imagine differently must be the
same for everyone is a good way to tie yourself in hopeless
conceptual knots – if not into religious wars. These can be
avoided simply by dropping the issue of existence, and
conceiving God simply as a name for the existential context that
an individual finds for his own life. If you find that context in an
organized religion, God bless you, as they say, so long as you
leave other people and their contexts alone.
Second, it is fine to say that your life must have a moral
context as well as a physical and biological one. Mine too, I
hope. We all have ethical choices to make, and some moral
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context in which we make them. For example, I think it’s wrong

go around shooting or dropping bombs on people you don’t like.
I think it’s wrong to deprive poor people of their livelihoods by
imposing economic change on their communities in a heedless
way. I think it’s wrong to turn our planet into a garbage dump.
But the Biblical God doesn’t help you make the relevant
decisions. Mostly, he confuses these issues by turning them into
problems of scriptural interpretation. And then he helps you
rationalize your choices after the fact with the claim to be doing
his will.
Thea: But at least he gives us a conceptual ideal, and sets us the

challenge of living up to his goodness. The only challenge that
Darwin sets us is that of passing our genes to another generation.
And even Darwinians don’t say that extinct species were bad –
merely that they were unlucky, or unsuccessful.
Guy: I think eco-Darwinism sets us the tremendous challenge of

transcending the Nature it has shown us – not by wishful denial
of our animal origins, but in some intellectually respectable, and
non-superstitious way. But why do you need a personalized God
to set you a moral challenge? Or punish you for doing wrong? If
you want to lead a Christian life, or any other kind of life, you are
free to do so – or to strive to do so. I can see why you might want
a single tyrant God to manipulate or constrain other people. But
how could that idea help you decide what good and evil mean for
you? If a book or a preacher or whoever tells you what God
expects of you, you still face the problem of deciding whether
that suggestion is to be followed.
Thea: I understand that for you, cognitive life – including spiritual life
– just means participation in an ecology of suggestions. There is
no Truth to look for anywhere.
Guy: Not quite. What I value is intelligent, creative participation in this

Cosmos. I work from a bottom-up constructivist, pluralist,
ecoDarwinian paradigm that regards our understandings of the
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world as so many human constructs intended to capture certain

aspects of experience for human purposes. I don’t look for, or
feel the need for, some absolute Truth that would be authoritative
for everyone everywhere. I doubt there is such a thing. But I
definitely think that some understandings fit the world better than
others, work better than others as a basis for our choices, and are
in that sense truer than others. To call a statement “true” is just
a short, careless way of suggesting that it fits experience well in
the currently relevant respects. In that sense I can and do look for
true ideas and statements – even about ethics.
Thea: Well, I know your arguments by now, but I can’t help feeling that
you strip both religion and science of real meaning when you
reject the concept of absolute, God’s-eye truth. Religion is more
than just an aspect – even the ultimate aspect – of an individual’s
attachment system. Authentic religion has always been a quest to
know God’s truth, and to live in its light. Science, in its
beginnings, was an attempt to read the mind of God in the book
of Nature. Deep down, where I live, and despite you clever
post-modernists, that’s what religion and science remain. They
can’t be anything else.
Guy: You know, I hear you. And I even sympathize. But I don’t see
how you can have what you want. Even physicists these day work
with alternative theories that can’t be tested. Geologists and
biologists work with various models, none definitive, but each
revealing aspects of the systems they study. Historians, social
scientists and shrinks like you most certainly deal in
interpretations and understandings, not apodictic truths.
Ironically, a chief reason why there can be no absolute truth
today, even in the sciences, is that we know too much.
Thea: Well, I still have to ask, What sort of home can we hope to make
in the world that science shows us? What are the implications of
your eD psychology for a spiritual outlook and practice?
Guy: At the moment, those implications are a matter of personal
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judgment and taste. It will be a long time, if ever, before the new
paradigm settles down to a stably consensual world view, with or
without an institutional structure. But if I had to name spiritual
antecedents for the emerging paradigm, I would mention Taoism,
Buddhism, Nature worship and Gnosticism. I might describe
myself as a Darwinian Gnostic – something like that.
Thea: A Darwinian Gnostic? What’s that? It doesn’t sound like

something that could be very popular.
a Darwinian gnostic
Guy: Actually, I don’t care much whether my kind of home-making in
this universe catches on or not. I have my own needs for meaning
in this world; and I offer my suggestions as best I can without
caring about their uptake. You ask, “What sort of home can we
make in the world that science shows us?” I can offer you a tour
of the home I’ve made – am making – for myself, but you and
everyone have to make your own.
Sometimes I think of the world as a smörgåsbord of spiritual
and intellectual offerings – suggestions – all tempting, in one way
or another.2 You can go to the table and fill your plate as many
times as you please, but you have to choose; and everyone must
choose for himself. If you don’t choose well, you’ll go spiritually
hungry or get a nasty indigestion. You shrinks then have the job
of helping people correct or live with their poor choices.
Thea: Stop. Just tell me what it means to be a Darwinian Gnostic.
Guy: Well, the first part you already know, as we’ve been talking
about it for two weeks now. I call myself a Darwinian (short for
“ecoDarwinian”) insofar as I regard the paradigm of
self-organization and ecology as our best available approach to
an explanation of Being. We ourselves, everything around us, and
our very thoughts about the things around us seem to have
2
See Talk #12 on Society.
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emerged through self-organizing processes of the kind we’ve

been discussing, and seem to follow similar principles on every
level we can study.
Thea: That’s an approach to scientific explanation. It’s hardly a

religion.
Guy: True, but it blends readily with some religious sentiments to

produce a strain of spirituality with the concept of
self-organization at its core. For example, as we’ve seen, it’s on
all fours with the Taoist notion of zi-ran; and it draws the Taoist
conclusion that going against “Nature’s way” will probably bring
you grief. It confirms the Buddhist concept of the unity of life; it
categorically rejects the notion that the Earth is just human real
estate for human use; and it easily takes the short step from our
discovery that Nature is sublime, beautiful and marvelous toward
a pagan impulse to Nature-worship. Certainly, it makes clear that
we need to put ourselves into some kind of harmony or alignment
with Nature whether we feel like worshiping or not.
Thea: And the Gnostic bit? What’s that?
Guy: Ah. . . I call myself a Gnostic with trepidation because there

never was any coherent body of Gnostic doctrine, and because a
great deal of nonsense often collected under that name. At the
same time, I think the Gnostics advanced some good ideas, and
that the name of their movement is too good to be scrapped
because they made so many mistakes. What can I say? Like other
religious movements, Gnosticism sprouted in a superstitious age;
but not all of its ideas are superstitious.
Thea: Apology noted. So why do you call yourself a Gnostic?
Guy: From Gnosticism, I draw the idea that spiritual growth is a matter
of knowledge (or the striving after knowledge) – not of faith. We
can learn what we need to know; and this learning is an active
process: We can ask questions and test the answers we are given.
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For authentic spiritual growth, it seems obvious to me that doubt

is better than faith.
I also follow Gnostic precedent in accepting that the cosmic
context is indifferent to our human concerns and interests. Nature
can be described as holy or sacred, (in the sense of being
beautiful, awe inspiring and altogether sublime), but it is neither
all-knowing nor “good” in any human sense. The world is not
optimally suited to human needs; life is cruel more often than
delicious. Darwin saw this clearly. What we are apt to call evil is
woven into its very fabric. It is a blatant lie to blame the world’s
evil on human disobedience, or any other human shortcoming.
We are what evolution – the demands of reproductive fitness –
made us. Or what it has made of us to-date.
Thea: Interestingly, the Hebrew Bible is ambiguous on the matter.

Genesis tells the story of the Fall, but Job is quite clear that the
ways of God are inscrutable and that Job’s sufferings are not a
punishment for his sins.
Guy: The Gnostics went even further, declaring that the Maker of this
bloody, pain-racked world was not the supreme God at all, but
only a rebellious, incompetent demiurge. We need not follow
them in their eccentric myth, but they were surely right that
something in us repudiates and rises above the cruelty of Nature.
We cannot unconditionally obey Nature, nor dominate it, nor
fully transcend it. I would say, the relationship between Man and
Nature is a politicious one: ambivalent, complex and troubled on
both sides. In the past, the Biblical myth of a Fall out of Nature
may have served us fairly well, but today it is altogether too
simple.
Thea: I can see why you describe yourself as a Gnostic with

reservations.
Guy: Yes, the Gnostics were a peculiar lot. But I revere them for their
staunch affirmation, more than two thousand years ago, that
knowledge per se is a spiritual good – as against the Christian
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preference for obedience and child-like faith. This alone makes

them memorable in the history of religious thought.
Thea: No, I can’t see you having much respect for faith. It has its uses
though. It makes for simplicity and peace of mind.
Guy: That’s just why I’m suspicious of it. Gnostics understand that the
price of knowledge is a willingness to endure confusion and
uncertainty. When you begin to learn, the first and last thing you
perceive is the extent of your own ignorance.
Thea: Maybe so, but most people don’t have time for confusion and
uncertainty. They need straight, simple answers to help them get
on with bleak and bitter lives. Gnosticism is an elitist doctrine.
Guy: Sadly true. And time out of mind, that has been the distinction
between religion and authentic spirituality. Organized religion is
a kind of franchise operation – much like MacDonald or Tim
Horton – in what I’d call the feel-good industry. Local “priests,”
trained and ordained in some fashion by a “home office” (with
however many levels in between) administer a certain brand of
spiritual benefit to paying customers, and remit a portion of their
take to the home office – in exchange for services that
standardize the product and maintain a degree of quality control.
There are many variants of the religion business, but that is its
core idea. Please understand that I am not being cynical now. I’m
just describing its organization structure. Quality of the “product”
is another matter. It may be shoddy and over-priced, or may be
very high indeed. I was a dues-paying member and operator in
such an organization for years, before turning into the maverick
I am today – with my own thoughts about spirituality, shared as
pure suggestions, with no organization behind me.
Thea: The distinction you’ve just drawn is a hot issue in some circles.
Many deny that there can be authentic “spirituality” without
parti-cipation in some organized religion. What do you mean by
that word? What is “spirituality” for you?
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Guy: Spirituality is about the human creature, naked in the universe.

I’d say that religion is more about the human creature in society.
It confronts the issue of our nakedness only to get us clothed in
its own garments again as quickly as possible. For the present
purpose, we can define spirituality as the personal project of
making a home in this universe. It seems to mean: learning to
draw upon the energies and wisdom of the unconscious mind;
achieving a harmony with Nature and with the people one lives
among; learning to live in the present. Spirituality is seeing
beneath the surface, to the nature of things. It means taking life
as it is – steadily and whole. Above all, perhaps, spirituality
means love, as its masters have always taught – first, for the
specific people and creatures in one’s life, and finally for life and
Nature in the abstract.
Thea: That’s a pretty convincing definition, and I would have to agree.

What I find striking, though is that it does not touch the social
and political dimensions of religion at all. That leaves a pretty
large gap, don’t you think?
Guy: Admittedly. I think authentic spirituality has always been, and

must be, a personal quest or project. If anything it is anti-social.
Attending church and following the rituals are a great way for
busy people to participate in their communities, but a very poor
way to learn to feel and think for oneself. As a therapist, I’m sure
you know that.
Thea: OK. What else can you say about the convictions of a Darwinian
Gnostic?
Guy: Their central point – the sticking point for most people, I think –
is that in a self-organizing world, no one watches over us. You
can, if you wish, imagine Nature or the whole universe as a
loving parent; but then, what it seems to love mostly are its own
powers of generation. It has too many children to care much
about any of them, and it is always busy making more. Today, I
think we have to recognize that authentic spirituality must be an
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unrequited and disinterested love of the world and life – a love

we value for its own sake, and not in hope of reward.
On the evidence, the universe does not care what we do to
ourselves or to each other. It will continue much as it is,
regardless. We may devise laws or and codes of conduct to live
by, but these will be precarious social devices, nor cosmic
absolutes. In this sense, we are free; and, correspondingly, we
must learn to function as moral adults. We can think of our lives
as a probing on the edge of the possible, but always at our own
risk. Nothing but good will, intelligent foresight or dumb luck
will save us from happenstance or from ourselves.
Thea: That won’t be enough for most people. I don’t know if it’s
enough for me.
Guy: Well it’s all I have to offer, I’m afraid. If you need a personalized
God, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Thea: In most religions, love (however understood) is more important

then knowledge. I think your emphasis on knowledge is
overblown.
Guy: Perhaps. I’ve been something of a glutton for it. I won’t

apologize though. The “perennial philosophy” has always taught
that love and knowledge depend on one another. To know
anything one must care about it enough to give the time and
attention that it requires. One cannot come to understand
anything one does not love sufficiently, as the great mystics
insisted. And conversely, love is meaningless without genuine
knowledge and understanding of what is loved. How many
parents love a fantasy of their children, rather than the children
themselves? How many husbands love a fantasy of their wives,
and vice versa? It’s a truism that knowledge without love is cold
and brutal; but I’ve always felt that love without clear-sighted
knowledge is mere sentimentality.
perennial philosophy
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Thea: I would agree, up to a point. On the other side there is Eliot’s

great line3 that “humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
There is a point where knowledge becomes toxic. Another
finding from psychotherapy, perhaps. Freud characterized
psychoanalysis as anamnesis – “unforgetting” – but we have
learned from experience since his time that not everything needs
to be remembered, that some things are better forgotten.
By the way, before we go on, I’ve heard that expression,
“perennial philosophy,” but I don’t know what it means. Which
philosophy are you talking about? And why is it perennial?
Guy: The expression denotes a cluster of ideas that appear again and
again in many times and places – always essentially the same,
though with countless variations. Its core idea, perhaps, is that the
phenom-enal self and its world are illusory – not to be taken at
face value.4
Thea: That sounds a bit like Nietzsche and the post-moderns: What
people call “reality” is unknown and unknowable. “There are no
facts, only interpretations.”
Guy: But the so-called “mystics” who developed their versions of this
philosophy were not into relativism. On the contrary, they
believed it was the supreme purpose of life to reach the plane of
absolute reality by seeing through the world’s illusions.
Accordingly, Yoga, Zen, and numerous other spiritual practices
attempt to lead their adepts beyond the ego to . . . salvation,
enlightenment, liberation – whatever you want to call it. They
insist that what we call a normal adult personality is still deluded
in important ways – certainly not the ideal and final goal of
human development.
3
In Burnt Norton.
4
The phrase “perennial philosophy” was coined by Leibniz and taken up by
Aldous Huxley. See Huxley’s book of that title.
303
Thea: No, that doesn’t sound like the post-modern types.
Guy: Not at all. On the other hand, most of those ancient disciplines,
in one form or another, are still being practiced today, and in a
distinctly post-modern mood that is not religious in any
traditional sense. As with post-modern relativism, one often feels
that people’s interest in them is a reaction and development from
the Modern – from the rationalism and humanism of the
Enlightenment.
Thea: In my own field, there’s a school called transpersonal

psychology5 – not quite respectable in most circles – that counts
William James, Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, Roberto Assagioli
and Ken Wilber among its founders. In their view, the adult ego
that emerges from childhood and adolescence is by no means the
highest stage of a person’s development. Rather, they hold that
the mystics were reporting accurately when they described their
transformative insights, and right again in teaching that such
insight is potentially available to all who take the path that leads
to them. I’ve never really looked into this movement, but it
sounds something like what you’re calling perennial philosophy.
How does it gibe with the Darwinian paradigm, and with current
neuropsychology?
Guy: I don’t think anyone really knows yet. I have looked into the
transpersonal school a bit – on a hunch that ecoDarwinian
psychology, transpersonal psychology and perennial philosophy
might be three names for the same thing. I suspect that what is
now called transpersonal psychology is perennial philosophy
recast in bottom-up Darwinian and ecological language.
Thea: Can you support that claim?
5
See, for example, www.transpersonalacademy.co.uk/ and
www.johnvdavis.com/tp/.
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Guy: I can make it plausible, at any rate. The “higher reality” that the
mystics spoke of has been variously called “the One,” “the
Atman,” “the Kingdom of God,” “the World Soul,” and many
other names. It may be that the higher “reality” these masters
were pointing to was simply a personal experience or intuition of
the mental ecology we’ve been discussing.
Thea: If your ecology of mind corresponds to their Supreme Reality, no

wonder they thought it was ineffable, and beyond human
comprehension!
Guy: Yes. And its amazing how far we’ve come toward understanding
that Reality in the language of modern science – and how many
new questions and fields of investigation have been opened up.
Thea: Then our “normal” understanding is defective (you and those

mystics and the trans-personalists would agree) because it dwells
too much on our separateness and individuality, and fails to see
how we are connected to each other and to the world around us?
Guy: Yes; and there is agreement on some practical points as well: For
example, that we take language too literally – thinking of it as
denoting an objective reality, not just as a pointing at shared
aspects of subjective experience. That we over-estimate our
powers of rational agency, failing to see how our tools and toys
shape and manipulate us as much as we manipulate them. That
thoughts and feelings and impulses, often received as if they were
transmissions from some external “god” or “demon,” are really
aspects of our selves – messages from the unconscious as we’d
now say.
Thea: It feels like tremendous arrogance on our part to think that

science can now tackle the ultimate mysteries of existence, giving
rational answers on matters long thought to be beyond human
comprehension.
Guy: At all events, it seems clear that science and the old spiritual
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traditions are meeting at last – not in agreement (not by a long

shot) but in the great questions they are asking: the questions of
ultimate human concern that every child asks as it begins to
reason.
Thea: The origin of the universe, the earth and life. The nature and
workings of our own minds. The place of an individual life and
mind in Nature and society.
science wars
Guy: Yes. Religion has always supplied mythic answers to those
questions, embodying the collective wisdom and daydreams of
the tribe. But, within the last few decades, science has developed
to a point where it is equipped to tackle these same questions, but
in a more empirical and critical way.
Thea: Which means that, more than ever, it’s on a collision course with
certain teachings of religion – not just on tangential matters like
the Earth’s position in the solar system, but on matters of vital
concern such as the nature and needs of a human soul.
Guy: To me that conflict seems totally unnecessary. Like so many

others, it could easily be avoided with just a little intelligence and
self-restraint.
Thea: Then why is it happening?
Guy: There’s over-reaching on both sides, I think. Religions have often

placed themselves in opposition to science by insisting too
literally on certain of their teachings – by failing to recognize the
nature of poetry and myth. Some religious leaders make
themselves ridiculous by taking the Bible as the literal word of
God, all serious Biblical scholarship to the contrary. On the other
side, scientists have often shown insensitivity to the religious
project, failing to recognize that it can serve legitimate values of
its own, quite different from those of science.
Perhaps one source of useless dogmatism has been a classical
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theory of knowledge which leads both sides to represent their

claims as absolute truths, rather than as suggestions which may
sometimes be helpful. If people understood the difference
between a fact and an interpretation, between a true-or-false
belief and a personal commitment, between a statement and a
suggestion, much of the conflict might disappear. What remained
in dispute could then be treated much more intelligently as a
negotiation and/or philosophical and political debate amongst
competing value systems.
Thea: You’re probably right. But you know that isn’t going to happen.
Guy: Well it might, eventually. Political arrangements too are

