Developments in the Human Brain

Elsewhere, recently, I have found it necessary to consider the Effect of the Emergence of Language upon Human Development and Understanding. And, in those studies, it clearly is significant just how the Patterns of Thinking seemed to change profoundly whenever a particular Form was also given a Name, and then discussed, along with other things, and in the same way as everything else. And, this was unavoidable, of course, because within Language, a Name must be totally-fixed, to thereby allow Language to both effectively and unambiguously deliver any ideas involved!

For, whereas, a Form is never once-and-for-all uniquely determined - they most certainly-and-importantly DO change, into various other and significantly different Forms as Development proceeds - Names, on the contrary, cannot do this, for a mutually understood definition must hold, in order for it to play a meaningful role within communication.

This is both mostly unacknowledged epistemologically, and highly important, as Language is our only means of Explaining Things. Such a limitation can often be wholly incorrect when applied to dynamic Forms and Systems in particular, as it is often not immediately evident, as profound Change doesn't happen most of the time, in many areas. They are then regularly used as just another normally-unchanging (constant) elements of Language, Words: and this can cause major errors in Explanations, when those Forms suddenly change into other quite different Forms, in Emergent Development. 

But today, I came across another See The Pattern video on Toutube, by the creator and presenter of that series, Gareth Samuals, in which he considers a study from a US University, in which the actual Shrinking of the Human Brain, generally, has been clearly established! 

Now, I gave been engaged for some time upon the Emergence and putting the Effect of the restrictions of Language, above those nrcessary for Human Thinking, which has seriously affected it, in both some great advantage, as well as also, other clearly disbling ways.

For, the direction that The Sciences have taken since the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC, there has been been an effort to take the Forms, along with all other elements as being totally constant, by putting the needs of the Consistent Language (in Explanation) well above the need to the development of the Forms, thus vastly distorting all supposedly Scientific Explanations, by the needs of Language over those required for Forms.

Now, in addition to the above point crucial other changes are involved. For, something about the processes involved in Thinking about Things generally, must surely have significantly changed the structures and processes involved in a major qualitative changes in the forms of wholly new features that were recently necessary that were NEVER necessary previously, and some replaced those left over from a majorly different System, no longer relevant!

It would seem that whatever changes happened (and remember they actually were NOT universally implemented) still involved a shrinking of our Brain size.

What could possibly have caused it? And did it mean a reduction in the processes necessary,  caused by   simplfied Thinking techniques!? And, if so what exactly were these changes?

We have long been aware of physical changes due to excessive exercise: but this discovery is undoubtedly significant - for it seems to link a Loss-in-Structures, coupled with a significant Gain-in -Performance!

For, if this is a rare if General Rule, it infers a very different - nay revolutionary - relation between Structure and Performance, and a significant re-writing of Development and Evolutionary Changes!

But, it shouldn't surprise us, if we are already committed to the Revelations delivered by Dialectical Materialism! For, though, most of the time, things do remain unchanged, we are beginning to address the Clear Fundamental Interludes of Significant Qualitative Changes, AND the significant Role of Contention in the creation of the Wholly New! So, it cannot be avoided that the Material World changes too - And NOT just incrementally - they also happen in the thinking abilities and even physical capabilities of organisms, which can only mean that these developments must also reflect the capability of physical Changes in those organisms too!

Thought-and-Language simply must have some physical manifestations - for, indeed revolutionary transformations in Thought cannot merely be a mere new arrangrmrnt of a totally unchanging physical entity!

For, we must remember, the relatively short lifetimes of individual people, and their only way of passing physical capabilities on being via Sexual Reproduction between different individuals, in a definitely clearly dialectical development of the production of a Single Egg (synthesis) - formed from both contributing (and contending) parents, but thereafter wholly contained within and automatically sustained by the Mother! Until finally, in a cataclysmic change termed Birth, suddenly becomes a separate and unique individual - having to breathe and feed for itself! If that isn't a Revolutionary Physical Change, I don't know what is!

