[MUSIC PLAYING]
PROFESSOR: Welcome, all,
to the fifth lecture
of the fall lecture series, God
and Computers, minds, machines,
and metaphysics.
Let me first announce
like I always do,
we have a discussion
group going on in parallel
to this lecture
series, which is run
by Professor Harvey Cox from
Harvard Divinity School and me.
And we meet the next
time on November 24
at Harvard Divinity
School at 12 o'clock.
Harvard Divinity School
is at 45 Francis Avenue
over at Cambridge.
For more information,
please give me an email.
My email address is
annef@ai.mit.edu.
When you visit my homepage
or the AI lab event page,
you can also find the
abstracts for all the talks
in the series.
And please feel free to visit
and to go around and watch.
Just to give people
who are today here
the first time a
little hint where
we are right now
in the series, we
have started with four lectures
on where we kind of had
from different angles,
from an engineer's angle,
a mythology angle, a
neuroscientist angle, and an AI
angle what the human factor is.
What human intelligence is.
What makes us special or
what makes us not special.
We are right now
in the second part
of the series, where we have
four different points of view
where scientists present more
or less personal accounts on how
they deal with
existential issues
within and outside
their research.
Last week, we had a
very personal account
from a Christian perspective
done by Federico Girosi, who
is here at MIT.
Today we will hear a
Buddhist perspective.
Next week, we will have
a Jewish perspective.
And in two weeks, we will
have a Hindu perspective.
All on these questions.
And I'm now very
happy, very glad,
and very proud to welcome
Francisco Varela, who
is currently
director of research
at the Laboratory of Cognitive
Neuroscience in the National
Center for Scientific
Research in Paris.
He studied, first, medicine at
the University of Santiago de
Chile, and later,
biology at Harvard, where
he received his PhD in 1970.
He went later back
to Chile but was
forced to leave after
the putsch and went
to Boulder, where
he became director
of epistemological research
at the Naropa Institute.
What fascinates me
specifically about his work,
that he really always combines
strict empirical research
with philosophical reasoning.
And so he was
therefore enormously
influential in both current
epistemological theories
and neuroscientific research.
He even was influential
for technology
because Rodney Brooks, the
director of the iLab, who
gave his talk two weeks
ago, bases his technology
on Francisco Varela's work.
He wrote numerous books.
I just want to mention two,
which is The Tree of Knowledge,
from 1987, and The
Embodied Mind from 1992.
And started-- and this is
also one of the reasons
why I invited him today--
many years ago, he
started to work intensively
together with the Dalai Lama.
He just edited a book called
Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying,
an Exploration of Consciousness
with the Dalai Lama,
and published
several other books
on Buddhism and neuroscience.
And I'm very glad and very
happy that you came all the way
from Paris to share with us your
thoughts on cognitive science
and Buddhism.
Welcome.
FRANCISCO VARELA:
Thank you very much.
It is a real pleasure.
I am not sure that I can live up
to your very generous depiction
of what I can or
can possibly do.
I am going to be quite a
bit more modest in what
I would like to
share with you today,
which is that to address
the question that
is behind this entire
series, god and computers,
as I said in my
abstracts, I would
like to put myself
very comfortably
right in the middle.
Because I don't
believe particularly
in a theistic or god position,
nor am I a computer expert.
However, what I would
like to bring in,
and that's maybe where the
Buddhist influence does show up
in me, is that I do very
strongly pursue and hold
to the position that
human experience,
simple, ordinary, lived
everyday, direct, first-person
human experience, is essential.
And it's essential, and
that's the main point today.
For me, both-- and there
is no contradiction here,
as far as I can see--
both for the study of science,
the scientific study of mind
today and for a
quest for meaning,
significance in our
own existence, which
is what I consider
spirituality, which
is very much the take of
the tradition of Buddhism.
So the challenge
for me today is then
to try and point out
a couple of points
where I see that these
two perspectives,
human experience
being at the center,
how does it enter
necessarily, inescapably,
into a good, modern cognitive
neuroscience or cognitive
science, and at the same
time, how properly understood,
this opens up necessarily
or inescapably also
into a quest for human
values and meaning
that is a religious or
spiritual dimension.
So let me start with experience.
Now, as you know, I'm
not going to bore you
with a lot of background,
because it's been in the media.
It's been in the literature.
The question of
consciousness, first-person
or human experience
within the modern science
or modern cognitive
neuroscience, I should say,
has been flaming up recently.
Oodles of books.
There's sort of a book
boom on the topic.
The way I like to see
it is by going back
to a very interesting
way of phrasing it
by somebody from MIT,
Roy Jackendoff, who
many years ago, published
a very pioneering book
on consciousness and
the computational mind.
And he phrased the
question by saying,
well, you have a computational
mind, a process of sorts,
then you have a
body and a brain.
That kind of circulation,
we can get our hands on.
That's just good science.
The real issue here
is the relationship
between the
computational mind and
the fundamental logical mind.
That is, here, the
technical term phenomenology
throughout my lecture,
please understand it
as being synonymous with direct
access to human experience.
OK?
So I'm going to use the Western
tradition of phenomenology,
i.e.
post Husserlian phenomenology,
in the same sense
as in the Buddhist
tradition, one actually
addresses direct experience
by direct examination
rather than by any
other possible means.
And as Jackendoff pointed
out, there is really
not a mind-body problem,
there is a mind-mind problem.
The computational
phenomenological issue.
Now the main point that I
would like to sketch for you
today is that what we need, and
it is not so difficult to find,
is to build a passage
or a circulation
between these two forms
of mind, the computational
and the phenomenological mind.
Instead of considering
them as absolutely opposite
or impossible to blend
or forever apart--
what is the famous words,
the twain shall never meet?