outcomes of an ecoDarwinian process. There’s no knowing what
wisdom may emerge once the alternatives are exhausted.
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Talk #15 Being Human
The drama of the human condition comes solely from

consciousness. Of course, consciousness and its revelations
allow us to create a better life for ourselves and others, but the
price we pay for that better life is high. It is not just the price of
risk and danger and pain. It is the price of knowing risk, danger
and pain. Worse even: it is the price of knowing what pleasure
is and knowing when it is missing or unattainable.
– The Feeling of W hat Happens,
Antonio Damasio, p 316
W e become what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful

about what we pretend to be.
– Kurt Vonnegut
Thea: What are you doing? You’re very still, but you look like you’re
concentrating very hard. Are you meditating?
Guy: You could call it that. But it’s nothing very mysterious.
Thea: What is it then?
Guy: I call it “taking the world apart.” It’s a kind of deconstruction –

like some critics do with literary texts. The idea is to look at
things not for what they are to us, not for their potential impact
on our lives, but for what they are in themselves.
Thea: How do you mean?
309
Guy: Well, you can visualize this room as the inside of a large box
made of painted drywall mounted on wooden two-by- fours. Then
at that chair as a structure of wood, metal, foam rubber and fabric
– not as a piece of furniture to sit in. And then, at the wood itself
as a material cut from the trunk of a tree, and at the fabric as a
woven synthetic fibre. And so on. You can look at another person
not as the other party to your relationship with him or her, but as
a fellow human animal, a fellow entity in the universe. It’s a good
way to avoid taking things for granted, and to realize how little
we actually know about them.
Thea: How long have you been doing this?
Guy: About half an hour now. Why?
Thea: No . . . I mean, what got you started on this practice?
Guy: I started doing it about twenty years ago, shortly after my second
marriage broke up. For my new apartment, I bought this reclining
armchair that I’m sitting in now. The cool, dark leather was great
for reading or daydreaming or dozing; and I had this fantasy of it
as a kind of acceleration couch for head trips, letting me leave my
body where it was so that my mind could wander. One day doing
that, I noticed that I was seeing my room as I just described it to
you. And it felt delightful, as if I’d slipped beneath the surface of
things and was seeing them freshly, as they really are. More
nearly as they are, at any rate.
Thea: And now you keep doing it?
Guy: Nearly every day. By now, it’s a state of mind I can get into,
more or less at will. I use a version of the practice for writing.
Thea: You remind me of that movie we saw a few months ago: What
the BLEEP Do We Know? The world as an Alice-in-Wonderland
adventure.
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Guy: With reservations, I liked What the BLEEP very much. I’d like
to see more of that vision in pop culture today.
Thea: I think you’re more adventurous than I am. You want to go

further down the rabbit-hole. I hear the arguments you’ve been
making in our talks, and I’m even mostly persuaded, but I still
find this whole world-view disturbing. From these talks we’ve
been having about human life and mind and the eD bottom-up
paradigm, what’s the bottom line? Where do you come out, after
all this?
the context of life

Guy: It’s too soon to say. I certainly don’t claim to have ready-made
answers to the meaning of life. I only insist that our society needs
to assimilate and come to terms with the new knowledge in some
intellectually honest way. The science itself is in flux. Only a
fool would claim to know where it’s going.
Thea: You’re just dodging. I’m not asking you to tell me the meaning
of life – only to sum up what all that reading is telling you. Your
claim has been that religion, philosophy, psychotherapy – all
serious thought today about the human condition – must either
accept and come to terms with this way of thinking, or thrash
futilely against its own obsolescence. So it’s only fair to ask
where all this reading is taking you?
Guy: It tells me that my “self” is just me – the whole person: body,

mind and life-history together, including whatever story I’m
pleased to tell myself about that human creature. It tells me that
(except as metaphor, a manner of speaking) there is no “soul” –
no mysterious essence – inside my skull, running my brain and
making its decisions. No such homuncular self is needed because
a functioning human brain can weave the minds we know
ourselves to be without supernatural assistance. It tells me that
my experience of consciousness emerges – bubbles up, so to
speak – as a largely unconscious ecology of competing
suggestions from my body in its life-world. It tells me that the
311
ideas I entertain about myself – the ideas that form my values and
guide my choices – are socially constructed stories and
rationalizations after the fact. Along with the playgrounds we
build around us, they fix an over-arching context for our actions
and choices. But they are only cognitive artifacts, conveniences.
Useful guides to live by, but nothing to kill and die for. Nothing
to cling to, when they are dragging you under. It tells me that our
world was not designed nor maintained and cared for top-down
by a supernatural person. Though some outcomes are probable to
the point of practical certainty, nothing is planned in advance.
Rather the world seems to be making itself up as it goes along, as
a beautifully self-organized, holarchical system.
Thea: You’re talking in generalities. Can’t you get a little more

concrete – a little more personal? What does this stuff have to say
about managing your life? What does it tell you about the
business of being human?
Guy: I’m trying to tell you. Perhaps I should begin by saying that I
don’t normally think about my life from the perspective of
biology and brain science any more than you do. And see no
reason why I should. Usually, I just think about what I must do,
and do it; or I think about what I want and go after it – just like
everybody else.
Thea: But surely this stuff is important to you in some way. You’re not
a university prof who has to publish for the sake of his career.
You’re not getting paid. You’re working with these ideas for
their own sake, because they mean something to you.
Guy: They do. But it’s important to recognize that philosophy and
science, and other systems of ideas, have only limited impact on
people’s ordinary speech and daily lives. And this is as it should
be. Even the philosophers and scientists who work with new
ideas and play with them, get across the street, do the shopping,
make love to their lovers like everybody else.
Despite all we know about astronomy, we still talk about the
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sun as rising in the east and setting in the west, though we have
dropped the image of a solar chariot pulled across the sky by
Apollo’s horses. Similarly, we will continue to talk about having
bodies and making decisions, even while knowing that it would
be more accurate to think of our brains and bodies as making us.
It would be foolish to do otherwise. We choose our metaphors
and language for the purposes at hand; and for most purposes of
life, folk psychology is a lot more convenient than neuroscience.
Thea: But our “supreme context” is altered?
Guy: That’s true. I don’t imagine my affairs and doings as supervised

by a parental God, who awards gold stars and demerit points for
my behavior. That’s a large change right there.
Thea: Then how do you see yourself?
Guy: I see myself living in a biological and cognitive eco-system, not

in a moral kindergarten. I’m a single node of feeling and
narrative consciousness in a vast system that includes many
similar nodes, with all of history and all the rest of Nature as its
context. I’m a link in a chain of generation that began with the
earliest life on earth and now extends through me to my daughter
and grand-daughter and any further progeny from my loins. I’m
a link in several lineages of knowledge and thought, extending
back in time through people and works I’ve learned from, and
forward through people who’ve learned from me. I’m linked to
you and others that I’ve loved, or merely known and dealt with,
and through all these people to their circles of loved ones, friends
and acquaintances through however many “degrees of
separation.” I’m made up of atoms and chemical molecules and
then of living cells, and am myself a component of various social
groupings and organizations.
So there’s still a “Great Chain of Being” if you like, and
we’re still parts of it, though it does not proceed from God down
through the angels, but builds itself up from nothingness and
branches out in all directions, inter-linking entities of the cosmos
313
in ways that beggar the imagination.
Thea: But you can’t find much love in such a world, nor much sense of
duty or purpose. It throws people onto their own resources and
leaves them fundamentally isolated – for all the inter-connections
you speak of.
Guy: It’s a minority view I know, but personally I find it easier to see
love in a self-organizing world that’s slowly and painfully lifting
itself out of chaos by its own bootstraps, than in a
Judaeo-Christian world, supposedly designed and called into
being by an all powerful, loving God in full awareness of all the
horrors that would follow. I’d sooner believe the Gnostic myth of
an ambitious apprentice-god who bungled the Creation while his
master wasn’t looking. The ecoDarwinian story is not just more
scientific, and more truthful about the Nature we see around us.
It gives us more to wonder at, more to be thankful for – more to
praise, if you feel moved to worship. That the world has come as
far as has, has become so rich and beautiful, all by itself. without
any guiding hand, leaves me happier and more at peace with our
condition than the religious story of a God who must be either
sadistic or incompetent, if his performance is judged in human
terms.
Thea: And purpose? Where do you find that? For that matter, how do
you experience time, without a “moving finger” writing the
story?
Guy: To the best of my knowledge, time for the physicist is still a

riddle. In my own life, time is an arrow, climbing toward the sky
and falling back to earth. Nothing new about that image, is there?
In the larger context, ecological time tends to run in spirals. Its
cycles tend to resemble the cycles that went before, but there is
ample room for novelty and its risks. Changes accumulate until
the system undergoes a change of state, crossing the pass into a
different region.
“Shit happens,” as that T-shirt says, but not toward some
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intended goal. Nor does it just happen repetitively, again and

again. Rather, the shit configures itself into complex systems that
support and constrain life in manifold, highly specific but inter-
related ways. History seems to be important, but not as progress
toward the fulfillment of a master plan. Many events happen
more or less at random, but then exert a permanent influence –
like the stones on a go-board that don’t move, once they have
been placed.
Thea: So your “religion” then amounts to what? What’s the “supreme

context” for your life choices?
Guy: A cautious probing at the edge of the possible,1 pursuant to my

desires and interests and concerns. Certainly not a living up to
general principles, or to a grand plan. Widening circles of
attachment to specific people, institutions and histories in a
self-organizing world. A life-long project to understand what I
can – and take in what I can of what others have understood – in
the brief time I have here, within the limits of my energy and
intelligence. And to share what I can of all this with anyone
who’s interested.
Thea: And that is enough for you?
Guy: It has to be. It’s what I’ve made of myself. It’s what I’ve become.
By now, it’s who I am.
Thea: You know, it’s weird. I think you’re one of the happier people I
know. But listening to you these last few minutes, you sound
more resigned than happy. How do you really feel about all this?
About the disenchanted world that your science has shown us?
Or this de-anthropomorphized world, if you prefer?
Guy: I have mixed feelings, like everybody else. The central change,
1
Stuart Kauffman’s phrase again. See Talk. #2.
315
I’d say, is that in place of a Divine Mystery beyond human

understanding we now have insuperable complexity that in
principle seems more or less understandable, though no
individual can grasp more than a fraction of it. Because
hard-working, intelligent, ambitious persons can now learn a
great deal about some narrow corner of the universe, much that
was once left to “fate” or to “the will of God” is now subject to
human manipulation if enough time and energy are mobilized.
But time and energy mean serious money, and money means
politics. The upshot is that what used to be a matter for prayer is
now a political issue – ultimately demanding submission to
systems and interests that are increasingly global in scope.
Thea: So where does that leave you?
Guy: Feeling extremely fortunate in some ways, but rather helpless at

the same time. Also, wondering at the position we have reached
in our career as a species. The debate one hears is between
people hoping for further benefits, medical, economic or even
spiritual, from these new discoveries against people who are
frankly hostile to and fearful of the story they are hearing. I am
not comfortable with either side’s position. I would be more
impressed with the potential breakthroughs if so many people all
around the world were not still starving, or dying in wars or from
common diseases that have been curable for half a century. And
I am disgusted by the religious types who know so little of
“God’s Truth that they cannot recognize intellectual cowardice
and dishonesty when it picks their pockets and grows fat at their
expense.
For myself, I am just trying to follow this story as it comes
together, and consider what it has to say about human nature and
the human condition.
Thea: Which is what according to you? You obviously don’t feel

threatened by the story it is telling, as so many people obviously
do. Why is that, I wonder?
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Guy: I don’t feel threatened because I feel no stake in denying the

obvious. On the most basic level, this new science merely
confirms and details what we’ve known for thousands of years.
It’s not news that people have animal needs; that we feel pleasure
and pain and a range of universally intelligible emotions; that we
die when we’ve been injured badly, and grow old and die
eventually in any case – like any other animal; that people are
much the same everywhere in some ways but, in some other
ways, can differ very widely; that our languages and cultures give
us a range of proclivities and capabilities that no other animal can
match – notably a sense of history and imagine future; it’s not
news that our minds play tricks on us; that we sometimes do
things against our better judgment. I could go on and on. On the
basics of the human condition, nothing in the scientific story is
tremendously new. What we’re losing is a cherished fantasy. Or
not even that – just the dubious privilege of feeling intellectually
honest and special while pretending that our cherished fantasy is
“Revealed Truth.”
Thea: One thing you’ve emphasized in these talks is that “human

nature”is again a respectable concept – that the mind is nothing
like a “blank slate,” and that humans are born with instinctive
behaviors and propensities that seem pretty much the same
everywhere. Could you say more about that? It’s controversial for
some reason. People care a lot about this point.
human nature
Guy: People care because there are political stakes involved. The idea
of human nature is thought to favor a conservative stance, while
a culturally malleable humanity, supposedly, should be more
open to reform. But in the scientific community by now, it’s
generally agreed that nearly all behavior requires both nature and
nurture. There’s a physiological propensity to learn something,
and a window of opportunity in which that learning occurs. Both
human speech and bird song are obvious examples: Young birds
need only minimal prompting to acquire the songs of their
species, but hatchlings kept isolated from others of their kind do
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not learn to sing properly. The same seems to be true of human

children.2
Just which traits are human propensities, and how exactly –
and to what extent – our genes contribute to their acquisition is
still a subject of debate.
Thea: How would we recognize genetic influence in a human trait?

Twin studies wouldn’t help much if the trait is common.
Guy: That’s a good question. Just because a trait, in one variant or

another, is found in societies of all times and places does not
establish a genetic component. Dennett, with his usual wit,
remarks3 that all hunters everywhere throw their spears pointy
end first, presumably without a neural structure prompting them
to do so. Only when a universally observed behavior is counter-
intuitive or (even better) self-defeating today, yet plausibly
related to reproductive success under stone-age conditions is
there a claim for some instinctual contribution from human
biology.
Thea: For example?
Guy: Certain aspects of mating and child rearing behavior may have a
biological foundation: that women tend to be attracted to older,
high-status men, while men go for good-looking, young women
and fall readily into jealous rage when those women hook up
with someone else; that everybody finds young children cute, and
feels an impulse to take care of them. That people mimic each
other’s behaviors, form themselves into groups, compete for
status, and make war against outsiders.
The specifics of such patterns surely require cultural learning
2
See http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/songbirds.html ,
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-12/uou-sit120304.php and
http://bowland-files.lancs.ac.uk/chimp/langac/LECTURE4/4feral.htm.
3
In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.
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but, as with language, there may be genetically guided

propensities behind the culturally-prescribed forms.
Thea: This idea that our typical patterns concerned with sex and
violence may be expressions of our genes reminds me of Original
Sin – a theory of evil in the human blood line.
Guy: Except that evolutionary biology has no category of evil.
Thea: No, nor any notion of disobedience to a divine commandment

either. Yet, like the Christian doctrine, it provides a theory of
human nature, purporting to explain why we so readily make our
affairs worse than they are or need to be.
Guy: The explanations could hardly be more different.
Thea: But that is just what is so interesting – that your modern science
agrees with Christian teaching on this one point, while
disagreeing everywhere else. For their different reasons, both
genetics and Genesis teach that humankind needs to be
suspicious of its own nature. Both seem to say that humanity is
a flawed or incomplete species, alienated from Nature and from
its own condition. In every other respect, as you say, the two
accounts are completely different. What the Bible attributes to
disobedience, pride and sin becomes a matter of human biology
and natural selection.
Guy: Yes. I see your point. I think it’s a nice example of mythical
thought managing to express something true and important in a
thoroughly distorted way.
Thea: The distortion is a serious one. As Freud saw, civilized life

compels us, on occasion, to struggle against our natures, and may
exact a high price when we fail to do so. Yet the notion of sin
distorts the issue completely. It is precisely God’s law for us –
our human nature – that we’re obeying when impulse gets the
better of us.
319
Guy: But why frame the issue in terms of obedience? That’s a source
of misunderstanding right there. Sure, we’ve evolved a set
impulses. But we’ve evolved some judgment as well. Human
suggers can learn to reject bad suggestions even from our own
affect systems. Just because we have evolved propensities to act
in certain ways doesn’t mean we’re compelled or commanded to
do so.
Thea: Of course, the learning needed for responsible self-control may

have been missed. Or, on the contrary it may have been
over-learned, cramping all capacity for spontaneous enjoyment.
Guy: Evolutionary psychologists are now considering that human

moral intuitions too may have a biological foundation. For
example, in an article for the Edge web site,4 a social
psychologist named Jonathan Haidt lists five “psychological
systems” (as he calls them) that he regards as both innate and
foundational for the moral codes that specific cultures develop.
Thea: That does sound interesting. What are they?
Guy: The first two systems, Haidt says, are standard liberal virtues:
fairness/justice and care and protection of the vulnerable. The
first can be connected to our concepts of free, informed consent
and freely negotiated contracts – central values of any
commercial society. The second, connects with our ideas of
nurture, rescue, guardianship and chivalry – equally central to the
possibility of any society whatever.
In addition to these, Haidt suggests three further systems as
innate and foundational for human moral intuitions:
in-group/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. These
values, more congenial to a conservative than to a liberal
world-view, uphold a vision of collective solidarity – at the
expense of the individual, where necessary.
4
At www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html.
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Thea: And sometimes, where not so necessary. Leaders tend to confuse

loyalty to themselves with loyalty to the group, and all too easily
see any criticism of their policies as treason. They regard their
authority as a God-given right, not as a gift and trust from their
constituents. They push the concept of purity to a point where
everything not compulsory is strictly forbidden.
Guy: All too true. But at the risk of becoming an apologist for tyrants,
one could point out that there are risks the other way too, when
individuals pursue their private interests to the limit, and the
public interest be damned. If there is such a thing as group
selection, then groups who manage a good balance between
individual rights and collective expectations are likely to fare
better in the long run – in terms of both genetic and memetic
descendants – than groups who flunk this dilemma in one
direction or the other.
Thea: I can accept that. It was a great strength of the American

constitution to recognize this issue, take it seriously, and seek a
viable balance. It’s surely interesting to think that evolution
might be pushing human moral sensibilities in this same direction
– toward an adaptive balancing of individual and collective
interests. What else does the theory have to say about human
minds and their tendencies?
Guy: While the details are still uncertain, another point is that all
human minds seem to be anchored not only in the neurons, but
also in the structures and experiences of a human body.
Thea: What do you mean?
Guy: In all cultures that we know of, progress and success are “up”
while failure is “down.” We “reach out” to people in trouble, and
advise them to “get a grip.” In the groups we join, we become
“insiders,” or we are left “out in the cold.” We go “off” the booze
and get “on” the job. We “take a stand,” or “button our lips” and
“sit on it.” In these metaphors, and a thousand others, our
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cognitive choices and procedures draw structure from our

experience of embodiment.5
Thea: Interesting, but so what? Why is this important?
Guy: Because it shows one way that our genes can eventually express
themselves in thoughts and cultural patterns. We think along
certain lines, because our bodies are as they are – as our genes
shaped them to be.
We can suppose too that human languages tend to carve the
world into things with qualities that perform actions because our
senses themselves do so. More generally, it seems clear that our
brains are not general-purpose learning engines, and that our
minds are expressions of human genetics and physiology, as well
as culture and personal experience. To some considerable extent,
our cognitive capabilities seem to be what the evolutionary
psychologists call “domain specific” – adapted for typical
problems that our paleolithic ancestors faced. As a species, we
are remarkable generalists, but strongly influenced and
sometimes constrained by the evolutionary heritage of a
paleolithic life style.
autonomy and authenticity

