Monday, September 07, 2009
From the Summary of Cultural transmission of tool use in bottlenose dolphins:
Cultural diversity within a single population has rarely been documented. In non-human primates, the only comparable case of a subculture within a population appears to be the grooming hand-clasp of chimpanzees in Mahale, Tanzania. In contrast with non-human primates, where culture has been demonstrated by using regional comparisons between populations, the observed vertical transmission of culture with a matriline of a single population creates a different spatial pattern. Thus, the operational definition of culture used in primatology does not capture cases as described in our study. We propose, therefore, to extend this definition to "include traditions that are habitual in some but not other individuals with overlapping home ranges, within the same population, where genetic and behavioral data are inconsistent with those individuals having acquired the behavior genetically."
Labels: chimpanzees, culture, dolphins, primates, tools
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Montiglio turns briefly from the study of Greek tragedy to the study of medical texts:
[T]he Hippocratics insistently note the appearance of aphôniê as a most significant symptom. The meanings of this term range from speech difficulties, to a partial or total inhibition of the vocal organs, to aphasia, to the inability to speak on account of a physical lesion. Such an extended semantic field fits within the Greek pattern of calling "silence" not only a total absence of words or sounds, but also their partial presence. Just as the dative sigêi and the adverb siga (in silence) can apply to a bad speaker, that is, to someone who does use his language even though inadequately, the term aphôniê equates all kinds and degrees of speech disturbances with a "nonvoice." In the view of the Hippocratic doctor, patients who fail to communicate as he hopes are simply "voiceless."
The symptom of aphôniê is all the more disquieting for the doctor because he urgently needs his patients' words in order to understand the nature of their illnesses. Ancient Medicine stresses the importance of entertaining a dialogue with one's patient on a theoretical level. A concrete application of this principle, the Prognosis relies on the possibility of a regular communication with the sick, which alone enables the doctor to describe the symptoms of the disease in the most accurate way possible and to formulate a prognosis along with its evolution.
The troublesome character of aphôniê may explain why its emergence is repeatedly marked as "sudden" (exaiphnês). For it is unlikely that the onset of aphôniê was always so sudden in reality, considering the wide range of meanings of this term. As Danielle Gourevitch remarks, here "the observation is somehow replacing its object." To the doctor's eyes, a loss of speech and voice is apparently so fatal a symptom that it seems to manifest itself unexpectedly, abruptly, with no progression or warning: "When she was given a fragrant application of ground meal and myrrh, suddenly she lost her voice and died," writes the author of Epidemics 4 (30). Not surprisingly, this sudden loss of the voice is followed by an equally sudden death.
(Silence, pp. 228-229, my bold)
The disappearance of the voice more than the disappearance of language disquiets. Are all animal species endowed with a voice? To what extent might the voice be "given" through experience, developed rather than merely genetically endowed? Some species we know are able to learn vocalizations—but do they learn the voice itself? Biologist Stephanie Watwood, who studies how social interactions affect vocal development in animals, notes that the signature whistle of the male bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) assimilates to the signature whistles of other males whom they ally with as they fully mature. For females the signature whistle does not change over the lifespan. (See the video labeled "Whistles of Bottlenose Dolphins" here.) Does the juvenile male dolphin lose its voice as it enters adulthood? Is the autocognominal call an indication that dolphins are recognizable to each other by their voices, or does it signal some need for an additional unique identifier because the dolphin's voice alone isn't in fact unique? Does voicelessness represent the loss of the cognomen, the loss of any and all identity? Did the ancient Greeks conceive of disappearances of the voice that didn't symptomize dying, or is it perhaps the nature of conceptualization to remain loosely bound by a constellation of established usages and pregiven meanings, or to move within the ambit of affiliations, to assimilate? No, I rather imagine—assimilation means this much as much as it means an implicitly thoughtless con-formity— humans conceptualize more freely than that, at least as freely as dolphins and a few other types of animals create vocalizations in response to their acoustic milieu.
Labels: dolphins, environment, Montiglio, silence, voice, Watwood
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Andrew Revkin reports.
