On dopamine

 

 

“After all, reward coding must accommodate the rewarding properties of both solving a math problem and having an orgasm.”¹

 

“If the reward-prediction error is positive, certain neurons fire to deliver a pulse of good feeling, . . . the urbilaterian adopted dopamine as the transmitter to signal a positive error, and that has been conserved.”²

 

“ That which endures primally out of the earliest beginning is what grants.” ³

 

 

Lamenting the sorrows of old age Mimnermus begins with loss of libido: “What life, what joy without golden Aphrodite?”⁴ ‘Aphrodite’ can be taken here as metonymy for toutes les promesses de bonheur ;⁵ so that, in the words of Bernard Williams, “unless I am propelled forward by the conatus of desire, project and interest, it is unclear why I should go on at all.” In general “there is a nexus of projects, related to [one's] conditions of life, and it would be the loss of all or most of them that would remove meaning.”  And in the face of such loss a person may feel that she “might as well have died.”⁶ Just so Mimnermus: “When these things are no longer sweet to me may I die.”⁷

 

By Sterling's account ‘Desire and Satisfaction’ got their start about a half-billion years ago with the last common ancestor of vertebrates and arthropods, the ‘urbilaterian’:

 

“A system was needed,” Sterling writes, “to prod an animal to search for all its key resources before they ran out and consume them in the right quantities.  Our urbilaterian ancestors (worms) solved this challenge with a reward circuit.  Hypothalamic neurons, monitoring an animal's internal state, plus external opportunities and dangers, initiate a search well before internal stores are depleted.  Any behavior that delivers something better than predicted elicits a pulse of dopamine that makes the animal ‘feel good,’ that is, satisfied.  Of course we can't know how a worm feels, but its behavior certainly gives this impression.  This circuit, using the same chemical [dopamine], operates in our brain and in the fruit fly's.  Thus, the reward circuit has been conserved for more than half a billion years.”⁸

 

Aristotle's sense of how things work – nurtured by Plato – led him to build orexis – appetitus, ‘desire’ – into the very foundation of his natural philosophy.  Book I of the Physics is all about the archai, the ‘starting points,’ ‘governing sources,’ ‘original beings’ of nature.  All thinkers worth mention say that the archai are in some sense ‘contraries,’ enantia;⁹ that phusis comes from contraries.  Aristotle reviews the contentions for various contraries as candidate archai and agrees that Yes, the archai must be contraries.¹⁰

 

Aristotle then argues for his novel version adapted from Plato: the two ur-contraries are ster ē sis, ‘deprivation,’ ‘lack;’ and eidos, ‘form.’¹¹ Yet there must always be a third, underlying (hupokeimenon) thing instancing lack and capable of taking form; and that third thing is hul ē, ‘material.’  He summarizes the doctrine by distinguishing his innovation from the thinking of other Platonists:

 

“For from its deprivation . . . something comes into being.  . . . [Yet] we say that material and deprivation are different things . . . For the nature that persists [ sc. hupokeimenon, hul ē ] is a co-cause with the form of the things that come into being, like a mother, while the other portion of the opposition [sc. the deprivation in the material] might often be slandered as not being at all . . . But since there is something divine and good and sovereign [which no true Platonist denies], we say that there is something opposite to it [lack of divinity, goodness, and sovereignty], and something else [the material that lacks] which inherently yearns for and stretches out toward it by its own nature [τὸ δὲ ὃ πέφυκεν ἐφίεσθαι καὶ ὀρέγεσθαι αὐτοῦ κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν].  For [other Platonists], it follows that the contrary yearns for [ὀρέγεσθαι] its own destruction.  However, it is not possible either for the form to long for itself, since it is not defective [διὰ τὸ μὴ εἶναι ἐνδεές¹²], or for its contrary [lack] to long for it (since contraries are destructive of one another), but it is the material that does this [longing] . . . That, then, there are starting points [archai], and what they are [the contraries ster ē sis- in-hul ē and eidos], and how many in number [three-in-two¹³], let it have been marked out in this way for us . . .”¹⁴

