Interdisciplinarity – the Only Way to Go
Dr. Clive Zammit (Philosophy) interviews EMA-PS co-directors Prof. Richard Muscat
(Neuroscience) and Prof. John Schranz (Performer Studies) on the occasion of the EMA-PS
international 3rd annual conference (January 2007), which was addressed, among others, by
Prof. Giacomo Rizzolatti, top neuroscientist and world famous for his discovery of the Mirror
Neuron System.
CZ Professor Muscat what exactly are these mirror neurons, and what is their
function in the human brain?
RM The main thing about mirror neurons, is that the same things that are
used, or that become active in my brain when I am doing something, also
become active when I see someone else doing that particular action. So
although I may not be doing the action myself, these neurons within my brain
become active anyway, mirroring the action that I see being performed by
someone else. So one can think of a mirror neuron as though there is a little
man within the little man, within the little man, who has a little mirror, that
shows the little man, the little man, the little man…a little homunculus holding
a little mirror, reflecting both the little man and what there is out there.
CZ Dr. Schranz, in view of Professor Muscat’s clarification, in what ways is it
important for a researcher in the field of theatre studies – and human
performance as related to theatre – to be interested and conversant with what
is going on at the cutting edge of research in neuroscience?
JS Unfortunately to “perform one’s role” is very often understood as my
showing, for example, how Macbeth from a poet became a murderer. So
there is something I know and I want to show it, and this something that I
know is a complete, ready product, a role we call Macbeth, written by
Shakespeare, and all I have to do is show what are the components that
make up that role – as if it were everlasting, never changing. The work of the
performer, rather than that, is using the role, to discover that which is
intrinsically woven in me as human being, and which I never was aware of
before. In the case of Macbeth, my possibly becoming a murderer. And
therefore publicly confessing to memories, understandings, which somehow
have already come alive in me in various situations. So performing enables
me to discover truths about myself. Now this is very much close to the
homunculus that Professor Muscat just used as an analogy to explain mirror
neurons. Now if science is specifically working upon the discovery of what it is
to be human, what it means to be the only living form which can knowingly
intervene upon its patterns and willfully decide whether to change them or not,
then performance in theatre and this work in neuroscience are indeed very
close.
CZ It seems that the key term which links what you both have been saying is
“performance”. However, at this point one may question whether language
may not be playing tricks on us – whether we may be seeking connections
which in reality are non-existent. My worry is that the term “performance”
means different things in the different contexts of theatre and neuroscience.
Can the gap between the meaning of the term “performance” from the
physiological point of view, and it meaning for creative artists, be bridged?
JS I think that the best way to move towards a response to this question is to
recall that over eleven years ago Professor Muscat and I were considering
what foundation stone to put at the base of a new research programme. One
of the first things we decided was, precisely, that for the first six months we
would investigate and examine terms which we both use, to find out how we
could understand each other when we speak. We worked on a terminology
which we could share. So yes, that is a danger, but once one is aware of it, it
can be bridged.
RM That is part of the answer. Because the difficulty is akin to having
someone talking in Dutch and someone talking in French – where would we
meet? In fact because neuroscience is reductionist, the term “performance” to
me would refer to just a tiny bit, a fraction of what it would mean in theatre
where “a performance” would mean the whole thing. So just beginning to
appreciate that fact from both sides, is already a big stride ahead. But then
there is also this lovely little term called partitura – from theatre language,
incidentally – which says that even in theatre, performance, is broken down
into these little bits. But this is also what we do in the lab. We break
performances down into manageable bits and then try to understand the
mechanism which enables this type of behaviour. So we are both similarly
looking into the mechanics which eventually will get us to the whole
performance by building up from an understanding of all the little bits. So yes
the differences may be there but this makes the dialogue even more
interesting and important.
CZ Yes, finally we are using the same language, but we are also using the
same terms within different fields. These terms are, as you have just argued,
obviously related. But then again, there are relations of many types, there can
be close relations and also very distant relations...
JS The crucial point is not to have a joint, or compromise, meaning. Although
the relations may remain different in the two fields, I know how he is using it
and he knows how I am using it. It is the awareness of the differences which
is crucial. This makes it possible to work together without misinterpreting each
other, simply because we take it as a given that what we both mean by a
common term must necessarily overlap.
