[For more depth in this topic read read the topics existential principles and biological registers and variation, unpredictability and mathematics.]
Thoughts to take forward. These points are examined in more detail at the end of this topic
Life modeling has no similarities with mathematics. In mathematics everything is exactly repeatable. In life, nothing is exactly repeatable.
The words ‘modeling’ and ‘model’ are used because we cannot reflect on the nature of life without using the structure of language. We think and talk primarily in terms of objects and movements; nouns and verbs. This is not in itself original as they are both drawn from our animal vision where we find object and movement perception. Objects and movements are existentially deep forms and they are widespread within the brains of advanced animals.
We can only vaguely describe life models because they cannot be captured by mathematics, science or language.
….……
Life modeling expressions range from functioning within the complex biochemistry of smell through to animal to animal ‘face to face’ moments. Below are two illustrations. Firstly something that humans used to do with sheep - not that one!! Secondly the nature of a personal face to face meeting with a stoat.
In the lambing pens of farmers (particularly hill farmers), some lambs would be dead at birth or die soon after. The key is to get the lamb suckling from her mother. The mother could be left with no lamb or only one lamb but she would still be producing milk. Sheep can suckle two lambs and sometimes three (if they are on good grass and the mother is a good milk maker). It is not uncommon for sheep to have three lambs but it is hard to suckle three successfully. Often one can grow up weak and not fatten up well. How about giving one of the triplets to the mother who has none or only one. This is what the farmers did - easy to say but extremely complex to do. In addition every time they did it they could not be sure that it would work.
If you watch nursing sheep and lambs in a field, the lamb(s) and their mother recognise each others calls. Even so, when they are reunited the mother will always smell the lamb to check that it is hers. Newly born lambs do well to get on their mums nipples and are not yet in voice. The mother sheep can only use smell to identify its offspring. Simple then, the lamb has a specific smell which is detected by the mother sheep’s sense of smell. We think of a simple, ‘one to one’, physical process.
What actually happens is that the skin of the dead lamb is put over the ‘third’ lamb and it is placed with the bereaved mother. Sometimes she accepts it as her lamb and sometimes she rejects it. After a few days the dead lamb’s skin is taken away. Sometimes the mother rejects the lamb at this point, on the grounds that it no longer smells like her lamb, but usually she continues to accept it. Either a lamb smells like her lamb or it doesn’t, so where lay the choice and how is it made?
Smell is complex and contains lots of different elements - a number of different pheromones of varying intensity would be part of the picture here. The sheep does not recognise her lamb by detecting one simple element. She uses a brain profile; the smell version of a life model. This is more robust than a single element. It can cope with variations within the individual components as well as variations in the set of components. The lamb that is wearing the skin of her dead lamb does not smell the same as the dead lamb. The profile has changed quite a lot and she can detect some of the smell of the new lamb. The profile of the new lamb is like the profile of her dead lamb (thanks to the skin) but it is not the same. If her brain accepts that the likeness is within the range of variation tolerated by the profile (pattern or model) of her lamb’s smell, then it is her lamb and she acts as if it is. It’s similar to recognising her lamb even though it has rolled in a cow pat. Thanks to the elements and registers introduced by the ‘new’ lamb her brain profile of her lamb’s smell has also changed. The profile elements, that originate from the dead lamb, lesson as the skin dries out. They decline in significance but are still part of the profile. When the dead skin is removed from the new lamb the smell profile of her lamb changes radically yet again as the elements from the dead lamb are no longer re-cognised. The brain has now to accept that the new profile variation is within acceptable limits. If it decides that it is, then she has a totally new lamb with a totally new smell and is fine about it.
The ‘time’ element of life modeling we can capture in an incident when I had a face to face encounter with a stoat who then looked away and moved of. Picture sitting at the foot of a large tree, with roots exposed, growing on a grass bank and set in a grass field. You turn, as you casually look behind, and find yourself staring into the eyes of a stoat with its rear end hidden behind a tree root. The distance was no more than eight feet. Time seemed to stand still but the mutual gaze lasted for about ten seconds. The stoat then turned away and moved off. I felt that I was looking at an equal, a sentient being. A potential acquaintance. For all animals with eyes there is a major difference between being seen by another animal and not being seen. At the very least it is crucial for hunting and for surviving being hunted. For all animals eye contact with another animal creates a space in time. It is accompanied by stillness. It can be milliseconds or minutes. What it shows is that ‘time’ is part of life modeling.
I am writing this account by drawing on the film (plus sounds, smells etc) of the incident in my episodic memory. Note that you are able to picture the incident that I have described by using pieces from relevant sensory content in your episodic memory. If we then both painted pictures of what we had remembered or constructed they would be very different. Even if we had been both looking at the same stoat in the same place at the same time the episodic memories would be different. In life modeling everything morphs and slips away. Of course the stoat was also largely dependent on its episodic memories - its experience.
The stoat and I met, face to face, as animals. If you look at the emotion topic you will see that both of us were using the emotion of interest. Both of us went from the surprise end of interest down to a level we describe as interest. There was no evidence of other emotions such as apprehension/fear. The emotion topic also clarifies that there is an emotional landscape for every moment that we are alive.
What were we both doing as we looked at each other? When we pause in ways like this we often say that we are thinking but actually we are unlikely to be. We use the word thinking to refer both to inner dialogues and to other brain activity. In this website we only use ‘thinking’ to refer to inner dialogues. It is more likely that both of us were searching episodic memory stimulated by every register currently engaged. This would be outside of focussed attention as we are using this to to stare at each other. We were both doing versions of the same thing. I can remember ‘thinking’ after about seven seconds; as compact inner language entered my focussed attention weakening my engagement with the stoat - though I maintained eye contact. As no animal but us can think then the stoat could not have been thinking. Both our brains were using a time space to allow possibilities to arise both within the encounter and within the biological registers active in us. We were expressing animal life and using similar life modeling. It is stopping or slowing down existential time within parts of our body/brain, in the context of the continuing material time of the encounter, that makes it possible for all our ferociously complex biological registers to participate.
