[Published in the Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 19(4):363-380.]

THE PROPERTIES OF NEUROGNOSIS

by

Charles D. Laughlin
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

INTRODUCTION
	One of the most important notions in biogenetic structuralism is the concept of neurognosis.  It is this notion that makes biogenetic structural theory such a radical departure from other theories of human consciousness.  In this paper I want to summarize some of our thinking about neurognosis, and to explore some of the properties of neurocognitive functioning that the notion implies.  I feel this exercise will be particularly useful, for although our group has written a good deal about the role of neurognosis and neurognostic structures in the processes of neural development and consciousness, these discussions are scattered throughout various books and papers.  And these sources are usually concerned with other issues, and neurognosis is often addressed only tangentially.

The Cognized and Operational Environments

	The principal function of the human nervous system at the level of the cerebral cortex is the construction of a vast network of models of the self and world.  Models are comprised of the form taken by constituent cells and their patterns of interaction, and this form expressed as activity is "information" -- literally that which results from the cells' in-forming (see Varela 1979, Young 1987: 27).  We call this entire network of models an individual's cognized environment.  This term contrasts with an individual's operational environment which is the real nature of that individual as an organism and that individual's world as an ecosystem.  Both the organism (or species) develops (or evolves) and the outer operational environment unfolds and develops.  This co-evolutionary view is fundamental to biogenetic structuralism, as it has been for similar theories.
	The cognized environment develops during the course of life -- especially during early pre- and perinatal life (see Laughlin 1991) -- by means of the growth and entrainment of networks of cells that become active in development, that grow, and that become progressively hierarchized into more complex organizations.  The prime function of the cognized environment is the adaptation of the individual to its internal and external operational environment (Piaget 1971, 1985), which is to say to its self and its world.  Mindful of the ambiguity that often accompanies the term "adaptation" (Bargatzky 1984), we mean to imply an adjustment in the organization of neural and other somatic systems producing more veridical experiences of, or knowledge about the operational environment, and more effective responses to objects and events in the world.

Neurognosis

	The neural networks comprising the cognized environment have their developmental origin in initial neurognostic structures that are generally present before, at, or just after birth, and the organization of which is largely genetically determined.  The evidence for the neurognostically organized, cognitive and perceptual competence of older fetuses and newborns is overwhelming (see Laughlin 1991), and is far more persuasive now than when we originally introduced and argued for the concept (Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974: Chap. 5).  It is clear at this point that the brains of fetuses, newborns and infants are complexly and actively organized to explore and model their physical and social operational environments, and that this is an intrinsically driven, self-regulating, adaptive process.

An Emphasis on Development

	As Henry A. Murray used to say, in some ways all human beings are alike, in some ways some human beings are alike, and in some ways no human beings are alike.  This is how he would address the simultaneous relevance of the biological, cultural and "personological" aspects of any particular human activity.  Our notion of neurognosis places an emphasis upon the ways all humans are alike.  This strategy is required by the tenacious persistence of mind-body, or mind-brain dualism that informs most anthropological theory today -- theory that generally treats the brain as a tabula rasa upon which society is free to impose cultural meanings without the mediation of any non-trivial biological limits.  Most anthropological theory does not adequately address either the issue of cultural universals or the biological mechanisms that produce those universals.
	An adequate explanation of cultural universals need not require either strict genetic determination or positing the existence of static, unchanging Platonic structures.  Indeed, neurognostic structures are anything but static.  They are, after all, living tissue, and all cellular systems in the body develop.  The developmental growth and  re-entrainment of these neurognostic structures is neurognostically regulated as well; that is, the course of much of the development of neurognostic structures is genetically charted.  Development of neural models involves a great deal of selectivity among alternative entrainments (Changeux 1985, Edelman 1987, Varela 1979).  Some potential organizations deteriorate, others become active, and still others remain relatively latent and undeveloped.  This selectivity is one reason why there is such remarkable plasticity in cognitive adaptation to the transcendental nature of the self and the world.  There is a great deal of evidence that the relative richness or poverty of the outer operational environment has a determinant effect upon the complexity and growth of neural networks in ontogenesis (Renner and Rosenzweig 1987).

