[MD] patterns of interaction

[MarshaV]

In mental process, the effects of differences are to be regarded as transforms of the difference which preceded them... [D]ifferences... and their trains of effects in promoting other differences become material of information, redundancy, pattern, and so on. — Bateson, Mind and Nature 

"How then can there be causality without agents? And, more specifically, how is it that our sense-faculties came to be receptive to the particular types of stimuli that impinge upon them, which together give rise to our world of experience? Our capacities for such awareness of distinctions did not arise uncaused, nor are they without their own consequences. They developed in dependence upon previous kinds of experience and in turn condition the kinds of experience, the kinds of cognitive awareness, that may arise in the future. The momentary arising of the discernment of differences is thus part of a larger feedback cycle in which "the effects of differences are to be regarded as transforms of the difference which preceded them." These two notions—circular causality, in the form of recursive feedback processes, and epigenesis, wherein the results of previous events serve as the basis for succeeding ones—comprise another area where Buddhist philosophy has much in common with scientific models of causality, particularly those of cognitive science and evolutionary biology. In both perspectives, these models turn our attention away from independent acts of isolated entities and toward particular patterns of interaction that give rise both to immediate forms of cognitive awareness and, in the long run, to the living forms we all embody. That is, this circular causality operates at both micro and macro levels."


      (http://www.gampoabbey.org/documents/Buddhist-Steps.pdf)  



Marsha:
This is a really great paper addressing cognitive experience.  I will not post another quote, but I sincerely hope you read it.