NEUROMATIC: OR, A PARTICULAR HISTORY OF RELIGION AND THE BRAINBy John Lardas Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. Pp. xv + 426. Paper $32.50.

I have so many questions for John about his book, I can't possibly get to all of them in this space. Presently, I am going to try to be as critical as possible and play a bit of devil's advocate. I focus on the part of the book I know quite intimately, chapter one, which is partly an ethnography of the RCC and MindLab in Aarhus, where I also spent quite a bit of time, about 5 years from 2007 to 2012.

But before I get there, I must say part of the trouble I have with the book is a kind of whispering of the actual critique. For me, it's like a ghost or a whale I am trying to find but never quite reaching. I know certain things are good, and John likes them.1 And certain things are bad, John doesn't like them. This doesn't seem to have a lot to do with methods or theories for John but more to do with style, the vibes a particular researcher gives off, or perhaps we could call them Modernian punk virtues?

In no particular order, and not exhaustively, a few of them are: that it is good if things are out of control, uncertain, non-intelligible, and incalculable. The Neuromatic episteme is bad, I think, for John, partly because scientists produce a world where such things are good. The scientists are Ahab, obsessively trying to chart the white whale, and John is Ishmael, somewhere in the ship, trying to tell a story about what is going on.

There are also Modernian sins: arrogance, calculation, clarity, precision, normalizing, and naturalizing.

In John's story, there is something very wrong with the situation we are in right now. The sky is falling. Something is ominous and scary about the Neuromatic moment, a moment that partly entails the redescription of science in terms of neurological networks and information theory where everything must be fungible, computable, and quantifiable—a kind of machine logic guiding all intertexts. A systematized and mathematized human nature where the brain is a machine. Later sciences influenced by cybernetics, which he calls second-order, even if they drop the machine metaphor, are still doomed, according to John. They are swallowed up by the organic totality of the modern episteme, and there is nowhere to hide.

John does not think he can exactly escape from this particular cage or boat, as it were, but there are inklings of resistance. “Fugitive history,” as he calls it, or “immanent criticism” in Adorno's words, is the answer. John acknowledges genealogy is indeed a cybernetic method. Perhaps this is where the cybernetic tendencies in the book come from. So instead of the brain taking over as the dominant universal metaphor, now “modernity” or “secularism” takes over. Every moment, every example is able to be controlled, tamed, and explained by historicizing it as part of the moment we are in. There are no counter-examples or falsifications, not even the possibility of them. A totalizing holism.

But there is “intervention.”

John is fighting someone, or some thing.

Since John is doing cybernetics, and we are all examples of the Neuromatic moment, presumably, there must be different versions of these things, different politics, ethics, and virtues within these. Just calling something cybernetic isn't enough. Why are some things virtuous and other things not?

I will now turn briefly to the CSR part.

John has compiled the most beautiful and indeed meticulous genealogy of the conditions that allow CSR to constitute knowledge. He also shows the absurd humanity involved in that process.

I was, and guess I still am, if you look on their website, a participant in the RCC in Aarhus. So I was part of the fictional campus novel that I think is underlying the chapter and John's fieldwork. A bunch of insane people trying to study religion.

By the time John got there, I think I was persona non grata, or perhaps they just thought I was a “moron with a normal EEG” (80). A few years before, at a big conference in Toronto, I tried to argue seriously, from a scientific perspective, that the heart literally was the mind, not the brain. A lot of people at RCC stopped talking to me after that (though some talked to me more).

Anyway, bear with me because I think this egocentric digression connects to some broader points. I was making that argument as a response to what I saw (and John sees) as a strong Protestant inflection in CSR. I was reacting to the fact that CSR wasn't, so to speak, “secular” at all; it was full of actively “religious” people trying to justify and apologize and naturalize religion. The Aarhus guys mostly didn't like that but swallowed it grudgingly. As good Scandinavians, Protestantism was perfectly normal, made sense.

I was trying to ask, what about Judaism? What would cognition look like from a “Judaic” perspective? There are, of course, Protestant leanings in some forms of Judaism, but I was looking at other sources.

What would cognition look like from countless other metaphysical perspectives we have around us?