Thea: You know, I’m still not clear what conscious agency or autonomy
can mean under these conditions. I don’t see where there is room
for such a thing. We’ve known since Freud’s time that agency
can be tricked by the unconscious. But if suggestions strongly
shaped by stone-age proclivities just bubble up from the
unconscious, and may or may not be subject to conscious review
on their way to the motor pathways, then we must expect our
actions to take us by surprise much of the time. Or am I missing
something?
Guy: No, I don’t think you’re missing anything. You’ve just described
5
See Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson.
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our situation pretty much as neuropsychologists now understand

it. But doesn’t that fit with your clinical experience, and with the
historical record? We know that people can function much of the
time as conscious and relatively autonomous agents. That this
capability has its limits, we also know. If the question is, “Do
words like agency and autonomy retain coherent meanings?” then
I think it can be shown that they do. But these meanings are not
identical with those of folk psychology. There is a sea-change,
corresponding to neuropsychology’s shifted concept of a self.
Where that change is relevant, we’ll need to get used to it.
One point worth noting, though, is that problems with the
concepts of agency and autonomy do not originate with
neuro-science or the eD paradigm. These merely add their own
perspective to an issue that has been familiar to Hindu and
Buddhist thinkers for a few thousand years, and that arose for me
many years ago, when I was a beginner in aikido, trying to read
a little about Taoism and Zen.
Thea: What issue are you thinking of?
Guy: In most arts, you learn from experience that trying to do things on
purpose, in the agential fashion that we take for granted, is
self-defeating. You must let go of control for a while, and let the
unconscious play if you hope to do anything worthwhile. In
aikido the point is especially clear. You start out thinking that
what you have to do is see your chance and apply one of those
neat techniques that your instructor has shown. But you soon
discover that this technical mind-set gets in the way. Rather, you
have to go along with the aggressive intention, catch its rhythm,
amplify the inherent instability of the attack, and allow it to
defeat itself. Getting personal fear and ego out of the circuit
would be one way to put it. Also, you must forget the technique
on a conscious level – though of course, your subconscious has
been trained to do it automatically, in every possible variation. In
short, you must forget about willful agency, and just participate
in the movement – be fully present to it, without the illusion of
making it happen.
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Thea: Just let the movement self-organize, you will say. Even if it kills
you.
Guy: In the language we’re now speaking – that I learned many years
later – that is just what I’ll say. But the Taoists and Zen people
made the same point in their own language; and even in Western
thought you can find a similar idea. In every tradition I know of,
it has been clear to people who allow themselves to know such
things, that the folk psychology of desire, belief and intention –
of agency, in one word – is paradoxical.6 Indeed, I think this may
be the experiential core of “perennial philosophy.” Whether you
talk about “going with the flow,” or “letting go of the illusion of
a separate Self,” or “putting yourself in the hands of God” who
is known to “help those who help themselves,” the point is much
the same. Long before brain science, people recognized by
introspection and experience that the concept of voluntary agency
is deeply flawed. We’ll never know how many people have
committed murder because they had a gun at hand. Conversely,
we know that people sometimes behave heroically, and/or prevail
against all odds when they forget themselves and let a situation
have its way with them.
Thea: Stigmergy in action!
Guy: Yes, exactly. Our tools and weapons, not to mention the global
systems we’re now building, use us as much as we use them.
Thea: Then what remains of autonomy? You said that concept still had
meaning, though I feel it continuing to erode with every point you
make.
6
For a discussion of these paradoxes, see my essay At the Limits of Agency
in the collection entitled Second Thoughts. Also available on my website
at www.secthoughts.com.
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Guy: Remember the Baldwin effect.7 Living creatures exploit the

plasticity of their own bodies to select the selection criteria that
act upon them. We use a version of that same effect to select the
reinforcement schedules that guide our learning when we choose
the games we play. Much of our autonomy lies in the choices we
make when we sign up for this game, and this lifestyle, rather
than that one. When you go to med school they train you to think
and act like a doctor. Mug people on the street, and your life will
teach you the instincts and reflexes of a mugger. Either way, after
a period of apprenticeship, you become what you are practicing
to be.
Thea: So once you join a game or a group, you lose your autonomy to
it. It takes you over and directs your choices. Is that what you’re
saying?
Guy: Not entirely. There’s more to autonomy than that. Apart from the
stigmergic effects, and effects of social participation there are the
unpredictable effects of inner conflict. There are unanticipated,
even paradoxical effects of strategic interaction – a “cunning of
Reason,” as Hegel called it. And there are random effects of
sheer happenstance. For all these reasons,life is always
happening to us while we’re planning something else. No matter
what, you always construct your own responses to the
suggestions you are receiving. They are always your responses,
shaped by your temperament, your education, your life history.
Human behavior is autonomous because it feels, and is uniquely
your own.
I’d say, autonomy remains what it has always been, though
we now understand it better: We cannot be unconditioned
masters of our lives because there is no a priori self beyond and
above it all. Life lives us more than we live it; life must “always
already” be living us before we can begin to think about living it.
If free will means a power to create and choose our lives out of
7
See Talk #2.
325
nothing, there is no such thing. If it means the autonomous

capability to evaluate and act on the suggestions we receive, then
we have it as much as ever.
I think the greatest autonomy is found just where we always
looked for it: in creative work that leaves you wide choice, with
only vague direction from your problem and materials – where
you spend a lot of time wondering what to do next, experiencing
not too little autonomy but too much of it. Csikszentmihalyi got
this right with his concept of “flow”– the state you enter when a
challenge is well suited to your level of skill.8 We are happiest
when feeling free but optimally guided at the same time.
Thea: Yes. I’ve always liked that notion of “flow.” I try to teach it to
my clients when they express boredom or frustration. It helps
them think about the ways that their lives are too challenging, or
not challenging enough. It adds up, I suppose. While we lack the
metaphysical “free will” of moral beings “made in the image of
God,” we have the relative autonomy one might expect, subject
to all the constraints and conditioning in our lives, but all the
possibilities we’ve learned to see, and all the distinctions and
judgments we’ve learned to make.
Okay. Before we quit for tonight, there’s one more concept
I’d like your take on. What is authenticity on this account? What
can it mean to live authentically, if there is no essential self, but
only a neural self-representation and a self-narrative?
Guy: Authenticity may be one of those concepts – like “truth” and

“justice” – that are easier to recognize than to define, and that in
the end, can only be recognized and defined by their absence.
Just as we know more clearly what it means to lie than we know
what truth is, so we can be much clearer about what is phony
than what is authentic.
8
See the interview with Dr. Csikszentmihalyi by Elizabeth Debold on the
W eb at www.wie.org/j21/csiksz.as.
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A constructivist like me might liken the authenticity of a life

or character to the integrity of a design. Saint-Exupery said, “A
designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is
nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
What he meant was that in great design, everything included is
necessary – essential, as we say. Nothing can be changed without
diminishing the whole.
That is certainly true of good writing: You work by blurting
your thoughts to the word processor, and then by keeping what
is worth saying and discarding the rest. Often, you only recognize
the themes of your piece as you are doing this; and in this way,
you learn from the process itself just what you are trying to say.
Similarly with a character, or a life. Its themes emerge as you are
living them. Only with hindsight, looking back, can you say what
kept faith with those themes and what did not. The difference is
that in real life, you don’t get to do a second draft.
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#16 BECOMING TRANS-HUMAN
Talk #16: Becoming Trans-human
Even though the machines are not yet inside of our bodies and
brains, we . . . routinely do intellectual feats as a society that
would be impossible without our machines. As these machines
become more and more intimate, they will be in our clothing
and ultimately inside our bodies and brains. This will allow us
to extend our mental horizons, and we’ll be capable of
appreciating and absorbing and communicating more of this
exponentially expanding knowledge base.
– Ray Kurzweil1
Guy: So . . . Have you had enough?
Thea: I don’t know. It’s all very interesting. But to really get my head
around this stuff, I’d have to do what you did: go off and spend
the next ten years reading around these subjects, to see where I
end up. I’m not sure that trading in a mystery for a reading
assignment is such a bargain.
Guy: Or, as we do with most things, you could just take on faith that
the people who have done that homework are not fools or liars,
and are really offering you the best ideas we have of where mind
comes from and how it works. If you do just that much, you’ll be
miles ahead of people who feel entitled to strong opinions on
matters of which they are willfully ignorant. Ignorance is no
crime today. Given how much there is to know, it’s not even a
1
See Kurzweil’s book, The Singularity is Near.
329
disgrace. A lifetime is barely enough to learn a fraction of what

is known in a few areas that really interest you. If I’ve done no
more than convince you that the eD paradigm of self-organization
can tell a much better story than Cartesian dualism and Intelligent
Design, our time will not have been wasted.
Thea: Oh, you’ve convinced me that it makes for better science.

Whether it makes for a better life, or a better society, I still have
doubts.
Guy: Reasonable ones. It’s still too soon to know what human societies
will do with the idea of self-organization. The first glimmerings
of the paradigm have only been around for about 400 years or so,
if we take Galileo’s clash with the Inquisition as the marker.
Scientists only became fully conscious of it within our lifetime.2
The lay public is only now awakening to the significance of its
clash with previous, top-down modes of explanation and
understanding.
Thea: How does Galileo come into it? In one of our early talks,3 I
remember you mentioning Adam Smith as a forerunner of the
ecoDarwinian paradigm. Galileo lived almost 200 years earlier.
self-organizing knowledge
Guy: Galileo has been called “the father of modern astronomy” and the
“father of modern physics.” In fact, we can see him as the father
of science itself – the first thorough-going practitioner of a
method through which public knowledge is allowed to
self-organize through the competitive contributions of
innumerable individuals, rather than be imposed top-down by
traditional authority. The real novelty of science was to license
perpetual criticism of authority from a pragmatic and empirical
standpoint. The community of science is just the community of
2
The term “self-organizing” was introduced in 1947 by W . Ross Ashby.
3
Talk #2.
330
people – relatively few people, unfortunately – who have learned

to live with doubt.
In that spirit, scientists operate by framing hypotheses that
they can test with systematic observations. Of course, the
hypotheses they can frame and the tests they can perform at any
point in time are limited by the current repertoire of concepts and
techniques, so we must imagine that community’s collective
knowledge as gradually extending and refining itself (evolving,
in other words) as its members attempt to work with their
knowledge and apply it. In the scientific literature of any field we
can trace “the social construction of reality” in almost complete
detail. Another clear example of such bottom-up construction
might be Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia that anyone can
edit.
Thea: So you could say that the ecoDarwinian revolution began with
the rise of science itself.
Guy: That’s what I would say: Dynamic change was already going
strong in the 17th century, but the rise of science, and the epoch
of “Enlightenment” that followed, effectively valorized change
and locked us into it as an addiction. Previous generations had
preferred stability to change – as many people still do – people
around the world, whose experience has been that change is
nearly always bad for them. Historically, the idea of evolution
and the notion of “progress” have been one and the same.
So if you ask what the idea of self-organization is doing, or
will do to human societies, you should count science and the
modern world among its achievements.
Thea: That’s quite a claim!
Guy: I make it advisedly. John Locke, Adam Smith, Jefferson, Diderot

and his Encyclopedists – they were all children of the
Enlightenment, which was itself a child of the self-organizing
process that we call science. The world they preached – its
democratic politics, capitalist economics, its science and its
331
technology – is based on this root idea that knowledge, wealth

and social order need not be planned and authorized by a ruler
(whether human or divine), but that they can evolve by
themselves, and have in fact done so. Smith explained how this
was the case in economics. Darwin showed how it could be true
of Life. In the last thirty years or so, as I’ve been describing,
we’ve begun to understand how it is true of Mind.
Thea: So when I ask about the impact of your eD paradigm on society,

there is the whole of modernity to consider. The Enlightenment,
liberal democracy, market economies and everything that
followed reflect the application of scientific Reason to social
issues. Both theoretically and pragmatically, these were now to
be treated with a focus on concrete results – in a scientific spirit
at least, if not yet actually by science.
Guy: Yes, and we can go further: On the level of values and morals, it
has been apparent for some time now that a key feature of the
bottom-up paradigm is to set a value on difference as evolution’s
raw material. This point was apparent to Nietzsche, who drew his
ethic of heroism and bold exploration from his reading of
Darwin. Although his reading (like that of the social Darwinists)
was largely a mis-reading, it remains true that Darwinism makes
room for, and finds creative use for individual traits and
idiosyncrasies that traditional philosophies would regard as
failings and perversions. Plato and Aristotle believed that all
things existed as ideal types – or ideas in the mind of God,
according to the Jewish and Christian thinkers – before they
appeared in the material world as more or less accurate instances
or realizations of the ideal. We post-Darwinians now see these
individual differences as more or less viable experiments – a
“dance on the edge of the possible,” as Stuart Kauffman put it –
with no pre-existing ideals anywhere.
Thea: While for traditionalists, anything that departs from what they see
as the ideal is just plain wrong. As with sex: What one person
enjoys as excitingly kinky, another condemns as an unnatural act.
332
Guy: Precisely. And with all the culture wars that follow.
Thea: So where is it going now – all these new ideas, new knowledge
and new technology? Where is the world going with them?
Guy: That’s an impossible question. The only honest answer I could

give you is that we won’t know until we get there. There’s just no
way to know which ideas will stand up, and which technologies
pay off. There’s no knowing how the competition of ideas and
technical possibilities will play out.
Thea: But surely you’ve thought about these things – have some
opinions about them.
Guy: Of course I have. But none that could do you or anyone any good.
I believe, as you do, that our civilization is racing toward a crisis
– a singularity, as it has been called – that promises to transform
human life beyond recognition, while it is already causing a crisis
for our planet’s ecosystem. The ideas I’ve been describing are
wrapped up with these trends, but the more I read and think, the
less idea I have of what should be done.
In fact, I doubt there’s much we can do, beyond trying to
understand the situation we are in, and doing our best with events
and issues as they arise. People clamor for regulation of the new
technologies, but I’m afraid they’re whistling in the dark. Gov-
ernments have been fairly good at setting standards that industry
itself has wanted in place, but have generally failed to regulate
business corporations against their wishes, for a public interest
however obvious. I’m afraid our governments will prove no more
effective at regulating the new technologies than King Canute at
regulating the tide. By all means, debate and legislate, if that is
your thing. But the waters keep rising anyhow.
Thea: I wish I could disagree, but nothing of my experience in

government encourages me to do so. The regulators mostly had
common interests with the regulated, and always depended on
them for information. And we were always playing catch-up –
333
always a step behind – trying to regulate processes already on

stream, and products already on the market.
Let me pull you back a little. You said something about
“racing toward a singularity.” That sounded ominous. What’s a
singularity?
toward the singularity

Guy: In math, it’s the point where a curve spikes – where its rate of
change becomes infinite. Ray Kurzweil applied this concept to
technology, arguing that it has accelerated exponentially over the
course of human history. Sometime around the middle of the 21st
century, he claims, it will become so rapid that the continuity of
history will be ruptured. At that point, humanity as we have
known it will come to an end, and a trans-human era will begin.
Thea: And you agree with this?
Guy: I do and I don’t. I think Kurzweil is undoubtedly right that

measurable technical parameters like chip speed, or the cost of
sending a message from New York to Beijing are changing
exponentially – up to limits of feasibility and/or diminishing
returns, in some cases. And I think he is right that the continuity
of history is threatened. But I think that he and other
trans-humanists underestimate the sheer durability of the human
condition, and the resistance that all these cognitive and
technological changes are provoking. I think it likely that greed,
lust for power, fear and sheer habit will foreclose the future they
dream of.
Thea: That would not be a singularity in history. That would be

business as usual.
Guy: Well, mathematical singularity might still be an apt metaphor for

our predicament. Not that the behaviors involved are odd, but that
the rate of change is becoming infinite.
It’s important to grasp that the new technologies really are
new – doing things that were never done before, and reshaping
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our ideas on what it means to be human. The changes wrought by

gunpowder, the printing press, the steam engine, telegraph and
telephone, electric lighting, cars and airplanes, radio and
television, modern medicine, and even the early digital computers
were quantitative changes, for the most part. They did faster,
cheaper and more effectively the same things that people had
always done. Their collective impact made a huge difference in
the ways that people lived and earned their livings, but did not
change our thinking much.
In that sense, the first real novelty – cognitive novelty – was
flight, followed by rockets and spaceflight. Man had long
dreamed of soaring through the skies; now we can actually do it.
The famous photo of an Earth-rise seen from the surface of the
moon, gave us our first external, truly global view of the small
planet that remains our only home. Digital imaging and the
Internet between them are changing our relationship to
information and knowledge much more than printing ever did.
Bio-technology will take the randomness (or the hand of God, if
you prefer) out of reproduction, making it possible for parents to
design their children to specification. Remote-control weapons
will take personal risk out of the warrior’s trade, making it
possible to kill people in the same adrenaline-rushed but fearless
mood in which kids now play video games. At the same time,
new medical technology will blur the distinction between man
and machine. On one hand, it will put all sorts of prosthetic
gadgetry (from hip replacements to ultra-miniaturized computing
and communications devices) into human bodies, directly linking
with the appropriate body tissue – bones, organs, arteries, veins
and nerve fibres. On the other, technology is already treating
human individuals as expensive system components that perform,
with carefully circumscribed autonomy, all tasks (and only those)
that cannot economically be automated. Or as refractory units
that smart information systems will supervise and manage – for
our own good.
It may even be possible for medical technology to postpone
or reverse the aging process: People would no longer die natural
deaths but, sooner or later, either have a fatal accident, or have
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themselves tidily put away, out of sheer boredom. Alternatively,

they might have their memories and personalities uploaded to
very powerful devices (probably more like synthetic neural nets
than like our present-day computers) to dwell eternally in
cyber-space. Both possibilities are being studied today, and
serious money is invested in them.
Thea: Where do governments stand on these matters?
Guy: Government attitudes are mixed, as you might expect. Apart from
various military and economic possibilities that they don’t want
to fall behind on, governments have reasonable fears of what
could happen when parents choose options for their children as
they do for their automobiles. Or when it has to pay pensions and
provide medical care and facilities for any large number of
people over 65, who expect to reach 120.
About the dire economic and political consequences of any
general increase in people’s intelligence, the less said the better.
I leave these to your imagination. But finally, just consider the
scope for political conflict between those who have access to
these new technologies and those who, for any reason, do not. Or
between those who do and do not accept their moral legitimacy.
Thea: Let me change the subject, a little. I don’t see the role of your eD
paradigm in all this. Except indirectly, insofar as these
developments are fruits of scientific method. Is there a more
direct connection?
Guy: The eD Paradigm and specific ideas that we’ve been discussing
are crucial for more than a few of the novel technologies. For
example:
• Principles of self-organization are being applied directly in
the manufacture of nano-tech devices in ways that I don’t
336
begin to understand.4
• Computer programmers are writing what they call genetic
algorithms to solve optimization problems by evolving
toward an answer.
• Modern communication networks are open systems that must
be used without fore-knowledge of load distribution and
without central control. Thus, the World Wide Web in
general, and Wiki sites in particular, are themselves partly
self-organizing systems that appeal to principles of
self-organization in their design. Google (which otherwise
knows only the keyword you enter) uses swarm logic to
prioritize the returns from your search requests.
• Engineers now try to design their gadgets to be
“user-friendly” – that is, to guide a user in their correct use.
They don’t refer to this guidance as “stigmergy,” but that is
the idea.
• Synthetic organs and organ transplants – a key dimension of
the anti-aging program – depend on a deep understanding of
the body’s immune system, with its tendency to hunt down
and destroy alien tissue. Cures for AIDS and very likely for
cancer will also depend on this understanding. But these
immune systems are not, and could not be pre-programmed
by evolution. Rather they self-organize over time to
recognize and combat specific invaders that they encounter.
Our existing vaccine technology is based on the considerable
understanding of this process that we have gained to-date;
but there is much that we still don’t know, and
communicable diseases that we can’t prevent, sometimes
because they are themselves evolving too rapidly.
• When personal computers and cell phones get small and light
enough to be inserted into our bodies and wired directly to
brains, a detailed understanding of the self-organizing
patterns in both biological and artificial neural networks will
4
See the W ikipedia article on nanotechnology at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology.
337
be needed.
• The defeat of natural aging, if it is possible, will depend on
a detailed understanding of the human body as an evolving
eco-system – strongly influenced, but not pre-programmed in
complete detail by its genes.
One could go on and on. You can see why Kurzweil regards this
technological explosion as a discontinuity in history. It’s like a
“black hole” in space – a mass so great that nothing, not even
light, escapes it. Everything gets sucked in, and we have no idea
what (if anything) comes out the other side.
Thea: And you believe the crisis is inescapable?
Guy: Apart from the eD paradigm’s direct contribution, I believe that