CZ I’d like to latch on to the word “reductionist” or “reductionistic” which
Professor Muscat used to describe neuroscience. To me, this word seems to
carry the implication that an understanding of how mirror neurons function will
help us understand how our brain goes about recognizing the actions and
intentions of people around us. Does this not imply that there are direct and
explainable causal links between the physiological make-up of the brain and
the mental realm of human intentions, and thought processes?
Does this mean that our thinking, planning, judging and even making moral
choices can be reduced to purely physical events? Would this not imply that
both actions and intentions of human beings are determined by purely
physical reactions that we have no control on whatsoever? If this is so, then
are we not explaining away the very human dimension that we are trying to
learn more about?
On the other hand, if the answer is no, then isn’t the claim that
neurophysiology can throw light on human intention and interaction,
overoptimistic?
RM Ten years ago I wouldn’t even have dared apply for a grant to perform
research on human intentions or consciousness. But what enables science to
go forward is that we get breakthroughs in technology, and one of the biggest
recent breakthroughs has been MRI. This allows us to peep into a brain and
see how this thing, or parts of it, seem to be working, while you are doing
some form of behaviour, or mental calculation. Now whether you like it or not,
it is the brain that is making up your intentions, and your brain is made up of
millions of nerve cells, all interconnected in trillions of ways. We may not yet
understand exactly how they all work, but they are still all very physical. The
problem arises when one uses this lack of knowledge to assume that there
must be something else besides the physical cells that we see. We still don’t
understand totally how all these neurons interact to bring about
consciousness. We cannot yet explain how some processes which are
unconscious suddenly become conscious. But the fact that we don’t
understand is not a good enough reason to say that these mental states may
be supported by something else. Maybe I am reductionist from that point of
view, but from what I see from clinical things that can go wrong, it is evident,
for example, that freewill can be removed if part of the frontal cortex becomes
damaged or destroyed. Now freewill seems very abstract to me, and
obviously it is also a very abstract concept in most other fields of study;
nevertheless, we know that it is produced in the frontal cortex, and if this is
damaged, free will is out of the window. So we know that it is physical and
also where it is located, but exactly how those physical parts interact to
produce free will is a different story altogether.
CZ So your claim is that although all mental states are products of purely
physical reactions and interactions that happen in our physical brains, there is
still a gap when one tries to understand how all these physical activities
actually cause, or become, what we then call mental states such as
consciousness or freewill.
RM Yes, the biggest question is how the thing works as a whole. What is the
neural code? Now everyone knows what neurons are and what they do, but
still we don’t know how the whole thing works together to make you
conscious, or to give you freewill. These are the mental states that humans
are all about. The neural code is still a black hole but maybe in ten, fifteen
years time we might crack it. It’s really just a matter of time.
CZ You seem to imply that even given all the information, even though it may
be just a matter of time until we understand how consciousness comes about,
there will still be a gap between understanding how these things are produced
and actually understanding or interpreting the physical neuron firings, or their
frequencies, in terms of human thoughts in the form they take at the
conscious level. Activity in the brain can be detected and located to specific
areas and measured, but to interpret a particular activity – as wishing to eat
an ice-cream, or a vision of the perfect beach – still requires an
interpretational leap. Is this the interpretational leap where you say we have to
be most careful?
Does this mean that if we had to come up with a supercomputer that breaks
the neural code and maps out everything in every possible detail, then we
would still not be able to say: ‘look this is exactly what is happening right now
in this brain, right now, for example, this person is thinking of the number
three hundred and fifty seven?’
RM Artificial intelligence was a good idea in neural network sketching and
gave us some insight into maybe how the brain can possibly work. That
forced the physiologists to go back into the laboratory and do some more
work. But now it transpires that the way the brain works is that it uses both
analogue and digital, and it uses algorithms. So part of the brain seems to
operate like a computer but the other bits of the brain don’t. This means that
even with the best computer model you couldn’t have a complete model of
how the brain functions.
