Time-Binding Semantic Circuit
The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit handles artifacts and makes a reality tunnel which can be passed on to others, even across generations. These reality tunnels may include art, blueprints, words, concepts, tools (with instructions on use transmitted verbally), theories, music, etc.
The semantic circuit allows us to sub-divide things, and reconnect things, at pleasure. There is no end to its busy-busy-busy labeling and packaging of experience. On the personal level, this is the “internal monologue” identified by James Joyce in Ulysses. On the historical level, this is the time-binding function described by Alfred Korzybski. So-called “future shock” has always been with us, since the semantic circuit began functioning somewhere in pre-history. In a symbolizing, calculating, abstracting species, all times are “times of change.” The process is however accelerating faster as time passes, because the symbolizing faculty is inherently self-augmenting.
Domesticated primates are symbol-using creatures; which means, as the pioneer semanticist, Alfred Korzybski, noted, that those who rule symbols, rule us. If Moses, Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus and St. Paul can be considered living influences—and they are: look around the world—this is only because their Signal has been carried to us by human symbol systems. These systems include words, artworks, music, rituals and unrecognized rituals (“games”) through which culture is transmitted. Since words contain both denotations (referents in the sensory-existential world) and connotations (emotional tones and poetic or rhetorical hooks), humans can be moved to action even by words which have no real meaning or reference in actuality. This is the mechanism of demagoguery, advertising and much of organized religion.
The semantic circuit seems intimately connected with three dimensionality because the left-right polarity between cerebral hemisphere and hand funtioning places us in three-demensional space. The semantic circuit involves both brain hemispheres, but Novelty is handled by the right hemisphere, and is transferred to the left hemisphere as it becomes familiar. Thus the imprint sites for this circuit are in the left hemisphere, which is closely linked with the delicate muscles of larynx and the fine manipulations of right-handed “dexterity.”
In ordinary language, the semantic circuit is usually called “the mind.” When we say someone “has a good mind,” we generally mean they have a good mouth, i.e., they use the semantic circuit well.
References
- Wilson, A., Robert. Prometheus Rising Chapter 6 The Time-Binding Semantic Circuit (Location 1019). Grand Junction, Colorado: Hilaritas Press.
Metadata
Type:🔵 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Sociobiology / Anatomy / Neuroanatomy / Physiology / Neurophysiology Neuropsychology / Evolutionary Psychology Status:☀️