Similarly, rhetorically John argues for an alternative. But not clearly (because clarity and precision are bad?). I think John believes that his formalism, one that may replicate the cybernetic proclivities under his scrutiny, has a noble purpose. He models the system “in order to intervene, deliberately and definitively” (66). Am I right in thinking the type of intervention John has in mind would be a kind of work of art, beautiful, meticulous, that is at the same time a kind of trolling of the system?

This project he envisions of recognizing “discourse as systematic” might be a precondition indeed “for moving across and perhaps even beyond it” (66).

I would like to know to where? And why do we want to get there?

I am surprised and struck by John saying he is “not particularly interested in the creative, radically open, disunified, groovy, and/or liberatory dimensions” of heterodox projects within the mind sciences that also seek to be reflexive and provide alternatives. Presumably, this is because he wants to stay close to the jib of historical genealogy. For, indeed, he “wants to resist reading the abstract freedoms promised by cybernetics as anything more than that … anything more than wishful thinking” (54).

This seems unfair to me, since John accepts that he is just as much engulfed in the Neuromatic episteme as anyone else; that is, he does not have the magical ability to transcend it any more than anyone else. Isn't there a better strategy to look for here? Aren't those projects just as much a resistance or intervention as his own? I mean specifically ones that see something wrong with the current scientific paradigm and seek disunified and groovy ways to resist?

Presumably, since John thinks the Neuromatic moment is something we can intervene against and possibly to move beyond, it turns out he does have something of a “liberatory” project in mind. Rhetorically, he poses his liberatory project as better, for example, than critical voices within disciplines of the mind sciences. But why is it better, since he is using the same machines? Machines that occlude difference, make everything flat and whole, much in the way John dismisses the differences within the history he articulates; any difference in the discourse must be ignored as not interesting or pointillist because it doesn't conform to the organic totality of an episteme. It is a form of flattening in order to fit a narrative and complicity in making of secular age becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So the basic question there is: Why is John's Power/Knowledge better? What are the criteria?

One of his problems seems to be with the concept of freedom. Is there a way to recover an idea of freedom that John is more comfortable with? What is the metaphysics behind that concept? Why is it better? Presumably, John believes in some sense of freedom, otherwise, the idea of an intervention would be paradoxical. Is it? Shouldn't artistic punks like freedom, or have they grown cynical?

I see two poles of reticence in the book. The first is a reticence to define the human. The second is a reticence to naturalize anything.

John's book is on the Foucault side of things. He takes aim at cybernetics. This is basically the key to understanding our present age. As he says, he is not interested in a few black sheep individuals who go against the cybernetic current. This is the proper genealogical move, but of course it leaves something out because the position has to resist seeing individual intentions as anything more than wishful thinking in order for his project to make sense.

In this model, nature is put under quarantine, a threshold one dare never cross. I think, in contrast, that naturalizing the human might be bad, but not naturalizing it is worse. John doesn't give us any argument as to why naturalizing (information) is bad. The worry we share is that there will be no human left once this overarching naturalism is realized. This line between human nature and nature I think, is similar to the line between life and nonlife. Both have normative implications. The line between them is not scientific but rather closer to what Foucault called an “epistemological indicator” (indicateur épistémologique; see Chomsky and Foucault 2015, 6, 7). The lines themselves are outside of science.

One of the key questions of our present age concerns the human relation to information. John criticizes the “founding assumption” of cybernetics “that information is built into nature and guarantees correspondences across all domains” (397). So the critique of information is part and parcel of the critique of human nature. But I think a more explicit critique of this version of information can be presented.

For example, another critique of the concept of information in cognitive science comes from Jerome Bruner, a giant in the field of cultural psychology in the last generation, which he presented in his Jerusalem-Harvard lectures at the Hebrew University. Bruner begins by bemoaning where the “cognitive revolution” went wrong. He basically thinks it went wrong because it ignored meaning in favor of information processing.

So both he and John seem to have a problem with this trend. But unlike John, Bruner actually tells us why, within his own narrative about the primacy of meaning in narratives. Bruner recognizes that in order to account for something like a human level of meaning, a story has to be told about how it develops in young children and the history of our species. There has to be something like proto-linguistic meaning. He lays that out in his third lecture and chapter called “entry into meaning.” He argues that children enter into meaning by learning how to tell stories. Meaning only makes sense in a particular cultural context. Children gradually work their way into that context by grasping first in a prelinguistic manner. This is a matter of learning more than biology, but biology has a constraining role to play for Bruner.