And, these constant renewals, many thousands per day, alongside the inevitable terminations, ultimately, of both parents of the prior generation, SIMPLY MUST involve other major changes too, also significantly sometimes including, the creation of the Wholly New! Yet, exactly how all those changes in Thinking, physically emerge-and-modify what happens in the Brain is NOT known.

There is no developing Physical Model of the Brain: it, instead, is conceived-of, as an eminently-flexible organ, with potentially infinite capabilities - to which I must profoundly disagree! For, what could possibly have given this matter such capabilities?

You can see why a God had to be considered as The Prime Architect with these assumptions - but it has long been just a necessary Myth!

And, with the usual regular errors imposed upon all discusions of causes, due to the confusion about Names, especially when they are applied to things such as Forms, as explained earlier in this piece - so that NO meaningful conclusions are arrived at, and making regularly sound conclusions impossible to achieve, and the consequent generated problems are thereafter rarely, if ever, addressed.

Yet, surely, it must be possible, from a real understanding of how Forms do ultimately-transform, via explicable processes, into something quite different, without letting the basic rules of supposedly intelligible Language, forever lead us into the mire!

Of course, to be able to do this, one must have seriously embarked upon a dedicated journey into The Dialectics of Change, which is NOT the accepted wisdom currently, though there are increasingly many areas where that is the only worthwhile Approach.

 

John Berger: ‘Writing is an off-shoot of something deeper’

"Words, terms, phrases can be separated from the creature of their language and used as mere labels. They then become inert and empty. The repetitive use of acronyms is a simple example of this. Most mainstream political discourse today is composed of words that, separated from any creature of language, are inert. And such dead “word-mongering” wipes out memory and breeds a ruthless complacency." JB

Very interesting piece by Berger for the Guardian newspaper on language and writing as a process of understanding - he always was a hero of mine!

Link to article

Slavoj Žižek - The Safe and Useful Rebel?

What happens when the writer adopts the vocabulary of the consensus in his society?

It is usually explained as being an attempt to speak in a language everyone can understand – presumably to win him or her to a better and more profound standpoint. But it isn’t, and it doesn’t! Instead, it is bound to pull the writer into the “currently dominant” standpoint, where such definitions have been developed over centuries to fit what basic assumptions and explanations were readily available, and indeed, in common use.

And, the question has to be asked, “Who would have been in a position to both formulate and disseminate such concepts?"

Is it the man in the street? Definitely not!

It will always be the products of those in power: those will have the education to be able to express such things, and the wherewithall to be able to disseminate them through their “owned” organs of information.

Any radical motive cannot be easily maintained in such circumstances, and the prophet, in seeking resonances with an alien readership, and in order to get into print, can very easily become the apologist!

The contradictions in meaning between any revolutionary criticisms and the acceptance of the status quo, can never be resolved, as the words used only make any kind of sense in their currently employed meanings: and who is it that will be doing the using? The dominant standpoint within a society that produced the current meanings of that vocabulary will unavoidably be those of the people in charge, and NOT the mass of the population, who for most of their history couldn’t even read, never mind write!

So, the “radical Marxist”, attempting to make a living in the highest institutions of learning must explain things using the accepted vocabulary of those who will make up the vast majority of his colleagues, though couched in the occasional words that seem to be revolutionary (but aren’t!)

Slavoj ŽiŽek seems to be the perfect example of this!

On reading the Introduction to his book In Defense of Lost Causes, he manages to set the stage for this long book, by excusing the “failures” of revolutionaries, and he does it by revealing their clear good intentions. He even calls their “evident virtues” – idealism – a quality of trying to achieve a better world. But rather than the usual advice to therefore, “Give up now you’ll never do it”, he alternatively says that unavoidable failure is really the best that anyone can ever do!

Isn’t that stimulating?

“NO!” And, if you think that, you are right!

Here is the absolutely-guaranteed, safe revolutionary for you!

