Critical Complexity

Collected Essays

Rika Preiser

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781501502613
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Analytic Philosophy

This book is a collection of all the single authored essays by Paul Cilliers, published between 1990-2011. Being one of few authors who approached the study of complexity from a philosophical perspective, the main themes in these papers explore:
- Qualitative characterization of complexity and the normative implications of studying complex adaptive systems,
- the philosophical and conceptual similarity to post-structural approaches
- how any engagement with complexity leads to a critical engagement with how we do science and design interventions
- critical and normative implications for how to engage with complex socio-political concerns in the world.

What makes this book unique is that it consolidates a body of work that is distributed over a wide range of academic journals. Although his book "Complexity and Postmodernism" (Routledge, 1998) remains a cornerstone in the field of complexity studies, Cilliers' journal essays really explore the application of the theoretical concepts in more depth. His ground-breaking ideas conceptualized in these essays have served as a continual source of novelty and inspiration in the process of applying complexity thinking to other fields of study.

Part 1: Single-authored Papers
Theme 1: Characterising Complexity

Paul Cilliers

The brain, the mental apparatus and the text

A post-structural neuropsychology

I sing the body electric (Walt Whitman).

1 Introduction

The desire of this work is to provide descriptions of the brain, and of what is called the brain’s “higher” functions (perception, memory and consciousness), that are neither crudely reductionistic, nor based on abstract or dualistic postulates. These descriptions have to be materialist (in a non-metaphysical sense of the word) without losing the ability to say something about the higher functions. The route taken in the process was the following: In the first place, information about the present state of neuropsychological theories was gathered. This information was related to Freud’s model of the “mental apparatus” in his early Project for a scientific psychology (Freud 1950). Such a reading of Freud suggested that there may be similarities between the way the brain works, and structural theories of how language works, a suspicion that was confirmed by a reading of Saussure (1974). These descriptions are placed in a post-structural context through Derrida’s scrupulous reading of both these texts – of Saussure in Of grammatology (Derrida 1976) and of Freud’s project in Freud and the scene of writing (Derrida 1978: 196–231). An interweaving of these texts with neurological theory results in what can be called a post-structural neuropsychology.

Let me underscore the importance of language in these descriptions. Language is not only important in post-structural descriptions of the brain, there are also firm links between the rule-based computational models of higher brain functions and formal theories of language. As a matter of fact, there is an exact mathematical equivalence between the formal grammars proposed by Chomsky (1957) as a description of the structure of language and the abstract mathematical descriptions of general models of computers provided by Alan Turing (1936). This makes post-structural descriptions of language significant on two levels, a negative and a positive one. In the first place it deconstructs formal theories of language and thereby all related formal systems based on production rules, including computational models of the brain. In the second place it provides a model that can be used to generate alternative descriptions of the brain. If this model is useful, it would show that post-structuralism is not merely a parasitic form of discourse analysis, but a constructive component of post-modern culture.

2 The brain

Functionally, the human nervous system consists only of neurons. Groups of neurons that perform specific tasks, usually closely related to some bodily function, are clustered together in specific architectural structures, like the cerebellum or the hypothalamus. The largest part of the brain, the cortex, is however fairly homogeneous, and is in fact nothing more than a large sheet of richly interconnected neurons that is crumpled up to fit inside the cranium. Whatever their function and location, all neurons operate on the same principles: On the dendrites of the neuron incoming information is integrated spatially (i.e. relative to the position on the complex structure of dendrites where the information arrives) as well as temporally (i.e. relative to the frequency of the repetition of a certain message). If this process of integration exceeds a certain level, determined at the foot of the cell body, an impulse is generated and propagated down the axon of the neuron to serve as input to the dendrites of other neurons (Stevens, 1979).

Despite the immense amount of neurons in the cortex, they are interconnected so richly that the route between any two neurons seldom involves more than a few steps. This results in a vast amount of loops and feedback circuits (Mountcastle 1975, 1978). A neuron does not operate on its own, but in concert with a number of others. Such a group of neurons is often referred to as a “neural assembly” (Palm 1982). There is therefore no significance in the firing of a specific neuron, it is always a pattern of activity that signifies something. Another characteristic of the functioning of the neuron concerns the way in which there is dialectic between the discrete and the continuous, or the digital and the analogue. The integration of the graded potential on the dendrites is a continuous process that results in the generating (or not) of the action potential in the axon, a discrete process. The action potential, however, does nothing more than initiate activity on the dendrites of a number of other neurons, and is therefore subsumed under a continuous process. The pattern of activity in a neural assembly will therefore always include digital and analogue processes simultaneously.1

The cortex can be seen as a distributed system. Activity is not localised, but involves patterns of interconnections that cover large areas. This idea is developed by Karl Pribram (1971, 1979) in his holographic theory of cortical functioning. A hologram is a complex kind of photograph that can be taken of an object by means of coherent light, like a laser beam. There is, however, not a one-to-one correspondence between the object and its representation in the hologram. The hologram looks nothing like the object at all. The information concerning the represented object is smeared over the whole hologram. This implies that loss of a specific part of the hologram will not result in the loss of a specific part of the object. What is more, the whole represented object can be regenerated from a small part of the hologram, with loss only in quality and definition. According to Pribram, the cortex functions in similar ways. Loss of a specific part of the cortex does not result in the loss of a specific function or memory. The brain can actually sustain a lot of damage, as is demonstrated by the severing of the corpus callosum – the large nerve bundle that connects the two hemispheres of the brain as a treatment for severe epilepsy. This major lesion has virtually no effect on the performance or behaviour of the subject in question. This can only be the case if functions are not localised, but distributed over large areas. The question to be answered, however, is the following: how does a distributed system of neurons sustain the higher functions of memory, perception and consciousness? Let us take this question to Freud.