Kurzweil’s singularity was already implicit in science, in Adam
Smith’s economic liberalism, in the American Constitution, and
in the human desire for “progress.” The religious types who hate
this “brave new world” have no viable alternative to offer, but
they are not crazy. They see correctly that modernity itself is
their enemy. What they fail to see is that a medieval society
armed with modern weapons can start a global war, but will not
be able to govern anything – even itself.
At root, the culture wars we see today are only so many
theaters in the much bigger war between people who believe
(albeit, perhaps, with large reservations) in science and
technology as sources of progress, and those who feel cheated,
humiliated, marginalized and oppressed by technology – often
with very good reason. A very nasty saying about our hi-tech
world captures the issue nicely: “Once a new technology rolls
over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the
road.”5
Largely, these two groups – road and steamroller – are
talking past each other, unable to understand or care what the
5
Attributed to Stewart Brand of MIT’s Media Lab.
338
other side is saying. And part of the reason for this polarization
and mutual incomprehension is that the sides are operating from
very different paradigms.
Thea: So you see the bottom-up boys as the party of progress, with the
top-down types as a fundamentalist resistance?
Guy: It’s not that clear cut. Remember what we said a while back about
the complexity of social cause. I don’t say that the world’s poor
are poor because they reject the ecoDarwinian paradigm. Nor
would I say the contrary: that they reject the ecoDarwinian
paradigm because they are failing to compete. Both statements
would be silly. On the other hand, it’s obvious that ideas of
Reason, science and technology, market economy, liberal
democracy and biological evolution have clustered together from
the mid 16th century to the present. While conversely and
unsurprisingly, most resistance to this “Enlightenment” program
has clung to some version of the top-down world-view.
It is probably more than coincidence that the Tao-based
civilizations of the Far East which, of course, had powerful
ancien regimes of their own have been adapting fairly
successfully to the modern world, while the Solar, monotheistic
civilizations of the Middle East (which laid the very foundations
of Western science) are conspicuously failing to do so, and
blaming everything but their top-down, it-is-the-will-of-Allah
world view for their difficulties.
Thea: Jews and Christians are also monotheists.
Guy: In theory yes, but few Jews and Christians really believe the old
stories any more, though they pretend they do when the
requirements are not too onerous or inconvenient. These days,
most of them “believe in belief,” as Dennett puts it, more than
they do in the commandments and providence of their God or in
the strictures of their church. Muslims seem really to believe that
Allah has a plan for the world revealed to his messenger
Mohamed – and that obedience to that message is demanded,
339
ultimately from everyone. Inconveniently, many Muslims seem

ready to die rather than compromise on this point.
Thea: I wonder if there is anything really new here. Hasn’t there always
been this same division of humanity into “steamroller” and
“road”? On one hand, aggressive, can-do entrepreneurial types
who jump (by a kind of swarm effect) onto the latest band-wagon
and ride along with it, cheering it on and making it happen. And,
underneath them, a peasantry too pre-occupied and exhausted
from their daily struggle to lift their heads up for more than a
moment, before the juggernaut pushes them back into the mud.
beyond human?
Guy: Perhaps the only thing new is that the future evolution of our
species may now become more a matter of culture than of
biology. Some futurists claim that humans soon will consciously
direct the evolution of the species, as we already do with our
crops and livestock. That’s what the word “trans-human” implies.
But here, I think, they are far too optimistic about the foresight
and regulatory effectiveness of either governments or the market.
The law of unintended consequences is still alive and well – in
fact, more so than ever as the systems we build get bigger and
more powerful.
What I think we may be seeing is a splitting of humanity –
more than six and a half billion of us and rising – into two
populations: One characterized by high education, income and
access to the new technologies – but with a low and managed
fertility rate. The other, just the reverse. In any case, the stakes
seem higher than ever before. The trans-humanists6 think of
themselves as battling for a Utopian future in which the
biological limitations of humankind are overcome, and its ancient
enemies of poverty, sickness, aging and death are permanently
defeated. The traditionalists see themselves as fighting a heroic
6
See the W orld Transhumanist Association web site at
www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/.
340
rear-guard action to preserve ancient human values – human

dignity as they understand it, and the fidelity of humankind to the
commandments of God Himself.
Thea: You make it sound like Armageddon – though not so much a war
of Good against Evil, as between utterly opposing visions of the
good. But I don’t think it has come to that, and I doubt it ever
will. Things are just not that clear cut, and the whole notion of
culture war is probably misleading. Most people seem to have a
foot in both camps. Even if they find themselves taking an active
part on one side or the other.
Guy: I’ve been drawing the distinction much too sharply, to make clear
what the issues are. You’re right to call me for doing so. In North
America, at least, if it’s a culture war, it’s still more like an
internecine, civil war in which families and individuals them-
selves are often divided against themselves. On the intellectual
level, there are clear and valid concerns on both sides; and
though I’m mostly with the futurists, I see merit in many
arguments from the opposition. For one thing, the label
trans-humanist makes me wince. With the most rabid
fundamentalists, I must agree that the redemption of humankind
– and of evolution itself – is not to be accomplished with a pill,
or any other technological fix.
Thea: Redemption!! What a strange word, coming from you. Do you

actually mean something by it? From an ecoDarwinian gnostic,
what could it possibly mean?
Guy: I mean something. No evolutionist would deny the amoral cruelty

of the Darwinian process. From any human perspective, there is
no doubt that Nature’s garden is savage, extravagant and
mindless in the extreme. But in humankind, evolution has
somehow produced a creature who can call this blind process to
a reckoning – who can wonder if the garden’s beauty is worth the
pain from which it derives, on which it’s based. As I used the
word, “redemption” would mean a judgment in the affirmative:
341
a sober judgment that one’s life has indeed been worth the pain
of living it, and the pain of other lives that made it possible.
Obviously, to have validity, such a judgment must be
autonomous and authentic; and we’ve discussed what those
words mean now. The redemption we must seek is not a matter
of reconciliation with an external, law-giving God, but with each
other and with ourselves.
People remember their histories. In some places especially,
the suggestive pull of history is overwhelming. I think this
question of redemption – a quest to avenge the past, or at least be
worthy of it, is now front and center in global politics.
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#17 WHAT WE DON’T KNOW
Talk #17 What We Don’t Know

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
– W ill Durant
Thea: You’ve spent the last few weeks telling me how much we’ve
learned. Why not finish up with an evening on what we don’t
know yet? Tell me about the questions that are still open.
Guy: That would be fitting. I think the measure of a theory or paradigm
is less the answers it gives than the new questions it teaches us to
ask.. The paradigm we’ve been discussing is rich in this respect.
It expands the scope of our ignorance enormously.
Thea: You know, that’s typical. It’s that love of good questions – more
than anything, probably – that alienates the philosopher, the artist
and the scientist from the rest of humanity. And vice versa. Most
people don’t care for interesting questions. What they want are
simple answers that will spare them the need to think and to take
responsibility for difficult choices.
Guy: I’ve never understood why that is so. Why is thinking so painful
for most people? After sex, it’s just about my favorite pastime.
Thea: After sex, you roll over and fall asleep, like every other man I’ve
known. Due to the way your brains are wired, no doubt. When
you’re awake, you talk more than most and, I admit, you have
interesting things to say.
Seriously, it’s not thinking that’s painful so much as
uncertainty. Your own notion of suggestive guidance explains it.
343
What you overlook is that most people don’t have time to think
– least of all, for thoughts that might disturb their living
arrangements. Most people are working too hard juggling their
commitments and trying to get through the day. They don’t have
the leisure for intellectual sports. And they will pay a good living
to anyone who relieves their uncertainties, and reassures them
that their lives are meaningful. Not just to priests, but to shrinks
like me. Clients aren’t happy when we insist they do their own
thinking. Much of my work is coping tactfully with that fact.
Guy: I suppose you’re right. Most people don’t see, and don’t want to
see that science is most fundamentally a method of inquiry and
an ethic of intellectual honesty. Its real power lies not in the
answers it gives, but in the ones it teaches us to ask: “How does
this work?” instead of “Why are the gods against or for us?”
In the past, we had myths to block uncomfortable questions,
but today these are coming unstuck, and peeling off. The great
questions are open again, and within the purview of scientific
inquiry.
Thea: It’s those renewed and sharpened questions I’d like to hear about
now. You’ve suggested many answers in these talks. Where do
we stand now? What great questions are still open?
Guy: The first one would be, “Where to begin?” There’s so much that
we still don’t know.
Thea: Why not start with the ecoDarwinian paradigm itself – the
intellectual taproot of this whole world-view, this whole
approach? What features of your paradigm are still uncertain?
Guy: Well, then the first question must be “What is the paradigm’s
scope? Just how far can the concept of self-organization take us,
and what are its limitations?”
Thea: You’ve been talking as if this style of thinking could explain

everything.
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Guy: You know the saying, “When your tool is a hammer, the whole
world looks like a nail.” The concept of self-organization is not
our only intellectual tool, but it’s by far the most promising we
have now. Of course, people are trying it everywhere, to see what
it can do. One big thing we don’t yet know is what it can’t do.
Thea: What limits can you imagine? What basic problems can you
foresee for your ED paradigm?
eD paradigm and general systems theory

Guy: To begin with, despite a lot of interest and work in the field,1 we
don’t yet have a general theory of self-organization. Until we do,
there’s no way of knowing how far the paradigm can be pushed
– what it can and cannot cover. At present self-organization
remains a concept, an approach to science and scientific
explanation. In its light, a number of specific theories have been
developed. These, on the whole, have proven highly successful,
though much of the work – especially in the social sciences –
remains controversial. Various mechanisms of self-organization
have been identified. I reviewed some of these with you at the
beginning of these talks.2 But we don’t have a general theory of
self-organization and it may be nonsense to ask for one. After
all, we’ve never had a general theory of cause-and-effect.
Thea: Though that paradigm too has had remarkable successes.
Guy: And is still preferred for any purposes. I think it’s important for
eD enthusiasts (like myself) to keep that in mind.
Thea: Why?
1
See, for example the Santa Fe Institute web site at www.santafe.edu/, and
Stuart Kauffman’s site at www.ucalgary.ca/ibi/kauffman/.
2
See Talk #2.
345
Guy: For the same reason that you don’t use a hammer to cut a board,
or a saw to drive a nail. We want different tools for different
purposes in our intellectual toolkit also.
Thea: All right. Agreed. Do you see any other key problems for the eD
paradigm?
Guy: Yes. One in particular. Emergent patterns in eD systems almost

always take us by surprise. We can’t really analyze these
systems. We can only simulate them to some extent. Often with
them, we don’t even know how to explain what happens after the
fact. We see only “blind chance” or some mysterious “destiny,”
where what we should see is bottom-up, evolutionary patterning
– an outcome of necessities and tendencies in the system.
Thea: You’ve said at several points in our talks that self-organizing

systems may not be as blind as we tend to think.
Guy: If the ecoDarwinian paradigm stands, then we ourselves show

how much foresight a self-organizing system can attain. This is
another area where we’ve gained just enough knowledge to see
how ignorant we still are. We know about the Baldwin effect, the
capability of at least some replicating patterns to select the
selection criteria that act upon them. But we don’t fully
understand the role of contextual effects in eD systems, least of
all in that of human society. In fact, there’s still some dispute that
such effects can be significant. Because Baldwin’s idea is
attractive, and because of its Lamarckian overtones, biologists
were reluctant to accept it. By now, they’ve mostly done so, but
uncertainties remain.
Thea: Then where does our science leave off today? Where do the
speculations begin?
inanimate Nature
Guy: Well, to begin at the beginning, the role of self-organization in
fundamental physics is a matter for speculation. There is no
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generally agreed answer to Leibniz’ great question, “Why is there

something rather than nothing?”3 Nor to the further, related
question, “Where did the laws of physics come from?”
Thea: Since you assume they were not edicts of God. Surely, from a
physicist’s perspective, fundamental law just is. To ask where the
laws came from is to imagine something more fundamental.
Guy: Not necessarily. The view most widely held today is that the
laws of physics follow from tautological symmetries of Nature,
and that the observed structure of the universe, including values
of its fundamental constants, resulted from a random breaking of
those symmetries. It may be that Leibniz asked the wrong
question: One result from quantum physics is that primordial
Nothingness is unstable and tends to collapse into
Somethingness. In that case, it would be Nothing, not
Something, that would call for explanation, except that there
would be no one around to do the explaining.4
We don’t really know yet. Maybe what we take to be
physical law resulted from those mathematical tautologies of
symmetry. Or maybe they evolved (as Lee Smolin has argued)
through a kind of cosmic natural selection (which is itself a
tautology: ripples of the random that last longer than those that
last not so long!).5 Perhaps the collapse of symmetry into
structure should be considered a principle of self-organization –
the most fundamental of all. One interpretation of our
3
See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/ and Jum Holt’s
amusing article at http://dbanach.com/holt.htm..
4
That there can be no privileged points of space and time; and that the
universe must look the same to all observers, in any direction, using any
system of coordinates. See Victor Stenger’s slide presentation at:
www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Nothing/Lawhigh.ppt, and his
article at www.csicop.org/sb/2006-06/reality-check.hml.
5
Notably Lee Smolin. See his book, The Life of the Cosmos.
347
ecoDarwinian paradigm is that anything that can happen probably

will happen, given sufficient time. Since we know that intelligent
life can happen – as it has here – we may conjecture that it has
probably happened elsewhere, perhaps again and again. It may be
that whole universes have to happen, simply because they can.
Thea: “Can happen.” “Probably will happen.” Then according to your

paradigm Einstein was completely wrong: God (your Supreme
Context) really does play dice with the universe – rolling them to
decide if there will be life! Perhaps to decide if there will be a
universe at all!
Guy: Dice is certainly a better metaphor than chess for the cosmic
game. But the bottom line is, we don’t yet understand the
relationship – the respective roles – of chance and necessity in
Nature.6
Thea: What relationship do you see – or would you expect?
Guy: When we think of chance, we think of things that happen for no

reason – or no discernible reason: events that have no
explanation. When we think of necessity, we have in mind events
that seemingly had to happen as they did: events so fully
determined that they could not have happened otherwise. On the
surface this distinction looks clear enough, yet when you look
deeper it breaks down: Chance and necessity now seem to be
aspects of one another.
Think first about the statistical predictability that keeps
banks, casinos and insurance companies in business. Bankers
don’t know when exactly their clients will deposit or withdraw
their money; casinos don’t know which card will come up, or
how the dice will roll; insurance companies don’t know when a
policy-holder will die, or when his house will burn down. But
6
See Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod, (1970).
348
such businesses manage to turn a reliable profit all the same with
the help of carefully plotted probability distributions and the “law
of averages.”
Natural selection, in all the versions we’ve been discussing,
relies on a similar blending of chance and necessity. Inheriting
advantageous traits from parents does not guarantee that an
organism will live long and leave many offspring. It merely (by
definition) increases the likelihood that it will. Yet here we are,
on a planet teeming with weird life forms, with ourselves among
the weirdest.
Thea: I begin to see what you mean. But these situations are fairly well
understood. Is there more to the relationship between necessity
and chance?
Guy: Much more. The development of any fertilized egg into a viable
organism is a demonstration of their subtle interplay as we
discussed early on in connection with teleonomy – the lobster
trap effect. The arrival of lobsters at the trap follows a random
distribution, as does the arrival of sperm cells at an ovum, or the
arrival of neurotransmitter molecules at a synapse. Nonetheless,
in these and many other cases, the over-all direction of the
process is essentially determined. This one principle is at the
root of life itself – the key reason why life is possible.
In quantum mechanics we discover another subtle interplay
between chance and physical causality that appears to make the
physical universe possible. In this case, the relationship is so
subtle that it is still not fully understood. But it is clear enough
that Einstein was mistaken in this respect. Contingency and
chance, along with logical necessity, are in the scheme of things.
Thea: The examples you’ve given are all cases of necessity arising from
chance. Can chance arise from necessity?
Guy: Just as easily. When you roll a dice or flip a coin, no one doubts
that it is a fully determined mechanical system, but so unstable
that its outcome is entirely unpredictable. Another example is the
349
local weather, which can rarely be predicted more than a few

days in advance, and not reliably at that.
Still another example, of chance and necessity working
inseparably, is human history itself. I remember using the
example of the First World War,7 but any other event would
serve equally well. In one sense that war was inevitable – had to
happen – given the mutual suspicion, the arms races and the
irreversible mobilization plans of the European powers. But there
is another sense in which the war happened almost by accident,
because an assassination plot succeeded instead of failing as it
nearly did.
biology and the biosphere