Does this self appointed prophet not know what Idealism really is? And it has absolutely nothing to do with Marxist revolutionaries. They are nothing if they are not the most realist operators in the world! Real philosophical Idealism is the direct opposite to Materialism, and Marxists are avowedly materialists! They commit to an entirely materialist standpoint, which takes Matter as primary, and attempts to explain things in terms of the entities present, their properties and their inter-relationships.

And, in case anyone is assuming that these Marxists see everything in purely mechanistic terms – the exact opposite is the case! Their standpoint is the only one that can both deal with real qualitative change, and is also essentially multi-disciplinary!

Indeed, these two philosophical words have very different meanings to what ŽiŽek attaches to them: and his meanings are those of the ruling classes, NOT those of committed revolutionaries.

Instead of the idealism of the status quo defenders, revolutionaries see Idealism as a standpoint that has the whole of reality determined entirely by eternal abstract laws, which can be totally encapsulated in purely formal equations. Contrast this with ŽiŽek’s chosen interpretation as a yearning for something better. And, if he were to be consistent with his chosen language, he would also use materialism to mean chasing after material gain, wealth and position. Not even remotely similar are they?

And yet, such very different meanings were considered crucial by real Marxists. Not only Marx and Engels, but also Lenin took this position, and wrote an important book entitled Materialism and Empirio Criticism to counter an idealist trend within the Bolshevik Party (led, I believe, by Lunacharsky, who after the Revolution became the Minister for Education in the Revolutionary Government)

So ŽiŽek’s introduction establishes an amazing position!

One side of it has already been established above in his choice of language, and the second must be his breathtaking apology for the catastrophes following the Russian Revolution, which he, along with the enemies of that revolution, sees as inevitable, but in his case somehow excusable too!

WHAT?

His "inevitable consequence" was no such thing, for it took Stalin many years, a World context of active hostility, and even military interventions by 14 capitalist powers, and, in addition, there was an externally, as well as internally wealth-sponsored Civil War, with the Royalists and Capitalist attempting to overthrow the Revolutionary Regime.

And, even then for Stalin to complete his proposed transformation, internal dedicated revolutionaries had to be successively removed, imprisoned and executed, or even pursued and assassinated (as was Trotsky) to achieve this supposedly “inevitable result”

It’s an odd kind of inevitability is it not? It’s a bit like the opposite of damning Stalin with faint praise to excuse this traitor to the revolution, both in Russia and worldwide!

Let us put our self professed revolutionary Marxist in his proper context!

You can picture a dinner party in London (say) where the “radical” ŽiŽek had been invited to entertain the gathering where various very comfortable academics could “discuss” ŽiŽek’s ideas without any rancour, and with conclusions such as, “All Revolutions are bound to fail!” and “Their idealism simply doesn’t match with Reality”, not to mention, “The inherent greed and insufficiency of people guarantees ultimate failure.” And, such a group beating up ŽiŽek with their mutually agreed vocabulary, could go home to their own comfortable beds, and sleep peacefully!

And such a description is certainly accurate, for this writer was similarly invited to such a Dinner Party for the same reasons, and with a similar bunch of invitees. The only difference was, that I didn’t speak their language, and if anything they went home worried to death!

Also, watching a discussion programme on TV yesterday, a wholly similar social situation was evident. And in a similar way to how I have described the certain treatment of ŽiŽek, with a similar Aunt Sally as he, it was clear that no matter what were the professed affiliations of the participants they all used exactly the same language, and just as effectively tidied away as ineffectual, idealist and bound-to-fail were all revolutionary threats.

Yet somehow major interventions, or their possibility, were constantly coming up in response to the Arab Spring, and you have to ask, which side they would be on when it came to resolving the situation!

P.S. And this is only in response to ŽiŽek ‘s Introduction!

Addendum

Once more into the breech, dear friends!

For, on thinking about ŽiŽek’s lead-in to In Defense of Lost Causes, I felt that I should do the same with the introduction to his book On Belief.

