Chapter 2
The Cognized and Operational Environments

Thus, in general, human perception is subject to error, because, in respect to those components most clearly in consciousness, it is interpretive.  In fact, error is the mark of the higher organisms, and is the schoolmaster by whose agency there is upward evolution.  For example, the evolutionary use of intelligence is that it enables the individual to profit by error without being slaughtered by it.

				Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality

	The life-world, and hence meaning, is a product of the functioning of the human nervous system.  We cannot hope to understand the schism that has occurred between scientific notions of causation and life-world meaning without first exploring the neurological process involved in producing them.  In order to better understand this process, we must begin with some basic suppositions.  Biogenetic structuralism conceives of the human being as an organism, and thus as a community of cells.  The trillions of cells comprising the being are organized into various organs and other structures that function to maintain themselves and the being as a whole.  The nervous system is a sub-community of cells within the organism that has evolved to facilitate the communication between different organs, the regulation of organs, and the internal depiction of the being and its environment to and for itself (Klopf 1982, Varela 1979).  The latter function is primarily the job of the evolutionarily most advanced parts of the nervous system (Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974, Jerison 1973, 1985).
THE COGNIZED ENVIRONMENT
	The principal function of the human nervous system at the level of the cerebral cortex^1 is the construction of a vast network of models^2 of the 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" themselves (see Varela 1979, Young 1987:27).  We call this entire network of models an individual's cognized environment.^3  This term contrasts with an individual's operational environment which is the real nature of that individual as a being and that individual's world as an ecosystem, apart from human knowledge of it.

^1  The cortex is the evolutionarily newest part of the nervous system and forms a corrugated layer of tissue on the top of the brain.  We agree with Doty (1975) that conscious processing is largely a cortical function.

^2  When we speak of a model, we do not refer either to an ideal type or to a description of a theory.  A model is an actual organization of tissue the function of which is to mediate some aspect or aspects of the world before the mind.

^3  We borrowed the concepts of cognized and operational environments from Rappaport (1968), but have changed their meaning substantially from his usage.  For further elaboration of these concepts, see Laughlin and Brady (1978: 6), d'Aquili et al. (1979: 12ff), Rubinstein et al. (1984: 21ff), and Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili (1990).

	Entities and events in the operational environment are called noumena (singular, noumenon).  Noumena is a Kantian term, but I do not wish to imply by my use of the concept that the operational environment and its constituent noumena are fundamentally unknowable.  Quite the contrary, the human brain is the product of millions of years of evolution for an organ that comes to know its being and its world.  The brain more or less accurately depicts its operational environment within the biological constraints of its capacity to interact with its own being and its world, and the demands of the organism's efforts to conserve the integrity of its internal organization (Piaget 1971, 1985).  As Whitehead (1938:121) so succinctly put it, "...we experience the universe, and we analyze in our consciousness a minute selection of its details." 
	The cognized environment develops during the course of life by means of the entrainment^4 of networks of cells that become active, that grow, that interconnect and interact, and that become progressively hierarchized into more complex organizations (Bruner 1974).  The prime function of the cognized environment is the adaptation of the individual to its internal and external operational environment (Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974, Neisser 1976, E.J. Gibson 1969, J. Gibson 1979, Popper 1972, Piaget 1971, 1985), which is to say to the individual's own dynamic nature and its ever-changing world.  "Adaptation" in this sense means the development of models whose operations and motor responses assure the continued survival of the organism.

^4  "Entrainment" is a technical term in neurophysiology that means the linking of neural systems into larger configurations by way of dendritic-axonic-endocrinological interconnections.  As the term implies, the process is like building up a train from a selection of railroad cars.  Entrainments may be momentary or enduring.  A change in a pattern of entrainment is termed "re-entrainment."