 

With all this longing we've almost got a country song.  Anyway we've got a folktale.  Alan Dundes shows that “ Folktales can consist simply of relating how abundance was lost or how a lack was liquidated. ”  (his italics)  Dundes notes that

 

“One structural type of American Indian folktale then consists of just two motifemes: Lack (L) and Lack Liquidated (LL).  In the Malecite version of ‘The Release of Impounded Water,’ a monster keeps back all the water in the world (L).  A culture hero slays the monster, which act releases water (LL).  A Wishram tale based upon the same motifeme pattern is as follows: ‘A people on the Columbia had no eyes or mouths (L).  They ate by smelling the sturgeon.  Coyote opened their eyes and mouths (LL).’  . . .   There are not a great many tales which consist of only two motifemes, but there are some.  The two motifeme sequence may be said to constitute a minimum definition of an American Indian folktale.”¹⁵

 

And as we just saw, Aristotle takes the same two-motifeme sequence of Lack/Lack Liquidated to constitute the structure of nature: deprivation-in-matter taking form.  No big surprise that Heidegger echoes the Master with a structurally identical ‘Tale of human being.’  In Heidegger's story hul ē is Geworfenheit, ster ē sis Sorge, and eidos is vorlaufende Entschlossenheit.

 

Thomas Sheehan glosses Geworfenheit, ‘thrownness,’ in these words: “our projects are not entirely free, unconditioned, and at our will.  We are already pulled into our aheadness in and through what we may call de-facto-ness [Faktizit ä t ].  We are already thrown into a family, a language, a social structure, the whole panoply of things and situations which we did not choose and which condition our actions and choices.  From the first instant of our lives we are already confronted by a history as long as our gene-structure.”¹⁶ Geworfenheit = ‘panoply of things and situations’ + genome + phenotype; ‘phenotype’ being “all traits of an organism other than its genome.  . . . the enzyme products of genes are part of the phenotype, as are behaviors, metabolic pathways, morphologies, nervous tics, remembered phone numbers, and spots on the lung following the flu.” ¹⁷ This amalgam is the human hul ē .¹⁸

 

The ster ē sis in Geworfenheit Heidegger designates as ‘being an issue for itself,’ um selbst gehen; in a word Sorge, ‘care.’  “Care is the term for the being of Dasein pure and simple.  It has the formal structure, an entity for which, intimately involved in its being-in-the-world, this very being is at issue [ Seiendes, dem es bei seinem In-der-Welt-sein um dieses Sein selbst geht ].”  He then describes ‘being at issue’ as a variety of ster ē sis:

 

“ ‘Its own being is the issue for Dasein’:  this first presupposes that in this Dasein there is something like a being out for something [Aussein auf etwas].  Dasein is out for its own being: it is out for its very being in order ‘to be’ its being.  As such a being-about care is this being out for the being which this very being-out is [ Sorge ist als solches Sein-um dieses Aussein auf das Sein, das dieses Aussein selbst ist ].  . . . The structure of ‘being out for something’ . . . brings with it the phenomenon of not yet having something which I am out for.  This phenomenon of not yet having something which I am out for is called being in want [das Darben oder die Darbung] .  It is not merely a pure and simple objective not-having of something that I am out for.  It is what first constitutes being-in-want, lack, need [ die Darbung, das Entbehren, das Bedürfen ].”¹⁹

 

The basic structure of care is ‘lack-in-being’ in the term from Being and Time, Schuldigsein.  Sorge is the ster ē sis in Geworfenheit.