For Bruner, certain mental forms have to be in place (or received) for something like the human level of meaning to emerge. These he lays out in the second chapter, “Folk Psychology as an Instrument of Culture.” It requires, first, a means for emphasizing human action or “agentivity”— action directed toward goals controlled by agents. It requires, secondly, that a sequential order be established and maintained—that events and states be “linearized” in a standard way. Narrative, thirdly, also requires a sensitivity to what is canonical and what violates canonicality in human interaction. Finally, narrative requires something approximating a narrator's perspective: it cannot, in the jargon of narratology, be “voiceless.” It is a “push” to construct narrative that determines the order of priority in which grammatical forms are mastered by the young child.

My point in bringing this up is that any critique worth its salt of the concept of information is going to have to engage the discourse, to be immanent in the discourse. I am not sure the genealogical approach can do that. It tends to stand outside, to transcend. Now John is fully aware of this, and accepts that both he and Foucault are part of the epistemes in which they do genealogy. To be fair, he paradoxically rejects the idea that he transcends the discourse he is researching, saying in a section called “poetics” that he offers “a view from the belly of this particular Leviathan” (64). But I have my doubts this ambivalent stance can work. If this is a global critique of all science and all scholarship at a particular time, it seems to lead to a kind of circularity. If all the concepts in the episteme are bad, then those include the concepts used by the genealogist. If only some are bad, I, personally, need some discussion of why some are better than others.

Thus aside from circularity, there is also the problem of difference. What I mean is there is a kind of flattening over of difference in the discourse for the sake of the genealogical instrument. In that sense, it ignores the immanent contextual meanings in the discourse of science.

Now Bruner does not think linguistic forms of robust meaning-making necessarily “grow out of” the prelinguistic practices. In fact, he thinks it impossible “in principle to establish any formal continuity between an earlier ‘preverbal’ and a later functionally ‘equivalent’ linguistic form.” He gives the example of comparing someone saying, “Can I have the apple?” to the “outstretched manual request gesture that predates it” (Bruner 1990, 76).

I am interested in this gap that Bruner and others are pointing to – the continuity and discontinuity between these two types of practices, one before meaning, the other after meaning. There is a phylogenetic and ontogenetic story to tell here. Biology will have a role to play. It must.

The concept of information surely does not capture the sense of meaning Bruner is trying to develop here, which requires a cultural context, reception, interaction, development, situations, folk psychology, and narrative to emerge. Information processing, as he says, doesn't work in its traditional sense: “Information is indifferent with respect to meaning. In computational terms, information comprises an already precoded message in the system …. According to classic information theory, a message is informative if it reduces alternative choices. This implies a code of established possible choices” (Bruner 1990, 4–5).

With regard to meaning, the point is that there is no preestablished code. Meaning is libertarian, not neo-liberal. Information and meaning are same same but different. So Bruner's “cognitive” stance, I argue, doesn't usher in all those problems John discusses because a human level of meaning is preserved.

In non-human animals or even plants, however, it might make sense to talk about preexisting codes. For example, the calls of certain primates do not have the flexibility of human meaning systems. Those signs are more like indexes than symbols in Peircian terminology. Their reception is more fixed. In that sense, the concept of information processing might make more sense. In my book, I dubbed this a difference between natural information and semantics, but other people frame it differently (Levy 2022).

So, I think John and I agree and disagree about information. We agree that it is a poor concept for making sense of human discourse and meaning-making. We agree that is a concept with a history coming out of the cognitive revolution. I think we disagree about its usefulness for explaining communication more broadly. So I think it is useful to a limited extent, and John thinks it is irredeemable.

I get the feeling John is trying to protect something about humanity at the same time that he doubts the very idea of the human as Foucault did. I think he is reticent to define the human because once that is done, it can become normative and conservative and thus lead to a loss of creativity and freedom. On the one hand, once you define something as human, you also define what is not human, and thus rationalize or legalize different treatment between human and non-human agents. This can have profoundly bad political and ethical consequences. On the other hand, maybe the human is the wrong category to be deciding the issue of, for example, rights. A better one might be the category of a person. All humans, no matter their ethnicity, level of mental or physical challenge, are persons. Many non-human animals may also fit that category.