The point here is that yes,
not only they can meet,
they are, in fact, two
aspects of the same reality.
But in order to really make
that productive beyond words,
we need to avail ourselves with
new tools, new perspectives,
and particularly new methods.
The two points that are central
for me is on the one hand
is to actually
understand how can we
build an active circulation
between the computational
or biological or
neurobiological side
and the phenomenological side.
That's going to
be the first part
of what I'm going to say today.
And the second
essential resource
we need to put back onto the
table that has been thoroughly
neglected, certainly
within science,
and by a large in the
Western tradition,
is a method for
examination of experience
that is a proper
phenomenological method.
So both things are going to
lead me into, hopefully in time,
the end of this talk.
Now, please bear with me.
It's going to be,
I think, I hope,
a relatively tight argument that
I'm going to try to develop.
There is not much time.
So please bear with me if it
is a little bit too fast track.
As it's fashioned today.
Let me just first of
all start by giving
an example of the
kinds of issues
that come up when
you ask the question,
is there a circulation.
So this is chapter
1, circulation
or reciprocal,
mutual circulation
between phenomenological
and neurocomputational mind.
What kinds of issues
do we find here?
Just to fix ideas.
Just so that this
is not so vague.
I just bring this one, which is
one particularly illuminating.
Again, understand this
just as a mere example,
not as a demonstration
on anything.
Everybody knows the
famous Necker cube.
You perhaps don't know, but
there is interesting literature
that shows that if you
look into the Necker cube,
it is a bi-stable perception
that shifts back and forth.
And it takes time to
shift back and forth.
And in fact, it goes from
front to back and back to front
with certain periodicity,
which is not like a clockwork,
but it has a certain frequency.
And in fact, here, for
example, you have in the lines,
indicate the moment when
the perceiver actually
sees the flip.
And it just indicates
that with a button,
so you have a time series.
The interesting thing
here is that when you now
keep doing the same experiment,
but you change perspectives,
you do an easy
Necker cube and you
move into a more difficult
Necker cube, that is,
by changing the angle of
rotation, what you have
is a very different
distribution of this interval,
of the inter-shift
intervals, as indicated here.
This one for this one,
this one for that one.
Now, if you have any
kind of familiarity
with the neural
basis of these sorts
of bistable visual
perceptions, you
know that this is a
classical demonstration
of the dynamical quality
of a process that
is relatively bistable.
There's quite a bit
of knowledge known
about the circuitry behind it.
Last year, a beautiful paper
by a couple of researchers,
Leopold and
Logothetis, even showed
how, in fact, recording
from single neurons
could anticipate the flip by
a few hundred milliseconds.
And in fact, when you
study the dynamics
of these kinds of
neuron and events,
you do find this kind
of dynamical setting.
Here, the setting is given
by choosing your perspective.
So precisely that's the point.
A global, perceptual,
experiential perspective.
That is, how you see the cube.
And it does you, the first
person, who is seeing the cube,
is setting up a context
of the underlying base,
the neuronal
machinery if you want,
so that you actually influence
that local neuronal machinery,
and that's reflected in
the rate of flip-flop.
And in fact, in the case of
the Logothetis experiment
with monkeys, the
expectation of the monkey
could influence how
the rate of discharge
of certain neurons in the
visual cortex would occur.
So that's the kind of flavor
that I want to convey.
The example is meant to
just give you the sense
that it's hard for
me to understand--
and I honestly say--
it is hard for me
to understand why is it so hard
to understand that when you
have a complete perceptual,
cognitive, conscious or aware
experience, that is, you're
looking at the Necker cube,
this is not separable.
In fact, it is a mutual up,
down, or downwards and upwards
causation with
the actual details
of the local computations.
And that the circulation
between the two not
only should not be seen as
an impossibility, in fact,
we see it all the time.
Now, the usual argument
to deny this is--
by the way, this is what I
like to call the research
project of neurophenomenology.
Neurophenomenology
is just a key word
that I'm throwing out to mean
precisely how can we actually
constructively build a
research project which
has yet to be fully fleshed
out, between these two levels.
That is, the
phenomenological level
and the neurocomputational
level in active passages,
both upwards, from the
neuro into the conscious
or into the phenomenological,
and also reciprocally,
backwards from the
phenomenological,
constraining the
local phenomena.
Now, the usual claim
today from people
who oppose the idea of
such a project, and I'm
going to take two
minutes to say this,
because it's really crucial
to crack what I think
is sort of an optical illusion
of the issue of experience
of phenomenological mind in the
field of cognitive neuroscience
is that in the current
debate of consciousness,
there is a large
majority of people who
would oppose the existence
of this first-hand experience
or first-person experience,
the phenomenological level,
by choosing either
most typically,
a form of reductionism,
saying ultimately,
we can do away
with consciousness
or with experience as some
sort of epiphenomenon.
It's really not
that interesting,
except as a correlate
of something else.
Or the more moderate ones,
also a very popular position,
a la Dennett and
few others, would
be some form of functionalist.
That is, it doing something,
but in fact, in itself, we
don't have, possibly,
any access to it,
nor is it something
that can be active
within scientific research.
So this is just to situate
my position that here, we
have a whole constellation of
people working in this domain,
where in fact, the claim
is quite the opposite.
The argument is usually
that since we know,
and it's true, that there are
very precise neural correlates
or neural bases for a number
of cognitive phenomenological
processes, such as perception,
motion, and so on and so forth,
therefore, that's the
only one that counts.
Now, that, of
course, only proves
that there are some
objects of research
that are at that level.
It doesn't prove that it is
the only object of research,
that it is the interesting one.
The third-person
position, as it is usually
described, this being the
first-person position,
makes-- is an interesting
slippage of sense
by saying that because there
are levels which are reducible,
therefore everything
is reducible.