 

Lack of what?  Section 62 of Being and Time is captioned, “The Existentielly Authentic Potentiality-for-Being-a-Whole of Da-sein as Anticipatory Resoluteness, ”²⁰ a mouthful which avers the Liquidated Lack to be vorlaufende Entschlossenheit, ‘anticipatory resoluteness,’ ‘cataphoric opened-upness,’ the human eidos.  Heidegger claims that “authentic potentiality-of-being-a-whole of Da-sein” is “a mode of being of Da-sein . . . in which it brings itself to and before itself.”  Anticipatory resoluteness, “basically dispersing every fugitive self-covering-over . . . arises from the sober understanding of the basic factical possibilities of Da-sein.”  In our “individualized potentiality-for-being . . . Da-sein becomes free of the entertaining ‘incidentals’ that busy curiosity provides for itself, primarily in terms of the events of the world.”²¹ Primordial Angst “strives to expect resoluteness of itself.”²²

 

“Philosophy,” says Williams, “in particular moral philosophy, is still deeply attached to giving good news”²³ and Heidegger is no exception here, for he holds out the prospect that “Together with the sober Angst that brings us before our individualized potentiality-of-being, goes the unshakable joy [ gerüstete Freude ] in this possibility.”²⁴ I.e., the phenomenon reflected in story-telling imagery – with unsubtle physiological overtones – as ‘release of impounded waters,’ ‘freeing of the dawn-cows.’²⁵

 

‘Unshakable joy’ is the Peruna talking; i.e. “dopamine, which all animals since the urbilaterian have relied on to feel okay.”²⁶ As Sapolsky implies with his reference to solving a math problem the mesolimbic/mesocortical dopaminergic system²⁷ undergirds insight.  And the phenomena of vorlaufende Entschlossenheit, moksa, bodhi, satori, basirah, the apophany of psychosis²⁸ and the peace that passeth understanding are nothing if not relief-granting Grundeinsichten into ‘that which is.’²⁹

 

But unless the particular case is a saint, “Dasein is always and already maybe again in irresoluteness.”³⁰ Although “dopamine pulses are as essential to human health as vitamins” nevertheless “satisfaction cannot be stored but must be continually renewed;”

 

“the pulses of satisfaction that move us from one activity to the next and sustain mood cannot be stored.  To serve diverse behaviors and learning, the pulse of dopamine that delivers a pulse of satisfaction must necessarily be brief.  Consequently, dopamine is promptly removed from the synaptic spaces by transporter proteins so as to prepare neurons to sense the next reward.  No matter how wonderful a meal or a sexual encounter, the glow soon fades—by design.  . . .  we are never more than minutes or hours from dissatisfaction.”³¹

 

The two scientists offer their version of pastoral – in days of yore a spare and simple life of lacks and their liquidation: “Once, we had lives that, amid considerable privation, also offered numerous subtle, hard-won pleasures.”³² “From our species’ origin we lived by hunting and gathering.  During the course of a day, these activities provided diverse small rewards and thus frequent pulses of satisfaction,” “the life-sustaining fountain of small rewards.” ³³

 

Now, by contrast, “we have drugs that cause spasms of pleasure and dopamine release a thousandfold higher than anything stimulated in our old drug-free world.”  Here ‘drug’ is Sapolsky's metonomy for every modality of TechsiCola we have at hand, from day-trading to jet-skis. “An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong [i.e., technologically boosted] explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation.  . . . our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get.”³⁴

 

So how did this synthetic Unwelt come about?  Is it, as Sterling contends, “the predictable consequence of pushing various highly optimized systems beyond the limits of their designs”?³⁵ Provisionally accepting that contention we want to know who, or what, is the pusher.  And immediately we jump to the conclusion: the dopaminergic-insight-system driving technological change.  (Or were we pushed?)

 

The role of insight in problem-solving and task-accomplishment has been noted at least since Aristotle. “The ἀγχίνοια,” he says, “is a good shot at the middle term in the blink of an eye.”³⁶ C. S. Peirce was the first, t.m.k., to insist on the centrality of insight to scientific advance;³⁷ and T. S. Kuhn to insist on its centrality to scientific revolution.³⁸ Schumpeter pointed out its centrality to “the fundamental phenomenon of economic development.”³⁹ K ö hler described captive chimpanzees as solving task-problems by insight.⁴⁰ Hadamard wrote a brief treatment confined to one field;⁴¹ Lonergan wrote a long, universalizing treatise;⁴² and it is Lonergan who makes vivid the key fact – en passant in a work on method – that in human being “insights are a dime a dozen;” viz.:

 

“But, as the many elementary objects are constructed into larger wholes, as the many operations are conjoined in a single compound knowing, so too the many levels of consciousness are just successive stages in the unfolding of a single thrust, the eros of the human spirit .  To know the good, it must know the real; to know the real, it must know the true; to know the true, it must know the intelligible; to know the intelligible, it must attend to the data.⁴³ So from slumber, we awake to attend.  Observing lets intelligence be puzzled, and we inquire.  Inquiry leads to the delight of insight, but insights are a dime a dozen , so critical reasonableness doubts, checks, makes sure.”⁴⁴

 

The eros of the human spirit – desire, lack – has its lowly origin in the urbilaterian, as does ‘delight,’ satisfaction, lack liquidated.  First desire was merely for the chemophysical sine qua non and only much later exaptatively, redirectedly, arose desire of ‘the intelligible,’ the sense-makeable-of through insight, innovative taking-as.⁴⁵

 

Else why when puzzled do we inquire?   “Dopamine,” Sapolsky writes, “is not just about reward anticipation; it fuels the goal-directed behavior needed to gain that reward; dopamine ‘binds’ the value of a reward to the resulting work.  . . . In other words, dopamine is not about the happiness of reward.  It's about the happiness of pursuit of reward that has a decent chance of occurring.”⁴⁶ This point is acutely relevant for the process of learning: “learning in the right context,” Sterling writes, “is intrinsically rewarding.  Neural circuits recognize when learning has occurred and trigger the reward circuit to deliver a pulse of dopamine that simultaneously provides satisfaction and boosts both learning and long-term memory.  In other words, the learning mechanism fuels itself via intrinsic reward signals.”⁴⁷ Hence the more we learn the needier we get.⁴⁸

 

Insights are kicks.  The fertile, productive ones come when we are working at a problem, a puzzle, an obstacle. Polya asks,

 

“What is progress toward the solution?  Advancing mobilization and organization of our knowledge, evolution of our conception of the problem, increasing prevision of the steps which will constitute the final argument.  We may advance steadily, by small imperceptible steps, but now and then we advance abruptly, by leaps and bounds.  A sudden advance toward the solution is called a BRIGHT IDEA, a good idea, a happy thought, a brain-wave (in German there is a more technical term, Einfall).  What is a bright idea?  An abrupt and momentous change of our outlook, a sudden reorganization of our mode of conceiving a problem, a just emerging confident prevision of the steps we have to take in order to attain the solution.”⁴⁹

 

Clear enough then why selection would favor any system that generates bright ideas a dime a dozen:  “Many a guess has turned out to be wrong but nevertheless useful in leading to a better one.  No idea is really bad, unless we are uncritical.  What is really bad is to have no idea at all.”⁵⁰ To be clueless is to lack any way forward, to be utterly aporos; having an insight liquidates that lack by showing some path; the capacity for insight is pathbreaking, porimos.⁵¹

 

Sterling notes “Evolution's core tendency to increase embodied information.”⁵² The human mode of increasing embodied information – as distinct from passing it around – is, in Heideggerese, das Entbergen, ‘laying bare.’  Now “What has the essence of technology to do with revealing [Entbergen]? . . . Everything.  For every bringing-forth [Her-vor-bringen] is grounded in revealing. . . . Technology is therefore no mere means.  Technology is a way of revealing.  . . . what is decisive in techn ē does not lie at all in making and manipulating nor in the using of means, but rather in the aforementioned revealing.  It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techn ē is a bringing-forth.”⁵³ But what about it makes techn ē a bringing-forth as revealing? Insight is decisive in technē; insight is the essence of technology and down in the engine-room is the impulse drive, the dopaminergic reward circuit.