And it was indeed the right decision. For, he analyses the debate occurring in 2000 on US TV in which clerics from the Jewish, Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist faiths discussed religion and Heaven. The Baptist explained that many “good people” would most certainly end up in Hell, as they hadn’t committed themselves to Christ during their lives.

And such an unwavering “principle”, ŽiŽek likened to that shown by Lenin in his revolutionary activities in Russia, and in his “re-casting” of Marx’s position with respect to political tasks.

[Clearly this academic philosopher is scared to death by such intransigence!]

But, of course, such a supposed resonance, could only be found by a modern “opponent” of Liberal Capitalist compromise, and was totally disregarding of the actual political natures of these two completely opposite men. For it handily coupled the two extremes as essentially similar in their steadfast positions. It is, of course, total and completely irresponsible rubbish, and sees them both as steadfast in their “beliefs”!

And, to thereafter promote himself, as ŽiŽek does, as being on the same side as Lenin, is total nonsense. As Trotsky said when describing such people as ŽiŽek – “They wear the yellow jacket of rebellion, but are still fast asleep in their beds when the factory gates are receiving workers in their thousands”. That would be anathema to someone like ŽiŽek: he is an informed faker, and no revolutionary!

Even mentioning Lenin’s name in a book about belief soils Lenin’s real and significant contributions, and effectively demotes a revolutionary commitment to merely another kind of “idealist” belief! Clearly, this analyser of Society is no Marxist at all, and certainly no revolutionary.

He, though, takes, along with all the enemies of that revolution, a position in opposition to Liberal Capitalism and compromise, which will resonate very well with the Right in US politics.

What a remarkable stance, it is so full of contradictions, it is no wonder he is visibly in constant, jerking agitation when he speaks, but it will certainly get readers. For if he (even if only apparently) took a Leninist Bolshevik stance, he would be crucified as are all such dangerous outsiders, so he wisely appeals to all sorts of people, and he does it from an evidently impotent, yet “clever radical” standpoint. Can you guess which side he will be on when the time comes?

I vividly remember innumerable avowedly “marxist” tendencies in the UK, when the troubles escalated in Northern Ireland, they all supported the sending of troops “to defend the republican Catholics” against the then rampant unionist mobs.

But, whom were they used against?

Any Marxist would know that immediately!

That betrayal, more than any number of written treatises, revealed their real position. Only one tendency opposed the sending of troops and they were the nearest thing to revolutionary Marxists at that time. And I know this because I was in that tendency!

Language and Plurality: The Disabling of Science

A quote from Wittgenstein made it clear that you cannot enter any specialism unless you know its language.

This was pointed out to me, in response to my damning critique of the self-professed Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who’s implicit, but unstated, position on revolution, revealed a very different kind of person.  For, I had made it clear, in that critique, that the very language and assumptions he used in defining his “radicalism” was absolutely nothing to do with either revolution or Marxism, and clearly everything to do with his position and milieu in the Universities in the capitalist world.

Yet, that criticism of mine wasn’t an appropriate example of a similar standpoint to Wittgenstein’s, for though mine is based upon a holistic philosophical standpoint, a working class origin and a lifetime in revolutionary politics, Wittgenstein’s was just as clearly based upon the usual pluralist philosophical standpoint, and it also implicitly justified, as absolutely essential, the identified set of different languages as unavoidable in the various different specialist disciplines. Indeed, it implied that the only way that investigations could ever be conducted, by specialists, was by first isolating, and then thoroughly simplifying a particular area of interest, and only then applying an analytic method to it. And, such an analysis would be meaningless, unless what is so revealed would definitely be unchanged from when it also occurred in totally unfettered Reality.

Indeed, that crucial assumption is embodied in the famed Principle of Plurality - often alternatively stated as the separability from context of all relations extracted by such means.

But, that assumption just isn’t true! You simply cannot assume that!

And, to prove my point, no one can apply relations found by such methods and apply them with confidence in a totally unfettered environment! They have to reconstruct the exact same and essential context, from which they were able to originally extract their “eternal” relation, in order to successfully employ it towards some sound and predictable outcome.

