An excerpt from 'Framing Neuroethical Praxis: Wojtyła’s Metaphysical Subject and its Modernist Cartesian Variants' in Logos i Ethos; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15633/lie.2555.
by Denis Larrivee
As a metaphysical structure that precedes all
acts that are its manifestation the humanum suppositum enters into every
physical act, sustaining it by virtue of making present an integral order that
it confers on the person.[1]
Through its entry into these acts, therefore, it is also a dynamical
participant in them. What is of even greater significance is that by entering
into these various dimensions, the metaphysical subject shapes them according
to an expressed personal subjectivity; hence, it also molds the neural
architecture, which expresses this manifestation corporally. Wojtyła is
therefore able to claim that the human body
has
been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery
hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it[2]
that is, the human body physically manifests an
originary, metaphysical reality subsisting in a unitary and personalist
subjectivity that is ordered to the performance of the good. Value contingency
in the metaphysical and personalist subject is thereby linked to the corporal form
that manifests it.
Transference of the Metaphysical
Subject into Visible Reality
For a neuroethical praxis, the humanum
suppositum is a reality accessed first through the phenomenal subject’s
objective, corporal manifestation,[3]
that is, it is first understood at the epistemological level of the phenomenal
subject, and only then at the metaphysical one. Significantly, its dependence
on the epistemological level does not imply its absence in the order of being.
If so, the phenomenal subject would be reduced to one manifestation among a
collective, consisting of a variety of dynamisms, and not linked to an overall
unity. The epistemological understanding of the subject is thus revelatory for
the Wojtyłan metaphysical conception, which thereby situates within its sphere
the corporal form of the neural dynamic. This dynamic, consequently, is
understood to be shaped according to the pattern of the humanum suppositum to
yield, that is, to transfer into physical reality, the uniquely human subject;
hence, it identifies the neural dynamic as a normative terrain to be “charted”
for probative concerns.
Metaphysically, the
humanum suppositum is seen, first, in its evocation of the human entity, that
is, the neural architecture is unified operatively. As a metaphysical prior of
the phenomenal subject, therefore, this evocation elicits the adoption by the
corporal form of an organizational order characterized by operational
confinement and underpinned by a systemic and dynamical configuration that is
needed for autonomous living. This unitary dynamic, for instance, is a
fundamental feature acted upon by evolution. As evolutionary philosopher Cliff
Hooker points out[4]
it is the activity of the whole organism that interacts with the environment
and the whole organism that is molded by evolutionary pressures, which thereby
acquires behaviors that are good for it. Likewise, such self initiated actions
presuppose a holistic organizational order, that is, a source for their
emergence. Philosophers of biology Maturana and Varela[5]
and Moreno and Mossio[6]
propose, in consequence, that the autopoetic capacity of living organisms –
understood as the organismal ability to produce themselves – can be present
only if organisms are purposed to autonomous existence as integrated,
operational, and topologically distinct wholes. They evidence this purposing in
pointing to the recursive restructuring used to sustain autonomy in the face of
ongoing thermodynamic constraints. Autonomy, thereby, constitutes a capacity for
existence that can only be exercised as an entity.
However, since
autonomy is also a condition of state, it can be exercised only through certain
dispositions, which act, therefore, as qualifiers for autonomous entities. For
humans, these include self governance, agency, and a behavioral repertoire
enabling a capacity to resist constraints imposed by one’s environment. These
dispositional qualifiers therefore evidence, secondly, the contribution of the
humanum suppositum to the ontological shaping of the phenomenal subject and the
neural architecture that sustains it. The consolidation of a neural
architecture underlying the self percept, for example, illustrates a
metaphysical conformity of the whole ontological dynamic to the unity
transcendental. Contingent properties that emerge from the neural architecture,
including those that contribute to the phenomenal subject, such as reasoning, consciousness,
agency, and identity, predicate from the self, that is, they display
independent manifestations and so possess neural circuitries distinguishable from
that of the self, though nonetheless subsumed to its oversight.
The subject’s
corporal manifestation is thus not autonomously determined but is shaped by an
extrinsic order that is determinative for its expression. Indeed, the natural
biological order shares this subordination to an immaterial prior, an
observation often used to explain why living processes assume unique
configurations rather than merely how they do so, that is, explananda classed
as design principles.[7]
Such principles are useful for explaining the metaphysical contribution to
cognition. They explain, in the first place, why only certain organizational
arrangements enable cognitive operation, that is, they explicate the need for cognition
to adopt a particular order. Kelso,[8]
in a prescient commentary, remarks that while nature’s forms are abundant, its
principles are few, and carefully preserved, meaning that the design of living
systems is neither arbitrary nor haphazard. Indeed, numerous studies now
document the adoption of such design principles in the construction of complex biological
systems, an illustration that only certain preferred operational forms can be
used, and so are, necessarily, widely adopted. For example, gene regulation
networks in cells are constructed of a handful of recurring circuit elements,
each of which can carry out specific dynamical functions autonomously,[9]
or, similarly, cases of cellular networks that resonate in unison in a
performance space.[10]
What these studies emphasize is the apparent universality of the deployment of
successful designs. Design principles, accordingly, are instantiated by living
organisms because they constitute valid principles of operation on which the dynamic
order of living organisms needs to be grounded for successful performance.
