The Mistake of Thinking That Art Is a Luxury: António Damásio's Biological Theory of Art.

Bernabé Mallo

Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

A review of The Strange Order of Things (2017) and its implications for understanding 

the origin of Art 

Introduction: Why do we create art?

For centuries, philosophers and art theorists have tried to answer a seemingly simple question: why do human beings create art? The answers have varied —for pleasure, for imitation of nature, for emotional expression, for the pursuit of beauty, for the need to communicate the ineffable. However, none of these explanations has managed to answer a deeper question: what biological need does art satisfy?

Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damásio has proposed a radically novel answer in his work The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feelings, and the Origin of Cultures (originally published in English in 2017). His thesis is surprising and, at the same time, profoundly convincing: art was not born as a pastime or an evolutionary accident, but as an absolute biological necessity in the service of homeostasis.

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What is homeostasis and why is it key to understanding art?

Homeostasis is, in its classical definition, the set of processes by which living organisms maintain their internal balance —temperature, pH, glucose levels, blood pressure— in the face of environmental variations. But Damásio goes much further. For him, homeostasis is not just a physiological self-regulatory mechanism, but the fundamental organising principle of all life, from bacteria to the most complex human cultures.

"Homeostasis", writes Damásio, "is the force that ensures that life regulates itself within a range that is not only compatible with survival but also conducive to flourishing, to a projection of life into the future of an organism or a species". In other words, we do not just want to survive: we want to prosper, flourish, transcend.

Damásio's conceptual leap consists of extending this homeostatic principle from the purely biological domain to the cultural domain. Just as the body regulates its temperature to stay alive, the mind regulates its affective states through the creation of objects, practices, and ideas that we call culture. Art, music, literature, religion, philosophy, science, and technology are, ultimately, homeostatic instruments.

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Feelings as the Mental Representatives of Homeostasis

To understand how cultural homeostasis operates, António Damásio introduces a central principle: feelings are the mental representatives and spokespersons of homeostasis within the conscious mind. Feelings are not mere epiphenomena, secondary effects, or ornaments of mental life. Instead, they are fundamental biological signals and mental images that inform us in real time about the state of our vital regulation.

When we experience well-being or pleasure, the organism indicates—through a coordinated internal chemistry—that we are in a favorable homeostatic state of efficiency and health. Conversely, when we feel pain, sadness, or distress, the brain warns us that something threatens our equilibrium and survival. This simple evolutionary logic—seeking what expands life and avoiding what damages it—has guided the evolution of living organisms for billions of years.

What makes human beings unique is that we have learned to externalize and expand this regulation through cultural homeostasis. We do not merely react biologically to fear, grief, or awe; we construct rituals to conjure them. We create elegies, funerary sculptures, philosophies, justice systems, and cosmologies to respond collectively to those biological alarms.

Art, science, and culture, from this neurobiological perspective, are authentic homeostatic technologies. They are refined tools developed by our minds to regulate our own affective states, process loss, celebrate social cohesion, and, ultimately, pursue not just basic survival, but a state of flourishing well-being.

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The neurobiological evidence: the brain that narrates and feels

Research by Damásio and his team at the Brain and Creativity Institute of the University of Southern California has provided fascinating empirical evidence of this fundamental human capacity. In recent experiments, it has been shown that the human brain possesses a narrative neuronal architecture —sets of brain structures, especially the Default Mode Network— that respond similarly to stories told in different languages.

This means that the capacity to construct narratives is not a cultural addition, but a fundamental characteristic of human brain architecture. Human beings do not just tell stories: they are made to tell stories, because stories are the vehicle through which we process our emotional experiences and regulate our homeostatic balance.

The work of art —a cave painting, a symphony, a novel, a poem— is nothing other than an externalisation of this internal narrative process. When the cave painter painted a bison in Altamira, he was not simply decorating a wall: he was projecting his inner world, his fears and hopes, his experiences of hunting and survival, onto a tangible image that allowed him to process and regulate his affective states.

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Art as a homeostatic instrument

Perhaps the most powerful formulation of this theory is the following: art functions as an instrument of biological regulation. Just as drugs act on biochemical processes to restore physiological balance, artistic experiences act on neural and affective processes to restore psychological and social balance.

A paradigmatic example is music. Listening to a melancholic piece when we are sad is not a masochistic act: it is a form of homeostasis. Music allows us to feel our emotion from a safe distance, process it, shape it, and finally integrate it into our life experience. Cheerful music, on the other hand, does not just express joy: it induces it, regulating our affective state upward.

The same applies to the visual arts, literature, theatre, and dance. All of them are affective technologies that we have developed to modulate our homeostatic state, to process suffering and enhance well-being, to connect with others and build community ties.