Now, how does this modify Wittgenstein’s statement?

It confirms that all such walled-off, and purposely “farmed” areas, as with all others from very similarly arranged situations, will inevitably generate their own “local lingo”. How could it be otherwise? In Wittgenstein’s mouth, such a statement is surely a consequence of a pluralist position, and a pluralist methodology. It is nothing to do with socially determined language in a Class Society.

Now, Wittgenstein may have considered that to make judgements in any specialist area (that would be of any real value) you would have to have studied it sufficiently to know what is meant by the terms other experts will use, and that is certainly true! But, you cannot ignore the effect of the pluralist filtering, which can only isolate specialisms, one from another, due to such a universally applied method. And, it therefore makes almost impossible, any more general realisations that occur between many very different areas of study. For, instead, this universally adopted method crucially encases each extraction with its own ideally-tailored context, and is therefore and unavoidably, a locally-determined knowledge.

Indeed, it usually amounts to a set of such situations, and their relations, that are sufficiently close in their required contexts, to be taken as a coherent subject, but still walled off completely from the rest of Reality. Indeed, the specialisations just get more and more restricting as new entities and their properties and relations are discovered. New specialisms seem to grow around particular investigative means.

The most glaring example of this being in Sub Atomic Physics, where the almost total reliance of investigators on High Speed Accelerators, or more properly, Colliders, have produced a remarkable walled-off World, so odd, that it is said to have its own unique laws, and even its own and very different Philosophy to the rest of Science – and, of course, its own language!

Now, if these criticisms are considered to have some merit, the usual and necessary response must be to ask “What is the alternative?" The so-called pluralist methodology has not only allowed a vastly extended knowledge of Reality, but crucially, it is entirely useable to required and valuable ends. What can possibly replace it with at least a similar efficacy, if not something clearly better?”

Well, these are certainly valid points to make, for the alternative standpoint to Plurality, is Holism. And its main tenet is that you cannot separate out a relation from its context without changing it or indeed, sometimes even destroying it altogether! Holism has all things affecting, and, to some extent, actually determining, all real behaviours.

Plurality actually “solved” that difficulty by isolation and comprehensive tailoring in order to make such extractions, and then replicating such ideal conditions in order to be able to effectively use the relations so achieved. What on earth can be done if we turn our backs upon such a powerful and useable method, and instead, somehow, attempt to directly study Reality-as-is?

The criticism is that any strictly holist approach is bound to confront us with unfathomable, simultaneous complexity, and hence the impossibility of making any explanatory progress at all! But, such a criticism only holds if Reality is some complex mechanism making any kind of analysis totally impossible. But, that is not the case!

Indeed, in spite of its “everything included” tenet, that does not stop coherent overall behaviours emerging from the melee. In spite of its complexity, it does not ever become totally chaotic, or indeed wholly unpredictable. And the reason for this is that in these all-things-included interactions, there are always systems and sub-systems that can, and indeed do, become dominant.

But they are never permanent!

Indeed, in most situations, though a period of relative stability can become established, so that conditions, for a time, can seem to be unchanging, and particularly important relations can be so frequently glimpsed, that stability is clearly a kind of active balance, and what is glimpsed comes and goes. It is that suggestion of an underlying eternal element that caused investigators to establish their tailor-made Domains of Investigation, and extract their presumed “eternal“ relations. But, without this artificially imposed stability, such temporary interludes will always subside and the situation will regularly, for its own fleeting interlude, become a different one.

Clearly, what the pluralist approach does, is it attempts to “freeze” a varying situation, then simplify it until its dominant relation is clearly and permanently displayed, and can be effectively extracted.

“So, what is the problem?”, I hear in a chorus of cries, “Isn’t the pluralist approach vindicated?”

Well no, I’m afraid it isn’t!

For it is totally unable to deal with the qualitative changes that will definitely terminate that prior wobbling Stability, and cause it quite naturally to turn into something else no longer dominated by that prior extracted relation.