Neurognosis As an Evolutionary Process

	Neurognosis has evolved over the millions of years of hominid phylogenesis.  Biogenetic structuralism has taken an evolutionary frame with respect to neurognosis because:  (1) The evidence of dramatic encephalization found in the fossil record of our extinct ancestors is well documented, and is generally considered to have a lot to do with the evolution of culture and consciousness (see e.g., Jerison 1973, 1985, Eccles 1989).  (2) Cultural variation upon a system of fundamental, evolutionarily derived structures, appears to be the primary mode of human adaptation.  
	Earl Count (1973) -- really our first neuroanthropologist -- argued along these lines in support of his notion of the "biogram."  Defined in our own terms, a species' biogram is the entire range of adaptations available to various individuals and groups and mediated by their neurognosis.  As neurognosis evolves, so, too, does the range of possible adaptations characteristic of the species.
	Because we have linked the evolutionary changes in hominid neurognosis with the evolution of the hominid biogram, we have explored the different areas of the nervous system that seem to have evolved during the course of hominid encephalization and that produce the distinctly human quality of mentation, learning, communication, and social action characteristic of our species' biogram today.  Yet we have always emphasized the developmental properties of neurognosis in all of these domains, regardless of the species of hominid being addressed.  TenHouten (1985; also in SNB 6(4):61-63), for instance, has shown using EEG equipment that people in different cultures develop different signature entrainments relative to standard learning and computational tasks.  We interpret these findings as transformations upon the field of potential neurognostic structures within the human biogram.

Properties of Neurognosis

	I have briefly summarized our understanding of neurognosis.   Now I would like to discuss some of the properties of neurognosis as they manifest themselves in culture and in experience.  In this way we may flesh out the concept and better see how it might be applicable to research in anthropology.

Learning and Cultural Universals

	We have seen that on the biogenetic structural account, all learning is accomplished by modifying existing neurognostic structures.  To a certain extent, what is learned is already partially known.  Neurognosis literally means knowledge inherent in the initial organization of the neural networks mediating the perception, cognition, feeling, intuition, etc.  I mean all learning is mediated by neurognosis!  I cannot conceive of any kind of natural learning that does not function in this way.  This is what is so radical about biogenetic structural theory.  Our view is antithetical to theories that either presume learning that is not mediated by the neurobiology of the organism, or that presume that neural structures are infinitely plastic.  
	Indeed, evidence suggests that neural systems are neither genetically "hardwired" -- as in the naive sense of so-called fixed action patterns -- nor are they totally plastic in their modifiability.  Rather, there is always a range of flexibility of structural modification depending upon (1) the system being considered and (2) the period of ontogenesis involved.  Those systems more constrained by neurognosis will manifest themselves more dramatically as universals, and will be more indicative of the species biogram than more flexible systems.  For example, many of the properties of human ceremonial ritual are clearly culturally universal (d'Aquili, Laughlin and McManus 1979).  These properties include central and autonomic nervous system drivers such as rhythmic stimuli (drumming, chanting, dancing, etc.), ordeals (perhaps painful ordeals such as were in the old Sundance), psychotropic drugs, fasting and dietary restrictions, sweat baths, etc.  But the point to note here is that there always exist neurognostic constraints upon just what, how much and the nature of material that may be learned.  The perinatal brain may or may not manifest relative plasticity, depending upon the domain of learning involved; indeed, under certain circumstances the young brain may be less plastic than the adult brain (see Will and Eclancher 1984).  