Maybe this just sets up another bad category, however. I just think that without being upfront about metaphysics and anthropology implied in a discourse, even a discourse about discourse, we cannot even begin discussing these important questions.

These musings bring me to the next topic: anthropocentrism.

Both approaches (John's and mine), implicitly or explicitly, deal with human nature. The choice to not define human nature, I think, is a kind of negative theology about the human. We don't know what the human is, we only know what it is not. This approach has value because it preserves, as said, a libertarian view of the human, it makes room for possible futures and ethics. At the same time, I think any time a scholar writes about history or even about discourse, he or she must make implicit judgments about the human.

We should be aware that Foucault's whole enterprise was meant to call this argument into question. Discourse has a kind of agency of its own. Individual authors are not important. This point comes out in the debate between Chomsky and Foucault held in Eindhoven in 1971 on the topic of human nature, where the Dutch moderator tries to press Foucault on his historical role as an individual (Chomsky and Foucault 2015, 22, 30). Foucault does not fall for the trap. He insists that he as an individual is not important. Individuals are simply “information nodes” in the discursive network.

My point in bringing this up is that both John and Foucault want to criticize the emergence of the human (or “Man”) as an object of scientific inquiry. For John, this is especially problematic when the human starts to become equated with a machine (I think). This is likely a valuable ethical and political point.

However, ironically, I think that by limiting the bounds of discourse only to the absent presence of the human—for all the sources they use are texts made by humans (or is this doubted?)—their views are anthropocentric in this exclusion. If we really want to avoid seeing humans as objects, I think it makes more sense to view humans and our discourse in the whole evolutionary history of life. In other words, take a broader view, a broader scope. In this view, human beings are not that special. We are one life form among others who share planet earth.

神经学：或者，宗教和大脑的特殊历史约翰·拉达斯现代。芝加哥：芝加哥大学出版社，2021 年。页码。xv + 426。纸质 32.50 美元。

我对约翰的书有很多问题，我不可能在这个空间里回答所有问题。目前，我将尝试尽可能地批判并扮演一些唱反调的角色。我重点关注这本书中我非常熟悉的部分，即第一章，它部分是对奥尔胡斯 RCC 和 MindLab 的民族志，我也在那里度过了相当多的时间，从 2007 年到 2012 年大约有 5 年时间。

但在我到达那里之前，我必须说我对这本书的部分麻烦是对实际批评的一种窃窃私语。对我来说，它就像我试图找到的幽灵或鲸鱼，但从未完全到达。我知道某些东西是好的，约翰喜欢它们。1 而某些东西是坏的，约翰不喜欢它们。对于约翰来说，这似乎与方法或理论没有太大关系，而更多地与风格、特定研究人员散发出的氛围有关，或者也许我们可以称它们为现代朋克美德？

其中一些观点没有特定的顺序，也不是详尽无遗的：如果事情失控、不确定、不可理解和无法计算，那是件好事。我认为，对于约翰来说，神经学认识是不好的，部分原因是科学家创造了一个这样的世界，其中这些东西都是好的。科学家们是亚哈，痴迷于绘制白鲸的图表，约翰是以实玛利，在船上的某个地方，试图讲述一个关于正在发生的事情的故事。

还有现代主义的罪恶：傲慢、算计、清晰、精确、正常化和自然化。

在约翰的故事中，我们现在所处的情况有一些非常错误的地方。天塌下来了。神经学时刻有些不祥和可怕，这一时刻在一定程度上需要用神经网络和信息论来重新描述科学，其中一切都必须是可替代的、可计算的和可量化的——一种指导所有互文的机器逻辑。系统化和数学化的人性，其中大脑是一台机器。约翰认为，后来受控制论影响的科学（他称之为二阶科学）即使放弃了机器的比喻，仍然注定要失败。它们被现代认识的有机整体所吞没，无处可藏。

约翰认为他无法完全逃离这个特定的笼子或船，但有一些阻力的迹象。用他的话说，“逃亡的历史”，或者用阿多诺的话说，“内在的批评”，就是答案。约翰承认谱系学确实是一种控制论方法。也许这就是书中控制论倾向的来源。因此，现在不再是大脑成为占主导地位的普遍隐喻，而是“现代性”或“世俗主义”占据了主导地位。每时每刻，每一个例子都可以通过将其历史化为我们所处时刻的一部分来控制、驯服和解释。不存在反例或证伪，甚至也不存在它们的可能性。一种整体性的整体论。

