In the “Twining Vines” (Katto) fascicle of his Shobo Genzo, Dogen retells the story of how Bodhidharma (image), on his deathbed, queried his four disciples as to their understanding. The first three gave verbal answers, to which Bodhidharma replied that they had attained his skin, flesh, and bones, respectively. Eka (Huike), in contrast, simply prostrated himself three times (awkwardly, one imagines, since he was missing an arm) and returned to his place. Commenting “You have got my marrow”, Bodhidharma then annointed him his successor.

Dogen’s point here is that Eka was not being “rewarded” for giving the “right” or “best” answer.

According to the Nishijima/Cross translation, where the name of the chapter is infelicitously rendered as “The Complicated”:

Now, learn in practice, the First Patriarch’s words “You have got my skin, flesh, bones and marrow” are the Patriarch’s words. The four disciples each possess what they have got and what they have heard. Both what they have heard and what they have got are skin, flesh, bones, and marrow which spring out of body and mind, and skin, flesh, bones, and marrow which drop away body and mind. We cannot see and hear the ancestral Master only by means of knowledge and understanding, which are but one move in a go game—not one-hundred-percent realization of subject-and-object, that-and-this.

Leaving aside the stiltedness of the translation, was Dogen really referring to the game of go here? (See another post regarding Dogen and go.) It seems unlikely. The Japanese in question is itchaku-shi (一著å­?). According to John Fairbairn, an expert in archaic Chinese and Japanese, it could “mean one piece, one seed, one son, etc.—or just a pawn = something nugatory”. In other words, a single element, or perhaps “scrap”, which is what I will use below.

The go image is admittedly attractive—comparing our cerebral understanding to one move out of the hundreds that constitute a go game, presumably representing the vast range of types of perception and realization. Unfortunately, it seems that Nishijima/Cross simply invented this.

I would translate this section as follows:

Make no mistake, Bodhidharma meant just what he said: “You have attained my skin/flesh/bones/marrow”. Indeed, everything the four disciples queried by Bodhidharma had either experienced or learned was precisely the skin, flesh, bones and marrow from which body and mind spring forth and drop away. They could not have entered the presence of the venerable master with mere scraps of opinions and logic, for then the question of doing vs. being could not have been adequately illuminated.

Continuing (my translation):

Some may think that some of the four disciples were closer to the truth in their understandings and that Bodhidharma, implying there were degrees of profundity in skin/flesh/bones/marrow or that skin and flesh is more distant from the truth than bones and marrow, recognized Eka’s attainment of the marrow because his understanding was superior. Sadly, however, such people, having yet to learn the ancestors’ way of study, miss Bodhidharma’s true message.

Stephen Wolfram (Wikipedia article) is the child prodigy who went on to invent Mathematica, the ubiquitous software package for mathematical analysis. It’s now been three years since the publication of his A New Kind of Science (Wikipedia article) to much fanfare. The book’s main thesis is that complexity can emerge from extremely simple models, of the type that can be embodied in computer programs. He claims

My purpose in this book is to initiate a transformation in science…making it possible to make progress on a remarkable range of fundamental issues that have never successfully been addressed by any of the existing sciences before.

The book is nearly 1200 pages of dense mathematics, diagrams, and discussion. The notes alone are over 300 pages, and the book is not cheap, so I’m not recommending people read it, but it is nonetheless thought-provoking, regardless of whether you accept his grandiose claims, which many people do not. For one thing, it’s never clear whether he’s claiming that his models might generate behavior which resembles the real world, or that they are the models governing the real world.

At one level, this book is a work of philosophy. So how does Wolfram approach the hoary old philosophical problem of free will? For him, free will is related to “computational irreducibility”, one of his key concepts, which basically means that there are some types of computation which don’t allow shortcuts. Such phenomena permit no predictions about what is going to happen until it actually does. There is no future until the universe has finished computing it.

Wolfram says, “I believe that it is this kind of intrinsic process [complex, unpredictable behavior generated by simple rules] that is primarily responsible for the apparent freedom in the operation of our brains.” A novel definition of “freedom”: “free of obvious laws”, “freedom from predictability”.

In a word, Wolfram believes that free will vs. determinism is a false dichotomy. The world proceeds deterministically, but appears to be (is?) imbued with “freedom” due to its unpredictability.

(Students of language may find it interesting that for this book Wolfram invented a distinct new style of writing which he claims is specifically suited to its material. That style involves starting a large percentage of his sentences with conjunctions: “And” (to show a connected thought), “But” (to show a contrasting thought), or “For” (to show background or reason). He notes that this helps break up extremely long sentences. After a few hundred pages, however, this style becomes extremely irritating.)