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The social dimension: art, empathy, and group cohesion

Damásio does not limit himself to considering individual homeostasis. Social homeostasis is equally fundamental. Human beings are deeply social animals, and our homeostatic balance depends on our inclusion in groups, our capacity for cooperation, and the quality of our affective bonds.

Art plays a crucial role in this social homeostasis. Community celebrations, shared rituals, collective narratives —myths, epics, traditions— are technologies of group cohesion that synchronise the affective states of members of a community, generating trust, cooperation, and a sense of belonging.

The neurologist has identified specific neural mechanisms underlying this social dimension. Oxytocin and vasopressin, neurotransmitters involved in social bonding and pair formation, are released during shared aesthetic experiences. Art literally connects us with others, modulating our neurochemistry to facilitate empathy and cooperation.

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The critique of "Descartes' error" revisited

Damásio is famous for his critique of "Descartes' error": the radical separation between mind and body, reason and emotion. In his earlier work, Descartes' Error (1994), he argued that human rationality depends crucially on emotions. In The Strange Order of Things, he takes this critique one step further.

The "error" he now combats is the belief that culture —including art, philosophy, and science— is the exclusive product of disembodied reason. Damásio demonstrates that feelings and emotions are not obstacles to cultural creation, but its main engine. We do not create art despite our emotions, but because of them. Art is the highest expression of our biological need to regulate ourselves affectively.

This perspective has radical implications for the philosophy of art. If art is a homeostatic instrument, then its value resides not only in its formal beauty or its capacity to represent reality, but in its biological function: helping human beings survive, prosper, and find meaning in a chaotic and uncertain world.

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Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)

This theory of Damásio resonates deeply with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence.

The S (Survival) dimension of our model finds its biological foundation in Damásian homeostasis: every aesthetic experience, however elevated it may seem, is rooted in mechanisms of vital regulation that ensure the persistence of the organism.

The Y (Symbolon) dimension —the capacity to create and share symbols as an act of recognition— corresponds to the human capacity to externalise homeostatic states into objects, images, and narratives. Art does not only express emotions: it symbolises them, makes them communicable and shareable.

The C (Wholeness) dimension —the drive toward totality and coherence— finds its equivalent in the homeostatic pursuit of balance and flourishing. Beauty is not merely formal pleasure; it is the subjective experience of an achieved homeostatic state, of a successful integration of parts into a coherent whole.

Damásio thus offers a robust empirical and theoretical basis for our hypothesis: art is not a cultural luxury, but an expression of the single function of the nervous system, which needs to survive (S), symbolise (Y), and achieve wholeness (C) to maintain its biological coherence.

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Final considerations: art as testimony of the living

Damásio's theory invites us to abandon the old dichotomy between nature and culture. Art is neither purely biological nor purely cultural: it is the crossroads where both domains meet and enhance each other.

Art, like medicine, philosophy, or science, is a homeostatic response to the challenges of human existence. It is born from pain and seeks relief; born from loss and seeks transcendence; born from solitude and seeks connection; born from chaos and seeks form.

Understanding this does not diminish the mystery of art, but deepens it. Because if art is an instrument of homeostatic regulation, then creating and contemplating art is not an escape from life, but the most human way of living it. It is the way we have found, after millions of years of evolution, to feel at home in a universe that was not made for us.

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References (APA7)

Damasio, A. (2018). The strange order of things: Life, feeling, and the making of cultures. Vintage. (Original work published 2017)

Damasio, A., & Damasio, H. (2016). Making minds and cultures: The neurobiology of storytelling and art. In The Strange Order of Things (pp. 293-318). Pantheon Books.

López Mallo, J. B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701

 https://catalogo.sanchoelsabio.eu

López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C

López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1 

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
 Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
 

Bernabé Mallo
 PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed:  https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects: 
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens

 

 

Robot or Artist? Artificial Intelligence Facing the Mirror of Human Creativity A commentary on Hengran Yang's article (2025): Artificial intelligence art robots

 

Bernabé Mallo

Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

 

Introduction: a question that is not new, but urgently needs an answer

Can a machine be an artist? Does the future of art belong to robots programmed to generate beauty, or will creativity remain an exclusively human domain? These questions, which a decade ago sounded like science fiction, now occupy the front pages of philosophy journals, cultural studies, and increasingly, artificial intelligence laboratories.

Hengran Yang's 2025 article, Artificial intelligence art robots: the future of technological art or the end of the human artist?, published in the International Theory and Practice in Humanities and Social Sciences, addresses precisely this debate. Yang offers a historical overview of AI-generated art, analyses its philosophical and ethical implications, and concludes that, although these technologies can produce formally complex works, they lack human emotional expression and cultural sensitivity. He thus proposes a complementary role for AI in the artistic ecosystem, not a substitutive one.