The Transcendental and the Zone of Uncertainty.
	The emphasis upon adaptation is important, for we make the fundamental assumption that the operational environment is transcendental relative to the capacity of any individual or society to comprehend it.  We do not mean by this that the operational environment is unknowable, but rather that knowledge is always intentional, developing, incomplete, and limited by the capacities of the brain.  The cognized environment is a system of points of view, and there is always more to know about the operational environment, or any noumenon within it, than can be known.  This consideration alone, if understood and taken seriously, can account for much of the difficulty experienced by philosophers of science, as well as scientists, in comprehending the relationship between meaning and causation.  For it is the rare human being who is able to keep the transcendental nature of reality before their mind when they are attempting to understand themselves and their world.  Both the understanding and that which we presume to "stand under" are points of view constituted within the organization of cells comprising the nervous system.  To be aware of the transcendental nature of the operational environment, is to be aware of the inherent limitations of one's point of view.
	The operational environment is not passively represented in the brain.  The brain does not take snapshots of the world.  The operational environment is modeled in an active and adaptively isomorphic^5 way -- and this is precisely the function of the higher neural processes of the human brain -- but there always exists a set of boundaries to knowledge, a zone of uncertainty^6  (d'Aquili et al. 1979: 40, 171), formed by the limits to spatial discernment, and to the capacity of the individual or species to apprehend temporal and causal relations.  The zone of uncertainty is the directly experienceable junction between the transcendental nature of the self and the world, and the limits of an individual's understanding (see Elster 1984: Chapter 4).  A consciousness that is fully aware of its zone of uncertainty is also aware that all forms of knowledge -- all theories, models, conceptions, ideologies, paradigms, teachings, schools of thought and points of view -- are partial, incomplete and ultimately distortions of the transcendental nature of things.  The cognized environment is defined by point of view, whereas there are no points of view in the operational environment. 

^5  We have given a technical definition of "adaptive isomorphism" in d'Aquili et al. (1979: 17).  The term implies that models are partially isomorphic to at least the extent required for survival.  "Isomorphic" means that the elements and relations comprising the neural model are not the same as those of the noumenon in the being or the world being modeled.  And just as there is more to a real airplane than there is to a model airplane, so too is there "transcendentally" more to the noumenon than there is to the model -- unless, of course, it is the neural network comprising the model that is itself the noumenon.

^6  Edmund Husserl's (1931) term for this is "horizon."

Metaphysical Assumptions of Biogenetic Structuralism
	I hope that I have made it clear from the start that biogenetic structuralism is an approach to knowledge more akin to that of Piaget than it is to either idealism (e.g., Berkeley or Bradley) or naive realism (e.g., Moore or Russell).  Extreme idealism holds that the life-world is but a world of appearances produced in consciousness.  All that really exists is consciousness.  There exists no reality apart from consciousness.^7  Naive realism holds that there is a reality apart from consciousness and that objective data from that world are imposed upon experience by way of the senses.^8  As we have seen, biogenetic structuralism holds a kind of evolutionary and biologically contructivist realism; that is, that there does indeed exist a reality apart from our experience of it, and that our being is part of that reality.  "In humanity," said the poet, "the universe becomes aware of itself."  Furthermore, knowledge of that reality, including knowledge of the self, is, and can only be, mediated by neurophysiological structures that model reality in a partially isomorphic way.

^7  Biogenetic structuralism allows us to avoid the pitfalls of skepticism.  From our point of view, such epistemological questions as the nature of reality apart from our knowing of it, whether there is a real world beyond the projections of mind, whether we can only know about sense data and and nothing about the noumena themselves, are false questions and border on the absurd.

^8  There are tons of data from perceptual psychology showing the extent to which even "raw" sensation is already an abstraction and intrinsic ordering of information about the operational environment.

	Biogenetic structuralism is an evolutionary structuralist theory that is founded on the premise that consciousness and certain aspects of the nervous system are two views of the same reality.  This is tricky to talk about for this tenet leads to all sorts of misunderstanding, not the least of which are accusations of resorting to physicalism, reductionism and identity theory.  As we have addressed these issues in various ways throughout our writings (see especially Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili 1990:12-18, 336-348), I will only summarized our position here as it relates to the topic of the monograph.
	I would suggest that there are only two possible, direct empirical approaches to the structures of experience: one via introspection and the other via the neurosciences.  All other approaches to the study of the structures of experience such as the exegetical analysis of myths, the psychological testing of people or animals, the logical analysis of propositions, Piagetian clinical interviews, behavioral experiments on people and animals, and clinical data from various types of psychotherapy, are indirect and inferential.  All such methods require that the researcher infer structures from the behavioral or symbolic expressions of consciousness.  The only two "windows" directly open to the structures of consciousness are those (from the inside out) into our own consciousness and onto (from the outside in) the organ of consciousness.  We should note that both windows are experiential, that both arise within the life-world of the contemplative or scientist.  The question is, how do we relate experiences derived from these two modes?
	A basic premise in biogenetic structuralism is that both the windows of introspection and the neurosciences are open to the same transcendental field.  The scope of experience via either window is, and always will be, both transcendental and of the same reality.  Knowledge gleaned from either window is thus incomplete, partial, and transitory -- a point of view.  As a consequence, neither the results of introspection (no matter how mature the contemplation), nor the theories of the neurosciences (no matter how well supported by sophisticated and elegant experimentation), may ever be considered a complete account of the scope of inquiry.  Biogenetic structuralism is therefore hampered by its own basic premise from appealing either to physicalistic reduction or to an identity theory.  Rather, it is a theory that holds that all approaches appropriate to the scope of inquiry (in this case, the life-world, meaning and causation) must be incorporated within an integrated theoretical frame.^9  The neurosciences must be incorporated into (never "reduced to") our theory of consciousness, and visa versa.