 

If we take technology as a mode of revealing then, Heidegger claims, “another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us.  It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth [der Bereich der Entbergung, d.h. der Wahr-heit].”  For “Techn ē is a mode of al ē thuein .  It reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie before us, whatever can look and turn out now one way and now another.”⁵⁴ The essence of technology is one kind of insight, yet still again Heidegger hunts the whale Grundeinsicht:

 

“Insight into that which is [ Einblick in das was ist ]—this title now names the event of the turn in beyng [Seyn] . . . At first and almost to the very end it appeared as though ‘insight into that which is’ signified only a glance that we humans cast forth from ourselves to that which is.  ‘That which is’ one customarily takes as a particular being, for indeed the ‘is’ is said of beings.  But now everything has turned.  Insight does not name our inspection of the being [ Einblick nennt nicht unsere Einsicht, die wir in das Seiende nehmen ⁵⁵], insight as flashing entry is the appropriative event of the constellation of the turn in the essence of beyng itself in the epoch of positionality.  . . . Everything merely technological never reaches into the essence of technology.  . . . Rather, the constellation of beyng should speak to us.”⁵⁶

 

The ‘turn’ is away from “inspection of the being” as Heidegger had described that phenomenon in 1925:

 

“Language, speaking, and thinking: they coincide as the human way of being [die Seinsart des Menschen].  They are the way we reveal [offenbar macht] and illumine (both for ourselves and for others) the world and our own human existence, so that in this luminosity we gain sight: human insight into ourselves [ Einsicht in sich selbst ] and an outlook on [Aussicht auf], and a practical insight into [Umsicht ü ber ], the world.  . . . The fact that existence has and understands and strives for [angestrebt] this basic form of revealing [ diese Grundart des Offenbarmachens ] implies that, for the most part, much of the world stands in need of [bedarf] ‘revelation’ [Offenbarung], of being un-covered and made known.  . . . So beings can be drawn out of their not-un-covered-ness [Unentdecktheit], their hiddenness [Verborgenheit].  They can be un-covered or un-hidden.  This uncoveredness or unhiddenness of beings is what we call truth [Wahrheit].  . . . Truth is the un-covering of beings [Wahrheit ist Entdeckung des Seienden].”⁵⁷

 

Yet our practical way-finding, problem-solving, uncovering of beings does not lay bare das Entbergen itself. So “The issue is no longer to be ‘about’ something, to present something objective, but to be appropriated over to the appropriating event.”⁵⁸ Technological thinking does not because it need not ask “the real question” which, Heidegger says, is ‘What is it that calls on us to think?’  ‘The turn’ means to direct ourselves away from scratching up and putting together yet more beings and to ask

 

“What makes a call upon us that we should think and, by thinking, be who we are?  That which calls on us to think in this way presumably can do so insofar as the calling itself, on its own, needs thought [als das Rufende selber und von sicht aus das Denken braucht].  What calls us to think, and thus commands, that is, brings our essential nature into the keeping of thought, needs thinking [braucht das Denken] because what calls to us wants itself to be thought about according to its nature [ seinem Wesen nach selbst bedacht sein m ö chte ]. What calls on us to think, demands for itself [ verlangt von sich ] that it be tended, cared for, husbanded in its own essential nature, by thought [in seinem eigenen Wesen bedient, gepflegt, beh ü tet sei ].”⁵⁹

 

The calling calls because it needs thinking. It lacks.  It wants ‘more,’ another iteration of self-articulating self-understanding⁶⁰ seeking “the unique and therefore single goal of our history . . . seeking itself, the seeking after beyng.”⁶¹

 

The half-billion year career of the dopaminergic reward circuit from safety device to ‘the calling’ – vom Wurme zum Menschen⁶² – thus illustrates the fundamental aspect of historical change which so deeply stirred Nietzsche.  As Darwin puts it,

 

“When this or that part [‘physiologcal organ (or legal institution, social custom, political usage, art form or religious rite)’⁶³] has been spoken of as adapted for some special purpose, it must not be supposed that it was originally always formed for this sole purpose.  The regular course of events seems to be, that a part which originally served for one purpose, becomes adapted by slow changes for widely different purposes.”⁶⁴

 

 

DCW  9/03/2020