Is God an accident? That’s the title of an article by Paul Bloom, a Yale psychology professor, in the December issue of Atlantic Monthly.

Coming from cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary biology, Bloom points out the “built-in” systems often called “folk physics” and “folk sociology”, which he describes as “two different computers in the brain”. The sociology half of this hard-wired dualism, if you will, permits us to conceive of abstract human-like entities independent of a specific incarnation. The same social engine, one of whose jobs is to infer agency and intent, indiscriminately finds such agency and intent even where it does not exist in reality. Voilà: God and disembodied souls.

I haven’t read anything else by Bloom (he is the author of Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human). His theory seems compelling as far as it goes, but…

Calling religion or God an “accident” certainly is catchy and looks good on the magazine’s cover. But is it really accurate? In fact, Bloom never uses the term accident again anywhere in the article. A feathery appendage a bird develops to protect itself from the cold turning out to be useful in flying—that’s an accident. That’s different from what’s happening here. The systems are functioning exactly as designed. The anthropomorphization module is doing exactly what it’s supposed to. All detectors yield false positives by their very nature. But they have mechanisms are in place to recover from those false positives. If we see a leaf moving, infer the presence of a predator, we freeze, then look again and finally realize it’s just the wind, and return to normal. The real question is: why does religious anthropomorphization bypass any similar corrective mechanism?

Second, from an evolutionary standpoint, we know there are spandrels, but one which decreases fitness will be selected away. If belief in God is such a spandrel (accident) and is a negative or waste of energy for the species, it should have been deselected, but it wasn’t. Why? Or are there evolutionary advantages to supernatural belief? If so, the story isn’t complete without identifying them.

A subset of this problem—probably impossible to ever answer—is why the dualistic body/mind model was selected for humans. Could there be fitness-decreasing aspects to an integrated body/mind model? If not, why wasn’t it selected? Or is evolution simply taking its time getting us there?

Finally, where do meditation or other spiritual practices—which, like Boyer (previous post) and Atran (previous post ), Bloom completely ignores—fit into this picture? Presumably, in terms of his folk physics vs. folk sociology dichotomy, practice has the effect of unifying the two engines. To borrow Dogen’s words: “cast off the gap between body and mind.” This raises the intriguing question of what kind of neurological implementation of the dual model might be amenable to such unification.

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New Scientist reports on statistical machine translation and the commercialization being done by Language Weaver.

What can hypnosis teach us about how people’s pre-formed views influence their interpretation of the world?

In This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis , the New York Times reported on research carried out by Columbia’s Dr. Amir Raz which found that subjects, instructed under hypnosis to ignore the lexical content of colored color words shown to them (the word “red” written in green letters), bypassed the normal conflict between the lexical content (the letters) and their color—the so-called “Stroop effect” (Wikipedia) which causes people to answer slowly when asked the letters’ colors. The abstract is available on PNAS. (An aside: although the researcher emphasizes “conflict reduction”, to me it would seem that the hypnotic suggestion eliminated the entire lexical input mechanism, preventing any conflict from occurring in the first place.)

I have not read the original article. However, the NYT reporting raises some questions. It points out that there are 10 times as many nerve fibers carrying information down as there are carrying it up, concluding that “consciousness” is “top down”:

What you see is not always what you get, because what you see depends on a framework built by experience that stands ready to interpret the raw information – as a flower or a hammer or a face.

But this is wrong. The framework does not “stand ready to interpret the raw information”—it drives the way the raw information is collected. Anyway, I think we already knew that.

The real problems start with its (or the researchers?) claim that the research sheds light both on the mechanism of hypnosis and simultaneously on the process of cognition. It’s like claiming that if I find that I do A and B results, I’ve learned about both A and B. Well I have, but only that A results in B and B results from A.

What would be truly interesting would be to understand the general processes—of which hypnosis is merely a minor one—by which the top-down constructs are built in our brain. Then we might start seeing how people suggest to themselves that God exists.

My favorite part of the article is this quote by Dr. Stephen M. Kosslyn, a neuroscientist at Harvard:

People think that sights, sounds and touch from the outside world constitute reality. But the brain constructs what it perceives based on past experience.

Wow, our nation’s newspaper of record is now reporting on neuroscientists’ theories of reality.