^9  We have called this the "rule of minimal inclusion" (Rubinstein, Laughlin and McManus 1984:93).

	The reader may well wish to ask:  Well, how do you know that consciousness and brain are two ways of looking at the same scope?  The answer is simple.  Every time we look for an experiential-physiological correspondence, presuming we have the expertise available and, in the case of brain research, the approproate methods and equipment, we usually find such a correspondence.  Of course, there are introspective experiences for which we have no methods yet available for research in the neurosciences.  Likewise, there is a lot going on in the nervous system than we are ever aware of.  But there is sufficient correspondence of results to suggest a rule of procedure, which is that for every event in consciousness there is a corresponding and causally interrelated physiological event.  
	The day is past when accounts of mind or consciousness can proceed very far without incorporating the findings of modern neuroscience.  In fact, current accounts of consciousness in psychology and philosophy that ignore findings from both the neurosciences and some tradition of mature contemplation appear to many of us as naive and silly.  Moreover, there are distinct advantages to following an integrated program.  One principal advantage is that we easily avoid mind-body dualism, and can thus appreciate that observations and theories derived from either perspective constitute cross-checks on the accuracy and inherent biases of the other perspective.  Conclusions reached by introspection may be evaluated relative to those reached in the neurosciences, and visa versa.  Failure to reach a consensus view should signal that something is wrong with the theories or observations of one or the other perspective.  For example, attempts over generations to find the location of the ego in the brain ("the ghost in the machine," or homonculus) were doomed to failure.  And, of course, mature contemplation through the ages has inevitably concluded that there is in fact no empirical ego, that the "ego" is a self-concept.  In this way, the science of consciousness is enriched from a variety of points of view and the temptation to appeal to a mind-brain dualism is systematically avoided.  
	I will point to other advantages of this view as we proceed.  Suffice it to say here that ontology and epistemology are intimately intertwined in biogenetic structuralism.  The developmental processes that mediate epistemology change the organization of models through the course of a lifetime, thus changing the very structure of both the knowledge available in consciousness and the being.  Moreover, if the structure of the being is radically altered (say, because of a brain injury), so too may its knowledge change.  And with the advent of self-awareness, the very structures of experience may change in subtle, and perhaps not so subtle ways.
Neurognosis.
   	The networks comprising the cognized environment have their developmental origin in initial neurognostic^10 structures that are present before, at, or just after birth, and the organization of which is largely determined genetically.  The evidence for the neurognostically organized, cognitive and perceptual competence of older fetuses and newborns is overwhelming (see Chapter 4), and is far more persuasive now than when we first developed the concept (Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974: Chap. 5; see Chamberlain 1987, Bower 1989, Laughlin 1991).  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 (Laughlin 1991).

^10  The concept of neurognosis is complex and refers to the essential genetical component producing universal patterns of activity within the nervous system, and the experiential and behavioral concommitants of that activity; see Laughlin 1991, Laughlin and d'Aquili (1974: Chapter 5), Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili (1990: Chapter 2) and d'Aquili et al. (1979: 8ff).