It's a funny kind of shift.
All I'm saying, it's
something that to
me is almost common
sense, which is to say,
there are some things
that are reducible,
there are other
things that are not.
There are some levels
of descriptions
that I admit that kind of
put downward projection,
but there are some that are not.
And the whole issue is to find
the right level of description,
depending on what
are you studying.
Not everything can be
studied at the same level.
Basic advantage, I would say,
of the position I'm defending
is actually quite
obvious, because we all
have this strange, fascinating
[CHUCKLES] thing we carry
around, which is the body.
And every time we look
at the body, every time
I move my arm,
every time I touch,
every time I look and take
this glass, this gesture.
And it is only within the
realm of the bonding experience
that this happens, that you have
two irreducible facts together,
inseparably together.
On the one hand, there
is the motion of the arm.
There is all of the
external description
that I can do of
how this is done.
At the same time, and
also as part of the data
that phenomena is
proposing to me,
I have my experience of seeing
the glass and drinking it.
Again, all I'm saying is
that these two sets of data
need to go together, and
they are irreducible.
There are some levels
at which they touch.
There are some levels
at which they do not.
If you ask me, do I
have an experience,
do I have a possible
access, conscious access,
to the discharge of the neuron
125 of the motor cortex,
probably not.
But if I have access to
the perception of the glass
or the actual flip-flop
of the Necker cube,
the answer seems to be yes.
OK.
So the body, to
me, provides what
I consider the most
irreducible source of arguments
for the inseparability of
these two kinds of phenomenon.
Now, in order to move just one
step more into the direction
I want to go, I
need to again shift
back into a mode
of illustration, so
that we move away from the very
general statements into some--
you have the flavor, a specific
whiff of the kinds of things
that I try to do
in the laboratory.
How does this articulation of
these two irreducible levels
actually work out?
Now, here, one of
the topics that
is most interesting
to illustrate what
I'm trying to do is, in fact,
a more profound and a more
constitutive event than the
flip-flop of a Necker cube,
which is time.
And therefore, let me
just use as illustration
the neurophenomenology of
present-time consciousness.
How is the time
now actually seen
from this neurophenomenological
perspective.
So in order to do
that, it makes sense
we have to see a
phenomenological side,
and we have to see
the neural side.
So let me start.
Again, time here is playing
the role of one of those events
where, by having a body, these
two things are mixed together.
This is not one of those objects
that it is easy to reduce,
nor is it one of those
phenomenological events
that has no link to
actual neural substrates
or bodily substrate.
But the first
contribution has to come--
or if you will start with
a contribution coming
from phenomenology,
we hit upon what
I would say is already the
announcement, the opening
into my second
message here, which
is that you say, what is now?
And we all understand how you
experience grabbing a cup.
But now you ask yourself
the question, what is now?
How do you experience right now?
What is the nature
of that experience?
Well, in fact, there
are many examples
in the literature you can read,
for example, the famous paper
by Ginsberg and Dennett, where--
or in the book by Roy
Jackendoff himself,
where the whole issue is
simply taken by saying,
oh, time is just this point.
And there is a little duration.
There is a little
glob around it,
but basically,
that's what it is.
What phenomenology--
and please, if you
would like to take something
home from what I'm saying,
this might be one of the
things that you would
like to take home and consider.
One of the messages
from phenomenology,
both Western and Buddhist,
is the observation
that when it comes to the
study of experience, just
a casual, cursory
inspection is not enough.
It is not enough to simply
say, oh, I'll just look.
Because when you
just look, in fact,
you pretend to be an
expert of something
which you've never done.
As if by listening
to sounds, you
would be automatically
a musician.
Or by having a body,
you would be a doctor.
That, of course, is nonsense.
For example of time it's
particularly beautiful,
because when you do
an analysis of time,
and I'm taking this now straight
from the phenomenological
tradition of the
Western philosophy,
in this case, the
work of Husserl.
The late work of Husserl
and a few other contributors
later on.
The structure of
present time turns out
to be an extremely complex
and interestingly layered
phenomenon.
In fact, in particular,
not only does it have what
many people, including
the casual inspection of
say, a la Ginsberg and Dennett
shows, that the present--
or William James,
for that matter.
The idea of the species
present that he beautifully
describes in chapter
12, I think it is,
of The Principle of Psychology.
Why did he call it
the species present?
It is because it has this
funny quality of having
a center and a periphery.
It is not like a
continuous line.
It has a center and periphery,
much like the visual foveal
and peripheral vision
in the visual system.
But that center periphery
has, in itself, a structure,
which is partly what he called
the retentional threads, which
make what I see still part of
the present without invoking
memory, which is still
another phenomena.
That's already an
interesting distinction.
And at the same
time, the opening
or the setting of the
boundary conditions for what
is going to come next.
That's what Husserl called
the static or transversal
intentionality, or the
three-part structure
of temporality.
That three-part
structural temporality
is actually inseparable from the
non-discontinuous non-central
periphery or continuous flow
of the possibility of time,
where these moments
of time emerge
which you can call the flow.
And in fact, when you examine
the longitudinal intentionality
of time or the
genetic constitution
of time, what you
find is that it
is inseparable from affective
dispositions or affect
or emotional tone sets.
Now, you can say, how
do you know all of that?
Well, I'm not
demonstrating it to you,
but there is all kinds of
published and to be published
and ongoing research, like
in any other literature, that
will point to the
kinds of observations
that you can do to
provide, to stuff up,
to actually give the ground
for these kinds of conclusions.
And I'm just bringing
this as an example how,
by applying in detail, very
precise analyses of experience
that does not show up
under cursory inspection,
you can come up with
a structure that
is both surprising
and interesting.
