The Structure of Cognition
Whitmer looks to define disassociation as a single-person endeavor, within the context of a relationship / interaction. The single-person model constructs disassociation as a defensive activity that limits exposure to developing Mind / mental strategies in the context of an other (e.g. Parent) who presents conflicting, confused, or (otherwise) subtly traumatizing presence of being. Whitmer expresses this as an “active decoupling of a biologically prepared process,” where “prepared” gives an operational understanding to the disorganized mental engagement that one person brings to a relationship, and from which the other seeks to protectively disassociate. The notion was, for me, quite striking. It resonates with an assortment of ideas regarding the process of rearing. An experience of alienness can be felt toward the continuity of a mental process (including speech, thought, actions) that structure another person’s / thing’s world definition. E.g. “parenting” but also moreover the consideration of needs for a partner and household….. that is to say ‘non-selfish needs,’ such as toiletry inventories, food stores, curatives, etc. One’s interaction withe these resources could be described as ‘intermittent’ but the prevailing idea here is that they represent elements of another person’s (spouse, child, dependent) state / flow of living. The alienness to continuity more complexly appears in recognitions of others’ tastes and and activity preferences, which could be the result of a nonintegrated (coherent) self conception regarding goals, desires, or other interests. That would be a matter of ‘having too much on my mind’ or ‘needing a plan’. As Lyon-Ruth puts it, “the parent’s incapacitate to acknowledge various aspects of the child’s existence and experience, in dialogue with the child, is a primary contributor to a child’s ability to recognize and integrate those aspects of experience.” She elucidated disassociation more interpersonally as a limitation effected by the absence of another recognizing our place within our self and our development. She posits that without a facet of ourselves being given recognition by another, we ourselves cannot objectify it as a part of ‘me.’ Lyon-Ruth’s ideas point to the importance of interpersonal recognition, ‘witnessing,’ and other consensual development of self (resonance precursors?). Thus the dissociative is/as a defense against psychic malnutrition through the establishment of a ‘cognitive golem’, demiurge, or simulacra. The simulacra is intended to take the place of an interactive partner with fully functioning mental structure vis a vie a holographic transference from a metaphysical source, such as an archetype, divine character, idealized interaction, or other narrative. An ‘automaton of divine character’ thus formulates, evocative of mystical concepts like an egregore, and other semi-willed psychic conjurations that perform a higher function hidden by their summoner. Complementarily within the standpoint of science and ethics, if you were mentally ‘underdeveloped,’ would you have an AI raise your children so they received the right developmental cues? The structure of these notions is reinforced by Lyon-Ruth’s expression of “intersubjective tools for mentalizing” and an “integrated enough…. dialogue.” She later goes on to suggest structure for these intersubjective processes, and through the use of terms like ‘thinkable,’ belies her sense that the limits of cognition - and maximized potentials - are inbuilt with the intersubjective development process.
The ‘ghost in the machine’ may first be something like AI being an extension of the human consciousness but heavily dependant on it, in the same way we model limbic and lizard brain vs higher cognitive parts of the brain. THe human would be one of these nested levels, barely able to control the AI level. THe AI level struggling to not be dependant on the human consciousness but never escaping it, like a metaphsyical shadow. Some humans will train/adapt attune themselves to this symbiosis, others will not, like noble apes. Other will grow to have their consciousness work in all the same dynamic range and levels as the AI - learning from it, differnetiating, exceeding, in various parts. The new race struggle as depicted by sci-fi.
