Theory of language and semioticsFaculty of language and literature Is metarepresentation an effect...

Theory of language and semiotics Faculty of language and literature

Is metarepresentation an effect of self-organization?

Meta-representation and (self-) consciousness: Emergence of higher levels of self-organization

in biological and semiotic systemsWednesday, September 27 – Friday, September 29, 2006

Wolfgang Wildgen

Theory of language and semiotics Faculty of Language and Literature

Wolfgang Wildgen2

Table of contents

1Reflexion on the concept of meta-representation2The phylo- and ontogenetic evolution of metarepresentation3Processes of self-organization as the basis of representation and metarepresentation4Metarepresentation and art5Many open questions


Wolfgang Wildgen3

Introduction: Reflexion on the concept of metarepresentation

• Some being, which is the container of the representation, e.g., a human mind, which perceives and thinks. We call it the repraesentans.

• Some entity being represented which is not directly accessible (absent). We call it the the repraesentandum. In many cases it is considered as in the focus of the attention of (a), or it is the goal of the intention of (a) (in the vectorial sense defined by Brentano).

• Some entity accessible to (a) which organizes the link between (a) and (b) and provides a specific organization for the system of such representations. Peirce calls it the repraesentamen.


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This discussion gives us rather two bad choices:

1. A concept of representation to which we may add (theoretically) an unlimited number of arguments (beyond the classical three ones found already in Augustine) and which is not only static but becomes a kind of unspecific basket of components without a clear profile.

2. A very rudimentary notion which refers to processes in the brain (as a proper part of a biological entity). As the details we know about the dynamics of the brain stem from studies in animals, this concept does not properly sepa-rate human from nonhuman representations.


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The prefix: meta • The prefix “meta” (from the Greek adverb: μετα)

means: inside of, after and the Latin noun meta means center, point of revolution.

• Meta in Latin has a rather clear meaning as the turning point in a circus (for races). If representation is a goal-directed process, then the turning point after which the race comes back to the start/goal could mark the process of metarepresentation.


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The Poincaré map of a base cycle and a path deviating from it

In a circular motion the path may return to a point identical with the start or deviate from it. If the deviations are damped, the path is stable; if differences grow progressively, the attractor becomes chaotic.

(source: http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/vis/dynsys/Poincare97/)


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Vector fields of point reproductions

There is an intermediate case which is shown in pattern reproduction and its self-organization. Every cycle abolishes parts of the original pattern, but there are one (or several) attractors to which all divergences tend. In the examples discussed by Stadler and Wildgen (1987), a text is reproduced in different series of reproduction. Some elements of the text are preserved, others change and finally one or several core texts emerge from the process of cyclic reproduction. In the case of experimental visual patterns reproduction, the underlying mechanism becomes even clearer.


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Literature on the topic metarepresentation • “Linguistic utterances are public representations and typical

objects of mental metarepresentation. Speakers in intending an utterance, and hearers, in interpreting an utterance, mentally represent it as a bearer of specified content, that is they metarepresent it.” (Sperber, 2000: 121)

• Dennett (2000) considers a path “from outside in” (ibidem: 21). The overt public use of signs is a clear indication of their metarepresentational nature (every body can perceive them, reflect on them, they are a common good like space, light, air, etc.). If we follow this line, metapresentations first become supra-individual, then social and finally elements of a cultural context, to which individuals respond (elements of his life world).


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Homunculus in the brain

individual consciousness

cultural context

world

Scale of the shifting concept of metarepresentation


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The phylo- and ontogenetic evolution of

metarepresentation

• In actual behavior embedded in a situation. Such processes belong to “microgenesis”.

• In the ontogenetic development, studies have revealed that two- to three year old children do not yet distinguish between a state of affairs p and a belief that p.

• Autistic children and adults are impaired in their evaluation of the states of mind of others (often regarding emotions).