但有“干预”。

约翰正在与某人或某物战斗。

由于约翰正在研究控制论，而我们都是神经学时刻的例子，想必这些东西一定有不同的版本，其中有不同的政治、伦理和美德。仅仅将某些东西称为控制论是不够的。为什么有的东西是善的，有的东西却不是？

我现在简要谈谈企业社会责任部分。

约翰编制了最美丽、最细致的家谱，记录了企业社会责任构成知识的条件。他还展示了这一过程中荒谬的人性。

如果你查看他们的网站，我曾经是，而且现在仍然是奥胡斯 RCC 的参与者。所以我是虚构的校园小说的一部分，我认为它是本章和约翰实地考察的基础。一群疯狂的人试图研究宗教。

当约翰到达那里时，我认为我是不受欢迎的人，或者也许他们只是认为我是一个“脑电图正常的白痴”（80）。几年前，在多伦多的一次大型会议上，我试图从科学的角度严肃地论证，心脏实际上就是心灵，而不是大脑。从那以后，RCC 的很多人就不再和我说话了（尽管有些人跟我说话的次数更多了）。

不管怎样，请耐心听我说，因为我认为这种以自我为中心的离题与一些更广泛的观点有关。我提出这个论点是为了回应我所看到的（约翰也看到的）企业社会责任中新教的强烈变化。我的反应是，可以说，企业社会责任根本不是“世俗的”。它充满了积极的“宗教”人士，试图为宗教辩护、道歉并使宗教自然化。奥胡斯的人大多不喜欢这样，但也勉强接受了。作为善良的斯堪的纳维亚人，新教是完全正常的，也是有道理的。

我想问，犹太教呢？从“犹太教”的角度来看，认知会是什么样子？当然，某些形式的犹太教有新教倾向，但我正在寻找其他来源。

从我们周围无数其他形而上学的角度来看，认知会是什么样子？

同样，约翰在修辞上主张另一种选择。但不清楚（因为清晰度和精确度都不好？）。我认为约翰相信他的形式主义，一种可能在他的审查下复制控制论倾向的形式主义，有一个崇高的目的。他对系统进行建模“是为了进行有意而明确的干预”（66）。我是否正确地认为约翰心目中的干预类型将是一种艺术作品，美丽、细致，同时也是对系统的一种破坏？

他设想的这个项目承认“话语是系统性的”，这可能确实是“跨越甚至超越它”的先决条件（66）。

我想知道去哪里？我们为什么要到达那里？

令我感到惊讶和震惊的是，约翰说他“对创造性、彻底开放、不统一、时髦和/或解放维度”的心智科学领域的非正统项目并不特别感兴趣，这些项目也寻求反身性并提供替代方案。想必，这是因为他想紧贴历史家谱。因为，事实上，他“不想把控制论所承诺的抽象自由解读为除此之外的任何东西......不仅仅是一厢情愿的想法”（54）。

这对我来说似乎不公平，因为约翰承认他和其他人一样沉迷于神经学认识；也就是说，他并不比任何人都拥有超越它的神奇能力。难道没有更好的策略可以寻找吗？这些项目不就像他自己的项目一样是一种阻力或干预吗？我特指那些看到当前科学范式有问题并寻求不统一和绝妙方式来抵抗的人？

据推测，既然约翰认为神经质时刻是我们可以干预并可能超越的东西，那么事实证明他确实有一个“解放”项目。他用修辞手法表达了他的例如，解放项目比心智科学学科内的批评声音更好。但既然他使用的是同样的机器，为什么它会更好呢？机器消除了差异，使一切变得平坦而完整，就像约翰在他所阐述的历史中消除差异一样；话语中的任何差异都必须被忽略，因为它不符合认识论的有机整体，因为它不有趣或点画派。这是一种扁平化的形式，目的是为了适应叙事和共谋，使世俗时代成为一种自我实现的预言。所以基本的问题是：为什么约翰的能力/知识更好？标准是什么？

他的问题之一似乎是自由概念。有没有办法恢复约翰更喜欢的自由观念？这个概念背后的形而上学是什么？为什么更好？据推测，约翰相信某种意义上的自由，否则，干预的想法将是自相矛盾的。是吗？艺术朋克不应该喜欢自由吗？或者他们已经变得愤世嫉俗了？