Thea: All right. Let’s change the subject. This bit about chance and
necessity gives me the creeps. What’s the situation in the life
sciences? What are the open questions there? Biological
evolution itself is still contentious for most people.
Guy: That is unfortunate and dangerous. Many areas of public policy

– global ecological management, food production and health
care, for example – all turn on correct understanding and sensible
interpretation of current biological science. And regardless of
how the ecoDarwinian paradigm turns out in general, its role in
biology now needs to be appreciated by every educated person.
Without the concepts of evolution and ecology, the science of life
is an uncatalogued collection of meaningless facts.8
That being said, this whole branch of science seems to be in
a kind of adolescence now, if no longer in its childhood.
Considered as a physio-chemical system, we are just beginning
to understand what life is, and how living beings function. The
deepest questions, perhaps, concern the relation of life to
7
See Talk #6.
8
As Theodosius Dobzhansky explained. See
http://people.delphiforums.com/lordorman/light.htm.
350
inanimate Nature Is life merely a kind of infection that some

planets catch? Or (at the other extreme) should it be seen as a
tendency of universes to become sentient and conscious of
themselves?
In present-day biology, ontogenesis is probably the central
problem – the development of an individual organism from a
fertilized egg. How precisely do suggestions from the genes, from
the local environments of individual cells, and from the global
environment of the whole foetus – in its egg or its mother’s
womb – result (most of the time) in a viable representative of the
species?
Thea: Chance and necessity again! So much of what we think of as

chance – pure happenstance – is not truly random at all, but
reflects patterns of influence that we have not followed, and
could not possibly follow, in complete detail. While so much of
what we think of as necessity is merely high probability.
Guy: Right. And these patterns of reciprocal influence produce the

wonderful physical effect called life. Some features of the world
– like planetary motion – are mechanical. Everything that
happens appears to do so by necessity. Other features seem to
happen by chance, so that the only regularities we can find in
them are statistical ones. But in between, there is this realm of
living creatures where the random and the mechanical work
dialectically, building interesting patterns and tearing them down
in order to build new ones. The most wonderful part of it is that
the researchers who study these processes are just such systems
themselves. The teleonomic life-cycle has evolved to a level that
can observe itself in action.
Thea: Ah . . . That brings us to the shaping of brains and minds now,

doesn’t it? In spite of all you’ve explained, I think that is still a
mystery. I doubt we can ever really know how a given person
became who she is. I doubt any therapist will ever know in
advance why one client turns her life around while another just
goes round and round in the same grooves for a lifetime.
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brains and minds

Guy: You may well be right that minds will remain unpredictable in
this way. In a general sense, we are beginning to understand how
learning works, yet the details of that process, and its limits, and
the relation of those limits to the neural architecture of a given
individual or a given species, are still way beyond us. Even the
mind of a dog, or a laboratory rat or a goldfish remains beyond
our comprehension.
Thea: You insist on speaking as if these creatures had minds. I still

think we should keep that word for creatures with language, with
a sense of past and future . . . for creatures like ourselves, in other
words. I still can’t see that fish have minds, in any worthwhile
sense.
Guy: As I’ve said before,9 all you’ve got here is a semantic argument
about the scope of a four-letter word. Every form of life must
have some kind of “mind.” You can use scare quotes if you like,
but the point remains: To survive, feed itself, and reproduce, a
creature must evaluate and respond to suggestions, selecting
appropriate behavior from its repertoire. However primitive, that
is already a mental process – agreed that it is different in degree
and complexity from what we do, to the point of appearing
different in kind. But even the most sophisticated brains are in
the business of parsing, evaluating and constructing responses to
suggestions as these reverberate in a neural network. Human
consciousness itself, unique and wonderful as it is, is only just
such an effect. But I will grant, if you insist, that this is not yet
fully proven. Likely as it is by now, you can count it as one of the
things we still don’t know for sure.
Thea: I do insist. And so will most people. But if you will concede
some room for doubt that your notion of suggestion processing
exhausts the concept of mind, then I need not harp on the point,
9
See Talk #5.
352
and I can concede, in turn, that what has been learned so far is
impressive. I can ask: What big questions remain about your
suggers – about suggestion processors as such?
Guy: More than enough to keep us busy for awhile. To begin with,
there’s the problem of complexity that we talked about earlier.
We need some way to analyze or just describe the workings of a
sugger ecology, a sugger network. We don’t have the tools as yet.
Also, a general theory and taxonomy of suggers is needed. We
know, just by looking at the forms that life takes and has taken
here on Earth, that these systems are capable of staggering
variety and versatility. We need some way to classify their
possibilities.
Thea: Yes, I can see how that would be quite a job. What else?
Guy: We need to re-think and work out in detail the relation between
cognition and emotion. We are used to thinking of emotion as
something that gets in the way of, or distracts from a
dispassionate appreciation of “the facts.” At best, this is a
half-truth. From the biologist’s perspective it is completely
wrong. Affect and emotion lie at the core of our perceptions, and
are inextricably mixed with them. Affect tells us what things and
situations mean to us, suggesting that we care about and orient
ourselves toward them in some appropriate way – with interest,
fear, disgust, or whatever. Without pleasure/pain and the affect
system, nothing would motivate us, one way or the other.
Neural learning and the brain’s representation of the various
kinds of information – a motor skill, a new face, a meaningful
experience, or even a telephone number – is another line of
research. We now know that learning is not an all-purpose
capability as originally thought, but is domain-specific. We have
different mechanisms for different types of learning, and can
learn some things very quickly and easily, while other things are
very difficult. We know that there are special developmental
windows for certain types of learning. We know – as the key to
what is called “instinct” – that brains of different species
353
somehow come pre-wired to learn what their young will need to

learn. We humans are no exception.
Thea: When you say that we still know little about how the brain
represents information, what exactly do you mean? I thought you
said quite a lot about that in our talks.
Guy: I tried to summarize what we now know. It seems clear that the
brain stores information by setting up firing patterns amongst
neurons, which excite or inhibit other neurons to which they are
connected. Learning seems to occur through the strengthening or
weakening of these synaptic connections, or by creating new
ones. These strengthening and weakening effects occur as
suggestions from the creature’s environment (as this impacts its
sense organs) to the neurons and glial cells of its brain. When
some event or association re-invokes a certain firing pattern in its
working memory, the corresponding information is recalled. This
much is generally accepted by now.
But we still lack tools to trace and document the neural
correlate of a given mental pattern, in a human brain – or any
vertebrate brain, for that matter. We don’t yet know exactly how
experience suggests the neural changes of learning. Details about
a brain’s representation of spatial location and navigation and its
usage for muscular coordination are only now being worked out.
The neural correlates of abstract thought, metaphor, symbolic
representation and reasoning, still elude us almost completely.
Thea: So at the end, your argument fizzles a bit, doesn’t it? You can’t
really finish the story you’ve been telling. We don’t really know
what makes human brains distinctively human. At least, not yet.
Guy: There is much we still don’t know about the architecture of

human brains. We know where language is coordinated, but not
exactly how. We’re just beginning to understand what all those
glial cells are doing. Much about their interaction with the
neurons and with each other is still unknown. But if you think
how far we have come, then . . . no, I don't think my story fizzles.
354
I think it’s coming together. I think it marks the beginning of a

new phase for human intellect and even spirit, as we learn to
perceive, accept and make the most of what we truly are.
Thea: Here I remain unconvinced. When I ask what is special about

human beings you reply with a list of primate traits – social
living, curiosity, intelligence, tool use, language, prolonged
childhood and education – that came together as a new specialty
and ecological niche. You explain how we evolved right out of
Nature into the wholly novel domain of culture and society, but
as an account of the human condition, your story is neither
comforting, nor inspiring. And it requires a good education and
a huge investment of leisure time to even begin to understand it.
For those reasons, I still doubt that your eD paradigm will greatly
appeal to most people, or greatly influence the human self-
understanding that prevails in our human cultures. Though the
new technologies that stem from that paradigm and its sciences
will certainly change our lives.
humankind
Guy: The future of these ideas is one of the biggest things we still
don’t know. You’re surely right that the eD story lacks mass
appeal. But there are two things you should remember: First, its
uptake is no more optional than modernity itself was. Traditional
cultures can resist them, but only at the price of making
themselves poor, weak and fundamentally ridiculous, however
much of a nuisance they become. In the United States right now,
there is a conflict between the forces of greed and tradition over
stem-cell research and other bio-technologies. Either greed will
win, or the technologies and their profits will move elsewhere –
probably to India or China or Japan, where there are no such
scruples.
A second point is that most of the story I’ve been telling you
is less than 30 years old, even amongst the small group of
scientists and thinkers who have been piecing it together. It is just
now becoming public knowledge. The theory of evolution is
about 150 years old. Modern science, and the glimmerings of a
355
scientific understanding of Nature only got off the ground about

500 years ago. Civilization itself has to this point, about 5000 of
written history behind it. Considering that primates of genus
homo were already walking around on the plains of Africa more
than two million years ago,10 the story I’ve been telling is like a
headline in the newspaper: It’s just too soon to say what it means,
or where it’s going. Present-day sensibilities, interests and
concentrations of power mean little on the time-scale of history,
and nothing at all on the time-scale of evolution. Perhaps the
central conclusion of my story is that human evolution is an
incomplete experiment whose long term consequences are still
unknown. We ourselves are the “missing link” between
anthropoid apes and the true human beings: the biological
specialists in tool-use, stigmergy, symbolization, culture and
social cooperation who (if we manage to survive) are still to
appear.
Thea: So one key question might be the current direction and long-term
prospects for human evolution?
Guy: That might be a question for an anthropology of the future, when

we understand ourselves and the implications of a human
lifestyle much better than at present. Right now, social science
faces the more immediate task of working out what we are and
how we got here. There’s still a long way to go – maybe an
impossible way – before those questions are properly answered.
Thea: It’s not for science to tell human beings what they are or should
be. Those are more questions of values than of science.
Guy: True. Science cannot define what human beings are or should be.
Evolution itself will do that. And in that process, there is space
for self-understanding and self-creation that science cannot and
should not usurp. But the science is not irrelevant. With all that
10
See www.onelife.com/evolve/manev.html.
356
is known today, the way we understand ourselves must now be

informed either by a serious science of humankind, or by willful
ignorance.
Thea: That “science of humankind” is much on your mind, obviously.

At several points in our talks, you’ve stressed the need and
possibility of such a discipline. What would its central questions
be?
Guy: I think Gregory Bateson framed the agenda for such a science
when he spoke of “an ecology of mind.” If the ecoDarwinian
paradigm prevails as he expected, then the task will be to
understand societies and their members as suggestion ecologies
along the lines that we’ve discussed.
This won’t be simple. Even apart from the daunting
complexity of social systems, we must accept that some
cherished concepts break down when we begin to think in
ecological terms. We lose a clear distinction between cause and
effect; because the loops of suggestive influence are circular. We
lose a sharp distinction between friend and foe because
ecological dependencies are usually politicious in character:
blends of symbiotic collaboration with competition or outright
conflict. We blur the distinctions between form and process,
structure and system, because the patterns we’ll have to deal with
are mostly temporal ones. I would guess there are many other
conceptual issues that we can’t foresee. Philosophers who come
to grips with the eD paradigm will have plenty to do.
Finally, it’s not clear that the society that pays academic
salaries really wants or is ready for a science of itself. A serious
science of culture must question its society’s core myths, and will
be subversive merely by existing, merely by demonstrating that
those myths can be questioned. All this said, I think the
ecological science of mind that Bateson dreamed of may be
feasible to some extent, though I have no idea how far it will get.
Of course, there’s no way to know except to try for it and see.
357
Thea: It would be a science of humankind far beyond anything we have

at present. Clearly, there’s no danger we’ll run out of things to
think about, any time soon.
philosophy
Guy: No danger at all. Rather, science is just beginning to tackle the
fundamental questions all children ask – the questions that have
attracted myth and speculation for thousands of years. And there
is one large area that we haven’t mentioned yet.
Thea: Namely?
Guy: There is no name for it at present. I think of it as personal

philosophy. Its questions have traditionally been matters for art,
philosophy and religion, but what I have in mind would be none
of these. Unlike classical philosophy, it would embrace some
version of constructivism and turn its back on the fantasy of a
God’s-eye, universal truth – especially ethical truth. Unlike
religion as we know it, it would reject revelation and belief in the
supernatural. Unlike art which seeks primarily to stimulate the
imagination with original suggestions, it would seek as the
philosophers did to evaluate the suggestions on offer, and to live
by a reasoned selection of the one’s most worth following.
What I have in mind would be a quest for personal truths –
of the kind that psychotherapy at its best can offer, understood to
be on one’s own responsibility, with no more than incidental help
from selected gurus. As an intellectual discipline, it would treat
all suggestions as matters for reflection, personal choice,
commitment – subject to dialogue and debate, but accepting that
public truths concerning them must be structures of argument,
rather than flat universal doctrines. Accordingly, it would teach
people to avoid promoting their beliefs into dogma. And it would
learn what it could from science while freeing itself from the
central limitation of science – the insistence on testing all
concepts and hypotheses in replicable experiments.
358
Thea: I’m surprised you acknowledge that as a limitation.
Guy: You shouldn’t be. Though I respect what science has

accomplished and is accomplishing, it seems clear that private
experience is not replicable, and that the human animal needs
suggestive guidance that authentic science can’t offer. Whether
the mass of humanity can find such guidance without lapsing into
superstition and bigotry can be the last question of these talks.
359
FURTHER READING
Further Reading
What this book needs is not so much a bibliography as an orientation
manual. A flood of material explaining, contributing to and/or utilizing
this or that aspect of ecoDarwinian science is now available, and more
comes out every day. A layman (like myself), wishing to survey the
paradigm as a whole, to get a sense of what it is, where it came from and
where it is going, has his work cut out. Daniel Dennett’s writings are a
good place to begin. It was Dennett’s Consciousness Explained (1991)
that turned me onto this exciting field and I owe him big time for doing
so. While some of his positions are considered extreme in neuroscience
circles and elsewhere, they are intellectually provocative, and closely
reasoned. In general, my approach has been to get my head around
Dennett’s ideas, read further as seemed appropriate, and then consider
why not every one agrees with him, (myself included, on a few secondary
issues). That strategy saved me from drowning in the literature – and I can
recommend it to anyone whose main interest lies not so much in the
science itself as the human “landscape” it illuminates: the implications for
our self-understanding of the naturalistic, ecological and evolutionary
perspective.
The central reason why Dennett has attracted so much controversy is
his insistence that anyone who wants to explain consciousness must not
invoke it as part of the explanation. As he says in one of his papers:1 “To
me one of the most fascinating bifurcations in the intellectual world today
is between those to whom it is obvious – obvious – that a theory that
leaves out the Subject is thereby disqualified as a theory of consciousness
1
Are we Explaining Consciousness Yet? Available on the W eb at
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/cognition.fin.htm.
361
(in Chalmers’s terms, it evades the Hard Problem), and those to whom it
is just as obvious that any theory that doesn’t leave out the Subject is
disqualified.” I know which camp that puts me in: Since it is circular to
explain subjectivity and consciousness in their own terms, one must either
despair of explanation or face the question of how subjectivity could arise
in a material world. Given the rapid progress in neuroscience, it seems
pre-mature to despair unless one prefers, as many do, that the “Hard
Problem” remain unsolved. The conclusion, accordingly, is not to deny
that we are conscious beings, but to refrain from appealing to anything
like subjectivity when subjectivity is the phenomenon to be explained.
My starting point, then, is that however the details come out, people like
Dennett and Nicholas Humphrey are holding the right end of the stick.
However . . . the Roman poet Lucretius was a naturalistic thinker
more than two thousand years ago. The central difference between his
self- understanding and ours is that we begin to see how the trick of
matter-emergent consciousness is done. Evolution, ecology, auto-poiesis
(or self- organization) and the underlying concept of system are the key
ideas. The central metaphor is Gregory Bateson’s: Mind is not an
immaterial substance, not a kind of engine, and not a computer. It seems
most like a kind of ecology: a pattern that emerges in the functioning and
interaction of a great many separate cells with no central direction
whatever (apart from the general context they produce together), much as
a forest emerges from the interaction of a great many living organisms.
Anyone wishing to unpack this metaphor and grasp its implications, finds
six main strands to follow:
• There is the question of what it means to be a self-constructing,
self-maintaining system. As a good part of our understanding of
such systems has been gained in attempts to duplicate their
functions artificially, some branches of engineering – especially
communications engineering, cybernetics and artificial
intelligence – are relevant. (See Systems Theory and Engineering
, page 332)
• Next comes biology, with a focus on ecology and evolution, of
course, but also on the crucial puzzle of genetics and foetal
development – how a single fertilized ovum becomes an
organism of its kind. It turns out, remarkably, that this
developmental process is itself Darwinian and ecological in
362
FURTHER READING
nature. (See Biology, Evolution and Ecology , page 335)

• Within biology, there must be special focus on the brain and
nervous system, especially on their processes of signaling, and on
the perceptual and affect systems that evaluate events in the
world for their significance to us. This broad field is called
neuroscience with its various related specialties. (See
Neuroscience, page 338)
• We also need to learn what we can about the Mind as such – as
we experience our own subjectivity, and as we observe
comparable effects in others. Psychology (the generic name for
this effort) also has numerous sub-specialties. Apart from
neuropsychology, concerned with tracing the link of feelings,
thoughts and intentions with physiological events in the nervous
system, two other sub-disciplines of psychology have special
interest for us: One of these is evolutionary psychology, which
seeks to work out what it can about “human nature” – the
aptitudes, propensities and quirks with which evolution has
equipped our species. The other is social psychology, specifically
focused on the propensities and suggestions that guide our
participation in groups, and our relationships with other
individuals. (See Psychology and the Mind, page 339)
• Corresponding to our human social proclivities, we have sciences
– relatively primitive ones as yet – to study the social institutions
that result. In an “ecology of Mind,” these must not be
over-looked because a mind is more the product of its
environment and relationships than of the wetware that supports
it. It is conceivable (the idea has been raised) that human
personalities may someday be recorded (as we now record
appearance and voice) and then uploaded to a server for a kind of
immortality in cyberspace. But no one thinks that a mind or
personality can be detached from the society in which it was
nurtured and educated, from the skills it learned, the work it did,
the ideas and prejudices it entertained. (See Anthropology and
Social Science, page 343)
• Finally, there are traditions of religion and philosophy. From one
perspective these are obstacles, rival accounts that our inquiry
must overcome and clear away. But they are also sources of
363
concepts, questions and values that are still valid, and of

suggestions that have directed and that still direct our lives and
institutions. They are part of our history, part of our minds, part
of who we are. Even in overcoming them we remain in many
ways attached to them. In any case, it is vital to understand them:
what we can keep of this heritage, and what we shall have to
discard. (See Religion and Philosophy, page 346)
For a survey of the kind undertaken here, the Internet is a superb tool.
Any errors of detail that a more scholarly approach would catch and
correct are more than compensated by the sheer convenience of access to
this global archive of information and opinion, and by the vivid graphics
often deployed in its presentation. In painting a landscape, the leaves on
each tree are less important than the sweep and mood of the prospect
before you. Surfing on the Web, you can get a sense of the landscape that
would be much harder to obtain in a library. Moreover, in a field evolving
as rapidly as this one, the materials available – and many details – are
changing on a weekly basis – and web sites are easier to update than
books. So, for further reading, I suggest you go on-line and explore for
yourself. Merely to help in getting started, a few books and sites,
organized under headings that correspond to the strands just mentioned,
are listed below. To save space, I’ve suppressed most of the Wikipedia
entries, which usually provide excellent introductions to the topics
mentioned. Lifetimes of study begin with the first mouse click, and the
main question is, “How deep do you want to go?”
364
FURTHER READING
Systems Theory and Engineering