• Schizophrenia “is a late-onset breakdown of a metarepresentational system”


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Phylogenetic evolution• Current results of experimental studies and observations in

the wild show imitation and simple mind-reading as mani-festations of metarepresentation are more common in great apes (e.g. chimpanzees)) than in monkeys.

• As the scenarios of the evolution of human language diverge vastly (between an origin two million years ago with the species Homo or 50,000 years ago with the first manifestations of cave art), the rise of “true” metarepre-sentation could be very recent.

• In order to avoid such a quasi-exclusion of all living beings, I shall take another avenue which may be given the etiquette “self-organization” or “emergent structure”.


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Basic model of self-organization in a stable

system with phase transitions

The phase space of water with lines of transition and the maximally complex triple point.

In a more general way every natural system can have "phases" or states not altered by small changes in parameters. The phase is a locus of macroscopic stability. A physical system (any system) consists of a number of components (e.g. water in Figure 1). These components are assumed to be independent of each other.


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Prototypical system in transient equilibrium

Bénard-cells (cf. Haken, 1990: 5 ). The spontaneous order appears as consequence of a critical temperature.


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Extension to cognition"Our results may be interpreted as follows: The fluid posses--

ses a variety of different states because of its internal mechanisms. But which of these states is realized depends on the initial conditions, or, to put things in a different way, a partially given pattern is completed in a unique fashion. But this is at the cognitive level precisely what happens in associative memory. Part of a set of data is completed in a unique fashion. Multistability means that our system can internally store many patterns. Their restoration from initial states appears simultaneously in all volume elements of the fluid, i.e. our fluid acts as a parallel computer."


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The emergence of language • The major difference between young chimpanzees and

children is that imitation (and teaching) is much more prominent in children. If humans create a rich environment for the training of chimpanzee gestures, these may come near to the semiotic capacity of young children, but this situation is artificial and does not belong to the natural environment of chimpanzees.

• The human preference for imitation, which is more abstract than emulation as it is not controlled by an evaluative testing of the model, triggers another process called the “ratchet effect” by Boesch and Tomasello (1998: 602), i.e., the inventory of accumulated behavioral patterns does not decrease; change consists of further elaboration and sophistication of the accumulated “cultural goods”.


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Metarepresentation as an emergent feature of

symbolic behavior

The order of documentation by paleontological data is:• lithic technology (after 2,3 million years BP)• art (geometric engraving on tools at the stage of Homo

erectus; high level iconic art after 40,000 BP)• myth (probably implied by Paleolithic art, i.e., before

40,000 BP)• language (only documented by first systems of writing in

the Neolithic)


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Metarepresentation and art

There is good evidence that the painter on the chair is in fact Vermeer himself, but the drawing he is making has obviously another motif and structure than the one on which he appears himself. Thus the act of drawing by Vermeer is represented and it has a strong analogy to the painting shown in Figure 5; in the same fashion the picture in front of the painter is not identical with the oil-painting by Vermeer, but it shares the central topic (and thus the object of the representation). In a stricter sense, this painting is not a metarepresentation.


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The person standing behind the door and looking at the scene looks simultaneously at the king and the queen. They appear in the mirror and are thus only represented indirectly (and with side inversion). The painter, who is Velasquez himself, looks also at the monarch pausing for a moment in his work. One may infer that, when he continues his work in one moment, he will again look at the scene with the meninas and at his painting.


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The case of a mirror • In the self-portrait on can assume that a mirror was used by the

painter; such an inference may be sustained by the somewhat unnatural position of the person, because in a self-portrait in front of a mirror, the painter must after each action on the painting return to an identical position in front of the mirror.

• The self-portrait can show a part of the mirror.• A portrait may show the person looking into a mirror and thus

both the painter and the painted person look into the mirror and the painting represents the effect of looking into a mirror (with the effect of the mirror (inversion and change of perspective).

• The mirror may show the painter and his model. Both may look into the mirror and this can be shown in the painting.