How are pauses resolved? They are resolved when an action is initiated. In the case of the stoat and myself we could have simply looked away. The stoat looked away then walked away. The initiation of an action ends the ‘stand off’ of biological registers and life models. It directly leads to the release of dopamine which acts on the biological register for the emotion of satisfied/happy. We feel this. It is similar to the release of endorphin when we use our muscles. It does not just hide the natural tearing of muscles it also acts on the emotion of satisfied/happy. (Movement)
It is so easy to see pauses in animals. The more complex the animal the more that it pauses. The larger the brain of an animal the larger its episodic memory and the longer the pauses it takes. Don’t confuse this with the fixed gaze of hunting actions as here focussed attention is fixed on expressing the action. Our need for pausing is so considerable; made extreme by inner dialogues; that for most of the time we appear to go around barely connected with the world around us. This is partly explained by both social overcrowding and the movement friendly, and therefore more predictable, nature of our man made environment. We appear to be fully animated only in engagements with each other and especially when taking part in social life models or when with high intimate individuals. Smiling and laughter take the energy out of errors and conflicted elements. To a lesser extent we can observe constant pausing very similar to ours in all primates. Primates are overwhelming social in nature. The social world is ferociously more complex than the physical world and highly dependent on empty material and existential time - pauses where there is nothing else demanding action.
….……
How does this concept of pauses and empty time fit with the major life modeling areas that we summarised in the existential principles and biological registers topic?
To quote:
There appear to be four important ‘pinch points’ where conflicting biological registers and life models are resolved.
The first is the movement trigger. (A pinch point even though complex movement and action models can go on for some time). We examine this in the movement and action topic.
The second is focussed attention. We look at this in the attention, consciousness and self topic.
The third is shared attention. Explanation of this can be found in the introduction and in the intimacy, movement and shared attention topic.
The fourth is ‘topic’ which you can read about in the introduction
All of these use the same basic form of a life model. These are highly flexible and in themselves as unpredictable as the encounters experienced by the embodied animal.
When looking at these topics consider the way that timing, pauses and the initiation of actions are at the heart of their nature.
….……
Our personal lived experience also carries the sense of empty time - where time is just ‘space’. Do we all live with the deep feeling that we face an empty void unless we fill our waking lives with intimate, physical and mental activity of some kind? This language might not work for you at all as we also ‘feel’ it according to our temperament. Why have we got ‘intimate’ described as an activity? Our greatest complexity, and therefore the most complex life models occur not within ourselves as individuals but within our participation in the social world that we are evolved for. In the topics of speech and language and memory and grammar we established that we have a variable biology for both of these but we also found that without experiencing early social participation they would not develop in any of us. In development, social dialogue precedes inner dialogue (thought). We attribute thought to babies and toddlers because ‘attributing’ is part of our biological social task - we do it from our animal nature.
….……
Here we re-visit the first section of this topic.
We can only vaguely describe life models because they cannot be captured by mathematics, language or science.
Life modeling has no similarities with mathematics. In mathematics everything is exactly repeatable. In life, nothing is exactly repeatable. We can also show that the origin of mathematics lies in our animal nature. Mathematics is not a priori; meaning that it does not exist without reference to reality.
The words ‘modeling’ and ‘model’ are used because we cannot reflect on the nature of life without using the structure of language. There is a more fundamental problem at the heart of language. We think and talk primarily in terms of objects and movements; nouns and verbs. Both have their origins in animal vision where we find object and movement perception. Objects and movements are existentially deep forms and they are widespread within the brains of animals. Language is not a priori; meaning that it does not exist without reference to reality.
In as much as science uses mathematics and language it is restrained by the forms and limits of both. Mathematics dominates science because of the accuracy and repeatability of its forms. It is at the heart of rational thought particularly when combined with aspects of language to form logic. We associate reasoning with logic but human beings are ‘surprisingly’ poor at logic. We are, however, very good at reasoning by comparison; reasoning by analogy. This fits episodic memory very well.
In the range of topics that we are looking at we have many biological registers beyond vision and speech and language (we need to remind ourselves that thought is only inner dialogue). Our nature includes many other biological registers intimacy (nurture and sex), other senses, physical movement, episodic memory and the emotions. We encounter most of them on this website.
Life is innately incomprehensible and that means not just in reflection but in every moment of being alive. We do not and cannot know what is happening. We cannot know why other people act as they do and we cannot know why we act as we do. We try to understand, comprehend and explain because they are essential for our intimate social lives. Our dominate rational culture says that we can know. We put the ability to know above hugging, smiling, laughing, apologising, frowning and a thousand ways of living.
Life can only be lived and we need to bring back most of the life we have put to one side. Perhaps the only way to relate to life itself is to feel overwhelmed by it, at the same time as feeling the strength and mystery of life in oneself and in relation to others. Nothing does this better than intimacy. In life nothing can be ‘nailed’ - nothing is stable. Life is being created, recreated and causing creation moment by moment.
Wittgenstein’s view was that there is an existential gap between life and language:
‘What belongs to the essence of the world cannot be expressed by language’.
‘It doesn’t strike us at all when we look round us, move about in space, feel our own bodies, etc. etc. because there is nothing that contrasts with the form of the world. The, self-evidence of the world, expresses itself in the very fact that language can and does only refer to it’.
‘You cannot extend experience by thinking any more than you can transmit measles over the phone’.