	The developmental re-entrainment of these initial structures is neurognostically regulated as well; that is, the course of much of neural development 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 are augmented, 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, Diamond 1988).
	It is my view that it is neurognosis that partially accounts for the intuition, expressed in the writings of thinkers from Plato through C.G. Jung and George Grant, that there exists in consciousness a strata of primordial forms upon which the objects and events in experience are by imperfect replicas.  Because the brain is fundamentally neurognostic in organization, it intuits its own developmental processes when it reflects upon the origins and structures of experience.  Thus, Plato held that there exists a realm of perfect Forms or Ideas that are the essence of things in experience.  Whitehead argued that the continuity of things ("actual occasions") in experience is due to such Platonic templates ("eternal objects").  And, of course, C.G. Jung taught that the collective unconscious of humanity is defined as a domain of archetypes experienced in dreams, myth, art and other symbolic expressions of the depths of the psyche.  Biogenetic structuralism differs from many of these views in that we apply the principle of experiential-physiological correspondence and hypothesize that the ontological basis of the archetypes is in the basic structures of the nervous system.  Of course, these structures are largely unknown by science and are still mysteries to be plumbed.
Intentionality.
	The ongoing, moment-by-moment operation of the cognized environment is essentially intentional in organization.  This fact is very important to our understanding of meaning.  Neural networks tend to organize themselves about a phenomenal object.  That object is also mediated by a neural network and is, for the moment, the central focus of cognitive, affective, metabolic and motor operations for the organism (Neisser 1976: 20ff).  Intentionality derives from a characteristic dialogue between the prefrontal cortex and the sensory cortex of the human brain that is inherent (neurognostic) to the structure of the brain and thus ubiquitous to human consciousness, regardless of cultural background.  Subsidiary structures entrained as a consequence of the dialogue between prefrontal and sensory processes may be located over a wide expanse of cortical (e.g., parietal visual attention structures, right lobe imaginal structures, left lobe language processing structures, etc.), subcortical (e.g., hippocampal recognition structures, brainstem arousal structures, limbic emotional structures, etc.) and endocrinal (e.g., hypothalamic and pituitary structures) areas.  As we shall see in Chapter 4, the intentional organization of neural processes mediating experience have a lot to do with our sense of causation.
Experience and The Life-world
	Experience^11 is a function of this intentional dialogue, and consists of the construction of a phenomenal world within the sensorium, the latter being a field of neural activity that arises and dissolves in temporally sequential epochs and that is coordinated with cognitive processes that associate meaning and form in a unitary frame (Laughlin 1988).  A point to emphasize here is that both the sensory and the cognitive-intentional aspects of experience are active (never static!) products of neurological functioning, and are exquisitely ordered in the service of abstract pattern recognition in moment-by-moment experience (Gibson 1969).  The total field of experience -- the life-world -- arising each moment is mediated by what we call the conscious network, a continuously changing field of intentional neural entrainments that may include any particular neural network one moment and disentrain it the next (Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili 1990:94-95).  The life-world is not a localized function that may be found in one place in the brain -- say in the hippocampus or in the frontal lobes.  Rather it is a complex of functions of networks located over a wide area of cortical and subcortical tissues.  

^11  We mean by experience "that which arises before the subject" in consciousness (see Dilthey 1976, Husserl 1977).  This includes perception, thought, imagination, intuition, affect and sensation.

	To summarize, the life-world is the unfolding stream of direct experience mediated by the individual's conscious network.  The cognized environment is the entire "library" of potential entrainments from which the actual conscious network mediating each moment of consciousness is entrained.  In other words, the cognized environment is a system of potential neural transformations within the individual's nervous system, while the conscious network is the actual transform in each moment, experienced as the life-world.
The Empirical Modification Cycle.
	The cognized environment may be therefore conceived as an "autopoieic" system (Maturana and Varela 1980, Varela 1979) -- an autonomous, self-constructing, self-regulating system, one function of which is to make possible the adaptation of the organism to its ever-changing operational environment, and another function of which is to maintain the unity  and survival of the organism.^12  The action (motor) component of the cognized environment operates to control what arises within experience so as to fulfill anticipated events within internally generated limits of tolerance, a feedforward process we have termed the empirical modification cycle, or EMC (Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974: 84ff; see also Pribram 1971, Neisser 1976, Arbib 1972, Powers 1973, Gray 1982, Varela 1979 for consonant views).  This feedforward, cognitive anticipation-sensory fulfillment process is required for learning, and for transformation of neural models encountering the flux and ultimately incomprehensible mystery of an essentially transcendental world.  Perhaps just as important, this process is required in any modern theory to link cognitive structures to the world in order to avoid mind-body dualism, and its conceptual traps, culture-nature dualism and materialism vs. idealism.^13

^12
  I am applying a Piagetian understanding of "equilibration" here.  The organism is a dynamic process of self-reconstruction relative to the dual demands of adaptation and organization; see Piaget (1971, 1985), and Parkins (1990).

^13  Bourdieu (1977: 78ff) seems to be getting at this kind of process in his concept of "habitus."