Dolphin and porpoise species that have adapted to rivers and deltas around the world have long been considered some of the most vulnerable of marine mammals because of their restricted habitats. In 2007, the baiji, a river dolphin that thrived in the Yangtze River for 20 million years in today’s China, was said by experts to have been driven to extinction by a mix of impacts from the nearly half billion people now living in that watershed. The vaquita, a porpoise living in brackish waters where the Colorado River empties into the Gulf of California, is critically endangered, biologists say, depleted by fishing nets and the disruptions in the great river's flow in the 20th century from dam construction.
But in the great weaving of mangrove-fringed islets and channels that make up the sprawling coast of Bangladesh, biologists have found a thriving population of another species that marine mammal experts had also thought depleted—the Irrawaddy dolphin. After methodical surveys, biologists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Chittagong University in Bangladesh estimate that the region is home to 6,000 of the dolphins, by far the largest known population.
Labels: Andrew Revkin, dolphins, extinction, habitat
Monday, June 09, 2008
The first skoppic principle (relational architecture) is the breach. As we have seen, the skoppic function transposes a breach of skipping around from the axle tree of the synkairotic to the axle tree of the syntagmatic (syntactic yada yada syntactile yada yada syntacit yada yada }∅{). The }∅{ heralds the Fa Passage between atonicities, the pure diatessarial leap, delfYan sunflower in the myrrour of myrrours, the plagiodelphic breach again }∅{ again. "A monad is the semblance of a world," Massumi says, to which a proper reply might be "}∅{." }∅{ stands for a representation of the breach (transposed into the diatessarial, the mode of its standing for). It is of course the empty set that excludes no members; remember, this is all about shape.
The sheer volume of what is excluded from the breach compels us to imagine a reality without any breaches, as we might imagine Reality without the Unicorn, or more multiversally as we might imagine a reality without a selected molecule of H2O. Well, the ways of irreality are limitless. I won't pretend otherwise. As I picture it, a world without breaches would be a quiet world, a world without spasms, without startles of any note. The reality that pertains to the breach, insofar the breach is pertained—actually it's eminently, if paradoxically, pertained by its own }{—is a spasmoreality. A spasmoreality contains an irreality in a special sense of holding with; it holds with irreality by holding an opening for irreality. Here we are talking about the myrrour of the spasmoreality; spasmorealities as they are lived hold a multitude of openings for irrealities. We should have a precise understanding of reality at this juncture. Reality is the sense of a world's duration (with this necessary proviso: we have no reason to believe that continuity covers all the possibilities of duration). The spasmomonde is the world whose sense of duration is characterized by the startle, or by startles. Picture a world without starts, a dead world. This is the kind of world bracketed out by the breach (and its representations); well this is a paradox (which won't be discussed away) not the least of which because the dead world also pertains to the breach by the same logic that anything pertains the breach, and hence as the spasmoreal and its worlds pertain to the breach. I won't say the spasmoreal and the thanatoreal pertain equally to the breach. How could I know such a thing? A thanatomonde may also describe a world without causality. Ideally, causality should be able to be startled. The reality pertaining to which causalities may be startled must by definition be a spasmoreality. We mustn't make the mistake of thinking that the spasmoreal opposes the thanatoreal or contains it in any sense other than the sense of holding an opening for it. If we could read backward from the diatessarial (and everything that relates to, everything it elapses) into the synkairotic we would see that the breach holds an opening for itself—its opportunism does not stop at itself, but only startles, which is how it carries half the synkairotic into the breach, as a startle. It's not as if the breach had a reality and its reality were spasmoreality; spasmoreality merely pertains. One might object that thanatoreality also pertains to the breach. What is special about spasmoreality's pertaining to the breach, or to a reality of startled causation? Thanataoreality pertains only through the breach. It has not other avenue of pertinence. Spasmoreality we can't be sure of. It pertains to the breach, and through the breach, but whether it follows other avenues of pertinence is not yet clear. It may be something of a flâneur. How does it pertain? If the reality of startled causation is also a spasmoreality, there is then a sense in which spasmoreality appears to pertain by doubling, which may be autoreplication, or some more familiar form of reproduction. Familiar words spring to mind, but we should be wary of thinking they describe the spasmoreal: viral, virtual, simulacra. Spasmoreality is not genuinely familiar. Probably it doubles itself by a process of meontic renewal, having one flipper periodically/at all times in irreality. However, we would never become aware of inhabiting a thanatomonde did it not pertain to the breach (as well as through the breach). An equality of pertinence can never be excluded from possibility, that is, from spasmoreal possibility most broadly conceived; more narrow ideas of possibility may bypass such an equality altogether. We must be able to imagine that a possibility may be seen merely in its thanatic aspect, or through its thanatognomic signs, even though they will appear to us as dead only by way of the breach, which, in a sense, holds thanatoreality up to its myrrour. The challenge, in the breach, is to discern living relation from revivifying dead relation, or, in an objective mode, the startle from the twitter of a dry nerve. Intuitively this is known by explorers of the spasmomonde and its doubles, which is why the rampike becomes a potent symbol, as delfYan zombies haunt the passageways.