Adaptive Systems
www.calresco.org/lucas/cas.htm
www.eas.asu.edu/~kdooley/casopdef.html
www.casresearch.com
Artificial Intelligence
http://users.erols.com/jsaunders/papers/aitechniques.htm
www.cse.msu.edu/dl/SciencePaper.pdf
Biomimicry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimicry
Butterfly Effect (see also Chaos Theory)

www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/chaos_new/Lorenz.html
Chance and Necessity

http://dannyreviews.com/h/Chance_and_Necessity.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random
Chaos Theory, Edge of Chaos

http://users.viawest.net/~keirsey/eofchaos.html
http://users.viawest.net/~keirsey/Inv.html
Collective Intelligence – Swarm Logic and Stigmergy

Out of Control, Kevin Kelly – see www.kk.org/outofcontrol/
ch2-g.html
www.advancedlab.pe.kr/wiki/index.php?CollectiveIntelligenceIn
SocialInsects
www.sce.carleton.ca/netmanage/tony/swarm.html
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Distr.CognitionFramework.pdf
www.stigmergicsystems.com/
www.geocities.com/fastiland/Teaching/acs/swarm.html
www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/index.html
www.casresearch.com/
365
Complexity, Science of
http://complexity.orcon.net.nz/
www.santafe.edu/index.php
Cybernetics
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/TOC.html#CSTHINK
www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/timeline.htm
Holarchy and Emergence

www.worldtrans.org/essay/holarchies.html
http://arxiv.org/ftp/nlin/papers/0506/0506028.pdf
http://llk.media.mit.edu/projects/emergence/index.html
http://www.panarchy.org/koestler/holon.1969.html
Fractals, Self-Similarity, Re-entrant Form

A Recursive Vision, Peter Harries-Jones, 1995
http://library.thinkquest.org/26242/full/index.html
www.taos-telecommunity.org/epow/EPOW-Archive/archive_
2003/EPOW-031117.htm
Fuzzy Logic
Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko
www.fuzzy-logic.com/
Information, Concept of & Problems With

www.capurro.de/infoconcept.html
http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/limits-of-information.html
www.capurro.de/trialog.htm
Neural Networks and Computational Neuroscience

www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_96/journal/vol4/cs11/report.html
http://vv.carleton.ca/~neil/neural/index.html
www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~brd/Teaching/AI/Lectures/
NN/neural.html
www.shef.ac.uk/psychology/gurney/notes/index.html
www.neurocomputing.org
366
FURTHER READING
http://diwww.epfl.ch/mantra/tutorial/english/index.html
Power Laws
www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
http://complexityworkshop.com/sun/PLaw/index.html
http://econophysics.blogspot.com/2006/07/tyranny-of-power-law-
and-why-we-should.html
Production Systems
http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Production_system
http://cogprints.org/1477/
www.thymos.com/tat/cognitio.html
Self Organization, the Self-So (zi ran and wu wei)

www.physicsdaily.com/physics/Self-organization
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/
self-organization.html
www.calresco.org/index.htm
www.santafe.edu/
Self-programming and Self-Reference

www.idsia.ch/~juergen/goedelmachine.html
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/kampis.html
www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/dec/langham.html
Simulation, Ecological Simulation

www.csi.uoregon.edu/nacse/ecosim/
www.red3d.com/cwr/ibm.html
www.exetersoftware.com/cat/Trinity/ecosim.html
www.ecobeaker.com/
Suggestion and Influence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestion
www.rickross.com/reference/brainwashing/brainwashing20.html
http://changingminds.org/index.htm
www.clinicalsocialwork.com/dealing.html
367
Systems, Closed and Open

www.panarchy.org/vonbertalanffy/systems.1968.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_system_%28systems_theory%29
www.managementhelp.org/systems/systems.htm
Trans-humanism and “The Singularity”

www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/09/ai-singularit-2.html
www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/
www.nickbostrom.com/
www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
http://bioethicsnews.com/category/nanotechnology/
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1855353/posts
Biology, Evolution and Ecology

Baldwin Effect and Niche Construction
www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~seal/niche/
www.geocities.com/Athens/4155/edit.html
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/baldwincranefin.htm
Bio-semiotics
www.library.utoronto.ca/see/pages/biosemioticsdef.html
www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/cePubl/2003a.bs01entry.html
www.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/biosem/
www.zbi.ee/~uexkull/biosem.htm
Cell Biology
http://library.thinkquest.org/12413/
www.geocities.com/jjmohn/endosymbiosis.htm
www.cellsalive.com/
Cladistics
www.fossilnews.com/1996/cladistics.html
www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/clad/clad1.html
368
FURTHER READING
Cooperation, Evolution of and Game Theory

http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/~strone01/altruism.html
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/COOPEVOL.html
http://users.tpg.com.au/users/jes999/5.htm
http://taumoda.com/web/PD/setup.html
Culture, Non-human
(cultural primatology, biological anthropology)
The Evolution of Culture in Animals, John Tyler Bonner
http://biologybk.st-and.ac.uk/cultures3/articles/deWaal.html
www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/9893/
http://www2.gsu.edu/~psysfb/Manuscripts/McGrew%20
Review%20AJP%202006.pdf
Developmental Biology (Evo-Devo)

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/24/
051024crbo_books1
www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/virtualembryo/dev_biol.html
www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~browder/dydev_at_glance.html
www.kli.ac.at/theorylab/Areas/DB.html
www.cellmigration.org/science/
www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005D708-2F7C-123B-
AF7C83414B7F0000
Ecology and Ecosystems

www.linnaeus.uu.se/online/eco/darwin.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/11353/ecosystems.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ecology/
www.greenleft.org.au/back/1991/19/19p10.htm
www.ecologyandsociety.org/
www.wikisummaries.org/The_Tipping_Point
www.wordspy.com/words/tippingpoint.asp
www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/16/opinion/edmoon.php
369
Evolution, Theory of
www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
www.becominghuman.org/
www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/a-z/
Genes and Genetics, Genome Project

www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEPC/NIH/gene03.html
www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/b4241d.html
www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/publicat/
primer2001/index.shtml
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/gene-code/
www.americanscientist.org/amsci/issues/Comsci98/compsci9801.h
tml
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/02/real-genetic-code.html
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/37228
http://homeobox.biosci.ki.se/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_plan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_developmental_biology
Geology, the Age of the Earth and Plate Tectonics

www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/age.htm
www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/geologictime.php
www.moorlandschool.co.uk/earth/tectonic.htm
www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tectonics.html
Group Selection
www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/a-z/Group_selection_.asp
www.physorg.com/news115476686.html
www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.wilson.html
Hypersea
www.medobserver.com/aug2002/hypersea.html
www.test.earthscape.org/r3/mcmenamin/mcmenamin12.html
http://discovermagazine.com/1995/oct/hyperseainvasion571
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FURTHER READING
Life (What is it?)

www.panspermia.org/whatis2.htm
http://academic.sun.ac.za/medphys/life.htm
http://dieoff.org/page150.htm
www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99171.htm
Medicine, ecoDarwinian
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/medicine_01
www.evolutionandmedicine.org/
www.sehn.org/ecomedicine.html
Social Insects
www.ndsu.nodak.edu/entomology/topics/societies.htm
http://ai-depot.com/Essay/SocialInsects.html
http://evolutionofcomputing.org/Multicellular/Stigmergy.html
Sociobiology
See “Human Nature” in Anthropology and Social Science
Neuroscience
Neuroscience (Introductory)
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/hist.html
www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/index_d.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience
Neurophysiology (how brains work)
www.cyberpunks.org/freeside/mab_neuro.html
www.cyberpunks.org/freeside/mab_neuro2.html
www.cyberpunks.org/freeside/mab_neuro3.html
Neuroanatomy (how human brains are configured)

http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/HISTHTML/
NEURANAT/NEURANCA.html
www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/studentwebs/session2/
371
group10/Neuroanatomy.htm
Neuropsychology (the brain – mind relationship)

The Synaptic Self, Joseph LeDoux
The Feeling of What Happens, Antonio Damasio
The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, Louis Cozolino
www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/2000MindBodyProblem.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Neuroscience
www.apa.org/monitor/nov05/neuroscience.html
www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~emiii/index.htm
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v4/psyche-4-10-taylor.html
http://gustavus.edu/academics/philosophy/lcogsci.html
http://www.brainsource.com/neuropsy.htm
http://web.uvic.ca/psyc/tcn_bm.html
Psychology and The Mind

Affect and Emotion
Shame and Pride, Affect Sex and the Birth of the Self, Nathanson
www.affectivetherapy.co.uk/news.htm
www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/damasioreview.html
www.jnd.org/dn.mss/CH01.pdf
Affordance Theory
www.learning-theories.com/affordance-theory-gibson.html
www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html
Attachment Theory
www.personalityresearch.org/attachment.html
http://attachment.edu.ar/outline.html
Cognitive Development
www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/piaget.shtml
www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/Areas/Developmental/CogDev-Child/
372
FURTHER READING
Consciousness
www.tjonard.ws/mind.html
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies
www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/crick-koch-cc-97.html
www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/phil/cons/consciousness.htm
www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060211/bob9.asp
http://consc.net/online.html
www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060211/bob9.asp
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/cognition.fin.htm
www.tartanhen.co.uk/mind/zombie.htm
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/searle.prob.html
www.consciousentities.com/index.php
Consciousness, States of – Dreaming and Dreams

www.scholarpedia.org/article/Neural_Correlates_of_Consciousness
http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/Articles/purpose.html
www.dreams.ca/
http://www.vanguard.edu/faculty/ddegelman/amoebaweb/
index.aspx?doc_id=875
ecoDarwinian Psychology, Ecology of Mind

www.oikos.org/psicen.htm
www.danieleastwell.co.uk/body.html
www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/MOTIVATE.PDF
http://home.comcast.net/~reillyjones/consciousa.html
www.psych.utah.edu/stat/dynamic_systems/Content/
examples/E42_Manual/Eco-of-Mind_CNS/
Further-Steps_Intro.html
http://ecopsychology.athabascau.ca/
www.psych.utah.edu/stat/dynamic_systems
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/mnemosyne.htm
http://cogprints.org/2130/00/dennett-chalmers.htm
Evolutionary Psychology and Sociobiology

See “Human Nature” in the Anthropology and Social Science Section
373
Flow, Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of

www.austega.com/gifted/articles/flow.htm
www.unrealities.com/essays/flow.htm
Judgment and mis-judgment (akrasia)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-deception/
http://www.philosophy.ubc.ca/prolegom/backissues/papers/
Schwartz.htm
http://www.utilitarian.org/akrasia.html
Language, Evolution of
The Symbolic Species, Terence Deacon
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/deacon.htm
http://williamcalvin.com/LEM/
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/5/2/4.html
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2007/09/the_evolution_of_
language.php
Needs, Maslow’s Hierarchy of

www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/maslow.html
http://www.xenodochy.org/ex/lists/maslow.html
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/
guidebk/teachtip/maslow.htm
Personality
www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/conclusions.html
www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/perscontents.html
www.ptypes.com/overviews.html
www.personalityresearch.org/
Self, Concept and Evolution of the

www.bizcharts.com/stoa_del_sol/conscious/conscious3.html
www.accampbell.uklinux.net/essays/skeptic/jaynes.html
www.soton.ac.uk/~crsi/thesymbolicself.pdf
www.soton.ac.uk/~crsi/evololutionofthesymbolicself.pdf
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~gallaghr/tics2000.html
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro99/
374
FURTHER READING
web3/Sancar.html
Sensation, Perception, Interpretation

http://ccrg.cs.memphis.edu/tutorial/PDFs/Sensing&
Perceiving.pdf
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/philospir/Lesson14.htm
Social Psychology (Persuasion and Influence)

www.geocities.com/l_zinkiewicz/socialpsych.html
www.LuciferEffect.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_behavior
http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/socpsy.html
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/socpsy.html
www.spring.org.uk/2007/11/10-piercing-insights-into-
human-nature.php
Transpersonal Psychology
www.naropa.edu/faculty/johndavis/tp/index.html
www.mdani.demon.co.uk/trans/tranlink.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpersonal_psychology
www.transpersonalpsychology.ca/
http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/Assagioli.html
www.imprint.co.uk/Wilber.htm
Unconscious Mind
www.ayrmetes.com/articles/conscious_and_unconscious.htm
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/rediscovery.htm
375
Anthropology and Social Science

Anthropology, Cultural (Ethnology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnology
www.vanderbilt.edu/anthro/intro
http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cultural.htm
www.anthro.net/
Anthropology Physical
See Human Evolution below
Cities
www.ecospherics.net/pages/RoweCities.html
Conflict Theory
www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-conflicttheory.html
www.d.umn.edu/~jhamlin1/conflict.html
www.drnadig.com/conflict.htm
Cultural Evolution and Meme Theory

www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/formerly-hyper-weird/
memetics.html
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/rose_n.html
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1998/vol2/lynch_a.html
www.istop.com/~ggrant/memetics/memelex.html
www.memecentral.com/Level3.htm
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett/dennett_p2.html
www.percepp.demon.co.uk/evltcult.htm
Firms, Theory of
www.tinbergen.nl/~buhai/papers/others/incomplete_contracts.pdf
www.scribd.com/doc/239542/The-Theory-of-the-Firm
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=903746
http://som.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/reports/1995-1999/themeB/
1997/97B05/97b05.pdf
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/mpch/firm1.html
376
FURTHER READING
Government and Society

www.g7.utoronto.ca/scholar/2002/bell11062002.pdf
www.thecorporation.com/media/TheRoleOfGovernment.pdf
www.caledoninst.org/PDF/553820495.pdf
www.wordwiz72.com/govt.html
www.heartacademy.org/2006/debakey.pdf
“Human Nature”
The Birth of the Mind , Gary Marcus
http://bostonreview.net/BR28.6/marcus.html
www.personalityresearch.org/evolutionary.html
www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/evpsychfaq.html
www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
www.evoyage.com/
http://human-nature.com/darwin/books/tattersall.html
www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/evol-psych.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~kruger/
www.cato.org/research/articles/wilkinson-050201.html
www.elon.edu/arcaro/titles/partiv.htm
Human Evolution
www.snowcrest.net/goehring/a2/primates/fossils.htm#intro
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/evolution/selection/
acceleration_embargo_ends_2007.html
www.palomar.edu/anthropology/
Language
The Symbolic Species, Terence Deacon
www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/evolution-language
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/publications/zoogoer/1995/6/
machiavellianmonkeys.cfm
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langevol.html
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/5/2/4.html
www.metaresolution.com
Meme Theory
377
see Cultural Evolution
Political Psychology and Political Theory

www.trinity.edu/mkearl/spy-pol.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State
http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/
logic_of_action.htm
Political Entrepreneurs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_entrepreneur
Public Interest, Concept of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_interest
Social/Association Networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
Social Hierarchies
see also holarchy in General Systems Theory
www.experiencefestival.com/hierarchy
Sociology, Social Psychology and Social Behaviour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_dynamics
www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
www.socialpsychology.org/
www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/socpsy.html
www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/socpsy.html
http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/conformity.htm
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/a_conforming.htm
www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/robert/papers/ritzer.htm
www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html
www.elon.edu/arcaro/titles/partiv.htm
Style and Fashion

www.heia.com.au/heia_graphics/JHEIA82-4.pdf
378
FURTHER READING
www.wiwi.uni-bonn.de/sfb/papers/1994/a/bonnsfa462.pdf
www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-March-1997/
finkelstein.html
http://web.media.mit.edu/~hugo/ideas/fashiondavis.html
www.sfu.ca/~csmith/genstuff/academic/lab/style.html
www.willamette.edu/cla/ler/learningstyles.htm
www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/humanities/wp/jmcmahon/
ThePossibilityofPerceptualStyle.pdf
Religion and Philosophy

Biology, Philosophy of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_biology
www.kli.ac.at/theorylab/Areas/PB.html
www.hps.cam.ac.uk/research/philofbio.html
Categories and Constructs

Explorations in Common Sense and Common Nonsense,
Daniel S. Levine
www.uta.edu/psychology/faculty/levine/EBOOK/
Constructivism
www.constructivism123.com
http://repgrid.com/reports/PSYCH/SIM/index.html
Creation Science
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/
www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/
Disenchanted World
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mmanty/teaching/
example4.html
Emergentism
379
http://progressiveliving.org/emergentism_defined.htm
http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/emergenc.htm
www.brynmawr.edu/biology/emergence/stephan.pdf
See also Holarchy and Emergence under
Systems, Communication and Cybernetics
Evolution and eD Paradigm, Catholic Position on

www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jp02tc.htm
www.catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0401bt.asp
Evolutionary Epistemology and ecoDarwinian Paradigm

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-evolutionary/
www.bostonreview.net/BR21.3/Orr.html
www.thur.de/philo/project/CA1.htm
www.mdpi.org/fis2005
Functionalism
www.philosophyonline.co.uk/pom/pom_functionalism_
introduction.htm
Gaia Theory and Philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
www.greenleft.org.au/back/1991/19/19p10.htm
Gnosticism
www.iep.utm.edu/g/gnostic.htm
www.webcom.com/~gnosis/gnintro.htm
www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm
Knowledge Science
www.bcngroup.org/area3/pprueitt/book.htm
Meditation
http://deepfreeze9.blogspot.com/2005/11/damasios-theory-of-
consciousness.html
Mind-Body Problem
380
FURTHER READING
(see also neurophysiology and the brain)

http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/mind.htm
www.humphrey.org.uk/papers_available_online.htm
How to Solve the Mind-Body Problem, Nicholas Humphrey
Mind of God, Creative Universe

www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9508/davies.html
www.pantheism.net/?gclid=CKPl2ZmujoICFRvsPgoddENyDA
Naturalism, Physicalism, Materialism
http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Physicalism
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/
Nietzsche. Darwin’s Influence on
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=4801
www.hichumanities.org/AHproceedings/James%20Birx.pdf
Perennial Philosophy
http://mythosandlogos.com/perennial.html
Philosophical Biology and Psychology

www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/theobiophi.html
https://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org/handle/1912/1703
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/philospir/
Religion and Science

www.religioustolerance.org/sci_rel.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/
Spirituality, Ecological and Postmodern

www.oates.org/journal/vol-05-2002/reviews/lamothe-01.php
www.soulfulliving.com/myth_and_meaning.htm
381
Index
adaptation, adaptive learning. . 35, 39, 41, 43, 51, 55, 81, 82, 84,85, 87,
91-94, 107, 108, 115, 126, 128, 136, 155,
158, 169, 170, 178, 193, 198, 200, 204,
210, 225, 294,
295, 310, 332
advertising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84, 95, 232. 257
affect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84, 102, 150-151, 179, 205, 208,
210, 293, 322, 330, 339
agents, agency
the person as agent. . . . . . . . . 14, 25, 124, 131, 133, 147-149, 196
223, 236, 250, 280, 295- 297
neural agencies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147-149, 151, 152, 173, 191,
236, 280, 295-297
aikido. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212, 296
akrasia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208, 341
Alcmaeon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Allport, Gordon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195-197, 200, 269
altruism, disinterestedness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259, 276, 336
anamnesis.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190, 277
ants and ant colonies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80-87, 90-93, 99, 116
anthropoids.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52, 170, 325
anthropology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67, 123, 216, 217, 224- 226, 268,
325, 331, 336, 338, 341, 343, 344
anticipation (see also prediction).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129-133
art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62, 80, 94, 171, 212, 215, 252,
256, 267, 327
Ashby, W. Ross.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 302
Assagioli, Roberto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279, 342
association. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17, 148, 164, 165, 169, 240,
249, 311, 323, 345
astronomy.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 18, 46, 130, 286, 302
attachment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193, 207, 208, 259, 271, 288, 331, 340
authenticity, quality of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295, 299, 312
384
INDEX
authority. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109, 237, 240, 252, 253, 255,