Behavior Controls Perception
	It is critical to our exploration of causation, and to our understanding of the relations between scientific explanation and technology, to describe the role of behavior (or "action," usually defined as "socially meaningful behavior") relative to perception within the EMC.  William T. Powers (1973) in his book, Behavior: The Control of Perception, has gone a long way toward modelling the function of behavior relative to perception.  His thesis is as simple as it is profound, for it is it is the failure to understanding the internal "cybernetic" function of behavior that has helped to thwart the production of a general theory of consciousness.
	According to Powers, behavior is never an end in itself, but is always a phase in a greater neurocognitive loop by which an object of interest is brought before the perceiving subject and kept there as long as desired, despite disturbances produced by other competing objects.  Behavior is thus negative feedback (ibid:54) which operates to perpetuate the object (or goal) of perception and to control responses to disturbances that might otherwise detract from that object.  Behavior is an exercise of motor control over the change of state in both self and world by the perceiving organism (ibid:47-48, 50).  For example, driving a car from point A to point B requires a series of moments of consciousness during which behavior continues to produce the perception of "staying on the road" -- moreover, "staying on the right road."
Creodes.
	The developmental interaction between neural models and the operational environment -- as we have said, an interaction involving selection of, growth of, entrainment and re-entrainment of, and hierarchization of neural structures  -- canalizes functional processes relative to particular stimuli in the operational environment (see Ogden and Richards 1923:56-57).  Using C.H. Waddington's term, neural models become relatively fixed in organization and structure, and thus produce creodes; i.e., become regularized, recursive and predictable in content, function and behavioral response relative to the intentional object (Waddington 1957; see also Piaget 1971, 1985).  It makes sense, therefore, to speak of an individual's cognized environment and its constituent models as an autopoieic system of creodes adapting to its operational environment (Varela 1979).^14

^14  Culture, on this account, is conceived as socially patterned creodes in individual cognized environments, as well as the social procedures ("enculturation") by means of which those creodes are established during development (Turner 1983).  The cognitive imperative to organize internal cognitive systems in interaction with the operational environment provides the intrinsic motivation evident in the mimicry and play of developing individuals (Laughlin 1990, Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974, Laughlin and McManus 1982).

MEANING AND THE SYMBOLIC FUNCTION
	It is obvious by this point that the operation of the cognized environment, as well as any society's culture, is thoroughly symbolic in nature (see Foster and Brandais 1980, Foster and Botscharow 1990, Geertz 1983, Turner 1967, Douglas 1966, 1970).  Both cognition and culture are inherently symbolic precisely because that is the way the human brain is physiologically designed to function.  Culture is not merely socially relative meaning, as implied by the more "cultural relativist" views (see e.g., Muhlhausler and Harre 1990).  Culture is in part meaning and in part the universal structures (the "ethno-logic;" see Hamill 1990) that entrain and mediate meaning.  The brain does not operate like a camera, passively recording images about the world on strips of blank emulsion.  Rather, the brain actively constructs a world of meaningful experience for itself.  The cognized environment is an abstraction at every functional level from the lowest sensory receptor field to the highest image and thought.  And the brain's own neurognostic structure is indelibly, but flexibly engraved upon every moment of consciousness.
	The symbolic function^15 refers to the relationship between the sensory object or event and the cognitive, neuroendocrinal and other somatic processes (including what Ogden and Richards 1923:53 liked to call "engrams") that become intended upon the object or event.  The symbolic function of the nervous system is that by which the whole network of models mediating the knowledge about an object becomes associated with that object in experience.  The object, whether anticipated, imagined or actual, is mediated by a network of cells that provides a partial meaning; say the topographical form, temporal continuity, spatial context, attributes, or other order of the object.  When we consider the object in this light, it makes good sense to call it a "symbol."  

^15  The biogenetic structuralist group has considered numerous issues relevant to the study of the symbolic function.  See Laughlin, McManus and Stephens (1981), d'Aquili, Laughlin and McManus (1979), Laughlin (1990), Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili (1990), Laughlin et al. (1986).  We consider the same fundamental processes operating at the neurocognitive level in all symbolic activities and among all human societies; processes that are operating as well in the neurophysiology of at least all higher animals.