Central periphery with
these dynamical retentions
of the just passed
and the opening
into the future and
the constitution
through affect and
the permanent flow.
At the same time, these
kinds of observation
can be mixed, with no,
at all, immediately
suggested the flip side of
what neuroscience can tell us.
Because when you do a
third-person perspective--
and then, again,
I'm now going back
to what comes from the
cognitive neuroscience.
it has been known for many
years that time, indeed,
has the behavior of animals.
Ethologists know this,
and it is part of research
that you can see, even
in the old days of EEG,
that time comes in globs which
lasts about 500 milliseconds.
It's a rough estimate.
In other words, it's
a perceptual frame,
what it takes to
constitute a perception
or a moment of behavior.
For example, here,
when an animal
has an orienting reaction,
you turn your head,
and you foveate, because
you hear a sound.
And then the next moment,
once you reorient and foveate,
I recognize a face.
Neurobiologically,
it has been known
that takes about
that kind of time.
And again, I cannot
go into details.
What is interesting is
that recently, there
is a very interesting idea
how that description can
be provided with
a mechanism of how
that moment, those moments
of cognitive present,
arise through a specific
mechanism, which
is a process of very
fast synchronization
or temporal coherence in
very distributed brain
ensembles or brain assemblies,
as is sometimes said,
that might be dispersed
throughout the nervous system.
And it is one of the current
hypotheses much studied
by many labs today,
including ourselves,
how that kind of
synchronicity, which
is based on an actual
electrical oscillation,
can provide the glue for
distributed assemblies
to become what is under the
constitution of this behavior,
such as foveation
and recognition.
And you can observe that,
just to make things, again,
concrete.
These are some recent
data from my lab.
By looking at,
say, human patients
that have electrodes
implanted into their brains,
because they're
epileptic, and they're
waiting epileptic resection.
Now when you do
that, these people
are willing, sometimes,
to work with us
and provide answers to
simple cognitive experiments,
such as discrimination of
visual objects or simple working
memory tasks.
But at the same time,
we have a whole bunch
of electrodes in this case--
about 24 electrodes--
distributed
throughout their brain,
and we can actually
study this exact
process of emergence
of their experience
of the discrimination
while they are doing
it under the hypothesis
that what we are
observing is titrating
this constitution of the present
through the establishment
of synchrony.
Again, this is just
a way of giving you
a little whiff of the
story of how you can then
proceed to investigate
neurophenomenologically
by putting these
two things together.
In other words, the
person actually engaged
in the experience
with his own account,
his own phenomenology,
and the results
of the recordings
and the phenomena
that give rise to that
moment of experience,
this is just the kind
of results you can get.
Excuse me, it's complicated.
But you will see in a
minute, it's not that bad.
These are four
electrodes implanted
in a particular
patient, two that
go all the way from
the back of the head,
through the limbic system,
into the head of the amygdala.
And these other two
in the frontal that
go through the frontal lobes,
down into the cingulate cortex.
So what you have
here, every point
here represents widely
distributed places
in the brain.
And you can see that this
patient, while he's recognizing
an illusory contour, in this
case, either recognizing it
or not, when there
is a red line,
we have drawn a
red line where you
can find a statistically
very robust synchrony
between these very
distant places.
In this case, for example,
the anterior hippocampus
and the anterior cingulate gyrus
of the other side of the brain.
Far apart.
OK?
Doesn't happen everywhere.
There are some local
phenomena. in other words,
adjacent places of
recording, and it does
happen between distant places.
Some of you--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
No.
In this case are local
field potentials,
because they are small.
Maybe a few millimeters
in diameter local fields.
You could do the
same thing if you
had access to the cells,
which has been done,
as you perhaps know.
Thanks for the clarification.
I know that those of you who
are not into this kind of field,
this doesn't mean anything.
Just take it as an example
of the sort of thing
that can be done
if you are working
in the lab with this
kind of material.
Good.
What does this buy us in terms
of where we're trying to go?
Well, the main point
I'm trying to set now,
back to the general
issue, is that when
we think about the
relationship between the two--
the mind-mind gap.
The phenomenology and
the computational mind,
there are many ways
in which from--
and I'm going to move now from
what I consider more or less
trivial into more
or less interesting
ways of establishing
the connection.
The most classical, the
most reductionistic way
is of this kind.
You can find it in any
psychology textbook
you care to examine.
Where if you have
phi, here, it's
some kind of
neurobiological terms,
say synchronicity between
distant brain sizes and brain
sites.
And psi are some
phenomenal terms,
such as I see the
illusory contour.
And then the argument
is usually this
is a formulation
due to David Taylor,
it says phi looks like psi,
therefore it explains it.
So the synchronicity looks
like the constitution
of a moment of perception,
therefore that's it.
You've got it.
Now, that, again, would
violate the reducibility
that I was referring to before.
A little better is what you
might call a more soft path.
That's the hard
path, if you want.
A more soft path
consists of just
pointing at what you might call
a phenomenal isomorphism, not
an analytical isomorphism,
where you establish
the parallels, such
as synchronous cell
assemblies, temporal
retention, for example.
OK?
We're back to the
example I just mentioned.
Or efference copy in the motor
system and voluntary action.
Or the perception of the other
and this beautiful, recently
described mirror neurons
in the cortex described
by [INAUDIBLE],, where the neuron
fires when the monkey moves
the arm, but it also fires just
as much when another monkey
moves the arms in front of him.
OK?
That's why he calls
them mirror neurons.
And you say, oh, wow.
That's great.
So that is the neuronal basis
of the perception of another?
Again you can take that into
the linking preposition mode
and say, that's it, or
as many people do today,
and this is again
referring to the literature
as it's going on, they've
taken more soft pass,
and say, well, we don't know.
