SEX AND EMBODIMENT, meeting 3 (out of 3)
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Left Hand of Darkness (U. Le Guin)
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sex, embodiment and "downward causation" (E. Thompson and F. Varela)
what the thunder said
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
"Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a 'character', is yet the
most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the
one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into the Phoenician Sailor,
and the latter is not wholly distinct from Ferdinand Prince of Naples, so
all the women are one woman, and the two sexes meet in Tiresias. What
Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem."
[author's note to line 218 of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot]
slide 2
Teiresias
"Of ten parts a man enjoys one only, but a woman enjoys the full ten parts
in her heart."
[Teiresias settling the dispute between Hera and Zeus on who enjoys sex
better]
slide 3
Teiresias
"Of ten parts a man enjoys one only, but a woman enjoys the full ten parts
in her heart."
[Teiresias settling the dispute between Hera and Zeus on who enjoys sex
better]
slide 4
"Oh Genly," she said, "I didn't know you!"
"Out they came, and met the Karhiders with a beautiful courtesy. But they
all looked strange to me, men and women, well as I knew them. Their voices
sounded strange: too deep, too shrill. They were like a troupe of great,
strange animals, of two different species: great apes with intelligent
eyes, all of them in rut, in kemmer. ... They took my hand, touched me,
held me.
I managed to keep myself in control... When we got to the Palace, however, I
had to get to my room at once.
The physician from Sassinoth came in. His quiet voice and his face, a young
serious face, not a man's face and not a woman's, a human face, these were
a relief to me, familiar, right."
slide 5
"Oh Genly," she said, "I didn't know you!"
"Out they came, and met the Karhiders with a beautiful courtesy. But they
all looked strange to me, men and women, well as I knew them. Their voices
sounded strange: too deep, too shrill. They were like a troupe of great,
strange animals, of two different species: great apes with intelligent
eyes, all of them in rut, in kemmer. ... They took my hand, touched me,
held me.
I managed to keep myself in control... When we got to the Palace, however, I
had to get to my room at once.
The physician from Sassinoth came in. His quiet voice and his face, a young
serious face, not a man's face and not a woman's, a human face, these were
a relief to me, familiar, right."
slide 6
men vs. women
Reavis and Overman (
Behavioral Neuroscience 115:196-206 (2001)
There was a significant cross-task interaction, with men performing better
on the card task than on the weather task and women performing better on
the weather task than on the card task.
Card task:
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There were no differences among subgroups of men or among
subgroups of women.
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Men outperformed women both by picking more $50 cards than women
and by stating the correct rule earlier than women.
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Although men outperformed women on this "male-superior task,"
performance was negatively correlated to levels of testosterone in
young men.
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There was no correlation with high or low levels of hormones in
women.
Weather task:
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There were no differences among subgroups of men or among
subgroups of women.
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There were no performance differences between men and women.
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Performance was negatively correlated with testosterone level in
women.
slide 7
men vs. women
 |
 |
| performance of men and women vs. trial # |
scatterplot of men's performance vs. testosterone level |
slide 8
women vs. themselves
Hausmann et al. (
Behavioral Neuroscience 114:1245-1250 (2000)
"We conclude that spatial performance is sensitive to hormonal fluctuations
over the menstrual cycle and that different aspects of spatial abilities
are related to different hormones or hormone combinations, resulting in
task-specific results. Task difficulty and/or 3-D processes seem to be
aspects that are able to modify these results to some extent."
slide 9
radical embodiment
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understanding the complex interplay of brain, body and world requires
the tools and methods of dynamical systems theory
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traditional notions of representation and computation are inadequate
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traditional decompositions of the cognitive system into functional
modules are misleading and blind us to arguably better decompositions
into dynamical systems that cut across the brain-body-world
divisions
"... as a result of the generic feature of `emergence' in complex
systems, one can expect there to be two-way or reciprocal relationships
between neural events and conscious activity."
[Thompson and Varela, 2001]
slide 10
the shadow of a perception
from Thompson and Varela:
(right) average scalp distribution of gamma activity and phase
synchrony
subjects were shown upright and upside-down Mooney faces (left)
color coding = gamma power
black/green lines = increase/decrease in synchrony
slide 11
the shadow of a perception
from Thompson and Varela:
(right) average scalp distribution of gamma activity and phase
synchrony
subjects were shown upright and upside-down Mooney faces (left)
color coding = gamma power
black/green lines = increase/decrease in synchrony
slide 12
perceptual modulation of epileptic activity: "downward
causation"?
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location of electrode grid and the waveform at electrode no.9
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distribution of the interspike intervals, Tn, for
the resting condition (passive fixation)
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density of points in the return map (d)
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first-return map, showing variations of one particular fixed point,
T2=0.465 s; stable and unstable manifolds are
estimated by straight line fits
slide 13
radical embodiment
"Although it is tacitly assumed that consciousness must `supervene' entirely
on internal neural states, it is far from clear how one is supposed to
distinguish between `internal' and `external' states.
Despite the philosophical fiction of `brain-in-a-vat', it is doubtful [...]
that one can `peel away' the body and the environment as `external' to the
brain processes crucial for consciousness.
The nervous system, the body and the environment are highly structured
dynamical systems, coupled to each other on multiple levels. Because they
are so thoroughly enmeshed — biologically, ecologically and socially
— a better conception of brain, body and environment would be as
mutually embedded systems [...]."
slide 14
ask a self-answering question, and get a self-questioning answer
"...we in the Handdara don't want answers. It's hard to avoid them, but we
try to."
"Faxe, I don't think I understand."
"Well, we come here to the Fastnesses mostly to learn what questions not to
ask."
"But you're the Answerers!"
"You don't see yet, Genry, why we perfected and practice Foretelling?"
"No—"
"To exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong
question."
the known and the unknown
"The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the
unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of
thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is
no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods,
nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no
religion. ... Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, predictable,
inevitable — the one certain thing you know concerning your future and
mine?"
"That we shall die."
"Yes. There is really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we
already know the answer. ... The only thing that makes life possible is
permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next."
compare with the conclusion of Closer
slide 16
supplementary material
