Poetry
Appendix 1: The Evolution of Music in Particular(*9)
Link to: "evolutionary sequences of successively higher-order circumstances"
(A Biolinguistic Agenda)
On Scientific Integrity in These Essays
-'Relationals' in Particular as Example
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The scientific integrity of material in these essays is of axiomatic importance to their development and understanding. Intended to offset any reader's doubt in this respect, developed here is the biology underlying one of the more important concepts -the idea of relationals; following that are excerpts from various essays in which the roles and importance of relationals are discussed in one way or another. |
The Evolutionary Nature, Role and
Importance of Relationals
- DEFINITION -
[NOTE: qualia, here (quale: singular), are first-order properties]
- (*1)
relational (noun): a second-or-higher-order property which qualifies in a generally comparative way the relationship of a same or lower-order property common to two (or more) 'elements' of the configuration space: (eg)
left-right/up-down/front-back/ness or in/outside-ness of one thing with respect to another; like/unlike-ness(*b), mirroring/chirality, more/less-ness, absence (vs presence) of material/body physical properties: temperature, chemistry,
pressure, magnetism/gravity, momentum, color, force, speed, sound, taste, smell, texture, dry/wetness et cetera; and at 'higher levels of vertebrate development'; now- then- and next-ness of state, for example, and shape or geometric pattern,
and repetition/rhythm and 'musicality'; temperament as in 'anger', 'attention' and even 'immeasurable degrees of (such as) honesty and fairness' et cetera -and changeability of relationals with time and space as a relational
itself as in 'the arts' eventually and mathematics too(*9).
(See also Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain.)
[The idea of relationals is fundamental to the idea of life-form evolutionary process in that whatever may have been the primitive chemistry or association of molecules of (a) any first ('pseudo'?) life-form 'replicating'
-any first process evidencing reproductive susceptibility, and (b) any first true and definition-yielding evolutionary process- such process cannot have taken place unless there were some registrable difference between the environments of that
cis-organism and its evolutionary trans-second -chemistry, temperature, gravity, pressure, light et cetera.
Or, putting it another way, 'purely simple physical process is state-table deterministic regardless of its seeming evolution' whereas life-form evolutionary process is intrinsically identifiable and defined by the relationals attaching it
-epigenetics therein. -See re: A Biolinguistic Agenda for 'the evolution of relationals' in this respect.]
There are, first, those chordates on the evolutionary tree for which 'relationals' do not (or 'did' not) exist, for which their organism/interaction with the environment then, is more or less state-table dictated by the immediate nature of their 'genetics-and-the-environment' as opposed to possible intercession by some kind of 'multiply-processing brain' (below) -what we may refer to as the fundamentally mechanical, more or less 'autonomic nervous system' econiche/response relationship of generally cold-blooded vertebrates (which is not to say 'There are no cold-blooded vertebrates capable of some kind of primitive learning').
[Axiomatic here is that it is (a) genetic capacity for change (or subjectivity to such change) and (b) 'evolutionally positive response' to successively more complex environment that toggles further life-form evolution and successive
environment/response -however diffusely manifest.
It follows then that there would be successively evolving coalescences(*a) of (c) cells registering 'successively higher-order relational properties of the environment' and (b) successively higher-order hierarchies and complexes
of cells issuing successively higher-order responses -ergo an eventual ganglion, 'brain' et cetera.]
There are, second, then -evolved off 'amphibians' (evolved off chordates et cetera), those eventually/now 'warm-blooded vertebrates' in which 'the brain and its operational order of environment-and-response' (relationship) has so
evolved that interposed between registration and reaction was something of a more or less limited capability for (a) 'learning something about what registered' to 'some however primitive level of abstraction' and (b) 'cerebrating
response into something of an operation'.
[It is 'the nature of evolutionary process' that organisms continuously and successively evolve (or 'devolve') into it whatever the nature and limits of their configuration space -'a machine that goes by itself' to whatever extent supported by its
genetics. There is for every organism, therefore -if it survives at all, an evolution of/in successive tri-stages -diasporation, saturation and dynamic stability(*3), at/in any one of which the process may terminate.
