[Fis] Art as human practice

[Paul Suni]

Dear Pedro,

Back to art. I find your work on the sociotype. which rests on the idea of limited resources of the brain especially interesting, because I cannot bring myself to think of information separately from the resources that are required to produce information. That is how my brain is put together. This makes it axiomatic for me to regard information as information with value. I have to use information theory like everyone else, but it is a rather blunt instrument, and it is difficult to integrate information theory with the notion of resources, other thermodynamical and quantum resources. It helps little with contemplating life and the human domain as well as art.

I think of living organisms as self-regulating to occupy a range of states, but in a way that ensures that the range of possibilities is kept large enough. In this view, the organism actually uses its vital resources to resist its existence from becoming too constrained. It is clear that this has adaptive value, but I imagine that conservation of possibility is mathemartically baked into the dynamics of life at all levels. On the other hand, it seem obvious to me that the corollary is that the organism is also sensitive to its degree of being constrained at all levels of existence.

Friston's fashionable Free Energy Principle (FEP) focuses on narrowing thermodynamic- and organismic functioning as an extremizing principle. I think that this is probably wrong. I hypothesize that organisms, including humans, avoid extremizing to the death. Optimization and extremization seem to me like some kind of academic disease. I believe that life and mind avoid extremes and optima. Indeterminacy and ignorance seem ontologically foundational to me. I study this in the context of complex dynamical systems.

Art then becomes an activity, which occurs in the space kept open (at all cost) consistent with this axiom of keeping life and mind from optimizing and extremixing itself into an “ academic state.” Art becomes a manifestation of the necessity of life and mind to perpetually support the contraditction of convergence (confluence) and divergence (discord). No wonder art is so incredibly powerful and so crucially important to the collective. 

A testament to this is that even the worst antiliberal collectivist movements of the 20th century (and at the present moment in academia) leave Westen classical music and high art intact from being labeled as “ liberal” or “ white” or “ straight” or  “ male.” Mathematics is not faring as well though. It is being regarded as racist in American academia, but mathematics is not exactly a fan of the messy good stuff of life and mind, is it?

Mathematics obviously loves equality, like the collectivists do. I was equalized a lot during my education, by pedagogical authority. The technique used on me was that of wrong accusations and immediate punishment for plagiarism, without due process. Not just due process, but without any process at all. It happened once after an exceptional feat in mathematics and twice after exceptional feats in artistic work. I did not meet my teacher’s expectations, which were low, and the three teachers involved apparently could not handle the cognitive dissonance of being wrong about my potential. The punishments were extremely brutal and, as a highly sensitive person (HSP), I did not have psychological resources to avoid PTSD, which still remains with me to this day. I understand Carl Jung who, still in his eighties, thought about murdering his thesis advisor, who had wrongly accused him of plagiarism.

Meeting the high- or low expectations of authority is a kind of extremizing. I did not know how to do that as a kid. Nobody set me aside and taught me the virtues of brown-nosing and how to stay safe from teachers, in general. I was just naturally oscillating between indifference and excellence - like organisms do naturally. That naturalness turned into a personal spiritual calamity. A more artistic and natural approach to education would be to treat everybody indifferently,  without expectations.

There are as many cliche’s about art and life as there are songs about the greatness of collectivisms, but history shows that the largest collectivist collective that can be sustained has about 100-200 individuals, as you know. Academics think of academia as a successful collective, but it is not.  It does not feed itself. It is entirely parasitic. Nor does the collective of the Catholic Church feed itself. It is parasitic, too. Having said that, I remain silent about information collectives, where individuals suckle on the teat of capitalism, but participate in information collectives and their frequently toxic machinations, which can be traced through Critical Theory to Marx, Lenin and Stalin.

Participating in this mode of sociality is difficult for me spiritually, but Pedro you have challenged me to contribute. I warmly appreciate your commitment to freedom of speech in this forum and thank you. Every now and then someone in this community pops up to confront me in a seemingly equalizing mood, but I feel free to defend myself. That is golden!