There is some kind
of isomorphism.
This is the old
idea of the duality,
the neurophenomenal duality.
And you leave that with
big question marks,
and you stop there.
Well, what I'm trying to
propose is that you can actually
bridge that by building active
constraints in both directions.
And this is how it would go.
You would take
phenomenological data,
but again, if you avail
yourself with the right kind
of precision that is
required and the right kind
of fundamental
adequacy of the method
to unfold what is present
within experience,
that gives rise to some
descriptive invariance,
and I'll come back to
that when I go back
to method, in a moment.
In other words, the
data in itself is deaf,
but you can actually describe
that into patterns, such
as you saw in the case of
time, with the longitudinal
transversional intentionality.
That's a pattern that comes
from many, many observations.
You build an invariance, and
into a formal description that
lends itself, because it is an
invariant and a description,
to some models and
descriptions, such
as you can use in this case.
It's very adequate
dynamical models,
which again leads itself into
naturalistic implementations,
which could be artificial.
In this case, the
implementation is neuronal.
So there you have a way of
actually not just saying
these two things are
next to each other,
but of actually building
the necessary passages that
connect one with the other.
For example, you could say,
if you take this perspective
that you have to
immediately discard
any form of naturalistic
implementation of time, that
would be a continuous time
flow, as in a classical computer
system, that would be absolutely
out from the beginning,
if you respect the fact that
this phenomenological data
constrains the way the actual
machinery could or should work.
Now of course, that's not
necessarily a problem,
because it is
immediately obvious
that that's not the case.
So again, to summarize
that point again,
it's like saying that neural
phenomenology, in this sense,
has what I like to
describe as a triple braid.
On the one hand, you
need a form of precision
to make the passage possible
between the two descriptions.
The second is that you need to
find the kinds of processes,
and in the case at hand, it
is the process of synchrony
that would be the
right candidate, which
is situated at the junction
between the phenomenological
level and the
biological sources.
You shouldn't go to, say,
membrane properties, which are
in themselves fundamental data.
But you shouldn't
go to that level,
because it wouldn't be
helpful for the junction.
And then third, and
I'm back to this point,
the explicit and pragmatic
methodology of examination
where the lived experience
and the actual bodily base
interpenetrate.
OK.
Take a breath.
We're going to the
next part, which
is you're going to ask
me, I hope, at this point,
so how do you do it?
This is all great,
but how do you do it?
So far you've said
you can do it.
Now, I'm going to spend the
next 10 or so minutes trying
to say a few things about
what is it that you do
and how that leads into the
examination of experience
in the way we need
to touch upon here.
Now, first of all, let me
say that the whole question
of the phenomenology
of experience, and I've
said it before, is
really a blind spot
in the Western tradition.
So to me, it's really an
absolute fantastic discovery
to find that many
of my colleagues,
when they write
about experience,
can be so scholarly and
so precise and so creative
when it comes to describe
naturalistic data,
but can be so
superficial when it
comes to describe experience.
And for example, while I
can mention many examples,
there is a book
where it says, well,
how are we going to solve the
phenomenological descriptions
to build a body of knowledge?
It said, well, let's just
trust on human good will.
And you say, well, that's great.
But what next?
OK.
Now, the reason we
have to now ask that
question in the
flip mode, and say,
why is it that it has been
so much in the blind spot?
And they think the reason
is that it is not easy.
And it is not easy because it
takes a really solid retraining
and relearning to do the
appropriate discriminations
that you need to do.
So the negative side is
that these things are not
simple to do.
Now, the positive side
is that when you do them,
you have an actual rich source
of data that you can do.
That you can mobilize.
That you can put
into the service
of a program such as the
neurophenomenology of time.
OK.
So what is it that
you need to work with?
And here again, I'm using
both Western phenomenology
and using a lot of the
phenomenology of experience
as it comes down from
the Buddhist tradition.
Because that's if you want--
that's their specialty.
That's what they
have to contribute
to the patrimony of mankind.
The whole thing is,
in fact, based on a--
as it should, on a very
ordinary human capacity,
which is that, not surprisingly,
of being all of a sudden able
of becoming aware
of, of reflecting on.
Now let me make a
distinction here
between reflection
and reflectiveness.
Reflection is the
usual sense, a thought,
thinking upon a thought or
an idea, associating an idea.
What I mean about reflection
is a different kind
of mental capacity
or human capacity,
which is that there
is a sudden suspension
of the habitual
association of thought
into a mode where you say, aha.
There is that discontinuity,
and you say, in English, you
become aware of.
All of a sudden, you can
say, you become aware of.
There is a sudden interruption.
That capacity for
reflectiveness is a little bit
like going to a movie.
You can either watch the
film go by, all of a sudden,
you can step out and see,
oh, the movie's there,
and this is the
color of the cinema.
And you can make
some observations
about the way the
film on the screen
is set up, and so
on and so forth.
Or if you're studying, say,
memory with a subject, you say,
give me some evocations
of your past,
the first thing that the
subject is going to do
is to tell your
stories about his past.
Very rarely he will be in a
position of actually examining
what is it that he does
when he brings memory back.
Not the content,
but the process.
OK?
That's the key to the notion
of phenomenological reduction,
is to move from
content to process.
To shift one level up.
That particular capacity,
it is not a mysterious one.
It is a very common and
ordinary human capacity.
What happens is that like
for music into musicians,
like from walking
into becoming skiers,
it is not enough to have it.
It has to be cultivated.
It has to be pursued in
a very systematic way.
And the cycle-- just trying
to make a decision, because
of time, what to skip here.
[LAUGHS] You noticed?
OK.
So you can say, all right.
Great.