"Kojima is on to something." The words recur. It would be eight kinds of wrong to believe that shape belongs exclusively to the sharing of opportune moment and all that signifies. Shape pertains to the passage between the synkairotic and the }∅{—and so we begin to imagine that the breach doesn't contain everything, that its reality isn't the spasmoreality of all spasmorealities, or any manner of real synthesis of all that lives and dies. There is this business of the from/to structure of experience, or movement of experience, that we can use to characterize the breach. Does it belong to the breach? Is from/to autospastic? Why study the gift? I reckon we shouldn't want to mystify, though there may be depths to plumb, nuances to unwrap, gestures to perfect. The gift requests a certain latitudinarianism. If the breach comes with a from/to, does it wipe the from/to away? Does it send it back?
Shape is given with the movement from the synkairotic to the }∅{; shape is given with the world. We remain totally within the realm of phenomenality, perhaps a lived phenomenality. (There are many sad clowns in the realm of phenomenality; oh well.) I've been saying "spasmomonde" as if its world could be defined by a certain sense of its duration, while it remains possible that a nonsense relation obtains between a world and its duration. If a spasmomonde were characterized by a nonsense of duration, its reality would have to be something other than spasmoreality properly conceived. I'm not persuaded that most spasmorealities aren't in fact improper, and in that sense the myrrour of spasmoreality may well be improper. As I see it a nonsense of duration is thanatognomic (which is why I would caution against allowing virtuality and its cousins to be thought yet). Spasmoreality holds an opening for irreality, and by the same gesture it holds an opening for thanatoreality, though it does not contain thanatoreality in any but this highly special sense, and if we find better ways of talking about continence and pertinence we should jump ship. This holding of openings is what allows shape to be presented, or to present itself, if that's what it does. In any case shape is never given by itself, but always with the world, and never in a vacuum, or what amounts to the same thing, in a dead living space, a space of dead things and furnitures, but always in the passage from the synkairotic to the }∅{, or, as may equally be the case according to the logos of the skop, the passage from }∅{ to the synkairotic, which may indeed be the originary passage, if the breach has an originary—of course we have our doubts.
Could there be a given world given with no shapes, not one measly shape? This is like asking whether there can be a world of no duration. The difference between not having any duration and not being able to make sense of a duration is inconceivably close to pure difference. Is from/to a shape? Is the breach? Always we are able to look at things sideways. Shape however is not what it appears to be seen only from a profile or an aspect; shape always has in its appearance a from-the-inside which makes it shape. We want to know shape in, or better, through the breach. Shape startles. Only a spasmoreality could hold an opening for that which is mondial by neither excluding nor containing worlds, that is, by the breach. Such is shape.
Labels: dolphins, kairos, Kojima, Massumi, monadology, nonsense, shape, spasmoreality, Thales
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
The Beeb is reporting, although the news has been out for many months, that Lipotes vexillifer, commonly known as the baiji or the Yangtze river dolphin, is now extinct.