Neurognosis As Primitive Realism

	Neurognosis insures a nascent and primitive realism to human cognition and experience.  In other words, we are born knowing the world and our selves from an initial cognitive standpoint which is adaptively real.  Remember what was said above:  A principal function of the human nervous system is the construction of a system of models of the world and the self.  These models develop from rudimentary neural structures produced in the course of neurogenesis, mostly (but not entirely) during gestation and early infancy.  It is neurognosis that mediates the "already there" world of experience for the human fetus and newborn, and that later operates as a preadaptation (what Chisholm and Heath 1987:61-62 call a "facultative adaptation") for the detection and interpretation of patterned energies encountered after birth and later in life (i.e., inherent knowledge about such things as objects, movement, causation, faces, hands, speech sounds, etc.).  	Knowledge of the self includes rudimentary knowledge of the body.  An example of neurognosis relative to the nascent body image is the phenomenon of the phantom limb.  As everyone knows by now, people who lose a limb from an accident, surgery or in battle may experience sensations as if the limb were still there.  Particularly serious is the experience of chronic pain in the absent limb experienced by some people.  An obvious explanation for this distortion of the body image is that what is being experienced by the unfortunate person is the cognized limb -- that is, the internal neuropsychological model of the limb, a part of their cognized body, which remains intact in cortical and subcortical tissue.  But there is an added dimension to this story.  Ronald Melzack (1992), one of the researchers that have worked out the gating theory of pain, has also shown that some people who are born without limbs may still experience pain in a phantom limb.  Our explanation for this seemingly anomalous fact is that the cognized body -- the internal system of neural models of one's body -- is neurognostic, and according to the neurognostic body image, the person has all of their limbs.  And the pain that is felt is in relation to the neurognostically perfect body image, not the actual body.
 	Without getting into the controversial issue of prenatal cognition and learning (see Laughlin 1991 on this issue), modern psychological evidence of early perinatal cognitive competence is substantial.  The newborn is already prepared to explore its environment, and detect, explore and model objects and relations found there.  In fact, some researchers go so far as to suggest that object perception develops early and that the infant at, or near birth is perceiving the world out of a single mechanism, an already mature "object concept" (Streri and Spelke 1988) from which it explores the surfaces and movements of objects in its environment.  Within a couple of months after birth at the latest, the infant is perceiving objects that extend behind other objects, and by five months can perceive them as continuing to exist when lost to view (Kellman and Spelke 1983, Baillargeon, Spelke and Wasserman 1985, Spelke and Kestenbaum 1986).  From at least the time of birth, infants are thought to discriminate colors and sounds on the basis of perceptual categories mediated by innate neural structures maturing during gestation (Wilson in Harnad 1987).  
	Contrary to the presumptions of Piagetian and a number of other schools of psychology, the infant is neurognostically prepared to process objects and events and to learn by interacting with them.  Some researchers have suggested that perhaps by late intrauterine life, by birth, or certainly by four months of age the child is equipped with innate higher perceptual and cognitive structures that anticipate a three dimensional and temporal/causal world that becomes fulfilled and refined in actual perceptual experience (see Gibson 1969, Treiber and Wilcox 1980, Bower 1974, Bower and Wishart 1979, Meltzoff and Borton 1979, Antell and Keating 1983, Banks 1988, Spelke 1988b, Leslie 1988, Gottlieb 1976a).  And this fulfilment may include a fundamental emotional evaluation of the object as being positive or negative, pleasurable or unpleasurable (Lipsett 1979, Steiner 1979).  The infant is inherently curious in its pursuit of novelty, despite its lack of motor development (Trevathan 1990) and in its social activity and learning (Papousek and Papousek 1982).
	We are thus born to know our being, and our physical and social world as it really is, but the knowing is always an unfolding process mediated by neural models that are to one degree or another adaptively isomorphic with the world.  We may say that the world is transcendental relative to our models of it.  That is, there is always more to know about the operational environment than can ever be known.

Neurognosis and the Quantum Sea

	There are many people, both within and outside the neurosciences, that worry about the cultural and moral consequences of a view of human consciousness that grounds itself in the nervous system (see e.g., Harrington 1992).  They perhaps fear that a neuroscientific view of consciousness reduces the value of humanity to mere creatureliness and mortality without the morally elevating effects of spiritual considerations.  They become concerned that a fully embodied view of consciousness leaves no room for life after death, or consciousness before birth -- that it eliminates the possibilities for the survival of the soul or karmic reincarnation, or the significance of transpersonal experiences such as near death or out of the body experiences.
	But such worries arise only as a consequence of reducing consciousness to a mechanistic, materialistic conception of the body and the physical world, and although such a metaphysical view of the nervous system is common in our culture, it is by no means the only view possible.  Indeed, the impact of modern quantum physics is having a modulating effect upon the more archaic mechanistic biases in biology and neurobiology.  Some researchers have related various transpersonal experiences to quantum mechanics (e.g., Puthoff 1993, Walker 1973), and some of us have begun to look at the conscious brain, and particularly its neurognostic structures, as very complex manifestations of coherence in the sea of quantum energies that make up the universe (see Wallace 1993a, 1993b, Laughlin 1994, Laughlin and Puthoff 1994, Deutsch 1985, Penrose 1989, Lockwood 1989).  Contrary to a materialistic view of the conscious brain, which would of necessity conceive of the individual body as a discrete entity, a quantum physical view of the conscious brain requires that a totality of energy relations be considered in any account of the physical body.  That is, the physical body, including its conscious nervous system, must be considered as a nexus of coherence in the sea of energies that are the universe.  Consideration of the processes of direct interaction of neurocognitive structures with quantum events -- events that may be distant in space and time -- become possible in this new view.
	I have come to understand that neurognosis has evolved within the greater framework of the quantum universe and cannot any longer be considered apart from our understanding of that universe.  Neurognosis is a product of complex coherence in the quantum sea, and as a consequence is structured in such a way as to produce not only nascent knowledge about material phenomena (i.e., objects, relations and movements among objects, etc.) but also nascent knowledge of the quantum sea itself.  In short, we are born knowing the world as objects and the world as sea.  The former knowledge results in intentionality related to objects, and the latter to experiences of voidness.  Enculturation into an extremely materialistic culture such as our own will encourage development of the adaptationally important neurognosis pertaining to local material objects and relations, while enculturation into more spiritual cultural traditions may result in more advanced development of neurognosis pertaining to the quantum sea (however the sea be symbolically coded in any particular society).  

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