Thanks Pedro!
Paul









> On Jan 15, 2026, at 1:05 PM, Pedro C. Marijuán <pedroc.marijuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Laszlo & FIS Colleagues,
> 
> Let me continue the initial reaction to the Kickoff text. As I was writing: "[arts] appear as an 'overflow' derived from two sources: the strong brain demands from social groups involved in emerging linguistic practices, plus a strange aesthetic impulse that i do not know how to qualify (and perhaps has a deep biological significance)." 
> 
> I have been reflecting on different approaches potentially connected with the above apparent dichotomy: The Social Brain (Robin Dunbar) and the Sociotype works of my research group. Then the "Trophic Theory" by Dale Purves (late 80s, early 90s) making a partial bridge to the aesthetics effects, finally Manfred Clynes and his "sentic forms" (an Austrian musician, neuroscientist, inventor, socialite) where we clearly find the link with emotions and art 'forms', and somehow return to the social brain... Too much, too long. I will encapsulate the basics. 
> 
> 1. Social Brain, about the relative constancy of the number of acquaintances in our social-personal networks. This number (aka as Dunbar's number, around 200 people in modern humans), may be found in tribes, companies, army organization, business... it generated a fashion in management gurus a couple of decades ago --these ideas are very easy to find in the literature. Evolutionarily and quite crucially, the number of individual contacts, say the size of natural social groups in humans, correlates with cortex size along the evo process of Homo. Thus, larger social groups, tightly connected, demanded far more extra cortex, particularly in relation with linguistic practices....  Enter the "sociotype", making clear the crucial correlation behind our social nature: genotype--phenotype--sociotype. This concept also captures linguistic practices, by showing a parallel with Dunbar's number, now regarding how much talking time we devote to maintain the different circles of the sociotype bonds (say, thinking in modern societies: family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances). We need those 3 - 4 hours of talking time, on average of course, depending on situations and personalities. Loneliness otherwise becomes a mental toxic (we made applied biomedical research on that) and becomes a fundamental health risk factor. It is a growing problem in today's young people hooked on screens... and in the elderly. (Interesting works by Jorge Navarro, my former collaborator).
> 
> 2. What does talking imply for our brains? Dale Purves was fashionable a few decades ago: according to his views, we could interpret that talking activities mobilize trophic resources that maintain synaptic networks in good shape by refreshing the supply and circulation of neuropeptides, neuromodulators, neurohormones, etc. A good conversation leaves an intense feeling of well being. But it may also be achieved by exciting activities in matters of personal interest (eg, creating art, watching art, participating in collective ceremonies). So, it seems that something else is needed apart of the daily ration of casual conversation. And in this respect the collective is of enormous interest and importance for the individuals of our species (Laszlo's main paper is great via the empirical works showing the appreciation of the collective dimension in the arts). Thereafter, your strong bonds of the sociotype --family, friends-- may grant you personal happiness, and the acquaintances may bring you funny novelties, but inevitably an extra trophic is needed. It has been always that way: from Greek recitals, drama and Olimpics, to Roman Circus, to the enormous Entertainment industry of our times, or the Tourism monster-destroyer of today, or the world crazy on mass-sport spectacles. It is the unending quest for the extra trophic!  
> 
> 3. And concluding with Clynes, he catalogued the fundamental "sentic forms" related to basic emotions (following Paul Ekman, more or less). You find these 'forms' in our voice emotional overtones, in the physical contacts we make, in laughter superimposed melodies too (again, research with Jorge Navarro), and in the structures of formal music... Seemingly we have to express them 'all' --all the forms, all the emotions-- a thing not easy to do in daily life, so he proposed an expression method (and made a little business about it). Indeed he proposed quite strong a connection of these sentic forms with the art forms & contents, and the deep aesthetic impulse. I would ad that emotions become an inner apprehension of the factors that most affect our daily life, the advancement of our own lives in a social niche, full of open-ended problems that easily overload our thin cognitions and have to be channeled in adaptive ways. Expressing them, at least partially via surrogates, looks good and healthy, for the 'social brain' convenience. Nevertheless the extra trophic, the 'overflow' of our brains, remains. It can be fed in trivial surrogates, in brutal ones, or in more difficult but more rewarding domains--which are called Arts most of them.