I know it can reflect, so
what do I do with that?
Well, both in the
phenomenological Western
tradition and in the Buddhist
tradition, what you're
asked to do is to
actually cultivate
that to become an expert
into the following gesture,
into the following fundamental
gesture, which is, on the one
hand, to induce those kinds
of suspensions or breaks
or bracketings.
Those can be induced
either spontaneously,
or you can train
yourself to induce them.
That is like flipping out.
The reflectiveness gesture.
Then the next move is not just
to establish yourself firmly.
Train that muscle, as it were,
but then to actually work
with that into the
next step, which
is that the process is not
just a reflection of what is it
that you're looking,
but actually,
you do the second
move, which is perhaps
the more subtle one, which is of
letting that position of being
the observer be very relaxed.
This happens all the time if you
are a master skier or a master
flutist.
The beginner learns her
technique and is all tied up.
The master is the one
who can do a gesture
and then relax into it.
And you cannot be a master
unless you can relax with
the purposeful, or the
intentional technique.
In this case, in the
case of reduction,
phenomenological reduction
is exactly the same thing.
You have to learn how to
induce the suspension,
and then you have to
learn how to let it go.
To put it down.
And in that putting
it down, what happens
is something that happens to
all of us, again, spontaneously,
but the whole point is to
cultivate it systematically.
Which is that whatever it
is that you're examining,
for example, time,
can be looked at now
from many different
variants or perspectives.
It appears.
It shows up in a fresh,
in a different way.
It appears in ways in which
you were not used to seeing.
And that's what
we call intuition.
That's what we call insight.
So as Husserl said, you build
up variance or eidetic variance
on a given domain and a given
set of data, time and motion,
whatever it is.
And then out of that
set of variance,
you can actually
extract the pattern.
That's what I referred to
before as the invariances.
And that gives you
the possibility
of, say, building up the kinds
of diagrams that I showed.
Now, As a little summary there,
so the first thing you need
is the attitude of
bracketing or suspending,
which leads to intuition,
the kind of intimacy
of direct evidence that is
proper to a direct examination.
Which leads to
invariance, that can enter
into next-level descriptions.
But none of that is possible
without a very solid training.
The stability, the
pragmatics that
needs to develop over
the course of time.
Now, it is said in the
Buddhist tradition,
for example, that although
it is easy to start,
it is very hard to become
a real fluid practitioner.
And by practitioner here, all we
mean is a good phenomenologist.
The reason, again, is simple.
Anything that you
need to learn requires
that kind of engagement.
And it just, again, befuddles me
why is it that it appears that
we should become instant experts
about our own experience when
we know we cannot be instant
experts about anything,
just about.
We all need that
kind of engagement.
But suppose that we have
the interest and the stamina
and the guts--
by the way, Husserl
was a real exception,
Because you can say, where
did he learn it from?
Well, if you read
his material, it's
amazing how much
he actually-- you
can see this kind of
reduction in action.
He not only came up with
fantastic descriptions
about time, he also anticipated
a whole bunch of things
that we know today in
neuroscience about space,
about affection, affect, I
should say, emotionality,
intersubjectivity, and a
whole bunch of other things.
You say, how did he do it?
Well, it seems that Husserl, you
can see it in action, in fact,
he was probably a
very gifted person,
like, if I might say so, a bit
of the Mozart of reduction.
Now, not all of us have that
kind of luck, and most of us
have to work hard.
And working hard for what?
Well, it depends on
what you want to do.
But if you're interested, I
say, in neurophenomenology,
that kind of training
is necessary in order
to actually understand how
to mobilize the resources
of your own experience.
But there is another motivation.
And that's where the Buddhist
angle comes into here.
And don't worry, I
will end in time.
[LAUGHS]
Which is that when you take this
attitude to your own experience
of seeing that whatever it
is that comes up in everyday,
ordinary experience can be
deepened, can be explored,
can be unfolded, can be enfolded
by applying a disciplined,
sustained cultivation.
Yes, you can do some
interesting research.
I hope that I have at least
suggested that direction.
But also, again, inseparable
from that discovery
of the structure
of experience, you
begin to discover a few
things about yourself.
In other words, it
touches what you
might call the existential
dimension of experience.
And that's where, in
the Buddhist tradition,
there are not really
scientists in that sense.
They're not interested
in empirical accounts,
although they might,
in fact, they are,
but not true historically.
They're much more
interested in how
that kind of training,
that kind of discipline
leads to a human transformation.
Leads to a spiritual quest.
So you can say, well, tell me.
How does it lead?
Again, let me give
you an example.
When you carry on the process of
systematic, sustained reduction
into the observation, for
example, of the question,
how is your own
identity constituted?
What is it to be a you?
Not what is it to be a bat,
but what is it to be a you,
what is it to be a me?
One of the first
things that comes up,
and it's considered to
be sort of Buddhism 101,
or practitioner 101 inside, and
it's readily confirmed whenever
you engage sufficiently
in this kind of training,
is that what is interesting
about the nature of myself,
when I say, what is it myself?
Where do I find it?
How do I find it?
What is its nature?
What is its texture?
Is that under
eidetic variations,
when you submit that
process repeatedly
under examination, what you see
is that the nature of the self,
as it is said, is precisely
that it is unfindable.
The nature of its unfindability,
it is a sudden insight--
insight, intuition?
You get this new
realization which
is not particularly abstract.
It is very intuitive.
It is very direct.
It is very intimate.
Into what?
Into a realm of phenomena
which is quite radical.
Which is the non-findability.
In the old days,
you used to say,
people used to translate this
non-findability of saying,
no self.
Well, it's not quite no self.
It is unfindable self.
And you can say, oh, yes.
I understand.