Plurality is a method for dealing with Stability only, and it also erroneously extrapolates its findings by considering them to be eternal.

Major flaws, I think you will agree!

Let us be clear, it only allows a "hopscotch" type of Science, where only isolated stabilities can be subject to analysis, BUT not a single transition to a new, natural and consequent situation is included! You have no option but to “hop” onto the next stability (and its consequent rules) without any understanding of why it had to occur!

Important? I should say so!

For example, a pluralist approach will never, ever in a million years, discover and understand the Origin of Life on Earth, or its Evolution. It will merely provide a few stepping stones towards (and away from) such transformations. Without any real understanding of the actual changing dynamics involved.

Yet, the disabling of Science by Plurality amounts to far more than that. For, the proliferation of ever narrower defined specialisms is inevitable, and even more significant, the transitions in Reality between these ever dwindling footholds, is totally prevented from ever being properly addressed, as long as that standpoint and method continues to hold sway.

The exemplar for the only possible future, pluralist development is demonstrated already by Computer Simulations.

In these totally pluralist models of unfettered situations the situation is removed from its natural holistic nature, and is replaced by an invented situation wherein multiple, eternal relations are all acting both simultaneously, but also separately. And, the actually existing problem of dynamic transitions is simply stepped over by evidentially established Switches. When a certain “key parameter” passes an established threshold value, the program is written so that it merely switches out one relation to be replaced by another, both of which were laws of the usual pluralist type, but rather than any sort of real dynamic transition, we model it with a simple switch-over that being the only way the pluralist standpoint can attempt to deal with a holist Reality.

Plurality deals only with Stability, and even then, very inadequately, as Mankind delves ever deeper into its newly revealed entities, causes and processes.

For Reality is not, as it is assumed, monolithic! It, on the contrary, consists of distinct and qualitatively different Levels, which are not mere hierarchies with a straight-through causality from bottom to top, but a system of superstructures, each of which is established by creative and indeed revolutionary Emergences.

The Origin of Life on Earth is the Key Exemplar!

Let me attempt to make this crucial point as clear as possible.

You can never reduce Life entirely to some new arrangement of separated pre-Life elements. For, an Emergence of this stature isn’t just a new turning in an entirely predictable development, but a Revolution, which can only occur when prefaced by a terminal crisis in the prior stability, which then precipitates a wholesale collapse into something resembling Chaos, but which is then followed by a remarkably creative period entirely holist in its nature that creates the entirely New via a myriad of simultaneous and mutually modifying processes to transform their own natures and context top down!

The new Level is not just a foamy product on the surface of a once calm, and now stormy, sea, but a wholly new Level that has significantly changed its own causing context.

How could that ever be analysed in a pluralist way?

Yet, it can still be disregarded as absolutely unnecessary because of the pragmatic effectiveness of pluralistic extractions, when used in production, and that, I’m afraid, is much more damaging it at first appears.

Like Formal Logic, the current pluralist-based Sciences really only deal with things which do not change into something else. It stops the actual dynamic of real qualitative developmental changes, by an approach assuming, or even purposely guaranteeing stability. It turns its back upon real qualitative changes, and attempts to transform what occurs in those indisputable interludes of significant qualitative change into descrete-state situations, with signals of when to switch. The actual beauty and power of emergent interludes is swept under the carpet, and replaced by non-explanatory rules-of-thumb.

It is therefore a major and damaging retreat, and in fact transforms what we proudly call Science – the attempt to get ever better explanations of all aspects of Reality, into mere Technology – the effective use to produce easily organised results!

Science is gradually shunted out, to be replaced by useable discoveries and methods of employing them.

Indeed, the attempt to explain things in a certain areas are not only abandoned, but actually banned as “self-kid”, as is increasingly the case in Sub Atomic Physics, which has transformed itself into a branch of Mathematics, and has left Reality behind to explore the much more conducive delights in the seemingly universal laws available in the World of Pure Form alone – Ideality!