	The cognitive associations intended upon the object -- that is, the conceptual, imaginal, affective, arousal, metabolic and motor networks that form the creode associated with the object -- function to extend and elaborate the "meaning" of the object-as-symbol for the subject.  The object may therefore be said to penetrate its meaning.  The object penetrates in the sense of neurophysiologically exciting its creode: exciting one set of pathways and actively inhibiting others.  The excited pathways may be either wholly neurognostic (i.e., "archetypal" -- structures that are the result of heavy genetic loading during development) or experientially informed models (i.e., developmental transformations of neurognostic structures during the course of adaptation; see Ogden and Richards 1923:53, Piaget 1971, 1977, 1985, Parkins 1990, Varela 1979, Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991).
Evocative, Fulfilling and Expressive Modes.
	These multiple, often complex entrainments tend (during development or enculturation) to form an intentional creode with the object being alternatively its evocator, its fulfillment and its expression.  In the evocative mode the object arises first in the sensorium and is then configured by all of these multiple associations that comprise its "meaning."  The object is literally re-cognized.  The sensory object may or may not have been stimulated by events in the operational environment external to the individual's nervous system.  In either case, we would say that the symbol has "evoked" its meaning -- that is, the network mediating the object has penetrated to a wider field of entrainments mediating the meaning of the object (Webber and Laughlin 1979).
	In the fulfilling mode the process is reversed and the network of multiple associations "desires" or anticipates the object for its fulfillment (see Edmund Husserl's discussions of "hyle" and "filling;" see also Miller 1984: 135, Laughlin 1988, Neisser 1976, Elster 1983).  Fulfillment may involve an imagined object or an object stimulated by events in the operational environment.  In the latter instance there may well be a motor component to acquiring the fulfilling object.  That is, the individual may act in order to seek the desired object.  We would say in this case that the symbol has "fulfilled" its meaning.  
	And in the expressive mode -- a specialized version of the fulfilling mode -- the intentional network selects an object that signifies its meaning for the purpose of communication in the operational environment, or between individuals.  If the communication is between individual cognized environments (whether between humans or non-human social animals), then a symbolic act would obviously involve both expression and evocation.  Thus we would say that a symbol has "expressed" its meaning.  That is, the act is produced by the intentionality of one individual and evokes intentionality in the other individual(s).
Evolution of the Symbolic Function.
	The human brain is the product of a long process of evolution, and the symbolic function naturally enough has evolved along with the brain (Holloway 1981, 1983).  The symbolic function is operating during every moment of consciousness.  Its operations remain tacit for the most part, being largely unconscious to all but the most self-aware humans (Polanyi 1958, Polanyi and Prosch 1975).  Humans do, however, come to cognize certain symbols as especially salient, and are substantially more aware of the role of the cognized symbol (or as we put it, the SYMBOL) in its penetrative, fulfilling and expressive modes.  Thus the especially red sap of a particular tree can come to be metaphorically associated with menstrual blood, sexual maturity and other notions important to a West African people (Turner 1967), or a wooden cross may evoke a powerful set of associations for a devout Christian.  SYMBOLS are typically those objects that evoke the most profound, ramified, socially controlled and archetypal intentionalities available in a culture's repertoire (e.g., flags, totems, shamanic and dramatic regalia, geographical features, cosmograms, icons, etc.).  Using Cassirer's (1955) metaphor, SYMBOLS are pregnant with meaning.  The capacity to cognize symbols as SYMBOLS seems at best rudimentary in the higher non-human animals, but had apparently become quite advanced among hominids by the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic.  Entire events may be demarcated as SYMBOLIC and take the characteristic form of ritual performance.
	A still more evolutionarily advanced form of the symbolic function is signing.  A sign is a specialized, molecular constituent in a more molar symbolic operation (e.g., lexemes are constituents of texts).  In sign systems there is a more evident specialization of meaning and hierarchization of embedded constituents (e.g., phonemes comprising morphemes, morphemes comprising utterances, utterances comprising conversations, etc.).  Signs also show a loss of the evolutionarily older stimulus-bound (so-called iconic) reference.  They are thus a more abstract element participating in a relatively stimulus-free contextualization of meaning.  However, in natural signing situations, such as a conversation, the telling of a myth, or a verbal report of an event, the SYMBOLIC reference is rarely if ever lost at the highest level of intent.  The context of the sign is the patterned (grammatical) relations it forms with other signs and embedded levels of signs, but the context of the text is generally experiential, and frequently metaphorical (Fernandez 1986).  