我在书中看到了两极的沉默。首先是对人类的定义保持沉默。第二个是不愿将任何事情归化。

约翰的书是站在福柯一边的。他的目标是控制论。这基本上是理解我们当今时代的关键。正如他所说，他对少数违背控制论潮流的害群之马不感兴趣。这是正确的家谱举措，但当然它遗漏了一些东西，因为为了使他的项目有意义，该职位必须抵制将个人意图视为一厢情愿的想法。

在这个模型中，自然被隔离，这是一个人们永远不敢跨越的门槛。相比之下，我认为，使人类自然化可能不好，但不自然化则更糟糕。约翰没有给我们任何关于为什么归化（信息）不好的论据。我们共同担心的是，一旦这种总体的自然主义实现，人类将不复存在。我认为人性与自然之间的界线类似于生命与非生命之间的界线。两者都具有规范含义。它们之间的界限不是科学的，而是更接近福柯所说的“认识论指标”（indicateur épistémologique；参见 Chomsky and Foucault  2015 , 6, 7）。这些线条本身不属于科学范畴。

我们当今时代的关键问题之一涉及人类与信息的关系。约翰批评控制论的“基本假设”“信息内置于自然界并保证所有领域的对应性”（397）。因此，对信息的批判是对人性批判的重要组成部分。但我认为可以对这个版本的信息提出更明确的批评。

例如，认知科学中信息概念的另一个批判来自上一代文化心理学领域的巨人杰罗姆·布鲁纳（Jerome Bruner），他在希伯来大学的耶路撒冷-哈佛讲座中提出了这一点。布鲁纳首先哀叹“认知革命”出了问题。他基本上认为这是错误的，因为它忽略了有利于信息处理的意义。

所以他和约翰似乎都对这种趋势有疑问。但与约翰不同的是，布鲁纳实际上在他自己的叙述中告诉了我们原因，即叙述中意义的首要地位。布鲁纳认识到，为了解释诸如人类层面的意义之类的东西，必须讲述一个关于幼儿的意义如何发展以及我们物种的历史的故事。必须有类似原始语言意义的东西。他在他的第三次讲座和名为“进入意义”的章节中阐述了这一点。他认为孩子们通过学习如何讲故事来了解意义。意义只有在特定的文化背景下才有意义。孩子们首先以语言前的方式进行抓握，逐渐进入该情境。这不仅仅是生物学的问题，但生物学对布鲁纳来说具有限制作用。

对于布鲁纳来说，某些心理形式必须就位（或接受），才能出现人类层面的意义。他在第二章“作为文化工具的民间心理学”中阐述了这些内容。首先，它需要一种强调人类行动或“主体性”的手段——针对主体控制的目标的行动。其次，它要求建立并维持顺序——事件和状态以标准方式“线性化”。第三，叙事还需要对人类互动中的规范和违反规范的内容保持敏感。最后，叙事需要接近叙述者视角的东西：用叙事学的行话来说，它不能是“无声的”。

我提出这一点的观点是，任何对信息概念有价值的批评都必须参与到话语中，成为话语中固有的。我不确定谱系方法能否做到这一点。它倾向于站在外面，超越。现在约翰完全意识到了这一点，并承认他和福柯都是他们进行谱系学的认识的一部分。公平地说，他矛盾地拒绝了他超越了他正在研究的话语的观点，并在名为“诗学”的部分中表示，他提供了“来自这个特定利维坦腹部的观点”（64）。但我怀疑这种矛盾的立场能否奏效。如果这是在特定时期对所有科学和学术的全球性批判，那么它似乎会导致一种循环。如果认知中的所有概念都是坏的，那么这些包括系谱学家使用的概念。如果只有一些不好，我个人需要一些讨论为什么有些比其他更好。

因此，除了循环之外，还存在差异的问题。我的意思是，为了谱系工具的缘故，话语中存在一种扁平化的差异。从这个意义上说，它忽略了科学话语中内在的语境意义。

现在，布鲁纳并不认为强大的意义建构的语言形式一定是从前语言实践中“产生出来的”。事实上，他认为“原则上不可能在早期的‘前动词’和后来的功能‘等效’语言形式之间建立任何形式上的连续性。” 他举了一个例子，比较某人说的“我可以吃苹果吗？” 到“早于它的伸出的手动请求手势”（Bruner  1990，76）。