258, 268, 294, 302
autonomy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 27, 34, 37, 38, 63, 64, 70-73, 81, 82
94, 114, 128, 148, 152, 192-194, 217
219, 223, 238, 241, 247, 249, 257
295-299, 307, 312
autopoiesis (see autopoietic process)
Baldwin, James Mark and the Baldwin effect. 50, 51, 53, 155, 168-171,
208, 297, 316,335
bargaining. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238, 253, 254
basin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49, 55
Bateson, Gregory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 16, 19, 49, 56, 61, 148,
165, 195, 197, 216, 326
bio-energetics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
biology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 27, 28, 31, 34, 38, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47
78, 82, 85, 100, 121, 127, 148, 163, 242,
262, 286, 291, 292, 311, 319, 320, 330,
335-337, 346, 348
Bowlby, John. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193, 207
brain. . . . . . . . . . . 8, 9, 12-14, 16-19, 21, 22, 24-30, 35, 36, 53, 57, 60,
74, 79-83, 87-89, 97, 98, 102, 103, 105, 111-116,
126, 136, 139-150, 152-158, 163, 164, 167, 168,
171-173, 177, 179, 183-186, 188-190, 199, 200, 203,
216, 236, 245, 251, 285, 286, 297, 323, 330, 339, 347
Brand, Stewart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Breuer, Josef. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Buddhism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
butterfly effect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
categories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100, 122, 123, 149, 151, 154, 160,
166, 178, 185, 269, 292, 335, 339, 346
causality. . . . . . . . . . . 12, 15, 23, 29, 46, 47, 52, 57, 72, 100, 126, 127,
131, 143, 180, 183, 310, 315, 319, 326
cells.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 24, 35, 46, 62, 82, 98, 115, 137, 139,
141, 145, 157, 158, 184, 233, 308, 324, 336
Cannetti, Elias.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
chance (see random)
chaos, edge of chaos. . . . . 33, 44, 54-56, 119, 120, 198, 247, 252, 287,
385
332, 333
Charcot, Jean-Martin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
chemistry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 47, 49, 102, 103, 136, 140, 211
children, child development. 5, 11, 62, 76, 77, 102, 104, 122, 131, 132,
154, 157, 160, 167, 168, 170, 173, 174, 201,
203, 205, 211, 215, 224, 232, 275-277, 280,
291, 292, 302, 303, 306, 307, 326, 340
choice, decision. . . . . . . . . . 14, 17, 32, 34, 48, 68, 72, 73, 81, 88, 110,
112-114, 132, 141, 166, 179, 183, 192, 198, 204,
219, 223, 237, 245, 257, 262, 267, 269- 272,
285, 286, 288, 295, 297, 298, 313, 327
Churchland, Paul/Patricia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
cities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93, 94, 167, 205, 217, 221, 235, 241, 242, 343
cladistics.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
cognition. . . . . . . . . . . 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 27, 29, 32, 34-36, 56, 57,
60, 73, 82,, 88, 89, 98, 99, 105, 115, 116, 122,
125, 127, 128, 140, 143, 144, 150, 151, 156,
159, 162, 164, 166, 167, 169-171, 173, 177,
192, 193, 199, 203, 205, 210, 217, 223, 238,
271, 285, 287, 295, 306, 322, 329, 340
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
communication.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 16, 17, 34, 35, 59, 60, 62-65, 67, 85,
86, 93, 97, 132, 159-161, 163, 172, 173,
217, 233, 255, 308, 346
competition. . . . . . . . . 8, 14, 64, 69, 70, 110, 111, 113, 125, 131, 133,
152, 177-179, 182, 191, 197, 199, 218, 223,
230, 231, 238, 251, 255, 258, 292, 304, 310, 326
complexity. . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 11, 16, 22, 25, 29, 31, 34, 37, 43, 57, 66,
80, 88-90, 92, 98, 100, 101, 106, 108, 109, 115,
125, 126, 128, 131, 135, 139, 140, 147, 149,
150, 157, 158, 161, 163, 164, 170, 172, 173,
178, 186, 188, 224, 227, 239, 240, 255, 269,
274, 288, 289, 310, 321, 322, 326, 333
computation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139, 149, 334
concepts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 21, 22, 25, 29, 30, 32, 34, 40, 42, 44, 46,
54, 56, 57, 60-63, 65, 66, 70, 74, 76, 77,
85, 87, 92, 97-99, 101, 104, 107, 110, 115,
386
INDEX
116, 120, 121, 125, 127, 132, 135, 137, 141,

150, 151, 154, 160-163, 172, 179, 182, 193,
195-198, 200, 207, 210, 215, 216, 218, 220,
226, 230-235, 238, 240, 243, 248, 254, 256,
269, 270, 271, 273, 290, 293, 294, 296-299,
concepts (cont’d) 302, 305, 314, 315, 320, 322, 326, 327,
330, 331, 334, 341, 345
conflict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 9, 11, 28, 67, 69, 70, 109, 125, 148,
152, 198, 199, 216, 226, 230, 242, 251, 255,
262, 267, 281, 298, 307, 312, 324, 326, 343
connectionism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
consciousness. . . . . . . . . . . . 8-10, 13-15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 25, 29, 35, 67,
68, 79, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 101, 104, 105,
108, 114-116, 141, 144, 149, 154, 155, 160,
173, 177-183, 185-192, 194, 200, 219, 245,
283, 285, 287, 295, 296, 302, 320, 322, 329,
330, 340-342, 347
constructivism.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271, 299, 327, 346
control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 15, 29, 34, 61, 64, 69-72, 82, 95, 106, 132,
167, 217, 223, 241, 247, 255, 262, 275, 293,
296, 306, 308, 333
conversation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 30, 60, 64, 129, 135, 181
Copernicus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 18, 31
co-evolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
cranes and skyhooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43, 44, 144
creation science.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42, 346
Crick, Francis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145, 340
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9-13, 18, 24, 28, 35-38, 64, 69, 76, 77, 84, 93,
116, 122, 151, 160, 166, 167, 188, 192, 193,
203, 205, 215-218, 220-227, 229, 241, 249,
250, 284, 293, 295, 304, 309, 311, 312,
324-326, 336, 343-345
cybernetics. . . . . . . 13, 18, 23, 61, 69-72, 111, 132, 167, 330, 333, 346
Damasio, Antonio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185, 187, 283, 339, 347
Darwin, Darwinism (see also natural selection, evolutionary
process). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13-15,
387
18, 22-24, 28, 30, 31, 37, 39, 40-44, 50,

52-55, 57, 66, 79, 88, 106, 107, 115, 121,
125-127, 152, 158, 179, 194, 199, 225, 230,
238, 269, 270-273, 276, 279, 281, 288, 302-304,
310, 312, 314, 316, 317, 320, 326, 329, 330,
337, 338, 340, 344, 347
Dawkins, Richard.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 34, 218
Deacon, Terrence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163, 164, 341, 344
death, dying. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 16, 158, 168, 189, 224, 237, 247,
261, 285, 290, 307, 310, 311, 318
Dennett, Daniel. . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 23, 39, 43, 44, 66, 72, 105-107, 159,
177, 182, 183, 236, 291, 310, 329, 330,
341, 343
Descartes, René. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
development.. . . . . . . . . . . 22, 108, 160, 191, 241, 278, 307, 336, 337
child and personal developme7n6t,. 102, 130, 192, 203, 204, 209, 210,
213, 279, 323, 340
foetal development. . . . . . . . 46, 53, 150, 157, 318, 320, 330, 336,
developmental biology.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Dewey, John.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Diderot, Denis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
disenchanted world. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289, 346
distributed cognition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 88
Dobzhansky, Theodosius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
dreams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182, 340
DSM IV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Durant, Will. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Eco, Umberto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159, 161
ecoDarwinian (eD) par1a4d,i1g7m,.19, 23, 31, 33, 57, 66, 120, 124, 178, 195,
204, 211, 217, 226, 242, 243,272, 285, 296,
302, 303, 307-309, 315, 316, 324, 326, 347
ecology.. . . . . . . . . . . 13, 15, 18, 31, 53, 54-56, 60, 109, 110, 115-117,
125, 127-129, 196, 199, 217, 273, 320, 322, 326,
330, 337
bio-ecology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 110, 330
cognitive ecology.. . . . . 24, 56, 57, 66, 73, 86, 109, 132, 134, 148,
183, 196, 197, 199, 223, 226, 271, 279,
388
INDEX
285, 330, 340

organic ecology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 148, 192
social ecology.. . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 56, 166, 167, 216, 227, 229-231,
238, 243, 247, 257, 271, 331
Edelman, Gerald. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Einstein, Albert.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317, 319
Elias, Norbert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
emergence, emergentism. . . . 25, 26, 33-35, 41, 43, 54, 80, 92, 93, 98,
100, 112, 114, 134, 142, 173, 178, 230,
316, 330, 333, 346
emotion. . . . . . . . . 9, 12, 79, 95, 102, 139, 150-152, 205, 239, 322, 339
entropy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37, 47, 61
epistemology.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 268, 347
ethics.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68, 271
evolution, co-evolution. . . . . 13, 14, 22-24, 28, 33, 36, 39-45, 49,22-24,
22-24, 28, 33, 36, 39-45, 49, 50-57, 61, 73,
78, 79, 81, 84, 87, 91, 100, 106, 108, 110,
115, 116, 119, 126, 131, 136, 137, 144, 152,
153, 155, 160, 164, 166-170, 173, 185, 197,
199, 200, 201, 207, 208, 217-220, 222, 234,
242, 243, 251, 257, 262, 274, 292-295, 303,
308, 310-312, 316, 319, 320, 324, 325, 329,
330, 331, 335-338, 341, 343, 344, 347
evolutionary psychology.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331, 341
existentialist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
expectation. . . . . . . . . 14, 36, 64, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 80, 103, 113, 119,
122, 157, 167, 171, 180, 203, 233, 236, 239,
242, 243, 247, 251, 258, 259, 271, 294, 295,
299, 307, 318, 326
fashion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 77, 88, 153, 166, 275, 296, 345
Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Finer, Samuel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
firms, theory of. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 113, 343
First World War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 241, 319
Flanagan, Owen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 184
flow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65, 167, 171, 233, 254, 297, 341
389
foetus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202, 207, 320

folk psychology. . . . . 8, 26, 29, 100, 105, 126, 154, 208, 286, 296, 297
fractal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 119, 249
free will (see also intention).27, 57, 72, 73, 126, 298
Freud, Sigmund. . . . . . . . 16, 21, 22, 26, 29, 68, 78, 143, 154, 277, 293
functionalism2.7, 73, 91, 92, 102, 146-148, 177, 179, 180, 187, 230, 347
fuzzy logic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123, 334
Gaia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34, 347
galaxies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33, 120, 128
Galileo, Galilei.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 31, 302
Galvani, Luigi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
games. . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 171, 181, 227, 236, 237, 239, 240, 243, 246,
250, 259, 266, 297, 298, 318, 336
genes and genetics. . . . . . . . . 17, 34, 35, 41, 51, 52, 72, 106, 157, 158,
202, 208, 218, 219, 270, 291, 292, 295,
309, 320, 330, 337
genome. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 202, 337
geology.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200, 201, 210, 337
Gibson, James.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195, 203, 207, 339
Giddens, Anthony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215, 243
Gnosticism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 265, 272-274, 276, 287, 312, 347
God.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 14, 15, 32, 33, 37, 44, 46, 50, 68, 103,
119, 124, 133, 178, 265, 269-271, 274, 277,
279, 281, 287, 288, 294, 299, 304, 306,
310-312, 316, 317, 347
Golgi, Camillo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141-143
grammar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161, 169, 171
Gregory, Richard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
groups.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 36, 54, 84, 93, 95, 113, 117, 128, 135, 167,
168, 191, 195, 213, 216, 217, 221-223, 225,
226, 237, 238, 241, 243, 245, 248-251, 253,
287, 292, 294, 298, 309, 324, 331, 345
group selection.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294, 338
guidance (see also influence). . . . . 18, 69, 70, 72, 76-78,
85, 129, 158, 191, 199, 213, 215, 221,
222, 224, 257, 285, 308, 313, 327, 331
Haidt, Jonathan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
390
INDEX
hard problem.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329

hermeneutics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110, 245
Herrigel, Eugen.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
hierarchy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134, 136, 147, 341, 345
Hippocrates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Hobbes, Thomas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240, 241, 251-253
Hodgkin, Alan.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Hogan, Patrick Colm.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
holarchy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134, 204, 286, 333, 345, 346
Holbach.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
holon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132, 134, 135, 333
house, home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266,267
Huemer, Michael. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
human evolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325, 343, 344
human nature. . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 36, 78, 290-293, 331, 338, 341, 344
Humphrey, Nicholas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 184-186,330
Huxley, Aldous. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Huxley, Andrew. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
icon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161, 162
infant.. . . . . . . . . 63, 76, 88, 91, 102, 126, 150, 151, 161, 211, 216, 262
influence (see also guidanc1e)6., 18, 22, 38, 55, 57, 61, 64,
69, 74, 81, 86, 94, 125, 127, 132, 143-145, 148,
157, 173, 178, 179, 182, 190, 191, 197, 218,
219, 224, 225, 239, 247, 257, 258,260, 261,
288, 291, 320, 324, 326, 335, 342, 348
information. . . . . . . . . 13, 16, 17, 23, 29, 34, 55, 60, 61, 63-65, 69, 88,
93, 99, 105, 115, 126, 127, 132, 140-142,
154, 162, 183, 189, 190, 217, 219, 243,
305-307, 322, 323, 332, 334
intelligence. . . . . . . . . . 9, 18, 35, 39, 41, 52, 53, 72, 79, 81, 82, 86-88,
91-93, 107, 115, 136, 141, 147, 148, 168,
178, 281, 289, 307, 324, 330, 332, 333
intention, intentional sta2n5c,e2.9, 39, 46, 53, 67, 89, 90, 98-100, 102, 112,
125, 126, 131, 141, 149, 151, 169, 182, 189,
205, 229, 236, 296, 297, 331
interaction, interplay. 79-81, 83, 86, 102, 127, 132, 133, 137, 140, 200,
202, 203, 222, 238, 298, 318, 319, 324, 330,
391
interbreeding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
interconnection, inter-linking, inter-penentration. . . . 87, 89, 139, 143,
192, 237, 287
inter-dependence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133, 230, 237
interest (or interest-excitement), affect of, (see also self-intere6s1t,) 6.4, 84,
91, 131, 150, 151, 211, 241, 322
interface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155, 156
Internet, World Wide Web.. . . . 19, 23, 48, 84, 93, 131, 217, 237, 293,
306, 308, 331, 332
interpersonal.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 173, 205, 225, 233
interpretation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 31, 32, 63, 110, 151, 196, 223, 270,
281, 317, 320, 342
inter-relationship (see relationship)
intervention, interference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 103, 194, 245-247, 263
Jackson, Hughlings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
James, William.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 10, 14, 16, 22, 25, 50, 143, 279, 348
Jefferson, Thomas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Jung, Carl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68, 198, 208, 213, 279
knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 17, 19, 26, 29, 44, 93, 97, 123, 130, 135,
136, 140, 179, 182, 188, 210, 236, 242,
244, 250, 255, 265-268, 274, 275, 277,
281, 285, 287, 288, 301-304, 306, 308,
316, 324, 347
Kant, Immanuel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240, 245
Kauffman, Stuart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52, 79, 91, 304
Koestler, Arthur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134, 333
Kurzweil, Ray. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301, 305, 306, 309
Lacarriere, Jacques. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
language. . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 16-18, 30, 52, 63, 65, 68, 69, 73, 77, 78, 88,
99, 100, 108, 112, 115, 116, 122, 127, 129, 151,
154, 159-161, 163-175, 178, 179, 185, 187, 188,
197, 203, 205, 211, 217, 224, 243, 254, 259, 262,
279, 280, 286, 292, 296, 321, 323, 324, 341, 344
392
INDEX
learning. . . . . . . . . . . 9, 23, 33, 35, 37, 39, 53, 62, 77, 78, 88, 105-108,
126, 131, 142, 143, 150, 152-154, 170, 174,
194, 203,206, 213, 223, 238, 274, 276,
291-293, 295, 297, 321-323, 339
least action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 45, 50
LeDoux, Joseph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Leibniz, Gottfried. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 79, 278, 317
Leshner, Alan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Libet, Benjamin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
life (what is it?).. . . . . . . 24, 26, 30, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44, 49, 56, 91, 121,
141, 160, 266, 273, 280, 317, 319, 320, 338
linguistics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 171, 173
literature. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 62, 157, 175, 217, 303, 329
literary theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Locke, John.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 35, 303
logic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 39, 49, 80, 83-85, 92, 95, 107,
123, 150, 308, 333, 334, 345
MacKay, Charles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
market. . . . . . . 84, 95, 240, 244, 253, 254, 257, 258, 304, 305, 310, 311
Marx-Tarlow, Terry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Marx, Karl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59, 110, 255
Maslow, Abraham.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279, 341
Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis de. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
meaning.. . . . . . . . . 11, 33, 41, 59, 61-63, 65, 66, 71, 75, 98, 110, 111,
121, 127, 144, 161, 165, 166, 175, 245, 246,
266-268, 270-272, 285, 297, 348
medicine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143, 306, 337, 338
memes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 125, 218-220, 222, 257, 294, 343, 344
memory. . . . . . . 9, 79, 139, 142, 150, 154, 174, 179, 180, 189, 237, 323
message.. . . . . . . . . 16, 60-62, 65, 71, 93, 127, 171, 174, 175, 306, 310
metaphor. . . . . . . . 13, 16, 28, 43, 56, 75, 110, 124, 165, 166, 182, 183,
197, 201, 210, 253, 285, 306, 318, 323, 330
Michels, Robert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Midgley, Mary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Milgram, Stanley. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236, 237
mind, mental. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13-18, 22, 24-32, 35, 36, 47, 53, 54, 56,
57, 60, 66-68, 74, 75, 79, 80, 87, 89, 90, 92,
393
97-117, 125, 126, 132, 136, 140, 141, 143, 144,