If neurotheology’s basic premise holds water, then a healthy brain is essential to a healthy spirit. And what better food to feed the brain than sushi, that quintessential Japanese classic, marrying the fruits of the sea and the rice paddy? Besides, it tastes good.

It helps that West Hollywood, our home, may have the highest concentration of sushi restaurants anywhere in the world—many within walking distance for us.

The sushi-ya closest to us, a mere three-minute walk, right across from the towering Pacific Design Center, is Nishimura, which I reported on here five years ago. This is the best sushi restaurant on the West Coast, or possibly in the US. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any recommendations for what’s best here, since Nishimura-san will decide that for you on any given day, piecing together ultra-creative, mouth-watering dishes from the supremely fresh neta he flies in from Japan. The problem is that a once-a-week meal here would consume a huge portion of my disposable income.

Down La Cienega we find Yabu (website), where it’s hard to go wrong with their competent sushi, good jizake collection, reasonable ambience, and dishes such as the Osaka-style pressed sushi which we love. Yabu also boasts a good soba menu, if you’re in that kind of mood.

As of late November, 2005, our all-time favorite, Murakami, right down at the end of our street on Santa Monica, where we had spent many an enjoyable evening bantering with the master and wolfing down his imaginative concoctions, has been sold to a new chef/owner. A recent visit demonstrated that all is not well at our favorite Japanese sushi shop. The old Murakami ambience is completely gone. The entire wait staff is new, and very shaky. The service has now slowed down by a factor of two. It may be my imagination, but the fish itself—possibly the single aspect the chef/owner is most responsible for, on his daily buying trips—is of lower quality. The lovely flower arrangements the previous owner’s wife did are gone—replaced by a cold, barren wall. Murakami-san took with him not only the spirit of the restaurant, but also its name; it now goes by the undistinguished moniker “Ari-ya”.

A bit west on Santa Monica we find Ajisai, just up Palm, where chef Shoei presides over his tiny fresh fish empire, with friendly service, superb catches of the day, background jazz, and good conversation. Our favorite is the boiled squid stuffed with crab.

Down Beverly is Hirozen, also reviewed in this space last year. Although you can eat à la carte , you cannot go wrong with Hiro’s omakase chef’s selection. Highly recommended.

North of Santa Monica on La Cienega we find Wa Sushi & Bistro, the subject of considerable oohing and aahing in the local press when it opened last year, possibly because its chefs are graduates of the legendary Matushisa just a few blocks away. But we found the food overwrought, the service spotty. The albacore salad we had was drenched in an overly assertive miso sauce. They can’t just serve sea bass—it has to have foie gras on top. They can’t just serve soft-shelled crab—it has to have caviar on top. Price performance is poor. We won’t be visiting this place again soon.

The king of 90069 sushi places, of course, is the iconic Sushi Roku , down on 3rd just off La Cienega. It’s also a celebrity hangout; once I saw David Spade there, a fine actor, although I didn’t get the chance to tell him how much I liked him in Joe Dirt. Sushi Roku has long outlived its never justified reputation. Service is perfunctory. The only thing high-end about it is its prices.

Koi (website ) also made a big splash when it opened last year right near us on La Cienega across from L’Orangerie. This is definitely the place to go if you want to try “hamachi fusion soy citrus truffle essence” or “yellowtail carpaccio grapeseed oil and ponzu wasabi tobiko”, consumed in a space that boasts of being a “stylish, harmonious blend of of custom furniture, earth tones and soft light”. Of course, it’s not really a sushi place, instead its cuisine is “Japanese-inspired with California accents”. Its cavernous interior seats over 200 aspiring movie moguls and 20-something would-be models.

Given all the sushi joints in LA, one wonders why anyone with no sushi-making skills and not even from Japan would even bother trying the genre, but still there are those that do. One we recently had the misfortune of trying was Niko Niko Sushi, right next to Barney’s Beanery, famous as Janis Joplin’s favorite hangout when she lived down the street. Suffice it to say you’d be better off crossing the street to IHOP and getting their $2.99 pancake special.

Of course there are lots of sushi places up on Sunset which I make a point of never patronizing. They can’t decide whether they want to be overpriced tourist traps or starlet-encrusted sushi discos. However, Katana is worth a mention, and a visit. Although definitely awash in Hollywood glitter, and owned by the Sushi Roku crowd, it serves a reasonable menu of kushi—things on sticks, one of mankind’s most basic food formats. I like the stuffed mushrooms and rib-eye, and the lamb is worth a try. I wouldn’t recommend their sushi, though.

