By the Late John Brockman Read Free Page B

necessary to construct a new model,
     to invoke a new system of abstraction, no more truthful than the old one, no closer
     to any ultimate answer. An abstraction is only an abstraction. The insanity of man
     is that he believed in his humanity as the very basis of reality, as the ultimate
     end to evolution. But “it is of the utmost importance to be vigilant in critically
     revising modes of abstraction. It is here that philosophy finds its niche as essential
     to the healthy progress of society. It is the critic of abstractions. A civilization
     which cannot burst through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility after a
     very limited period of progress.” 14 Man is dead.

     
    This is the end of the doctrine of specific causation. There are only the simultaneous
     neural operations of the present, the all-at-once, the here-and now. No more talk
     about the environment. The only total situation is in what the brain is doing. There
     is no past, there is no future, there is no time, there is no space. The beginnings,
     the endings, are all bound up in the multiplicity of neural operations. The unity
     is methodological. Break through the limited framework of subjects and objects. It’s
     all happening at once, bound up in a universe of simultaneity.

     
    Who’s crazy? Mankind went out of its mind. There is no mind out of which to go. Who’s
     crazy?

     
    “The supreme abstraction of the brain was indeed the mind. . . . From the confusion
     of metaphysics and psychoanalysis, abstractions of abstractions, the thinking brain
     has turned to the first possible glimpses of itself.” 15 For years man understood that animals did not act through a consciousness; now it
     is evident that man himself, the human animal, did not act with a conscious sensibility.
     It’s all a question of breaking through to new systems of abstraction.

     
    “Neither the presence nor absence of consciousness can serve as an exclusive criterion
     either for the presence or absence of any other characteristic in a particular thing.
     . . . The only way a particular individual can be determined to be conscious is with
     reference to his observable behavior.” 16 Behavior is a consideration of the past. The present is in the activity of the brain.
     Analyzing the patterns of the present turned the world of man inside out and upside
     down. Insanity. Who’s crazy?

     
    “Cogito ergo sum.” 17 I think therefore I am. But the only conclusion to be derived from thought is that
     the brain has direct experience. We are not concerned with the existence of thought
     but with the activity of the brain.

     
    There is no conscious self, there is no subconscious, there is no mind. Indeed, the
     word mental is an “unfortunate word, a word whose function in our culture is often only to stand
     in lieu of an intelligent explanation, and which connotes rather a foggy limbo than
     a cosmic structural order characterized by patterning.” 18 Be concerned with discerning operant patterns on the neural level. All experience
     can be accounted for in terms of neural operations. “Only by renouncing an explanation
     of life in the ordinary sense do we gain a possibility of taking into account its
     characteristics.” 19

     
    This system of abstraction, based as it is on operant considerations, goes beyond
     linear systems. Nonlinear processes are composed of interacting elements. Common Western
     language lends itself to pictorial interpretations. But, “the description of many
     aspects of human existence demands a terminology which is not immediately founded
     on simple physical pictures.” 20 Nonlinear processes can be represented by operant mathematical symbols. Common language
     is a poor substitute. Pure mathematical symbolism allows us to “represent relations
     for which ordinary verbal expression is imprecise or cumbersome. In this connection,
     it may be stressed that, just by avoiding the reference to the conscious subject which