The limits of Computational Theory of the Mind (CTM)

Moment by moment, night flickers in the imagination, in eroticism, subverting our strivings for virtue and order, giving an uncanny aura to objects and persons, revealed to us through the eyes of an artist…. Every attraction, every pattern of touch, every orgasm is shaped by psychic shadows.

Camille Paglia (1991, p. 4)

I am a somatic psychotherapist currently investigating a meta-model of human sexuality that can explain many components of irrational erotic arousal in terms of evolutionary psychology not yet fully accounted for by the computational theory of the mind (CTM). The proposed sexual model goes beyond the collective instinctual drive for the propagation of the species. It is a model where the development of consciousness is more consistently selected over human survival or personal advantage (see illustration below, regarding the stereotypical sexual coupling between the proverbial Catholic girl and the bad boy.) This hard-wired priority of consciousness development accounts for all manner of sexual attraction and perversion.

My understanding of computational theory of the mind (CTM) is of an organic feedback mechanism that acts to organize perception. My notion is that this mechanism is mediated not only by the mind but by the entire body as a computational vehicle of self-correcting apperception (not to mention a vehicle of self-healing molecular biology) and driven by chemical reinforcers such a dopamine, oxytocin, etc. to recognize and therefore respond (reorganize) to higher-level (transcendent) patterns of organization.

The new contribution of this erotic model of psychic and somatic organization is that it proposes a consciousness theory of arousal that drives evolution through a slightly modified version of the above mechanistic model (CTM). The new factor is akin to a yearning principle, that is, it's the instinctually-driven urge for humans to deeply know and manipulate physiological (somatic), material (environmental), and relational (interpersonal) as well as spiritual (transpersonal) dynamics.

The model posits the development of psychic organization primarily through a somatic gnosis of symbolic representations (chemical/emotional/relational pattern recognition on a visceral-body level) and secondarily through dream mentation (Fosshage), conceptual cognition, and eventually, through the manipulation of limiting linguistic symbols for articulating and propagating knowledge.

The model assumes a dynamic relationship between an individual’s personal reaction to symbols (that is, pre-extant organization matrices to which the individual is predisposed--environmentally, genetically, and personally--to recognize; also called archetypal patterns) and a somatic reaction that can be termed incentive salience (that which lights up reward centers in the brain) but is also recognized as instinct or desire. Ultimately, the model proposes that we are hard-wired for the development of consciousness primarily through the somatic exploration of symbols of transcendence (archetypal patterns), an optimal method for achieving developmental quantum leaps--something that the CTM model, as it now stands, cannot account for.

Steve Pinker writes (So How Does The Mind Work, 2005):

"Evolutionary psychology also helps to explain many instances of error, irrationality, and illusion—why we gamble, eat junk food, fall for visual illusions, obsess over celebrities, and fear snakes and heights more than hair dryers near bathtubs or driving without a seatbelt. The nature of the explanation is that there can be a mismatch between the ancestral environment to which our minds are evolutionarily adapted and the current environment in which we find ourselves."

The meta-theory of sexuality and arousal posits that such irrational desires (and addictions) symbolically point to unmet developmental needs. The resulting yearning, when suppressed, becomes more and more pathological. The underlying need is sought on a literal basis rather than on a higher-level analogical basis. (eg. Grasping for a breast rather than becoming conscious of insufficient nurturing in childhood or infancy –something the body well remembers and still irrationally clamors for, despite slaps in the face—rather than to seek appropriate and effective ways of bridging the as-of-yet-unconscious lacuna.)

A more elaborate illustration of this dynamic is seen in the underlying set of developmental needs expressed through the stereotypical sexual attraction between the proverbial Catholic Girl and Bad Boy. The Girl’s upbringing requires her to repress all tendencies to selfishness, self-interest, aggression, hostility, dishonesty, swearing, lying, cheating, etc… much of which the Bad Boy flaunts with impunity. This Boy, in turn, raised in a rough, gang-infested neighborhood might be risking his life if he dares exhibit tenderness, compassion, generosity, empathy, tearfulness, or any “softness” of emotion, which the good girl nonetheless proudly flaunts with the enviable result that everyone, including this Bad Boy, clamors to protect (or, perversely, attempts to squash in the hope that she can demonstrate how to survive despite her vulnerable attributes!)

Certainly when he rapes her or, optimally, only expresses carefully contrived (i.e., symbolic) roughness through his erotic aggression, he wants to pierce through her innocence to drink in her purity while infusing her with the Bad Boy qualities she lacks. Ideally he holds back sufficiently to not damage or traumatize her. Optimally, he is compelled to push their mutual limits whilst taking care to monitor her responses (to remain relational) in view of affording her a deep visceral pleasure that might embolden her to eventually try out (and validate for herself) her own latent bad-boy capacities -heretofore repressed.