'Dynamic stability', in other words, is a matter of where one stands in time with respect to the evolving configuration-space whole -which therefore includes all organisms too. -'The limited cerebrative capabilities of warm-blooded non-primate
vertebrates' then, is only a reflection of their 'thus-far evolution into thus-far dynamic stability': it is not inconceivable, for example, that the chimpanzee might, under evolutionary process, have genetic capability for evolving into 'some one other
or new hominid'.]
There are, lastly then -evolved off 'some one or more eventual proanthropoids', those 'prohominids' in which some limited capability of cerebration 'notched up enough to abstract some basic relational of relationals'
-'a machine that goes by itself' therein -deliberative capability' -the evolution, eventually, of a mankind capable of successively higher-orders of abstraction investing the nature-whole of 'himself and his configuration space'.
[The relative difficulty of all cogitation depends upon the amount of developmental learning that had to go on to make it possible -what we might refer to as the depth of 'relationals' that went into that learning and go into that cogitation. That depth
is generally manifest in the cortex and in the corrugation of the cortex in particular. 'Old memories', in this respect, have a huge amount of relationals attached to them as a function of time -supporting, in other words, exactly such observations and
studies as in the article here.
(-comment posted on Thursday, January 29, 2009, NPR Morning Edition's Your Health - Brain Study Indicates Why Some Memories Persist -by Jon Hamilton)]
Relationals, in a word, have an at least cerebrating brain in interaction -or they do not exist as 'relationals' to the organism at all.
The evolutionary role of relationals does not end here however; following are three items which should also be of interest.
1 - Relationals and Pecking Order
The idea of pecking order is a high-order concept which we (humans) generally associate with warm-blooded vertebrates, and sexual reproduction in particular. It is, in that sense, a property come into existence as part of warm-blooded
animal evolution out of cold-blooded forerunners -of more or less limitedly mechanical or 'taxonomic' capabilities of interaction with their resource/environment. The bottom line here then is no more than that the relationals-processing intrinsic of
'pecking-order-based expression' is a coevolute of 'warm-bloodedness' and already existing and internalized sexual reproduction.
2 - Relationals and Hominid Evolution
The peculiarity of 'relationals registration' as compared with other possible 'evolutionary toggles into hominidism' is its fundamentality -however primitive, as 'a machine that goes by itself', thus it is 'capability of cerebrating relationals'
in particular, which effectively makes various other evolutionary toggles possible and even viable. We might consider, for example, the related fundamentality of vocalization (amphibians forward) from out of which then, any tiniest leap into
'cerebration of relationals' might squeeze a tiniest vocal elicitation of tiniest 'relational observation/discovery'; surely then, it is easily the proliferation of such 'information cerebrated and communicated' that might account for all
other prosimian-to-mankind genetic changes -'a machine that goes by itself'(*4).
[There is, in fact, a certain hierarchy of evolutionally successive relationals related to several high-order human properties that are not all 'uniquely human' either -'empathy' in elephants, for example, and 'sharing' in bonobos, that neuroscientists
would like to know more about.
'Relationals' does not explain that neurology in this respect, but it does go a long way (in evolutionary process) to suggest something akin to 'genetics facilitating successively higher-order connectivity' for successively higher-order
relationals.
Thus -roughly- 'like me'ness 'precedes' sexual congregationality precedes 'togetherness' precedes 'mere cerebration' precedes cooperation (e.g. hunting operations) precedes(?) 'mirroring' precedes empathy precedes 'awareness of self'
precedes deliberative capability. -But/and to one degree or another then, the further such 'higher evolution of every life-form and its manifested relationals' is more or less constrained or channeled by limitations of its as-evolved physicality
and the evolutionary properties of its various environments.]
(*5)
3 - Relationals and Human Intellectual Interaction
The rigorous structure of mathematics and science aside (below), the compounding and successive hierarchization of relationals -successively higher dimensionality therein, leads, eventually, into 'the phenomenology of the arts and of belief systems in
general'.
In that this process necessarily entails the registration and assimilation of 'phenomenological complexes', it is impossible to register cogitatable details except as 'situationally textural elements'.
Musical notes, words and paint on a page are de-facto phenomenological in the most scientifically rigorous sense possible.
How 'artistic or other meaning therein inhabits the intellect', on the other hand, depends upon communication (below) -and therein, the profoundly variable problem of conveying 'situationally textural' generalities absent unambiguous definition.
-Ergo, 'History repeats itself' and other religious, political and other 'truths' and differences in beliefs, opinions, philosophy et cetera (see 'statistical probity').
