Edelman – Three paradoxes and concentric circles

One last note would be addressed to the notion of sensorimotor simulation. The whole theory of the sensorimotor paradox lies on the idea that motor enaction of a contradictory situation, such as gazing at one’s own hand and the impossibility to catch it with itself, is subtituted by its imaginary outcome, which gets disconnected from the very need to enact sensorimotor impulse in the first place. Yet, the fact that the enaction of the impulse is contradicted, that the neural response is ‘delayed or lagged’ (to borrow from Gerald M. Edelman’s condition for self-consciousness) doesn’t mean that the impulse doesn’t come from the same place ; that is, that our imagination and stream of thought don’t come from the same neural system, only diverted from the possibility that the impulse should be enacted physically but contained, confined to the limits of the production of mental images and self-induced memory.

One empirical experience that could stress that, is that if one gets to mentally represent to themselves a continuous piece of music or sound, for example, that mental representation would be systematically cut off by physically emitted sounds such as breathing or tapping with one’s fingers – which are both a way that grounds us back to our present reality, as investigated by psychoanalyst Darian Leader in Hands (Hamish Hamilton, 2016). If I imagine a continuous sound, for instance an organ playing one continuous note, and I breathe in, even for half a second the sound that I imagine will be interrupted by the perception of the actual sound of my breathing – as I perceive it by the same way that I neurally perceive what I mentally produce from a reconstituted memory. Beyond speaking for a question of paying attention to two different things simultaneously, this kind of phenomenon supports the idea of emitting both a physical and mentally represented sound being physiologically impossible. I could be thinking or having a music playing in my head and still hear what is around me without the latter perturbing the continuity of my mental activity. But, it is something else when it comes to being able to think and emit a sound at the same time by whatever means. (The question should be addressed differently as to the linguistic experience of hearing impaired or deaf people, notably, as communication would be centred on other sensorimotor and memory organisations.)

This means that somehow, they have an equal value as to the origin of the experience, whether physically enacted or mentally simulated, which supports again the theory of the sensorimotor paradox. We can see the stream of thought, for instance, as a preparation of an action that is looped and continuously delayed. But, as soon as one sound is enacted from the body, it liberates motor enaction in its relation to sound perception and releases the effort of neural looping. We can triangulate the sensorimotor paradox hypothesis with Gerlad M. Edelman’s condition for self-consciousness and the fact that, as far as the physical action of emitting whatever sound is concerned, we cannot physically enact it and imagine it at the same time – in the same way that we can’t be with the hand and catch the hand with itself at the same time. Thus, to think and emit mental representation is a neural contraction that requires much more energy and tension than we think.

This note is meant to support further synthesis and elaboration from the theoretical corpus already existing on the matter. So it seems, things only just began.

Taking inspiration from German philosopher Georg Hegel’s parable of the Master and the Slave, we could describe one of the main traits of what we might call the workings of the symbolic. Take a shore on a distant island. Two people would get to stand there and look at the horizon. One is a colonial person, the other is an indigenous person. The colonial person would look at the horizon and see, maybe, homeland. The indigenous person would look at the horizon and see, perhaps, a prison. The view is the same, but the sight is different. The colonial person would refer their experience to the land and country they came from. We could imagine that the indigenous person would feel they could never find their homeland back to the way it used to be. So works the symbolic : the word may be the same, but the memory that is sighted behind may be very different according to one’s situation (read also Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, 1988).

In his most significant work, that is what psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan theorised as the object a, what is sighted, often without a name nor a clear image, behind the word or meaning that we address. And the same happens with the sensorimotor paradox : though one cannot go beyond the blocking of sensorimotricity when gazing at their own hand, their imagination has to go beyond, simulating a different sight. Memory tries to simulate the image of a situation where sensorimotricity is still valid and functioning. It’s just a way for our neural system to survive the delay or lag of the response, as biologist Gerald M. Edelman stated (The Remembered Present, 1989).

Later on, this leads us to a more daily and contemporary experience out of the evolutionary perspective : the social control cast on one’s body into prescribed conducts forces them into integrating a relation with what has to be blocked in their spontaneous interactions with their surroundings. Body expression is channelled through blocking sensorimotor interactions, a blocking that would force the body and, let us suppose, the neural system into a paradox : to get the impulse to enact an interaction and have itself self-restrained. To justify the self-restraint of sensorimotricity must be balanced with the perspective of, at least, an imaginary resolution, so the entropy of the blocking would not lead to an outburst.

We do not need to still be staring at our own hand to experience a sensorimotor paradox when a whole social system of imagination and self-awareness has been based on controlling body expression and sensorimotor interaction. What keeps us in sight of something, in spite of the violence of feeling restrained, keeps being rooted in the capacity to maintain a viable imaginary perspective, even blinded by the illusion of something else. Likewise, words comprise a distance, that is implicit to the sensorimotor and relational disposition in which words and speech modalities are learnt and take place. We learn to speak and exchange with a certain physical distance from others, and the memory of the right distance to observe is also comprised in the use of words. Then speech, especially self-speech in the constant stream of thoughts, is also a way to recreate this safe distance that is also a measure of the liberty to act. It comes to sensorimotricity and its memory at the very heart of words. Whether raising awareness to some other part of our surroundings when staring at our own hand or desperately trying to occult a reality that we cannot socially address with some other word, image or discourse, the symbolic always functions as a re-establishment of a viable sensorimotor perspective that we could enact ourselves from as a living being.

That is why, as French queer activist Delphine Montera stated (@autistequeer_le_docu on Instagram), analysing a systemic structure such as Ableism can be powerful tool for a broader social, political and intersectional analysis. This synthesis between the evolutionary hypothesis of the sensorimotor paradox theory and what we experience today on a daily basis as human beings may be the most important bridge to consider and take care of here. We may not have much time to delay or reverse the consequences of our History and the way that we persevere into self-destructive politics in our societies. But as long as there is a bridge, there is a possibility for transformation.

Photo credit : « Butterfly », La Fille Renne ❤

Étiquette : Edelman

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