> 
> Enough. Hope the text can be followed and makes some sense. 
> 
> Best regards,
> --Pedro 
> 
> El 15/01/2026 a las 10:27, OARF escribió:
>> Hi Mark, Marcus, Laszio, Kate and Fis Colleagues,
>> 
>> I don’t know if the creation of art follows the same logic as the logic of mathematics. I recall in university  trying to prove some difficult theorem will walking down the campus hill back home, I would use fast backtracking form some start to the finish (the theorem). By the time I. got down the hill I usually had it. 
>> 
>> In contrast,  when I do art there is no backtracking only spontaneous adaption to what is.  I have a general idea of what I want but the motor part takes over to execute.  Not does emotion necessarily play a role in the creative process other than the fun of it. Similar to the fun of shooting a basketball while jumping and turning high in the air and making a perfect shot.  Or the feel of the body and breathing the fresh air while cross country skiing. The art of the physical! The very doing of art is the deeper beauty.  The end product is just that.  Much like sex but there nature can take over to produce its own art and product. 
>> 
>> ///Below is from a previous post on the same topic in another thread:
>> 
>> I grew up with an artist, my mother who wanted to be a sculptor but life had other plans for her. Surrounded by actual art being done day by day by mother or my fathers love of wood and carpentry and me doodling while bored in grade school and later doing cartoons and later theoretical mathematical cartoons.
>> 
>> As an adult at University I also viewed S.C. Kleene’s Introduction to metamathematics as art. Or von Neumann’s mathematical theory of games and his mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics as art.  There is a wonderful beauty in abstract thought and especially in the personal process of construction of new theoretical concepts much like my mother’s actively painting an oil. 
>> 
>> So art for me is tied to the emotional construction of it.  
>> 
>> As for animals and art, my theory of communication and cooperation also applies to animal communication. 
>> For an early version see: https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.tark.org/proceedings/tark_mar7_88/p129-werner.pdf__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QHEBgo7Oq2dKLYliHzhMVIY8KESl5PDsOgjnSiq2hrktLji0FRWhV1bUiAtZrnoVUyBfmFU9hLue5EXGJEDxJlo$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.tark.org/proceedings/tark_mar7_88/p129-werner.pdf__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XHWQY6CdfW4Dr6-g1VLtgrCAfPILHe90MKVPjng6oDkL1Unq1h5LESbCQVi_BvGjbnV1VTTlAhHKr2mDnZug0Nc$>
>> I think animals are highly intelligent and have complex communication systems with art being a form of communication important in the cooperative ecology of sexual reproduction.  
>>  
>> The social cooperation and communication theory links information with value and intentional states. I see emotions as a complex of intentions (strategic), action-abilities, information and their evaluation.  Art combines all these themes.  It is the bedrock of the formation of and what makes society possible at all. 
>> 
>> This relates to Artificial Social Intelligence https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.07847__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QHEBgo7Oq2dKLYliHzhMVIY8KESl5PDsOgjnSiq2hrktLji0FRWhV1bUiAtZrnoVUyBfmFU9hLue5EXGN9NXl_I$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.07847__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XHWQY6CdfW4Dr6-g1VLtgrCAfPILHe90MKVPjng6oDkL1Unq1h5LESbCQVi_BvGjbnV1VTTlAhHKr2mDYTXT6Sc$>
>> 
>> Now with AI we are at the doorstep of combining the abstract with biological synthesis:
>> See my “AI-CAD-CRISPR Protocols to Crack the Cancer Code: Reverse Engineer Multicellular Life and Design in silico Brains with Natural Architectures” https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395391173_AI-CAD-CRISPR_Protocols_to_Crack_the_Cancer_Code_Reverse_Engineer_Multicellular_Life_and_Design_in_silico_Brains_with_Natural_Architectures__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!QHEBgo7Oq2dKLYliHzhMVIY8KESl5PDsOgjnSiq2hrktLji0FRWhV1bUiAtZrnoVUyBfmFU9hLue5EXGd4GdhXY$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.researchgate.net/publication/395391173_AI-CAD-CRISPR_Protocols_to_Crack_the_Cancer_Code_Reverse_Engineer_Multicellular_Life_and_Design_in_silico_Brains_with_Natural_Architectures__;!!D9dNQwwGXtA!XHWQY6CdfW4Dr6-g1VLtgrCAfPILHe90MKVPjng6oDkL1Unq1h5LESbCQVi_BvGjbnV1VTTlAhHKr2mDfCQ68-U$>
>> 
>> What will be the role of Art in the Bio-AI world? 
>> 
>> -Eric
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