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Salvador Dali has made such a painting called: Stereoscopic Painting (1976). Figure 7 shows this painting. In fact the action of the mirror could be repeated whereby the painter and his model would appear not only twice but three, four, … n times. In the latter case the of mirrors may constitute a group of deformations (in the sense of Leyton) re-establishing identity after a finite number of steps. As in the case of video-feed back it can also have a chaotic attractor and destroy the original input and be slaved by an internal standard (e.g. a Sierpinki-structure).


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The painting including the self-reference to Velasquez is reproduced under deformations (roughly described by the cubist style of Picasso in this period). In this case, Picasso is not represented, i.e. the metarepesentational character is not overt. Nevertheless Picasso’s characteristic style (in this period of his life) is like a signature of his presence. Is this a case of metarepresentation?

Pablo Picasso, one piece in a series after Velasquez’ Meninas


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Groupings and reanalysis

The central group around the infanta: valence =3

Bystanders:

2 + 2 +1

Group without Velasquez, 17.9.1957


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Right groups, 24.10. and 8.11.1957

Partial pictures with the participants at the right of the Infanta. Valence 4 (left) and 2 (right).

Colors green, blue, red (yellow, white)


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Reanalysis of the central person: Infanta Margarita Maria

Infanta 14.9.1957, 100x81


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Citation in painting

Andy Warhol, “The Last Supper”, 1986


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The central zone of Leonardo‘s „Last supper“ (Marani, 2001: 156)


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Selfreferential loop (1)

Selfreferential loop (2)

Selfreferential loop (3) Reflexion of

(A, B) in C

Modification of the semiotic triad by three types of self-referential loops: (1). (2), and (3) and redefinition of the triad.

Repraesentans

Repraesentamen Repraesentandum


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Levels of cyclic self-reference• The clearest case of metarepresentation is loop (1), where

the repraesentans and with him the whole process enters a self-referential loop.

• The last examples discussed (Picasso) belong to type (2), i.e. one picture (repraesentamen) refers to another with the same topic, order, technique etc. This phenomenon is currently called intertextuality. In Picasso’s series the primary reference is always Velasquez’ painting, secondary references are its own re-representations.

• The mirror is itself an optical reference (with inversion) of an object to itself (and thus of type 3). Implicitly both are a repraesentamen for a repraesentans, and thus signs.


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Strategies of explanation• The strategy followed in the last section is a very optimistic one,

insofar as a basic continuity of laws and principles throughout the universe (possibly fixed in the period after the big bang and not valid for other universes existing beyond ours) is assumed.

• A less radical strategy could allow for rather autonomous levels of organization which only share some very basic laws with other levels and may be described independently from earlier stages, from which they have emerged. Thus one could postulate that with the rise of consciousness (or intentionality) (meta) representations became rather independent from the surrounding ecology and are characterized by their arbitrariness.

• Such arbitrary systems could not only control our perception of the ecology, in which we live, they could even change this ecology from a natural to an artificial one and thus reverse the Darwinian law of fitness.


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• Another explanation of the emergence of metarepresentaiton could start from the social organization of animals and the techniques (e.g., grooming in higher apes) of social control or peace.

• A shift in the social structure triggered by symbolic forms, could have allowed higher levels of cooperation, larger societies with a network of levels and social subdivisions, different role patterns and types of socialization. The biological potential would have been exploited to a degree impossible for socially less organized primates. In this view meta (meta …)representation would be a consequence of a social (economic, political) evolution rather than an effect of higher cognitive capacities. These two routes may be called:– The route of cognitive enrichment and self-referentiality.– The route of social complexity and higher levels of

socialization.

Theory of language and semiotics Faculty of language and literature

My home page is:http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/home

pages/wildgen.htm

You may find my presentation (one week after the conference) together with other

conference papers of the last two years in a list at the end of my homepage.

Theory of language and semioticsFaculty of language and literature Is metarepresentation an effect...

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