Myself is just an
association of stories
that I'm telling myself.
And you can have a
very elaborate theory
about how your self
is a composite entity.
Many scientists do.
In fact, lots of people who
write upon consciousness do.
That's not the point.
The point is why
is it that we'll
continue to behave as if we
had a very solid reference
and a very solid fixed point
of view to defend, to maintain,
to sustain, to
distinguish, and to create
in the ultimate analysis,
a whole bunch of trouble
for those around us.
The point here is that
this kind of examination,
it's not the one
that it is purely
the intellectual analysis.
The intellectual analysis
leads to the motivation
into the sustained
examination that
leads to an insight
that is transformative.
That, to me, the core
of the spiritual path.
The spiritual because
the direct intuition,
the direct examination
actually changes
you, which doesn't
necessarily do the mere
or the pure logical analysis.
There's an old text from
the 15th century where
a man called Shekbur said,
"not finding anything
is an incredible find."
Or actually, the
Dalai Lama these days,
he uses a very quaint
colloquial Tibetan expression
to express the same idea.
He says,
[SPEAKING TIBETAN] which
means, literally, "Nothing
where my finger can go.
There is no place to
put my finger on."
Now, I'm trying here to
make you have the sense
that it is quite different
to say that, which
is an understandable statement.
And you can even
analyze it and be
very smart about the
logical composition
of that kind of
sentences and the fact
that that kind of statement
contains an existential impact
once it becomes yours by that
kind of immediate knowledge.
So that's the main point, here.
That it is the existential
impact of that kind of analysis
that creates the opening
into the spiritual dimension.
So let me try and get to the
roundup of my presentation
by saying, I gave you, I
hope, the argument to say
that the nature of experience
is way more interesting than we
think.
On the one hand, I think
we can do a pretty good job
at understanding experience
from a perfectly reasonable
scientific point of view
if we avail ourselves
of the neurophenomenological
perspective
as a research program.
And if we avail ourselves
with the proper training
and the proper methods
to actually exploit
what's in there, once those
two things are in place,
I personally see
absolutely no problem
or no conflict between
science and spirituality.
Because in fact, we're
talking about the same thing.
We're talking about
what is contained
in the nature of experience.
You can take that nature of
the richness of that experience
into a good bit
of science, or you
can take it into a
transformative path
for your own life.
That's, of course, not a
contradiction in terms at all.
And once that's, it's to
me, established a frame
or as a possibility,
what I can--
inevitably, you need to--
I think we have to conclude is
that the naturalistic events,
the brains, the bodies,
the neurons, seen
from the point of
view of the more
existentially deep understanding
of the nature of self,
for example, acquire
a transcendence.
The neurons, all of a sudden,
are not just these little blips
out there, yet they are.
They are not denying that
there are calcium-dependent,
potassium-dependent voltage
currents and so on and so
forth.
but there is a communication, a
translucency or a transparency,
into the more
existential dimension.
At the same time, the purely
very indescribable, sometimes,
existential depths of
one's own experience,
which is sometimes unsayable,
because unfindable,
finds a very natural connection
into the roots of nature
and into what
science is all about.
So from that point of view, the
title that I gave to this talk,
it's why a proper
science of mine, i.e.
a proper witness
to new resources
that we need to put in, implies
the transcendence of nature.
That is, where the
material and the spiritual
are certainly non-dual, but
transparent to each other.
Thank you.
Two minutes late, I'm sorry.
PROFESSOR: Thanks
very much, Francisco.
We have-- actually, we
have nearly 15 minutes
for a question.
We have, definitely, 10 minutes.
So do you want to take
the questions, or--
FRANCISCO VARELA: Sure.
PROFESSOR: Yeah?
OK.
FRANCISCO VARELA: No, please.
You--
PROFESSOR: OK.
FRANCISCO VARELA:
You be the chairman.
PROFESSOR: Yes, please.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
FRANCISCO VARELA: Yes.
Thank you.
It's a great question.
Because indeed, like
there is different kinds
of little self-analysis
in science
and different
motivations for doing it,
there are different
levels of analysis
in the Buddhist phenomenology.
There is, at least, I
would say, two extremes
and the whole
gradation in between.
One is the kind of
tradition in Buddhism
which gives rise to the
whole corpus of say,
the so-called Abidharma
tradition, which is the detail,
I would say today,
phenomenological psychology.
The components of experience.
This is very minute appearing.
How many emotions
can we discriminate?
How does time appear?
What is the nature
of, for example,
the perception of the other,
and so on and so forth.
That leads very much into a
kind of a scientific dimension,
and that's where
it's easy to have
a dialogue between cognitive
neuroscience and Buddhism.
Then there is the more
existential schools
or traditions, such as
the so-called [INAUDIBLE]
or Mahamudra traditions
in the Tibetan school,
where, in fact, the
whole emphasis is
much more on non-findability
and that idea of non-findability
or as it is
sometimes translated,
as emptiness or sunyata, in
the original Sanskrit term,
is taken into more and
more radical degrees.
There is progressive
stages in the understanding
of that emptiness.
The literal example vignette
that I mentioned today
about the
non-findability of myself
is but one stage, and that
can be cultivated further,
like anything else, into
a real, if you want,
naked form of non-perception
or emptiness, where, of course,
you have to choose your
style, and you have to choose
your fate and your preferences.
PROFESSOR: Yes please.
Morgan.
AUDIENCE: I just had
two technical questions
about your--
the brain evidence.
The first one was when you
showed the information where
you did the statistical
correlations,
you mentioned that those
were epileptic patients.
But did they have their
[INAUDIBLE] intact?
FRANCISCO VARELA: Yes.
AUDIENCE: OK.
And the second one was the
mirror particle neurons.