3 The mental apparatus

Very early in Freud’s career (in 1895), when he was still primarily a neurologist, he developed a model for the functioning of what he calls “the mental apparatus”, posthumously published as the Project for a scientific psychology (1950). This astounding work covertly served as a basis for much of his later work, and is virtually completely compatible with modern neurology (see Pribram & Gill 1976) The model consists of two types of interconnected neurons; what the he calls the φ and the ψ systems. The first is the perceptual system, and the second the “psychological” system. The only difference between the two systems lies in the way they are interconnected. The neurons transport energy, or what he calls “quantity”. In the perceptual system, the flow of quantity is unimpeded. In the ψ system the neurons are separated by “contact barriers”, and pathways have to be breached by the flow of quantity. lf the connection between two neurons are regularly active, the resistance of the contact barrier is broken down, and the pathway becomes “facilitated”. The characteristics of the mental apparatus is determined by the pattern of facilitations in the ψ system.

Perception is for Freud just a registration of stimuli. This does not mean that the world is merely copied inside the brain. In the first place, the stimuli have no ideational content, they are merely bits of quantity that will be channelled in certain ways by the mental apparatus. In the second place, there is for him no difference between stimuli from outside the body and from inside the body (one of the many post-structural moments foreshadowed in Freud). Stimuli from the outside and the inside are “perceived” by the mental apparatus in the same way by channelling the received energy into the routes already opened up, or by using it to breach open new routes.

The main characteristic of nervous tissue for Freud, is “memory”. (Freud 1950: 299). Memory is the furrowed pathways in the ψ system, the patterns of facilitated contact barriers. If the contact barriers were all equally facilitated, however, the system would be homogeneous, and the property of memory would not emerge. Freud therefore makes a small but vital change to the definition of memory. It is now “represented by the differences in the facilitations of the ψ neurons” (300, my emphasis). Memory does not lie in the facilitated pathways themselves, but in the relationship between facilitations, and this relationship is one of differences. Freud’s discussion of memory and perception does not include any reference to consciousness. They are both unconscious processes. Not unconscious in the sense that they are part of some entity in the psyche, merely unconscious in the sense that they have not passed through the filter of consciousness because they are before consciousness. This is how he formulates it:

Hitherto, nothing whatever bas been said of the fact that every psychological theory, apart from what it achieves from the point of view of natural science, must fulfil yet another major requirement. It should explain to us what we are aware of, in the most puzzling fashion, through our ‘consciousness’; and, since this consciousness knows nothing of what we have so far been assuming – quantities and neurones – it should explain this lack of knowledge to us as well (Freud 1950: 307, 308).

When he has to answer the question of consciousness, Freud provides an ad hoc solution. He postulates another system of neurons, the ω system, embedded in the ψ system that is impervious to quantity. Here we only have a play of “qualities”, and this is what we are conscious of. This ad hoc solution is unnecessary because, as we shall see, Freud has already said all there is to say about consciousness. That Freud is unhappy with this solution is apparent from the Project itself (311), and from the fact that all references to the ψ system is dropped when Freud returns to these matters 30 years later in A note on the ‘Mystic writing-pad’ (1925).

In this fascinating little article Freud dispenses with all characteristics of the mental apparatus except memory and perception. The guiding metaphor of the whole article is that of “writing”. But let us give meaning to “writing” by following another route.

4 The model of language

The characterisation of the brain as an open system where entities have no significance on their own, but derive significance from their relationships with the other components of the system, bears a striking resemblance to Saussure’s characterisation of language. For Saussure language consists of a system of signs that each consist of a signifier (say, the word) and a signified (its meaning). The relationship between signifier and signified is completely arbitrary, there is no “natural” link between the two. The meaning of a sign is however not determined by the user performing a speech act. The system of language (“langue”) is constituted by a set of relationships that transcends the individual user. Although the sign has an arbitrary nature that is not manifested anywhere else but in its use, man is always already caught up in the system of language.

The relationship between signs that constitute their meaning is one of differences. The meaning of a sign is related to the way in which it differs from all the other signs in the system. The signifier “brown” does not have a meaning because it can be identified with a concept that unambiguously contains the essence of “brownness”, but because it can be differentiated from the signifiers “black”, “blue”, “grey”, and also from “squirrel”, “fly” and “impeccable”. “In language there are only differences without positive terms” (Saussure 1974: 120). Because all the signs are related, any changes or any additions will eventually reverberate through the whole system, and in the end change even the agent of change. Such change, however, is always incremental and therefore Saussure’s system will not tolerate the concept of an epistemological break.

Despite his insistence that language is a system that transcends the individual user, the sign remains for Saussure a psychological entity (66). Although the sign has no essential nature, the speaker always somehow gets it right. Because the signifier and the signified are only fully united in the speaking subject, speaking is, for Saussure the true form of language. In writing, the close relationship between the speaker and his intention breaks down.

It is exactly on this point that Derrida concentra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Single-Authored Papers Theme 1: Characterising Complexity
• Part 1: Single-Authored Papers Theme 2: Complexity and Philosophy
• Part 1: Single-Authored Papers Theme 3: Implications of Complexity Thinking
• Part 2: Posthumous after 2011 Theme 1: Critical Complexity
• Author Index
• Endnotes