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Authors: Arthur Koestler

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Thus consciousness may be described, somewhat perversely, as that special
attribute of an activity which
decreases in direct proportion to habit
formation
. The condensation of learning into habit is accompanied by a
dimming of the lights of awareness. We expect therefore that the opposite
process will take place when routine is disturbed by running into some
unexpected obstacle or problem: that this will cause an instantaneous
switch from 'mechanical' to 'minding' or 'mindful' behaviour. Let a kitten
suddenly cross the road on which you have been driving absent-mindedly,
and your previously absent mind will return in a flash to take over
control, i.e., to make an instant decision whether to run over the kitten
or risk the safety of your passengers by slamming on the brakes. What
happens in such a crisis is a sudden transfer of control of an ongoing
activity to a higher level of the multilevelled hierarchy, because the
decision to be made is beyond the competence of the automatic pilot
and must be referred to 'higher quarters'. In the present theory this
sudden shift of the control of behaviour from a lower to a higher level
of the hierarchy -- analogous to the physicist's quantum jump -- is the
essence of conscious decision-making and of the subjective experience
of free will.

 

 

The opposite process, as we have seen, is the mechanization of routines,
the enslavement to habit. We thus arrive at a dynamic view of a continuous
two-way traffic up and down the mind-body hierarchy. The automatization
of habits and skills implies a steady downward motion as on a moving
escalator, thus making room in the upper strata for more sophisticated
activities -- but also threatening to turn us into automata. Each downward
step is a transition from the mental to the mechanical; each upward shift
in the hierarchy produces more vivid and structured states of consciousness.

 

 

These alternations between robot-like and luminous behaviour are, as I said,
a matter of everyday experience. On some rare occasions, however, creative
people experience a quick oscillation -- a
reculer pour mieux sauter
-- from the over-articulated, over-specialized strata in the cognitive
hierarchy down to more primitive and fluid levels, and up again to a
re-structured upper level.

 

 

 

2

 

 

Classical dualism knows only a single mind-body barrier. The holarchic
approach on which the present theory is based implies a
pluralistic
instead of a dualistic view
: the transformation of physical events into
mental events, and vice versa, is effected not by a single leap over a
single barrier, but by a whole series of steps up or down through the
swing-gates of the multi-levelled hierarchy.

 

 

As a concrete example, let us remember (
Chapter I, 6
)
how we convert air-waves arriving at the ear-drum, which are physical
events, into ideas, which are mental events. It isn't done 'in one
go'. In order to decode the message which the air-pulsations carry
the listener must perform a rapid series of 'quantum jumps' from
one level of the language hierarchy to the next higher one: phonemes
have no meaning and can only be interpreted on the level of morphemes;
words must be referred to their context, sentences to a larger frame of
reference. Active speech -- the spelling out of a previously unverbalized
idea or image -- involves the reverse process: it converts mental events
into the mechanical motions of the vocal cords. This again is achieved
by a whole intermediate series of rapid but distinct steps, each of
which triggers off linguistic routines of a more and more automatized
type: the structuring of the intended message into a linear sequence,
processing it according to the silent dictates of grammar and syntax;
and lastly, innervating the entirely mechanical motion-patterns of
the organs of speech. Noam Chomsky's psycholinguistic hierarchy was
anticipated in
A Midsummer Night's Dream
:

 

As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

 

Let me repeat: each downward step in the stepwise conversion of airy nothings
into the physical motions of the vocal cords entails a transfer of control
to more automatized automatisms; each step upward leads to more mentalistic
processes of mentation. Thus the mind-body dichotomy is not localized
along a single boundary or interface, as in classical dualism, but is
present on every intermediary level of the hierarchy.

 

 

On this view, the categorical distinction between mind and body fades away,
and instead of it 'mental' and 'mechanical' become complementary attributes
of processes on every level. The dominance of one of these attributes over
the other -- whether the activity of knotting my tie is performed mindfully
or mechanically -- depends on the flow of traffic in the hierarchy,
whether the shifts of control proceed in an upward or downward direction
through the swing-gates. Thus even the lower, visceral reaches of the
hierarchy, regulated by the autonomic nervous system, can apparently
be brought under mental control through Yoga practices or biofeedback
methods. And vice versa -- to say it once more -- when I am sleepy or
bored, I can perform the supposedly mental activity of reading a paper --
without 'taking in' a single word.

 

 

We are in the habit of talking of 'mind' as if it were a thing, which it is
not -- nor is matter, for that matter. Mentating, thinking, remembering,
imagining are
processes
in a reciprocal or complementary relationship
to mechanical processes. At this point of the argument modern physics
provides us with a pertinent analogy: the so-called 'Principle
of Complementarity', which is fundamental to its whole theoretical
structure. It states, put into non-technical language, that the elementary
constituents of matter -- electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. -- are
ambiguous, Janus-faced entities which under certain conditions behave
like solid corpuscles, but under other conditions behave like waves in
a non-substantial medium. Werner Heisenberg, Nobel laureate and one of
the pioneers in sub-atomic physics, commented:

 

The concept of Complementarity is meant to describe a situation in
which we can look at one and the same event through two different
frames of reference. These two frames mutually exclude each other,
but they also complement each other, and only the juxtaposition of
these contradictory frames provides an exhaustive view . . .
What we call Complementarity accords very neatly with the Cartesian
dualism of matter and mind. [3]

 

Although this refers to classical dualism and not to the plurality of levels
proposed here, the analogy retains its attractiveness. The knowledge that an
electron will behave as a particle or a wave, depending on the experimental
set-up, makes it easier to accept that man too will, according to
circumstances, function as an automaton or a conscious being.