Having said that, I still maintain that fifty years down the line, we will have a
much better understanding of how the brain works and maybe then we could
explain what makes consciousness, and what a mental state is all about. After
all, it is a fact that we know a lot about how the brain releases particular
chemicals and the effects of these chemical on behaviour. This knowledge
already enables us to design and administer drugs that can deal with anxiety,
depression. They might not all work perfectly, but what they actually do is
target a particular chemical in the brain and in that way disable that type of
behaviour. So we already know quite a lot about behaviour and also how to
alter it.
CZ Dr Schranz, we have here what I would interpret as a very confident claim
from Professor Muscat that cracking the neural code and explaining
consciousness and freewill is just a scientific event waiting to happen. How is
such a claim to be received from the point of view of a creative artist? Would
such discoveries be perceived as a threat to human creativity and openness?
Or could such breakthroughs harbour opportunities in that, possibly knowing
more about what makes us creative and the physical conditions that are
conducive to creative thinking, may then be taken up and used as a tool by
the artists to design strategies and exercises by which to enhance their own
work and performances.
JS Far from a threat, what Prof Muscat has pointed out seems very positive. I
do not want to sound esoteric, but I think that a good analogy for creativity is
what in eastern mythology is called the veil of Maya. Maya is there, behind the
veil, you are seeing her and you know that if you remove the veil, you are
coming closer to Maya, but when you reach out you always find yet another
veil. Because explaining what is, in my view, necessarily changes what is. It
expands it, empowers it. By explaining what is, what you have really done is
explained what was. Because in journeying towards the explanation, your
‘what was’ has moved forward and now you suddenly have something else to
explain. The discovery expands what was before, and therefore, what you
have suddenly understood has now grown further and you have to understand
how it has grown. This is therefore a question of growth of potential. I think
that I can explain where I am now, but in explaining it I have moved ahead
again, I have pushed the limit forward.
In performance itself this is extremely tangible, and this is why the dialogue
with science becomes so exiting to me. Let’s take today’s performance. I am
performing it. That performance is a structure. I am in my ninety-ninth night.
The tragedy is that in Malta, when we discuss performance we all too often
can only say ‘I am in my third night of a three night run’, which in terms of
performance means little. I would be in the territory of innovation when I am in
my thirtieth night, maybe. That is where the miracles may start hitting me.
Because I am doing that which I think I know, and in going it as I know it I am
really expanding it.
RM And this brings you to the foundation of what it is to be creative. Creativity
is inherent in our make-up because at the end of the day, one can’t repeat,
one can’t imitate. If you imitate and repeat, you are being lazy. But normally,
nine times out of ten you don’t. Even though on your hundredth performance
you might learn just a tiny little bit on that day, it is still a step forward. This is
all due to the way your brain is wired up. Until you are eleven, twelve, you are
producing a thousand nerve cells per second and these are all competing to
get wired up. But even though by twelve years of age these things are wired
up, you can still take on more information and your head does not turn into a
concrete block. Far from it, once they are there, these things start re-wiring
themselves. You may remain with the same number but the wiring starts
changing and neurons change the way they communicate with one another.
This is true of all living things. Its like building a house. Once you finish
building and even when you are already living in the house you will always still
be reorganizing your house. Inside, your house is always changing.
CZ Does the idea that science can finally explain everything therefore reflect
an outmoded prejudice about the way we understand life and the world
around us, specifically the belief that human beings, the way they behave,
perform and learn, is static? You both seem to be saying, maybe in different
languages, that in fact all that goes to make us up is dynamic. And even if we
were to explain everything, that very explanation would render the being that
we have just explained, a thing of the past. Is this what we mean when we say
that the human being is open-ended? Would I be correct in assuming that it is
this open-endedness that saves us from the fear of determinism – that is of
finding out that all of our mental states are not only caused but also
completely determined by chemical reactions in our brains?
RM Yes, I would say you hit the nail on the head, because genes are there to
make particular products, so the goal of the genes is specified, but how we
get from the genes to the goal is left up to us. And that is the way we are
wired up. What you are when you are performing your hundredth or
thousandth night is a different ‘you’; it can never be the same. And finally the
proof of the pudding is that we all have thirty thousand genes – every one of
us – and yet you look at all the people in the world and they are all different.