By extension, such
principles help to explain why cognition needs to exhibit a unified operation and
why its qualifying properties, in turn, need to be configured as predicates of
an autonomously directed entity. The instantiation of attractor motifs in
neural network operation, for example, constitutes a revealing design feature
for brain activity since it shows that such motifs are linked to the system
wide, neural network activity of the brain; hence, it reveals the presence of
constraints that subsume these motifs within a holistic form. Friston makes the
pertinent comment here that
our exchanges with our environment are
constrained to an exquisite degree by local and global brain dynamics and that
these dynamics have been carefully crafted by evolution, neurodevelopment, and
experience to optimize behavior.[11]
A significant issue raised by these
explanations is then how the biological order depends on such extrinsic
influences, that is, how metaphysical constraints influence the materially manifested
form seen in the neural architecture. Explanatory accounts for cognitive order,
accordingly, need to be concerned with the nature of this relationship, both
its origin and the manner by which constraints on the instantiated order are
imposed. Michael Morange[12]
offers one explanation, arguing that the imposition of such constraints is due
to physical laws that establish limits on outcome. He points, for instance, to
allometric scaling laws that establish physical dependencies between different
properties of an organism such as metabolism and size. Yet Morange’s physical
explanation begs the question for the existence of such a physical ordering;
thus it cannot be the sole basis on which to explain the why question for the order
of neural operation. This explanatory insufficiency can be seen, for instance,
in Yi et al’s study of integral feed back, which shows that only this type of
recurrency can achieve resonance.[13]
While Yi’s study demonstrates a physical and causal effect mediated by one
element on another, it also shows that the effectiveness of this operation is
not itself solely a consequence of a physical dimension. What is critical here is
the presence of feedback connections and an organized composition in which the
elements are circularly arranged. These latter features are abstract, that is,
they are non-physical characteristics that nevertheless have a bearing on
performance. By extension and for this reason, recurrency in neural network
operation, among other cognitive features, has at once both a physical and an
immaterial dimension.
Non-physical
influences are also evidenced in the large scale formal order of cognition,
like the brain’s integrated performance amidst the complexity of the neural
architecture, as well as in small scale order, like the dynamical attractors
mentioned by Friston. Because the material order is subsumed to these
immaterial features the latter can be regarded as a supraphysical influence
effecting their material instantiation. The act of instantiation thus means
that the material dimension, in a formally causal sense, is subordinate to an
influence that is universally pertinent, exteriorized, and supraphysical and so
is determinative for the adopted topology.[14]
It is in the context of this supraphysical influence on cognition that Wojtyła’s
introduction of the humanum suppositum is relevant. That is, it is only through
the metaphysical order that the neural architecture is shaped according to the
ontological form of the phenomenal subject. This shaping is not merely a matter
of the neural architecture adopting one among a variety of forms, that is, the
adoption of an arbitrary hylomorphic expression, but it is the specific
acquisition in the epistemological order of the phenomenal subject, as Wojtyła
points out. This metaphysical association thus anchors the objective reality of
the phenomenal subject in an immaterial one that is ontologically generative.
Indeed, the phenomenal subject shares with the humanum suppositum its
relational orientation toward being, seen, for example, in the evolutionary
trend toward knowledge acquisition and dynamical freedom.[15]
[1]
Cf. G. Holub, The Human Subject and its Interiority…, op. cit., p. 47–66.
[2]
Cf. John Paul II, Pope, Man and Woman…, op. cit., passim.
[3]
Cf. G. Holub, The Human Subject and its Interiority…, op. cit., p. 58.
[4]
Cf. C. Hooker, Interaction and Bio-cognitive Order, “Synthese” 166 (2008), p. 513–546.
[5]
Cf. H. R. Maturana, F. Varela, De maquinas y seres vivos. Autopoiesis: La
organizacion de lo vivo, Santiago de Chile 1979.
[6]
Cf. A. Moreno, M. Mossio, Biological Autonomy: a Philosophical and
Theoretical Enquiry, Berlin 2015.
[7]
Cf. P. Braillard, Systems Biology and the Mechanistic Framework, “History and
Philosophy of the Life Sciences” 32 (2010) no. 1, p. 43–62.
[8]
Cf. S. Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior,
Cambridge 1995.
[9]
Cf. U. Alon, An Introduction to Systems Biology, Design Principles of Biological
Circuits, Boca Raton 2007, p. 1.
[10]
Cf. Y. Hart, Y. Antebi, A. Mayo, N.
Friedman, U. Alon, Design Principles of
Cell Circuits with Paradoxical Components, “Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America” 109 (2012) no. 21, p.
8346–8351.
[11]
Cf. K. Friston, Free Energy and Global Dynamics, in: Principles of Brain Dynamics, eds. M. I. Rabinovich, K. J. Friston,
P. Varona, Boston 2013, p. 269–292.
[12]
Cf. M. Morange, Les Secrets du Vivant: Contre la Pensee unique en Biologie, Paris
2005.
[13]
Cf. T. M. Yi et al., Robust Perfect Adaptation in Bacterial Chemotaxis Through Integral
Feedback Control, “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America” 97 (2000), p. 4649–4653.
[14]
Cf. C. Gillett, Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy, Cambridge 2016,
p. 2.
[15]
Cf. N. Clark, Person and Being, Marquette 1993, p. 36.
No comments:
Post a Comment