147-149, 152, 154, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189,
190, 191, 194, 195, 201-203, 208, 210-213,
216, 217, 225, 226, 328, 245, 256, 276, 279,
280, 284, 285, 290, 301, 303, 321, 322, 326,
330, 331, 339, 340, 342, 344, 347
Minsky, Marvin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148, 149
Monod, Jacques. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 318
morality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Morita therapy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
motor, activity and coordination. . . . . . . . . . . . . 81, 90, 150, 179, 188,
197, 199, 295, 322
Myers Briggs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
nanotechnology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
narrative (see also stories)
Nathanson, Donald.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150, 151, 339
natural selection
Nature.. . . . . . . . . . . 15, 37, 43, 46, 49, 50, 52, 72 , 100, 110, 119, 120
123-125, 134, 136, 159, 209, 230, 233, 263,
270-274, 276, 280, 287, 288, 292, 316,
318, 320, 324
needs (human and animal)2.1, 63, 78, 103, 147, 155-157, 165, 172, 193,
207, 211, 212, 229, 246, 249, 272, 274, 281,
290, 327, 341
negotiation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 234, 235, 238-240, 243, 249, 281
neural net. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89, 90, 153
neuron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 81, 83, 97, 99, 141, 142, 145, 158
neuroscience.. . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 23, 89, 103, 115, 143, 149, 153, 279,
286, 295, 296, 329-331, 338, 339
Newton, Isaac.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 338
Nietzsche, Friederich. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278, 304
Noble, Hugh.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
order (see also c2h2a,o2s4)., 33, 34, 39-41, 43, 44, 46, 50, 57, 63, 84, 87, 104
110, 115, 120, 159, 169, 215, 242, 254, 303, 321
O’Shea, Michael. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
paradigm (see eco-Darwinian paradigm)
parallel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 18, 148, 190
394
INDEX
pattern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 10, 40, 48-50, 56, 60, 84, 112, 115, 119-121,
125-128, 131, 132, 136, 154, 182, 183, 211,
239, 249, 323, 330
perception (see also sense, sensation). . . . 18, 46, 66, 79, 86, 114, 139,
141, 156, 184,185, 342
perennial philosophy.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277, 279, 348
persons, the personal (see also personalty, inter-personal trans-personal)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 18, 26,
27, 32, 36, 37, 51, 60, 62, 65, 71, 73, 75-78,
82, 97-99, 106, 122, 126, 132, 155, 158, 159,
167, 173, 179, 181,187, 191, 193, 195, 196,
200-203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 212, 216, 217,
219, 221-225, 227, 232-236, 239, 241, 243,
246, 249-253, 259, 268-270, 272, 276, 277,
279, 281, 284, 285, 286, 295, 296, 304, 306,
321, 327, 340, 344, 346
personality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 111, 115, 116, 139, 150, 152, 191,
195-211, 213, 216, 221, 222, 225,
227, 269, 278, 307, 331, 340, 341, 344
pheromone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85, 86, 93
philosophy.. . . 14, 31, 97, 104, 123, 171, 266, 277-279, 285, 286, 297,
313, 317, 326, 327, 331, 339, 341, 346-348
physicalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
physics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 39, 44, 45, 127, 128, 140,
178, 269, 302, 316, 317, 334
plants.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40, 56, 66, 133, 191-193
plasticity, biological .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 51, 142, 155, 297
play therapy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
playpens, playgrounds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232-234, 239, 240
political entrepreneurs. . . . . . . . . . . . 252, 253, 257, 259, 260, 263, 345
political psychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
political theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254, 263, 345
politicious relationships. . 9, 11, 133, 178, 198, 230, 231, 249, 274, 326
politics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 36, 245, 246, 253, 256, 259, 289, 303, 312
Pope John Paul I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Popper, Karl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
power, political. . . . . . . . . 237, 238, 241, 245, 251, 252, 255, 257-261,
395
268, 306, 325, 334

power laws. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 50, 84, 136, 260, 334
prediction (see also anticipation). . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 100, 129, 130, 133
primates, primatology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169, 189, 324, 336
process. . . . . . . . . 14, 25, 32, 35, 36, 39-41, 44, 46, 49, 52, 54-56, 60,
74, 80, 90, 98, 100, 107, 113, 121, 124, 125, 152,
154, 157, 158, 164, 169, 175, 178-180,190, 191,
197, 206, 210, 219, 229, 231, 234, 237,238, 242,
248, 253, 256, 258, 267, 274, 281, 299, 303,
307, 308, 312, 319, 321, 325, 326, 330
autopoietic process (see autopoiesis)
biological process (see life)
change process (see change)
complex process (see complexity)
communication process (see communication)
copying process (see propagation)
decision process (see choice)
ecoDarwinian (eD) process (see ecoDarwinian paradigm)
evolutionary process (see evolution)
growth process (see growth)
life or living process (see life)
random process (see chance)
re-entrant process (see re-entrance)
self-organizing process (see self-organization)
social process (see society)
production systems.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 71, 108
propagation (see also pattern)
psychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7-9, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 24, 26-31, 33, 37,
50, 53, 63, 67, 69, 76, 95, 100, 102-105, 107,
125, 126, 143, 154, 191, 208, 216, 217, 223,
226, 244, 269, 272, 279, 286, 293, 296, 297,
331, 334, 339-342, 345, 346, 348
psychotherapy. . . 14, 22, 24, 28, 36, 175, 210, 213, 277, 285, 327, 339
public, the.11, 14, 18, 22, 23, 25, 31, 33, 46, 94, 193, 240,241, 246-253,
255-260, 262, 266, 294, 302, 305, 320, 324, 327, 345
public interest.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294, 305, 345
Quakers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
396
INDEX
Ram¢n y Cajal, Santiago. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142, 143

radio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61, 89, 200, 306
random . . . . . . . . . . 35, 37, 39-41, 44, 46, 52, 55, 56, 85, 88, 107, 124,
152, 153, 211, 288, 298, 306, 316 -320, 332
reinforcement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , 179, 246, 297
re-entrance (see also auto-poiesis)
relationship (see also social psycholog1y5),)1.7, 18, 24, 30,
54, 56, 60, 76, 78, 84, 95, 102, 111, 126, 132,
133, 134, 136, 137, 148, 170, 172, 177, 178, 193,
197, 199, 207, 209, 215-217, 224-227, 230,231,
234, 235, 241, 242, 248, 249, 258, 259, 284, 288, 306, 331
religion (see also spirituality).. . . . 8, 11, 14, 18, 22
76, 97, 135, 164, 187, 209, 212, 213, 217, 224,
219, 235, 252, 265, 267-271, 273, 275, 276, 278
280, 281, 285, 288, 290, 309, 327, 331, 346, 348
residue.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
robot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 62, 80, 82, 91, 180, 181
role. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 12, 21, 34, 37, 40, 41, 62, 68, 104, 108,
116, 141, 143, 167, 188, 194, 206, 212, 233, 236,
237, 239, 240, 243, 245, 250, 251, 307, 316, 320
Sagan, Carl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
scheme. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65, 86, 105, 108, 162, 319
science. . . . . . . . . . . 7, 9, 11-15, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26-28, 30, 31, 34,
36, 37, 42, 43, 47, 50, 73, 79, 97, 107, 115,
116, 127, 140, 144, 154, 163, 187, 210,
217, 223, 224, 236-238, 242-244, 255,
262, 265-268, 271, 272, 279-281, 285,
science (cont’d) 286, 289, 290, 292, 296, 297, 302-304,
309, 310, 314-316, 320, 324-327, 329,
331, 333, 334, 336, 338, 341, 343,
346-348
scripts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76, 77, 196, 197
Searle, John.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79, 340
self, selves (see also persons). . . . . . 14-18, 24-27, 31-35,
40-42, 44-50, 53-57, 60, 67-69, 73,
80, 82, 85, 91-93, 100, 109, 112, 116,
117, 119, 121, 123, 126, 127, 135,
397
137, 150, 158, 170, 174, 179, 180, 183,

190, 191, 194, 199-202, 204, 205, 210,
212, 215, 217, 225, 227, 229-231, 236-238,
241-243, 245, 248-251, 258, 260, 263,
269, 273, 276, 278, 280, 281, 285-288,
291, 293, 296-299, 302, 303, 308, 312,
314-317, 324, 325, 329, 330, 333-335, 339, 341
self-interest, stake (see also interest, altruism).34, 56, 91, 92, 123,
225, 226, 229, 230, 236, 237,
241, 243, 249, 250, 256, 258, 259,
260, 274, 288, 289, 294, 305, 325
self-organization, self-organizing process. . . . . . . . . . 25, 263, 315, 317
self-understanding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324, 329
semiotics (see also signs). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 159, 336
sensation, sensory (see also pe1r0c,e1p5ti-o1n9),. 21, 25, 29, 32, 34, 39, 43,
44, 47, 50, 51, 55, 57, 59-65, 67-69, 80-82,
89-91, 99, 100, 101, 114, 125, 127-129, 134,
141, 150, 153, 155, 156, 162, 171, 174, 178,
182, 184-186, 188, 191, 194, 203, 206, 209,
210, 212, 216, 217, 221-223, 225, 226, 232,
248, 254, 269, 271, 274, 277, 278, 287, 290,
306, 319, 321, 323, 329, 332, 342, 346
sentience.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 79, 91, 92, 186-188, 192
serial.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174, 190
Shaw, George Bernard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Sherrington, Charles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142, 143
signs (see also 6s0em , 6io2t,i6cs3),. 93, 159-164, 169, 172, 297
Simon, Herbert.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
simulation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37, 52, 131, 147, 199, 316, 335
singularity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301, 305, 306, 309
skills. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127, 174, 188, 189, 206, 298, 322
Skinner, B. F.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106, 107
skyhooks (see cranes and skyhooks)
Spirkin, A.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Smith, Adam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 93, 302, 303
Smolin, Lee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 317
social insects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86, 338
398
INDEX
social psychology (see also relationship) . . . 226, 331, 342, 345

social science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 36, 217, 223, 236-238, 242-244
, 325, 331, 338, 341, 343
society. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9-13, 17, 24, 27, 36, 60, 92,93, 110-112, 116,
135, 137, 144, 148, 170, 203, 209, 215, 217,
221, 222, 224-227, 229-234, 237, 240-249,
252, 254, 255, 257-263, 272, 276, 280, 285,
293, 301-303, 309, 316,324, 326, 331, 344
social. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 13-15, 18, 22, 24, 28, 36, 53,
54, 56, 63, 67, 73, 78, 84, 86, 94, 98, 101, 102,
128, 136, 144, 151, 156, 167, 170, 173, 191, 192,
195, 197, 199, 206-209, 215, 217, 223, 226, 227,
229, 232, 234-238, 241-244, 246-248, 250, 251,
255, 256, 262, 271, 276, 277, 287, 293, 298, 303,
304, 310, 315, 324-326, 331, 338, 341-343, 345
sociobiology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23, 338, 341
software. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123, 147, 148, 216
soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 13, 15, 28, 31, 85, 279, 281
species.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 17, 24, 35, 40-42, 51-54, 59,
73, 74, 77, 94, 110, 111, 121, 122, 126, 133, 155,
156, 158, 160, 163, 164, 192, 204, 210, 211, 223,
270, 289, 291, 292, 295, 311, 320, 321, 323, 331,
341, 344
spirituality (see also religion). . . . . . . . . . 13, 14, 31, 109,
156, 168, 209, 210, 213, 271-276, 278, 280,
289, 302, 304, 324, 348
stability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 15, 32, 48, 49, 55, 56, 109, 111-114,
127, 129, 134,136, 149, 161, 167, 191, 195,
197-200, 204, 225, 231, 243, 245, 254, 257, 303
state, the. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237, 247, 251, 255-258
statements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71, 109, 131, 159, 231, 271, 281
Stenger, Victor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Stevenson, Robert Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
steam, steam engine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 28, 56, 140, 306
stigmergy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 85-88, 92-95, 111, 116, 167, 177,
226, 227, 233, 297, 298, 325, 333, 338
stories (see also narrative). . . . . . . 18, 26, 27, 30,
399
32, 33, 39, 62, 83, 92, 125, 130, 145, 157, 170,
172, 179, 180, 183, 190, 191, 198, 203, 204,
210, 211, 238, 250, 266, 274, 285, 288-290,
302, 310, 323-325
structure (see also system). . . . . . . 18, 34, 35, 40, 55-57,
77, 80, 83, 119, 120, 136, 137, 142, 154,
160-162, 164, 166, 195-197, 199, 201, 204,
210, 215, 217, 226, 231, 235, 242, 252, 272,
275, 284, 291, 295, 317, 326
style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73, 168, 244, 295, 314, 345, 346
sugger.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71, 86, 90, 92, 106, 132, 161, 162, 236, 322
suggestion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 29, 34, 47, 57, 59-71,
73-77, 85-87, 90, 92, 97-99, 101, 105, 106, 109,
114-116, 120, 126-128, 130, 132, 137, 143, 145,
149, 157, 159-162, 165, 167, 171, 174, 177, 180,
183, 185, 190, 192, 196, 197, 209, 211, 215,
217-219, 222-224, 226, 227, 229, 231, 233, 236-239,
254, 257, 259-261, 267, 271, 281, 322, 326, 332, 335
swarms, swarm logic. . . . . . . . . . . . 18, 80, 83-85, 92, 94, 95, 111, 116,
167, 177, 308, 310, 333
symbols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 49, 161, 163, 164, 168, 169
synapse.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 98, 139, 142, 145, 319
system (see also structure).8-11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24,
27, 32-35, 40, 41, 43, 45, 47-49, 52-56, 60, 65,
66, 70, 71, 73, 76, 77, 79, 86, 87, 89, 91-93, 97-99,
105, 108-111, 113-116, 127, 128, 131, 132, 134,
137, 139, 142-144, 146-148, 150-152, 166, 178,
179, 183, 192, 193, 195-197, 199, 200, 203, 205,
207, 208, 211, 215-217, 221-224, 226, 227, 229-231,
247, 257, 258, 269, 271, 281, 286-288, 307-309, 316,
317, 319, 320, 322, 326, 330, 331, 334, 335
Tao, Taoism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 62, 310
tectonic plates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 200, 201, 337
teleology, teleonomy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 46, 47, 319, 321
temperament.. . . . 10, 101, 103, 150, 157, 201, 205, 208, 236, 239, 298
termites.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 85, 86, 92, 115
Thatcher, Margaret.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
400
tools, tool-maki1n0g,. 65, 52, 76, 93, 94, 107, 139, 168-173, 188, 207, 216,
243, 260, 262, 280, 297, 314, 315, 322-325, 331
transpersonal psychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209, 279, 280, 342
trial-and-error (see random)
truth.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 109, 155, 159, 182, 223, 237, 271, 272,
290, 299, 322, 327
unconscious mind . . . . . 11, 21, 25, 27, 29, 68, 75, 104, 144, 177, 188,
194, 200, 276, 280, 285, 295, 296, 342
value. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 64, 71, 94, 124, 235, 238, 239, 268, 271,
276, 278, 281, 304
van Krieken, Robert. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Vonnegut, Kurt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
watchmakerargument. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Watts, Alan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Weiner, Norbert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
wetware.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 200, 331
Wilber, Ken. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Wilhelm, Hellmut. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Wundt, Wilhelm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Yoga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141, 174, 213, 278
Zen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174, 213, 215, 226, 278, 296
Zimbardo.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236

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The ecoDarwinian

copyright © Richard Ostrofsky, 2007

1st Edition: April, 2008

Front Cover: Ripples of the random . . .

Beautifully self-organized systems . . .

Talk #1 Eco-Darwinian Psychology 21

Talk #2 Order Without Design 39

Talk #3 The Power of Suggestion 59

Talk #4 Distributed Cognition 79

Talk #5 The Concept of Mind 97

Talk #6 Pattern and Structure 119

Talk #7 Neural Wetware 139

Talk #8 Language 159

Talk #9 Consciousness 177

Talk #10 A Mind of One’s Own 195

Talk #12 Society 229

Talk #13 Groups and Governance 245

Talk #14 At Home in the Cosmos 265

Talk #15 Being Human 283

Talk #16 Becoming Trans-human 301

Talk #17 What We Don’t Know 313

Further Reading 329

In 1972, Gregory Bateson published a collection of cross-disciplinary

Rather, it’s an approach – a strategy for seeing and making sense of

evaluated, and either turned down or accepted. These structures derive

flavor of oxymoron. We find ourselves with a fairly precise language of

ideas continually. Their reservations, or (as in Carol’s case) outright

Guy: I agree that your role is a conservative one. But I think a

Guy: In a nutshell, the revolution I have in mind is Darwinism, and its

Thea: But Darwinism is hardly news! Nietzsche, Freud and William

Thea: Does this new science have a name?

Guy: Darwinism is controversial precisely because of the paradigm

Instead of thinking of the world as planned, designed intended,

Thea: You could drop Darwin and speak of “eco-psychology,” couldn’t

Guy: Too warm and fuzzy for my purposes. That term

Thea: What’s a self-organizing system? I don’t begin to understand

Guy: A self-organizing system is one that shows increasing order

Thea: And you think the mind is such a system?

of as a self-organizing ecology of competing desires, perceptions

Thea: But this is scary. If we can’t think of ourselves as competent

self-sensing, proprioceptive self and the narrative self are still

science and folk psychology

grounded in science. We’d prefer not to think of ourselves as

perform. You can offer the new self-understanding tentatively, on

Thea: Suggestions about who they are?

Guy: Of course, that will be a complete misunderstanding.

Thea: No doubt. But there will be plenty of radicals pushing

Guy: The idea of the brain as a processor of suggestion (rather than

with consciousness. Most of what we do is coordinated and even

Thea: But normally, we think of our actions as deliberate. We go after

Thea: Certainly, as a therapist, I know people often do things for

ecoDarwinian psychology is not reductionist

Thea: I thought post-modernism was rather passé by now.

Guy: I see post-modernism as a double shockwave. The first, hitting

interpretation in philosophy, and relativity and quantum theory

Thea: My fear is that we may be left with no coherent self at all.

notion of an essential self – a perdurable self-within-the-self that

the program of ecoDarwinian psychology

Thea: That should take a good few years of research.

already valuable , powerful and dangerous.

Guy: I can describe what I’ve understood of it:

1) Its basis is the eD paradigm itself. As the Bible’s creation story

2) In particular, the human body, in one finite, fragile envelope, is

out of a single fertilized egg?