The Three Brain Theory of Sign Use

THE THREE BRAIN THEORY OF SIGN-USE


1. Socrates

-as a Silenus: "...only his outer casing, like those little figures ...you've only got to open him up to find him full..." (Symposium).

as Marsyus the satyr (pan) "..can get just the same effect without any instrument at all -- with nothing but a few simple words, not even poetry...staggered and bewitched."

(Symposium)

Socrates devoted his entire life to 'tendance of the soul'. This is total devotion of brain 1 relating to crowning the reality of the upper part of Brain 2 with its knowledge. The power of this life work's force is real, beyond measure in the reality of brain 3 world, still felt when contacted. This is the manifestation of a coated higher-being-body in Gurdjieff's system, as I understand it.

2. Direct self observation gives the standard philosophical divison: Processes of thought using signs (cognition); processes of feeling (connation); processes of bodily movement (motility). (Mind, soul and body)

3. The three term series of cumulative word order -- movement, expression, speech -- can be used, together with though/observation experiment, to demonstrate the three brain function.

Let these three words be posted on the diagonal inside a 3 column,
3 row matrix of 9 squares, as in a sudoku section:


Speech ( ) ( )



( ) Expression ( )




( ) ( ) Body movement


Speech is the finest grade of expressive movement.
Expression is the finest grade of body movement.
Body movement is lowest in the descending order of presupposition; first in the ascending order of actuality.

In order for a body movement to be an 'expression', as clapping hands in approval expresses the sentiment of appreciation, an inner quality is required to distinguish the movement as "expressive", as opposed to merely behavioral. Lacking such an inner determinant, the body movement 'acts out', or mimics expression. I take the existence of this word, with its function observable by contrast, to be a demonstration of the effects of brain 2. Higher grade expressive body movement is with the nimble and differentiated extremities: limbs, fingers, facial contortions; and the larnyx.

Speaking, as in the expression of thought of passions, is the highest grade expressive body movement, manifesting an additional inner factor distinct in kind from merely expressive consciousness and unique to thought. This the cortical-capped head brain (usually called "the brain") without which there may be sound-mouth movements, but nothing said. A body movement identical, in the lower motility apparatus, to the process of articulating ideas and propositions in verbal discourse -- except lacking the function of the head brain thinking.

With these relations spelled out, the numbered slots can be formally completed by referring to contectual parameters, as follows.

1
speech => (2 Text/Token) => (3 Quality/Quantity)

(4 per-/illocutionary force ) < =

5
<=> -expression <=>

(6 Brain 2<=1 arousal)

(7 voluntary/involuntary movement) < =

(8 limbs (fine) / torso (gross))
9 <= body movement



Elaborations. 2. text and token are the two conjoined constituents of actual sign use -- a particularized meaning-energy unit.

3. Quality and quantity, intensive and extensive magnitude (Kant), are the two metaphysical determinants of content of consciousness under sign-use (communicated by S*). "x is a content of consciousness under S*" in analyzed schematic form is: S*(ql, qt). These three constituents of each content of consciousness correspond to the three brains: intellectual, mammalian, reptilian.

4. John Austin's distinction between the perlocutionary and illocutionary force of a speech act follows functionally from expression on its way to getting spoken. Illocutionary force is the information, or 'truth value', communicated by S*. This is related to 2., text and token, following the order of descent. Perlocutionary force is the primary, pre-linguistic expressive movement from which interest on fact, and science, breaks away and becomes linearized in systems. It is thus the ambiguously polarized "booming, buzzing confusion" of infantile life, in William James' terms; the flow of content of consciousness as a phenomenal totality, including its pictures and words; the polymorphous perverse source of all textual content.

6. This makes explicit the hypothesis of two separate processing centers, or "brains", are actualized in the speech act communicating a content of consciousness blending arousal of the moving brain 1 of the soul brain, 2. This 'yielding' supplies the necessary preparation for Expression, 5, to carry over to brain 1 speech.

7. Voluntary movement is subsumed under S* used for moral judgments ("I couldn't" cancels "you should have"). Non-random involuntary muscle movements of the most basic instinctual origins are: A. struggle-to-escape (survive), imprinted by the trauma of birth; B. The orgasmic reflex at the climax of maximally pleasurable sexual conjunction. The extreme psychic vulnerability of the person in regard to B., if it is experienced with the open, swollen lubricity required for orgasm reflect to engulf consciousness, edges the "Turn loose and go with the flow" attraction with danger, and fearfulness. Birth trauma and any sexual or emotional abuse are collaterally aroused.

8. The overall skeletal-muscular movements differentiated into anatomical locales is the first derivative of. The infant batting the butteflies on a jungle jim hanging above his crib is grooving hand-eye-impulse ('desire') coordinated neuron paths.

9 Body movement: a hypothetical totality of material energy expended in activating body functions in general. Exists only metaphysically, as it were (compare alchemical 'prima materia'). Lacks any apriori determinations except "off" and "on" at any given switch point.