And so this in itself already proves that determinism doesn’t stand a chance in
hell.
CZ We have been emphasizing the level of indeterminacy which is inevitable
even given the fact that we all are made up of the same building blocks. Now
let us bring this back into the context that we left from, which was a Master’s
Degree based on interdisciplinarity, bringing together vastly different fields of
study. Does not this plasticity and indeterminacy itself raise the fear that the
differences will be so vast that such a degree will leave very little solid ground
on which academic progress may be made?
RM It’s you, it’s him, it’s the students and it’s me – we are all humans. It’s the
human element that is the common ground. We all look at the subject with our
own pair of glasses and we only see bits. What we are trying to achieve here
is to put all the bits in the pot. And finally it’s the students that are going to
benefit most, because they will be the ones with all the different glasses,
looking at what it is to be human.
JS Indeterminacy on its own cannot work. It needs to be supported by a
discipline which provides some fundamental building blocks. You cannot
improvise, you cannot bring rabbits out of a hat, without a hat, without a
discipline. Improvising, generating, being indeterminate can only be possible
from a strong basis of some form of discipline. So when we come to EMAPS,
we have to realize that the fundamental discipline in there is the human being,
a structure which has been transmitted as a whole. What is most essential is
to find out what is at the basis of the discipline of being human. We need this
discipline, and it can come from seeing, as Richard was saying, with all the
different glasses. Only then, can you tackle problems and create solutions as
a complete human being. These solutions will then bear witness to human
potential and excellence.
RM Exactly, but giving joint lectures requires vast preparation. If we had to
quantify the hours of preparation in relation to the actual hours of lectures
delivered, the numbers would seem crazy, but the results make it all worth
while. The students thrive when you have joint lectures. Because really all of a
sudden they have all these different pieces of information, and from the way
they put it together you suddenly realize that they are putting one plus one
together and getting four. The dynamics become incredible, as we have now
seen in practice. There is a quantum leap in the level of learning, thinking and
inquiry.
CZ It is difficult to deny that joint lecturing brings in a whole new dimension to
the learning experience. But one can still play the cynic about all this, and say
that, yes this is all fun and games as long as you are closed in within the
sheltered world of the University. But does this also apply in the real world?
To play the cynic’s role as best I can: What may be the strongest argument
against the cynic’s claim that interdisciplinarity is just a passing fad which has
been conceived and promoted by shrewd academics merely to reap lucrative
academic funding? Are there any guarantees that, should universities fall on
leaner times, funding for research of this nature would not be the first to
quickly dry up, forcing the different disciplines to make a quick retreat to their
former traditionally distant territories?
JS I think that it is now very evident in the real world out there, that many long
accepted presuppositions upon which western thinking has been founded
need urgently to be questioned. And finally some radical questions about how
we perceive ourselves and the world around us are in fact being asked. Of
course the wielding of power in the western style has warded off the
necessary awareness that the western way of seeing things is not necessarily
the only and the best. And it is only in a very limited geographic sphere, but
one with relatively huge economic clout, that non-interdisciplinarity has been
the norm. But it is also very evident that on a broader geographic and
historical scale, it is actually interdisciplinarity which is the norm. I believe that
this move away from segregated disciplines has started, and that it is
unstoppable.
RM Basically the interesting things always happen at the boundaries.
Formerly the boundaries of different disciplines were distant from each other –
the empty spaces in between were vast. But now as the knowledge within the
disciplines grows, the boundaries have started to meet, so there is no more
empty space for retreat. One cannot go back because the empty spaces are
full; the disciplines have met because they grew. They cannot shrink back
away from each other.
JS Ironically enough, Rizzolatti’s discovery of the mirror neurons has now
given birth to Socio Cognitive Neuroscience – a new discipline which is itself
interdisciplinary. This may formerly have seemed paradoxical, but now it is
inevitable. I would answer the cynic by stating that contrary to what he
suggests, interdisciplinarity is not the first to go, but in today’s world,
interdisciplinarity is, inevitably – the way to go.