	The most advanced form of symbolic activity is formal signing in which both the constituent signs and the highest level of text may be totally abstracted from stimulus reference (e.g., mathematics and formal logical structures, as well as certain types of abstract art).  Formal sign systems can establish their own contexts and meanings independent of perceptual experience.  It would be well to remember this fact when we consider the role of abstraction in scientific models of causation and how such models contribute to the loss of meaning in the life-world of most people (see Chapter 4).
Adaptation and the Symbolic Function.
	All four levels of symbolic activity may be producing meaning within the same event and operating within and between the same cognized environments.  Furthermore, all four levels have adaptive consequences in both evolution and development.  The adaptive importance of the symbolic function, operating unconsciously in most individuals, has been made clear above.  Stimuli deriving from noumena may excite sensory objects that in turn evoke canalized associations and responses that have developed in perceptual and motor interaction with those noumena.  The associations are knowledge about those noumena, or more properly about sensory objects.  Penetration into the neurocognitive field occurs rapidly and allows entrainment of total meaning from initially partial information about the operational environment.  Yet any set of entrainments about any intentional object reflects its zone of uncertainty -- there is always a "horizon" (to use Husserl's 1931:101 apt metaphor) whether perceptual or cognitive.  The attributes or abstract features recognized are always a subset of the total possible attributes and the meaning evoked can always be different, or more accurate, more complete, more precise, seen from a different vantage point, etc., relative to the transcendental nature of the noumenon.
	SYMBOLIC activity may manifest its adaptive function in more dramatic ways, and in ways that have been of great interest to anthropologists.  Some forms of SYMBOLISM such as mythology may both express the dynamics of the depths of the psyche, and provide knowledge intended to cope with a society's consensus zone of uncertainty -- both SYMBOLIZING those hidden forces behind observable events about which I spoke in Chapter 1.  Myth frequently provides an explanation for the origins of humanity, the world and society, of relations between good and evil, of the relations between life and death, and of why things are as they appear to be.  Myth also may provide a map of significant relations among gross domains of objects and events such as animals, geological features, heavenly bodies, seasons and calamities.  Myth often provides a description of the normally unseen domains of the cosmos, multiple realities the existence of which accounts for the forces affecting human affairs.  And when glimpsed, experiences of these normally hidden domains are given mythical interpretations -- the myth alternatively providing both the context of evocation and the context of interpretation.  
	SYMBOLISM in the form of ritual may operate to orient individual intentional processes (including action) toward socially important goals (d'Aquili et al. 1979, Laughlin et al. 1986).  Points of transformation, such as life crises, may be demarcated and managed in ritual ways (van Gennep 1960).  Ritual methods may be applied to effect the course of events, or to remedy perceived imbalances and deficits in the individual or cosmos.  These methods may also be used to evoke transpersonal experiences upon which the continued vitality of the cosmology depends (see Chapter 3).  Spontaneous SYMBOLISM occurring in alternative phases of consciousness (see Laughlin et al. 1986) such as in dreams or during drug trips may be interpreted by shamans in socially useful ways (e.g., portend of life's occupation, psychodynamic conflict, divination of the cause of disease, future warfare or deprivation, etc.).
	The adaptive importance of sign systems is most evident in natural language.  Language evolved to facilitate the exchange of vicarious experience in a species whose brain had evolved to the point where it could know far more about the world than is ever perceptually present to consciousness.^16  The potential survival problem for a social species with such a brain is that the experience of individual group members may diverge to the extent that consensus reality and social action become impossible.  Interaction between individual cognized environments via language and other symbolism makes possible a significant overlap in vicarious experience despite the inability of every individual to have the same direct experiences (Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974: Chapter 4, Chapple 1970, Count 1973, Kurland and Beckerman 1987).  It is upon a proper analysis of the mechanisms by which cognized environments become adaptively synchronized that an integration of cognitive (or subjective) and social theories becomes possible (see e.g. Chapple 1970, Burridge 1979, Henriques et al. 1984, Schutz 1964 on this issue).