He might be investigating the question of, “How might she respond when I do to her what was done to me, when I was too young/undeveloped to contain such pressure? Can I learn to be like her, or would it still be too dangerous to me?” If she feels safe in fully surrendering to what this exchange offers she might, through practice, learn to internalize his bad-boy behaviors, which have been so direly lacking within her range of responses. She can get unstuck from the good-pole of the good-bad dichotomy, which blocks her from the resolution of her developmental arrest. When the boy sheds a tear or becomes sweetly overwhelmed or deeply ashamed by his feelings, the girl might jump to cheer him and love him all the more. His wound begins to heal when he dares behave vulnerably with her, if she has modeled it for him under his "attacks" that is, if she does not take advantage or use his vulnerability against him.

These visceral lessons assist this dyad in transcending deeply buried psychologically and physically hard-wired traits. The orgasmic surrender allows the physical holding patterns that belie the embodied psychological attitudes to finally become loosed, at least for the post-coitus relaxation. If, however, such lessons are sufficiently repeated as to promote homeostatic shifts in the psychological and physical posturings of these lovers, then eventually much development and consciousness can be permanently gained. If the physical relaxation of old, chronic muscular holding patterns becomes the new norm through their "loosened" stances, then even organic illness (which could have resulted from the reduced flow of oxygen in those chronically tensed parts of the body) might be allayed in the long-term.

The girl’s and boy’s respective physiologies become excited with what their whole bearing recognizes as a potential sexual interaction that offers transcendent possibilities for resolving each of their psychological blocks. This is an archetypal pattern, not one cognitively recognized by the participants nor understood by the social environments that originally caused the psychological and behavioral suppression. Once recognized and exhaustively explored through a multitude of erotic variations, the sexual charge associated with this "Bad-Boy/Good-Girl" theme eventually dissipates. Consciousness can then be further explored within some different archetypal erotic landscape. New erotic fantasies herald the next onion layer of psychic healing/growth. An appetite to pornography is healthy if not abused addictively so as to obstruct the acquisition of consciousness.

Pinker wrote:

“Deriving new accurate beliefs from old ones in pursuit of a goal is not a bad definition of ‘intelligence’, so a principal advantage of the computational theory of mind (CTM) is that it explains how a hunk of matter (a brain or a computer can be intelligent.”

Nowhere in any logical construct, built on limited assumptions, can anyone compute a rational argument from the lover’s vantage of how and why these and more salacious erotic couplings can be psychologically healthy. On the contrary, we are aroused by whatever actually seems most unhealthy, at least from our perspective, because it brings to consciousness what was shameful and buried early in each of us. It arouses, through pattern recognition (archetypal symbols) whatever has held us back from becoming whole. Arousal always raises into consciousness that which was repressed in us during our childhood through shaming or fear. However, everything gleaned through arousal and sexual satisfaction attests to the desirability and wholesomeness of sexually perverse relationships. Admittedly, this holds true only if certain relational conditions are met and maintained: honoring the sexual partner's free will and even helping safeguard it when it is insufficiently upheld, which takes a tremendous amount of presence, insight, and respect.

The capacity for derivative thinking is perhaps not a bad definition of a certain type of intelligence, but the CTM model is as yet inadequate for describing the type of intelligence characterized by creativity. The contention of the proposed new thesis (The Psychic Function of Erotic Arousal) is that the entire body serves as an integrative mechanism that can perceive and organize new, inchoate information by mapping new perception upon itself using analogical pattern recognition to draw new conclusions about higher levels of organization. We have a whole universe of biological mechanisms within us that represent patterns through which our organism functions brilliantly, and of course unconsciously, on higher levels of organization than we can yet cognitively conceive. We are cognitively unaware of more than a tiny fraction of those patterns, although some aspect of our being certainly masters the knowledge of biological mechanisms far beyond the scope of our conscious minds.

The point is that new information rarely computes correctly within a set field of knowledge. The entire human body is part of a higher order processing mechanism than the computational model gives it (the body) credit for managing. The body's apperceptive faculties are not limited to the mind in the way the CTM understands it. The body utilizes an analogical model of pattern recognition (arousal) for gleaning a higher organizational structure about the irrational, that is, about "what the mind doesn't know we don't know," but about what the body has a veritable clue through the "universe within itself."

Pinker:

“Finally, mental life—internal representations and processes—appears to be more lawful and universal than overt behavior, which can vary with circumstances.”

In healthy sexuality the opposite is true, as illustrated in the above example. Furthermore, overt behavior in sex is usually a more muted version of an individual’s erotic fantasy, and for good reason.

Guggenbuhl-Craig observed that, “in psychoanalytic practice it happens again and again that the more differentiated, and not the weaker a person is, the more we find the so-called sexual aberrations” (2001, p. 90).

Jung’s notion of the transcendent function was to psychology the equivalent of what the quantum leap was to physics. No cognitive construct will uncover the way to new consciousness, although once a new awareness is gleaned, CTM might map an effective model that explains it. Creative intelligence is a visceral drive that expresses itself through arousal (libido, life energy, enthusiasm, joy, pleasure) that is best explored through sex, art, and only then consolidated through cognitive awareness. Let science not imagine it can forge the way to new knowledge when it so emphatically and persistently dismisses the value of the irrational and incoherent! Until this stance is changed to integrate "intuition" and "gut response," science can only confirm and articulate new ideas through hindsight postulation of imagined--not derived--models. Science can never dictate the limits of art or judge the veracity of creative expression without hindering the expansion of consciousness.