[On the matter of how and why speech exists at all(*9), consider only that communication is meaningless without communicants; anyone born and somehow raised without such communicants therefore, would at most have done no
more than perhaps generate certain discrete patterns of vocalization for various primitively experienced, perhaps discrete phenomena -no language, not to mention no 'ambiguities of meaning between people' either -see The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.]
Excerpts on 'Relationals'
Let us observe first that there is a primitive cerebration common to all vertebrates in that all have (varying in degree with genome complexity -below) a facility for 'assimilating primitive econiche constituency and interrelationships into correspondingly primitive, more or less mechanically cerebratable patterns of response or affect'. All vertebrates, consequently, have something of a 'cold-blooded', basic and genetic or taxonomic personality (eg of fishes, lizard and snakes) reflected in how they respond (mechanically) to what is ('learnable' to be) 'edible', 'too high to reach', 'not my operational medium' et cetera -of little cerebration in relationals(*1) [footnote above] and consequently little influence of pecking-order in their viability and procreation.
'Warm-blooded' vertebrates on the other hand, display in addition something of a 'cerebration in relationals' distinguishing (eg) prey running 'catchably slower' than others, 'contemplating' what distance is 'leapable' and what male 'peckable',
and 'maneuvering for what female mountable', effectively manifesting the pecking-order that is the basis, even to a certain 'psychological influence' (intimidation, 'display', 'appeal', fear etc), of basic, classical persona... For
hominids, further still but in particular, it is thru reification that the persona of human-being -and his 'god' and 'creativity', eventually became manifest (below).This construction then, is based upon the general observation that of two
mechanisms commonly associated with evolution -natural-selection and (closely related) pecking-order, it is the latter, synonymous cerebration in relationals, that signals warm-blooded viability and procreation in general -eventually human
deliberative capability and reification in 'creativity, god and other disquieting primitively-unanswerable's'. The following four theses [three, here] summarize that purely physical evolution as it might have developed in hypothetical
stages...
1 - A pre-persona (underlying pecking-order) first-surfaces as a relatively mechanical, 'cold-blooded' or taxonomic personality developing -genome-directed-and-limited, out of 'response-to-stimulus-assimilation and primitive cerebration of primitive relationals'. This corresponds, roughly, to the mechanics of natural selection in which mutation and econiche dynamics are primary operatives, of 'knowledge' generally limited to a 'learning' of basic response more or less mechanically affecting viability and procreation.
2 - A true, 'classical' and basic persona -'warm-blooded', but non-reificational, surfaces with 'the assimilation of relationals into a genome-based-and-limited -but cerebratable, natural-selection,
knowledge-and-pecking-order', a major, relatively non-mechanical operative in viability and procreation.
3 - Reificational persona reflects, in addition, a capacity for deliberating relationships among relationals, capacity for 'creating operational mechanisms abstractly relating pecking-order and other affects and thereby
deliberatively influencing and promoting intrinsically hominid viability and procreation'...
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Assuming properly continuing nutritional and other metabolic requirements, vertebrate development from the fertilized cell (there are others) typically begins with the first mitotic replication that toggles the differentiating multiplication of all other
cells: any one cell becoming two precipitates a relational condition -either with respect to the resource/environment or due to 'imperfect' replication and transposed DNA, that toggles into another likewise registered state: in general, it takes
no more than the re-existence of some specific condition and properly continuing conditions to re-precipitate the hierarchies of cell multiplication, orientation and differentiation that constitute species life-form.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
[There are two 'major' stages in vertebrate ontogeny: embryonic -of relatively short duration and rapid morphological and functional development 'assuring' genetic integrity, and free-form -of relatively little morphological change but
significantly greater duration and 'high-order function and capability assuring procreation'... Embryonic or free-form, it is genome specifics and the resource/environment-and-econiche envelopes in which it develops that determine physical and
cerebrative constitution -taxonomic personality, classical and reificational persona. Thus some particular 'greater econiche' may be more or less equally critical to both lizards and gorillas thru certain initial stages of development, but increasingly
with maturation into reproduction and beyond, the operating space of the lizard (re its physical constitution and cerebration) is of a phenomenology primarily physical whereas the gorilla's is both that and significantly 'higher-order' by virtue
of cerebratable pecking-order (relationals) 'enlarging' taxonomic personality.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~
'Other' and human-being 'state-tables' differ only thru similarly specific consequences of genome specific-gene constitution, subtle functions and interrelationships of which it may be added, may never be known. -It is really no more than an exercise to
parlay evolution of 'response to stimulus' beyond 'a sense of relationals' into a 'dimensionality of relationals' and the reificational persona that has, for the moment at least, out-paced our understanding of that evolution. The fundamental
'peculiarity' of hominid-being -the wellspring of his 'god, order-of-things and creativity', is the deliberative capability that 'forces' him, by virtue of being alive and 'investing his space', into reifying successively higher orders of phenomenology
out of it. Artistic, mathematical or 'animal' and implicit a 'system of human experience', these conceptualizations are -all, constituted solely in, of and as phenomenology of the configuration space.