The granddaddy of upscale nouvelle cuisine Japonaise à la mer is, of course, Matsuhisa itself, on restaurant row on La Cienega. I’ll regale you with Matushisa stories in another post.

I am pleased to announce the first annual neurotheology market size survey.

There are many resources for understanding the neuroscience business as a whole, such as the Corante Brainwave blog, where you can find entries such as:

Cogniceuticals improve and treat disorders of attention, learning, memory, or cognition. Cogniceuticals are the fastest growing neuropharmaceutical market for two primary reasons: (1) demographic shifts towards aging population (2) scientific progress on memory related disorders, especially animal models.

However, no one has to my knowledge focused on the size of the neurotheology market, so I hereby present my first annual analysis.

Research: Five government and foundation-funded projects, averaging $250K each. Total: $1.25M.

Books: Ten books, averaging sales of 2,000 each, at $20. Total: $400K.

Materials: Transcranial stimulation helmets, herbs, sales of 5K at $100 each. Total: $500K.

Blogs: This blog makes about $30/year, from Google AdSense ads.

The total neurotheology market for 2005 is thus $2,150,030.

Our forecast is that the market should balloon to double the size in 2006, with more activity in each of its segments. If current trends continue, my blog revenue is expected to more than double, reaching $75.

Bill O’Reilly (picture; website) is the talking head on Fox News that everyone loves to hate. Now—unlikely as it may seem—he turns out to be the latest advocate for neurotheology! On his Wednesday show, he took up the controversy about the Dalai Lama’s planned speech on the neuroscience of meditation at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience next month in Washington. 544 researchers have signed a petition against his appearance (NYT ), which seems odd, because he’s appearing not as a scientist, of course, but as part of a new “Dialogues between Neuroscience and Society” track “featuring leaders from fields outside of neuroscience whose work relates to subjects of interest to neuroscientists”.

Bill’s guest was Dr. Stuart Dryer, a neuroscientist from the University of Houston who studies such things as embyronic neuronal development in vertebrates, and is opposed to the Dalai Lama’s speech. Bill took him to task in typical O’Reilly-esque fashion, accusing him as coming off as “anti-spiritual”, adding, “The Dalai Lama’s a good guy.”

Somebody should have warned Dryer what he was getting into going onto O’Reilly’s show. I like Bill, but he’s a bully (and pervert) who doesn’t invite guests to hear their opinions, but to lecture them:

The Dalai Lama is being asked to talk about meditation. He claims that you can train the brain to be more compassionate and more positive. That seems to be pretty fascinating and something you might want to hear about.

Bill opined that next year they might want to invite someone to talk about the neurophysiology of prayer as well, since he hears that makes people more loving too.

I’m a little bit conflicted about Bill giving neurotheology such high visibility in the popular culture, especially in his largely right-wing demographic. Before you know it Bush will be pushing more faith-based initiatives claiming that they are good for the brain, or something like that. At the same time, exposure to the basic concept of neurotheology—which, after all, states that physical processes in the brain are a key element in religious experience—could only be helpful. On the other hand, we should not lose sight of one of the scientists’ points: that the research on meditation and the brain is still in its infancy.

In any case, I do think Carol Barnes, who is president of the neuroscience society and responsible for the invitation, had it right:

The practice of meditation is a human behavior, and the Dalai Lama is extraordinarily skilled at it and at promoting qualities of peace and compassion that I thought could bring us together. That’s not the way it’s gone so far.

Terry Schiavo is the brain-dead woman whose husband is trying to take her off life support, while her parents try to keep her alive.

This is a fascinating case which blends aspects of medicine, ethics, law, religion, and psychology.

I won’t comment on the repulsive political posturing and grandstanding in which our nation’s elected representatives are now engaged in Washington.

What caught my eye was the sentence in the NYT that

But many doctors say that what appear to be emotion and cognition are in fact involuntary reflexes.

But what if the “emotion” and “cognition” we all show every day is actually “involuntary”? What does “involuntary” mean? Is it an “emotion” when a baby smiles back at you, and is it “voluntary”? Is it “cognition” when my cat intently follows a bird flying outside our window?

(It being completely irrelevant from the legal standpoint, of course, whether Terry is showing “cognition” or “emotion” when she follows a balloon with her eyes—she can’t make or communicate decisions about her medical treatment, and the law says in that case her husband gets to make them for her. I guess that’s too complicated for the hyprocrites claiming to be in favor of a “culture of life”, who would better be described as in favor of a “culture of vegetables”.)