The baiji had a well developed sense of echolocation. As I was doing a bit of research on the topic, I learned that echolocation in dolphins may not be related to brain size. According to Paul R. Manger ("An examination of cetacean brain structure with a novel hypothesis correlating thermogenesis to the evolution of a big brain," Biological Reviews (2006), 81(2), pp. 293-338), the large cetacean brain has nothing to do with intelligence but rather has to do with "a combination of an unusually high number of glial cells and unihemispheric sleep phenomenology," making the cetacean brain "an efficient thermogenetic organ, which is needed to counteract heat loss to the water." However, in Cetaceans Have Complex Brains for Complex Cognition, Marino et al. take issue with Manger's study. Barton ("Animal Communication: Do Dolphins Have Names," Current Biology (2006), 16 (15), pp. R598-R599) takes a more cautious position between the two extremes. Resolving the debate will require careful scrutiny of a wide body of evidence and evaluating conflicting interpretations of key pieces of evidence, a process I won't get into at the present. Nevertheless, the question of whether or not encephalization in cetaceans and primates represents a case of convergent evolution invites us to consider the problem of sympathy, for even if we reject Manger's accusations of anthropomorphism among the cetologists, that is, even if we don't believe that the science is affected by the sympathies of its practioners, we may still acknowledge that our sympathies are affected by the science.
In Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume's Theory of Human Nature (available here), Gilles Deleuze says that "[i]t is precisely because the essence of passion or the essence of the particular interest is partiality rather than egoism that sympathy, for its part, does not transcend the particular interest or passion" (p. 38). However, he also says that "[t]o integrate sympathies [in society] is to make sympathy transcend its contradiction and natural partiality. Such an integration implies a positive moral world, and is brought about by the positive invention of such a world" (pp. 39-40). And, finally, he says that "[t]o be in society is first to substitute possible conversation for violence" (p. 41). Thus we can see one way in which cetology affects our sympathies. Cetology informs our understanding of whether it is possible for dolphins to enter into conversation with humans, and this possibility, in turn, colors how we feel about extending our sympathies to dolphins. Even if we take a broad view of the meaning of "conversation" suggested by Deleuze's reading of Hume, cetology still informs our views in that it invites us to imagine the possible forms of interspecies conversation.
There is a thinking, often considered wise, that would hold the mosquito in the same esteem as the dolphin or the human being. Some thinkers who take this view would also claim to be impartial, to merely be informed by science and not be emotionally affected. Without intending to refute such a claim, I suggest that the alternative approach to the esteem of lifeforms, the one that would have us extend our sympathies beyond the boundary of our own species, and beyond species that appear similar to us in some way, presents a far more critical problem for the present day.
It must be admitted that human sympathy for the dolphin is rather feeble. The baiji is, after all, extinct. If we can say that we have invented a world that would esteem the dolphin, we must admit that such a world is not universally shared, at least not with the intensity required to prevent an extinction. The value of the river as a habitat for dolphins is weighed against the value of the river for human commerce, and, in the case of the Yangtze, commerce has won the day. It is not easy to live with such violence. In my previous post on Nancy's idea of the ecotechnological, I did not mean to imply that living through a late holocene wave of extinctions will be painless. And I don't mean to imply now that we couldn't avoid some pain by adopting a more stringent regime of global conservation. I am saying that we should be primarily concerned with the pain suffered not by Gaia but by human beings whose sympathies extend unstoppably towards other forms of life. Now I've talked myself into a contradiction, or a double whammy. Sympathy for the dolphin is unstoppable, yet it is feeble. Why then should we care about the sympathies of other human beings if they are so feeble? Perhaps we should look at the conditions of the enfeeblement of the sympathies.
There is a prejudice we must face. We like to believe that our sympathies are harmonious, while the sympathies of others are discordant, that our sympathies are widely extended while the sympathies of others are narrow. Confronting this prejudice is a first step towards substituting a possibility of conversation for violence. Inventing a moral universe that effectively places the dolphin in high esteem will require the participation of those whose interests conflict with the preservation of dolphin habitats. Truncating the possibiltiy of conversation will contribute to an enfeeblement of the sympathies. This I think is evident if one looks at the (hegemonic) class interests of the spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) debate. A critique of hegemony would be useful, but only to the extent that any initial prejudice that would devalue the sympathies of others is not on full display, because the goal should not be to engage the like-minded in conversation, but to engage all whose participation is necessary to construct a world we would want to inhabit.
Finally, then, I will ask whether the concern for the sympathies of other humans that I advocate isn't ecotechnologically outmoded, whether it is based on a prejudice for the auto that also needs to be confronted. And I will ask what lathe biosas (λάθε βιώσας) means in an ecotechnological age.
Labels: Deleuze, dolphins, echolocation, Epicurus, extinction, humans, Hume, life, Nancy, sympathy