-from Pecking Order, Competition, Institution, Government and Economic Policy
The 'peculiarity' of the prohominid was that his cerebration did not 'confine his evolution to the relative econiche stability of some lesser organism'; it was rather, 'a machine that goes by itself', one of continuing configuration-space assimilation into successively higher-order relationals..., a registering of 'order' in other words, that was not of 'relatively immediate assimilation and consequence' as in the habits and procreation of 'lesser' animals, but one, rather, of 'dynamic order and meaningful activity' -of pro-evolutionary, eventually 'deliberative' function and operation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Primates have an understanding of 'relational properties' (the physical world about them) which they communicate by action and vocalizations of one kind or another, a primitive, proanthropoid property that took only the evolutionally 'happenstantial' migration of the larynx downward (among related mechanisms) to perhaps 'channel' the evolution of those 'already meaningful sounds' into gradually more informational, primitive speech.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~
[(footnote *8) - It is the 'statistically reliable usefulness of explanation attaching a perceived phenomenon' (eg conjuring 'spirit' in fire, and 'soul' to inhabit live bodies but not dead) that promotes progression -'knowledge, however erroneous in fine'- and it is progression in turn that operates to increase the integrity of 'knowledge'... The 'statistically reliable' observation that 'Everything (perceived) has a container (of it)' -a fact of this as-observed-space, does not imply/need-of or constitute phenomenology of 'a container for an unobservable universe -a Creator of the space and its order'. (-from The System of Human Experience)]
-thus 'government' -as opposed to 'pecking-order via mere knowledge facilitating reproduction and viability', is a function of high-order relationals and the eventual evolution of reification out of deliberative capability. It was only as mankind began to ponder questions for which he had to conjure 'the existence of spirits', for example, that primitive 'government' came into existence.
-from The Nature and Course of Human Evolution as The Basis of Economic Policy
The evolution of sexual reproduction generally served to improve the adaptability of organism-whole response to environmental factors over that of asexual. Adding to this 'further hierarchization in time', was the evolution of bipolar and bilateral body organization, with each its own successively higher-order nervous system and corresponding facility for response to the environment -vertebrate cerebrative capability eventually, and its 'cerebration of econiche relationals into well-being and viability'... Thus in addition to 'elemental' food-chain hierarchization (above), there is one -intraspecies, of 'well-being and viability by successful relationals cerebration' -the 'cold-blooded vertebrate's essentially mechanical learning of 'what is edible', 'too high to reach' and 'not my operational medium', for example, thru to the eventually warm-blooded's 'collaborative' hunting and pecking-order by pain infliction or anticipation thereof. -Some individuals better at 'cerebrating relationals than others' then, there eventually develops an idlemind-time during which the vertebrate -warm-blooded in particular, either 'rests' or defaults, intrinsically, to 'occupying its idle-mind awakedness with discovery of the nature of itself and its configuration space'...
-from Kernel Properties of The Hominid Organism
(footnote *7) - Life-style-and-quality must be understood not for 'materiality' (generally hominid-being) by which it is commonly 'measured', but as a 'mentally and physically manifest sophistication appreciating the phenomenology and its system-of-human-experience relationals'. 'Sophistication' as used here derives from Webster's Third New International Dictionary definition-
sophisticated : deprived of native or original simplicity: as a: highly complicated : many sided : COMPLEX ... b: WORLDLY-WISE, KNOWING 3: devoid of grossness : SUBTLE: as a: supremely cultured : finely experienced and aware b: intellectually appealing : devoid of obvious traditional or popular appeal.