我对布鲁纳和其他人指出的这一差距感兴趣——这两种实践之间的连续性和不连续性，一种在意义之前，另一种在意义之后。这里有一个系统发育和个体发育的故事要讲。生物学将发挥作用。它必须。

信息的概念肯定没有抓住布鲁纳在这里试图发展的意义，这需要文化背景、接受、互动、发展、情境、民间心理和叙事的出现。正如他所说，信息处理并不按照传统意义上进行：“信息与意义无关。用计算术语来说，信息包括系统中已经预编码的消息……。根据经典信息论，如果一条消息减少了替代选择，那么它就是信息丰富的。这意味着既定的可能选择代码”（Bruner  1990，4-5）。

就意义而言，关键是没有预先制定的代码。意义是自由主义的，而不是新自由主义的。信息和含义相同但又不同。因此，我认为，布鲁纳的“认知”立场并没有引发约翰讨论的所有这些问题，因为保留了人类层面的意义。

然而，在非人类动物甚至植物中，谈论预先存在的代码可能是有意义的。例如，某些灵长类动物的叫声不具备人类意义系统的灵活性。这些符号更像是索引，而不是皮尔西安术语中的符号。他们的接待更加固定。从这个意义上说，信息处理的概念可能更有意义。在我的书中，我将其称为自然信息和语义之间的差异，但其他人以不同的方式描述它（Levy  2022）。

所以，我认为约翰和我对信息的看法是同意和不同意的。我们同意，对于理解人类话语和意义创造来说，这是一个糟糕的概念。我们一致认为，这是一个源自认知革命的历史概念。我认为我们不同意它对于更广泛地解释沟通的有用性。所以我认为它的用处是有限的，而约翰则认为它是不可挽回的。

我有一种感觉，约翰试图保护人性的某些东西，同时他也像福柯那样怀疑人类的观念。我认为他不愿对人类进行定义，因为一旦定义了人类，它就会变得规范和保守，从而导致创造力和自由的丧失。一方面，一旦你将某物定义为人类，你也就定义了非人类，从而使人类和非人类主体之间的不同待遇合理化或合法化。这可能会产生极其糟糕的政治和道德后果。另一方面，也许人类是决定权利问题的错误类别。更好的可能是一个人的类别。所有人类，无论其种族、精神或身体挑战程度如何，都是人。许多非人类动物也可能属于这一类。

然而，也许这只是建立了另一个不好的类别。我只是认为，如果不预先了解话语中隐含的形而上学和人类学，即使是关于话语的话语，我们甚至无法开始讨论这些重要问题。

这些思考将我带到了下一个主题：人类中心主义。

这两种方法（约翰的和我的）都或隐或显地涉及人性。我认为，选择不定义人性是一种关于人类的消极神学。我们不知道人是什么，我们只知道人不是什么。这种方法之所以有价值，是因为它保留了人类的自由主义观点，为可能的未来和道德腾出了空间。同时，我认为任何时候一个学者写历史甚至话语时，他或她都必须对人类做出含蓄的判断。

我们应该意识到，福柯的整个事业都是为了对这一论点提出质疑。话语有其自身的一种作用力。个别作者并不重要。这一点出现在1971年乔姆斯基和福柯在埃因霍温举行的关于人性主题的辩论中，荷兰主持人试图向福柯施压，要求他强调他作为个体的历史角色（Chomsky and Foucault 2015, 22, 30  ）。福柯并没有落入这个陷阱。他坚持认为他作为个人并不重要。个人只是话语网络中的“信息节点”。

我提出这个问题的目的是，约翰和福柯都想批评人类（或“人”）作为科学探究对象的出现。对于约翰来说，当人类开始等同于机器时（我认为），这尤其成问题。这可能是一个有价值的道德和政治观点。

然而，具有讽刺意味的是，我认为，通过将话语范围仅限于人类的缺席——因为他们使用的所有来源都是人类制作的文本（或者这是值得怀疑的？）——他们的观点在这种排除中是人类中心主义的。如果我们真的想避免将人类视为物体，我认为在整个生命进化史中看待人类和我们的话语更有意义。换句话说，视野更广阔，范围更广。从这个角度来看，人类并没有那么特别。我们是共享地球的其他生命形式中的一种。