WORLD ORGANISATION OF SYSTEMS AND CYBERNETICS ELEVENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS (Brunei University, August 23-17, 1999) Abridged paper

DO WE PERCEIVE THINGS OR PROCESSES ?

Henri Duprat Socit Franaise de Mesure Paris, France Abstract Usual models of vision often imply the underlying assumption of static pictures, successively received and elaborated by the brain. Then, experimental results appear to embody an anticipating component. This paradox vanishes if we assume that what is primarily perceived is not a state, but a process : any external stimulus may be interpreted as a resonance between brain and reality. Such a tuning process would naturally imply something like an anticipation, but in fact merely extrapolated from a local trend. Key-words (domains) Behavioral Sciences - Biocybernetics Cognition e-mail : henri.duprat@m4x.org I. Trends and mutations in neurology The progress in neurobiology shows two features : it depends upon innovations in other sciences, namely physics and chemistry, and it must conquer strong reluctances to acknowledge the complexity of living beings. About 1580, the Spanish medicist Juan Huarte had suggested that "Nature has made in the human body many things which we believe to be simple only for the delicacy of their composition, and it might be so In the brain, though homogeneous a matter it may seem". The invention of microscope brought the proofs of this assumption, but only in vitro, as regards the anatomy of brain. However, a hundred years after Leeuwenhoek and Malpighi, Buffon still stated that "brain is a barely organized kind of mucilage". As regards physiology, it was not until the last decades that an analysis of the neurological processes could be developped in vivo, thanks to improvements in electronic imagery.

II. Is the brain a predictive machine? A thorough experimental analysis of the timing of nervous signals between retina and visual cortex has induced Alain Berthoz to develop the theory that "the brain is not a machine that responds to external stimuli but a machine that formulates hypotheses based upon internally generated simulations of action". Supported by many examples, Berthoz's theory may be a conceptual breakthrough in neurosciences, but it should imply a change in our paradigm of time. We have been teached to consider time as a sequence of states, as if every thing were at rest between unexplained jumps from a state to another, as the successive pictures of a movie. Such an interpretation of time wipes off an intrinsic part of time, which is motion. An alternative paradigm is to assume that what is primarily perceived is not a state, but a time process : any external stimulus may be interpreted as a resonance between brain and outside world. Then, the concept of "state" becomes a construction of mind, which integrates the processes too slow or too fast to be seen at change around us. Such a return to Heraclitus's "Everything flows" would comply with Berthoz's theory, as well as with the thesis of Paul Weiss,, who has already maintained that a living being is not the body we are seeing, but a process, the trace of which is this body. III. What is actually perceived ? The underlying question is to separate what is directly perceived from what is a result of the brain's work. The mistake would be to underestimate the extent of this work. For instance, Jean Petitot has formalized Husserl's ideas and stated that space is perceived as referred to polar coordinates, instead of cartesian, the isotropic 3-D referential being just a mental scheme elaborated by the brain. The main hindrance to a dynamic theory of cognition seems to be the pregnancy of the epistemological model of mechanics, which deals essentially with statics, universal laws and measurement of physical constants. As a result of historical factors, there is a gap between measurements of static quantities and of dynamic quantities. IV. A research program In neuroscience Huarte had expressed the hypothesis that "the brain fine structure, if examined and studied by improved means, would explain the diversity of our mind processes and of our impressions and feelings". Four centuries later, this proposal remains a valuable "research program" for neuroscientists. A dynamic approach, instead of a static one, of the connection between anatomy and function of the brain in its normal activities, needs a thorough improvement of devices and models used in electronics for high frequencies and dynamic processes. Nobody can

listen a concert from a FM broadcast by using a crystal set or even an oscilloscope. According to Robert Rosen, "we may expect that, as new experimental techniques are generated elsewhere, entirely new biological probes, and correspondingly new data, presently unimaginable, await us in the future". Combination of computers, telemetry and miniaturized sensors should lead to as deep a revolution in biology and medecine as microscope did since the XVIIth century.

May 15th, 1999 References

BERTHOZ Alain, "Neural Basis of Decision in Perception and in the Control of Movement", in Damasio et alii, Eds., Neurobiology of Decision Making, Springer, 1996. HUARTE y NAVARRO Juan de Dios, " Examen de Ingenis para las Ciencias ", Pamplona, 1578. PETITOT Jean, "Gomtrie de la perception dans Ding und Raum de Husserl ", CAMSCNRS, 1998 (unpublished).

ROSEN Robert, "Life Itself", Columbia University Press, 1991. WEISS Paul, "Within the Gates of Science and beyond", Hafner Publishing Company,
1971.