^16  Our theory of the evolution of the brain is somewhat non-Darwinian; see our discussion of the evolutionary development of particular neural processes in Laughlin and d'Aquili 1974: Chapters 2, 3 and 4, and the consonant views of other authors mentioned in an earlier note.

	Formal sign systems (like symbolic logic, arithmetic, geometrical and algebraic formulations) make possible the expression of cognized relations about both the world and the being that are content-free (Beth and Piaget 1966).  Knowledge of essential or abstract patterns in relations may be expressed and transmitted without the necessity for concrete sensory fulfillment.  Formal signs are artifacts of abstract thought; that is, thought about the organization of ideas and relations.  It is this ability to produce abstract concepts removed from experience that makes it possible to generate ideas and reify them upon the world.  As Whitehead (1964) taught, many of our abstract notions derive originally from the "rough," usually "vague" sense of relations in the perceptual world.  But in the process of abstracting them, they may conceptually take the place of the experiential world -- become "more real" than the world of experience from which they were abstracted.  Abstract knowledge may even evoke vicarious experiences of a world that no one actually experienced directly.
Technology and the Artifacts of Knowledge.
	The behavior of many species of animals results in material transformations of the operational environment.  Some ants and termites dig tunnels, some birds and primates build nests, and humans build houses and farm fields.  Some of the material transformations facilitate an extension of control over perception by behavior.  Technology may be understood on our account as the artifactual extension of neural models into the operational environment.  As for behavior, the function of technology is to control perception by altering sensory stimuli so that perceived events occur that match those anticipated by cognitive-intentional structures.  The easiest and most primitive way the organism exercises this control is by body movement and locomotion -- sensory organs or entire bodies are moved in space.  The world may also be manipulated so that experience "opens up" to the senses -- the bird coaxes a grub from under the tree bark; the chimpanzee fishes for termites.  Human beings will likewise move their sensory organs and bodies in space and are able to transform their operational environments with behavior (both their inner being and their outer world) far more handily and complexly than other animals so as to better control sensory events so they fulfill the expectations of intentional processes.  	Technology is thus essentially a symbolic process involving both activity in the operational environment ("praxis," or physiological fulfillment and expression) and feedback about effects upon the operational environment (physiological evocation; Laughlin 1989c).  The reader may have already concluded that my view of technology is phenomenological.  As Martin Heidegger (1977; see also Ellul 1964, Ihde 1983, 1990) has pointed out, restricting our understanding of the concept "technology" to tools, tool-use, or even practical, tool-like rituals, will result in our failing to grasp the full essence of technology as a domain of meaning.  We also need to set aside the mistaken notion that technology requires science (Ihde 1990:4).  Humanity has been developing its technological expression for thousands of years, in fact all through the Paleolithic.  Science no doubt produces technologies, and even changes technologies, but science is not necessary for technology, or the evolution of technology.
	What we often call "artifacts" are actually the material transformations of the operational environment used to open up, control, exploit, fertilize and otherwise extend the explorations and adaptations possible given the limitations provided by the unaided motor and sensory facilities of the human body.  These material transformations may thus be considered as artifacts of knowledge (Laughlin 1989c), the material fulfillment and expression of cognized environments operating in various societies and in different ages during the course of hominid evolution.  In the fulfilling mode an artifact may facilitate the occurrence of desired sensory events; e.g., a spear brings down a deer, a crystal is used as a meditation device to evoke a transformation of consciousness.  In the expressive mode an artifact may operate as a SYMBOL; e.g., a signal flag is used to send a message, a painting is used to express a state of mind.  The same artifact may operate in both modes simultaneously; e.g., a physician's stethoscope may fulfill the physician's desire to hear the heartbeat, and be a SYMBOL of the physician's status for the patient.  And in every case there is an evocative mode to the interaction in that the artifact is meaningfully perceived prior to and during its use.  It is this technological interaction between the cognized and operational environments (both internal and external to the being) that is facilitated and expressed by material transformations in the operational environment -- meaningful transformations that we normally refer to as technology.  
The Epistemic Process.
	We are forced to conclude from all these considerations that the epistemic process is, and can only be, a property of the organization of the nervous system, whether or not that process involves behavior and technology.  In classical metaphysical terms, both "ontology" and "epistemology" involve neurognostic structures that develop and are modified via the EMC.  The EMC is fundamentally a symbolic process and sometimes incorporates a technological component that changes, "opens up," and facilitates feedback into neural models.  This means that there is no world of experience, and no knowing about that world of experience apart from the neurocognitive processes that construct and mediate that world and that render that world meaningful.  And, as Piaget (1971) has repeatedly taught, we cannot hope to understand the processes of knowing separable from an evolutionary and developmental frame.  The human nervous system did not evolve as an empirical tabula rasa to passively record objective and veridical information about the operational environment, but rather as a community of cells that actively organizes itself in adaptively isomorphic models of the world (see Varela 1979).  The relative veridicality of these models depends upon a continuous EMC dialogue between developing models and noumena in a constantly changing operational environment.  It is from this understanding of the nature of knowledge and experience that a neuroepistemology becomes not only conceivable, but necessary to the future development of science (Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili 1990).  Only with such an understanding will we come to fully appreciate the schism that presently exists between the world of scientific explanation on the one hand and the meaningful life-world of people on the other.