Can you give us a pointer
to that work, or--
FRANCISCO VARELA: Yes.
You just look at
Rizzolatti, Science, 1995.
AUDIENCE: Are those the
interior parietal lobule?
FRANCISCO VARELA: Yes, the
interior parietal lobule.
Correct.
PROFESSOR: Yes, please.
AUDIENCE: Professor Brooks
said in another lecture
that there's no subjectivity,
if I understood him correctly.
Now you are saying
there is no self.
Now, I think that this is a
critically important thing,
if we could go into this
a little more slowly.
Could you tell-- when
is your examination
of the self exhausted?
That is to say, did
you go into the nature
of this eidetic reduction,
for example, you are saying,
at some point, you are
certain that there is no self.
Or what is the nature of
exhausting this examination
to find--
FRANCISCO VARELA:
There is no exhaustion.
It's an open question,
as far as I'm concerned.
AUDIENCE: How can you state
that there is no self?
FRANCISCO VARELA: No.
I state that there is no self--
first of all, I
didn't say no self.
I qualified that by saying
that the self is not findable.
Very different.
We do have a self.
I'm Francisco.
Hi.
How are you?
I have no problem with that.
Nobody is trying to convince
anybody you don't exist.
The question is what is the
nature of that existence?
We have a mode of
existence that deserves
a really precise answer.
And what the examination and
phenomenological analysis
yields, at the first level,
is something quite simple.
That is that this composite--
first of all, it is a composite.
But we can also deduce
that even from science.
And second, that
it is not findable.
You cannot put your
finger, as Dalai Lama says,
you cannot put your finger in.
Now, you can say, what gives
you the right to say that?
It gives me the right, the
same right that anybody
who does a good
experiment, who says,
these are my conditions
and observations.
I go, and this is my method.
This is what I see.
That's what I've been
trying to propose to you.
I don't think that that's final.
It is one proposition
for examination
where we're trying to be
honest with each other and say,
this is how I do it.
This is what I see.
Why don't you check?
I know that you have.
[LAUGHS] But what I mean is
it's the same kind of routine
as any kind of examination.
So yes, I can say it.
Do I hold to that as some
kind of ultimate truth?
No, of course not.
To me, the whole thing
is an open question.
PROFESSOR: And I also
would like to add
that Rod didn't say
that there is not
such a thing like subjectivity.
He said, it's not something
to distinguish machines
from humans.
That computers can
have that as well.
But he never said anything
like that there is not
such a thing like subjectivity.
Just to clarify for
the people who haven't
been at Rodney Brooks' talk.
I wouldn't like him to
be presented in that--
yes, please.
AUDIENCE: I'm really
fascinated with a lot of things
that you said.
And I'm thinking
in the life of--
FRANCISCO VARELA: I think
you'll have to speak up
for the people in the back.
AUDIENCE: I'm thinking, in
the life of a scientist,
in my case, a neuropsychologist,
my colleagues are
of the same bent, of
life is divided up
into being very cautionistic
in the laboratory
to find the answers.
And many will take weekends,
days, evenings, or weeks
off to get in touch
with themselves.
To meditate, to revive
themselves so that they
can go back to do more
reductionistic work.
The point being that this
separating the phenomenological
with the reductionistic,
where you
seem to be saying-- at
least I hope you're saying--
is that trying to
integrate that,
bringing that sense in the
morning, in the evening,
in the laboratory if
possible, because they really
do correlate.
FRANCISCO VARELA: Thank you.
That's precisely the point.
That I must be
stupid or something,
but I fail to see why is it
that these two things should
be in conflict.
Now, they are in conflict.
We just hear the way
we have been taught
or we've been trained
because of the assumptions
that we've been carrying on
from the history of science
and the history of
Western tradition.
That's fine.
Nobody says we
have to stay there.
And what I'm trying to say,
just to complement what you just
pointed out, is that it
is not enough to notice
that this is happening.
We have to avail
ourselves with new tools
to actually produce the change
so that this interpenetration
can happen.
Now, it seems to me, stands
to be absolutely to reason
that if you're studying brains
and minds and psychology,
that kind of presence
of experience,
both in its mechanism and
in its existential depths,
it's inescapable.
We're bound to find it.
We try to chase it
out through the door,
and it comes back through
the window, as it is said.
And in the history
of psychology,
it's a compulsive repetition
of the same kind of gesture.
So yes.
That is very much
the kind of vision
that I'm trying to develop.
And again, I must say, I've
been very inspired in this
by the Buddhist tradition.
Because in fact, Buddhism,
as the question before
pointed out, is very
diverse, but in its spirit,
it's very much that.
It's the ordinary,
but the ordinary,
but the entire depth
of ordinariness.
And so morning, evening,
and weekends, no different.
PROFESSOR: We have time
for one more question.
Yes, please.
AUDIENCE: I'm
comfortable with the idea
that computers have
computational lives.
What about the idea that they
have phenomenological lives?
FRANCISCO VARELA: Rod.
[LAUGHTER]
PROFESSOR: Rod, do you
want to answer that?
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: My answer is obvious
from my talk two weeks ago.
FRANCISCO VARELA: No.
I was just being facetious.
I'll be very
straightforward here.
I don't know.
In other words, what
do I mean by no,
no, it's not just a way of
avoiding the question is it
seems to me an open question.
In principle, I see no objection
or no logical or a priori
reasoning or conclusion
or observation that
would lead me to rule that out.
So a cog might, one
day, in its fifth, 10th,
or 40th generation,
become aware and have
the same kind of empty self.
Who knows?
We don't know.
There is-- it's
an open question.
PROFESSOR: Unfortunately,
we have to stop here.
I'm very sorry.
FRANCISCO VARELA: OK.
Thanks for having me.