 

 

Another Nobel laureate, Wolfgang Pauli, thought along similar lines:

 

The general problem of the relationship between mind and body,
between the inward and the outward, cannot be said to have been
solved . . . Modern science has perhaps brought us nearer to a more
satisfactory understanding of this relationship by introducing the
concept of complementarity into physics itself. [4]

 

One might add to these quotations almost any amount of similar pronouncements
by the pioneers of contemporary physics. It is evident that they regard
the parallel between the two types of complementarity -- body/mind and
corpuscle/wave -- as more than a superficial analogy. It is, in fact,
a very deep analogy, but in order to appreciate what it implies, we must
try to get some inkling of what the physicist means by the 'waves' which
constitute one of the two aspects of matter. Commonsense, that treacherous
counsellor, tells us that to produce a wave,
there must be something
that waves
-- a vibrating piano -- string, or undulating water, or air
in motion. But the conception of 'matter-waves'
excludes by definition
any medium with material attributes as a carrier of the wave. Thus we
are faced with the task of imagining the vibration of a string but
without the string, or the grin of the Cheshire cat but without the
cat. We may, however, derive some comfort from the analogy between the
two complementarities. The contents of consciousness that pass through
the mind, from the perception of colour to thoughts and images, are
un-substantial 'airy nothings', yet they are somehow linked to the
material brain, as the unsubstantial 'waves' of physics are somehow
linked to the material aspects of the sub-atomic particles.

 

 

It seems that the dual aspect of man reflects the dual aspect of the
ultimate constituents of the universe.

 

 

 

3

 

 

The 'spelling out' of an intention -- whether it is the verbal articulation
of an idea or just the stubbing out of a cigarette -- is a process which
triggers successive sub-routines into action -- functional holons from
arithmetical skills down to mechanical muscle-contractions: in other
words, it is a process of
particularizations
of a general intent. Vice
versa, the referring of decisions to higher levels is an
integrative
process which tends to produce a higher degree of coordination and
wholeness of the experience. How does the problem of free will fit into
this schema?

 

 

We have seen that all our bodily and mental skills are governed by
fixed
rules
and more or less
flexible strategies
. The rules of chess define
the permissible moves, strategy determines the choice of the actual move.
The problem of free will then boils down to the question how such choices
are made. The chess player's choice may be called 'free' in the sense that
it is not determined by the rules. But though his choice is free in the
above sense, it is certainly not random. On the contrary, it is guided
by considerations of a much greater complexity -- involving a higher
level of the hierarchy -- than the simple rules of the game. Compare
the game of noughts and crosses with the game of chess. In both cases
my strategic choice of the next move is 'free' in the sense of not
being determined by the rules. But noughts and crosses offer only a
few alternative choices guided by relatively simple strategies, whereas
the chess player is guided by considerations on a much higher level of
complexity with an incomparably larger variety of choices -- that is,
more degrees of freedom.* Moreover, the strategic considerations which
guide his choice again form an ascending hierarchy. On the lowest
level are tactical precepts such as occupying the centre squares of
the chessboard, avoiding loss of material, protecting the king --
precepts which every duffer can master, but which the master is free
to overrule by shifting his attention to higher levels of strategy
where material may be sacrificed and the king exposed in an apparently
crazy move which, however, is more promising from the viewpoint of the
game as a whole. Thus in the course of the game, decisions have to be
constantly referred to higher echelons with more degrees of freedom,
and each shift upward is accompanied by a heightening of awareness and
the experience of making a free choice. Generally speaking, in these
sophisticated domains the constraining code of rules (whether of chess
or of the grammar of speech) operates more or less automatically, on
unconscious or preconscious levels, whereas the strategic choices are
aided by the beam of focal awareness.

 

* The term 'degrees of freedom' is used in physics to denote the number
of independent variables defining the state of a system.

 

To repeat: the degrees of freedom in the hierarchy increase with ascending
order, and each upward shift of attention to higher levels, each handing
over of a decision to higher echelons, is accompanied by the experience
of free choice. But is it merely a subjective experience fraught with
illusion? I do not think this is the case. After all, freedom cannot
be defined in absolute, only in relative terms, as freedom
from
some
specific constraint. The ordinary prisoner has more freedom than one
in solitary confinement; democracy allows more freedom than tyranny;
and so on. Similar gradations are found in the multilevelled hierarchies
of thought and action, where with each step upwards to a higher level
the relative importance of the constraints decreases and the number
of choices increases
. But this does not mean that there is a highest
level free from all constraints. On the contrary, the present theory
implies that the hierarchy is open-ended towards infinite regress,
both in the upward and downward direction. We tend to believe that the
ultimate responsibility rests with the apex of the hierarchy -- but that
apex is never at rest, it keeps receding.
The self eludes the grasp
of its own awareness.
Facing downward and outward, a person is aware
of the task in hand, an awareness that fades with each step down into
the dimness of routine, the darkness of visceral processes, the various
degrees of unawareness of the growing cabbage and the falling stone,
and finally dissolves in the ambiguity of the Janus-faced electron. But
in the upward direction the hierarchy is also open-ended and leads into
the infinite regress of the self. Looking upwards, or inwards, man has a
feeling of wholeness, of a solid core to his personality from which his
decisions emanate, and which in Penfield's words, 'controls his thinking
and directs the searchlight of his attention'. But this metaphor of
the great neuro-surgeon is deceptive. When a priest chides a penitent
for indulging in sinful thoughts, both priest and penitent tacitly
assume that behind the agency which switches on the sinful thoughts,
there is another agency which controls the switchboard, and so on ad
infinitum. The ultimate culprit, the self which directs the searchlight
of my attention, can never be caught in its focal beam. The experiencing
subject can never fully become the object of his experience; at best he
can achieve successive approximations. If learning and knowing consist in
making oneself a private model of the universe, it follows that

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