From the perspective of my research —which integrates neuroscience, philosophy, and anthropology within the framework of Surgical Philosophy and the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C— Yang's work is valuable as a starting point. But it also reveals a fundamental limitation: his analysis operates at the level of traditional philosophy of art and cultural studies, without addressing the neurobiological and evolutionary basis of aesthetic experience. That is the gap our research attempts to fill.

 

What does Yang say?

Yang structures his work around several key sections. First, he reconstructs the historical evolution of AI art, from algorithmic experiments in the 1960s to contemporary developments such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and robot artists like Ai-Da, capable of drawing and painting using deep learning algorithms.

Next, he analyses the philosophical and ethical questions this phenomenon raises: who is the author of an AI-generated work? Can a machine be considered creative? What happens to the value of human artistic work when a machine can produce thousands of works in seconds?

Yang's conclusion is nuanced. He acknowledges the technical capabilities of AI —its ability to generate images, music, or texts with impressive formal complexity— but emphasises that these systems possess neither consciousness, nor intentionality, nor subjective experience. Therefore, AI cannot replace the human artist, but should be understood as a collaborative tool. Future artists, Yang suggests, will need to develop technical skills to work with AI, not to compete against it.

 

Surgical Philosophy: excising the confusion between product and process 

From the Surgical Philosophy I develop in my work, the first step in addressing a poorly posed problem is to make a precise analytical cut. In the debate on AI and art, the fundamental confusion consists of equating two radically different things: the formal product (an image, a symphony, a poem) and the embodied process that, in human beings, gives rise to that product.

An AI can generate an image that, viewed externally, is indistinguishable from a human painting. But what it lacks is:

• A body that feels: AI has no autonomic nervous system; it does not experience a racing heart in the presence of beauty, nor shivers before tragedy, nor stillness before the sublime.

• An evolutionary history: AI does not descend from primates who, over millions of years, learned to detect patterns, avoid predators, and collaborate in groups.

• A personal biography: AI has not suffered loss, has not loved, has not feared death. In short, it has no self that unfolds over time.

The error that Surgical Philosophy helps to excise is believing that, because the product is similar, the process is equivalent. It is not. And that difference is what matters for understanding art as a human phenomenon.

 

S/ Y/ C: why AI cannot (yet) be an artist

My Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C holds that neuronal functioning is based on a single function subdivided into three concatenated subfunctions that operate as a single unit: S (Survival), Y (Symbolon), and C (Wholeness). These three constitute the substrate of all human experience, including artistic experience. Let us examine each one in the human being and ask whether artificial intelligence can even approximate its unfolding.

The S dimension, survival. In human beings, aesthetic emotion does not float in an abstract void: it is rooted in biological mechanisms for detecting favourable environments, resources, and safety signals. Art mobilises the autonomic nervous system —it quickens the heart, bristles the skin, holds the breath. It is not a superimposed cultural ornament; it is a deep activation of the living body that must preserve itself. Artificial intelligence, by contrast, has no body to preserve. It experiences no fear, pleasure, wonder, or nostalgia. Its "response" to a stimulus —if it can be called that— is not an experience but a mathematical function that lacks the embodied texture of feeling.

The Y dimension, symbolon. Human beings create and share symbols from a shared cultural history. Art is, in its essence, symbolon: an act of recognition through common codes, a bridge connecting one interior to another through a shared form. Artificial intelligence can manipulate symbols with impressive efficiency: it processes language, generates recognisable images, composes texts that imitate discursive coherence. But it does not inhabit the symbol. There is no one "inside" the machine who recognises or is recognised, who shares the tremor of a discovered meaning, who celebrates the encounter between a sign and its interpretation. AI handles the symbol from the outside; the human being lives it from within.

The C dimension, wholeness. The human brain seeks to close forms, reduce uncertainty, integrate parts into a coherent whole. Beauty is, to a large extent, the subjective experience of an achieved wholeness: a form that closes, a rhythm that resolves, a meaning that emerges as an organic totality. Artificial intelligence can generate formally "closed" objects —rhymed sonnets, symmetrical images, structured melodies— but it does not experience the drive toward wholeness. There is no subject who feels relief when the pattern closes, nor anguish when it fragments, nor longing when a totality is intuited but not yet reached. There is form, undoubtedly. But there is no experience of form.

The conclusion is clear: artificial intelligence can imitate the product of art —the formally finished work, the image, the text, the melody— but it cannot generate the living process that gives meaning to that product. It lacks the S substrate of a body that feels because its survival depends on it. It does not inhabit the Y dimension of the symbol as an act of shared recognition. It does not feel the C drive toward wholeness as a biological and existential need.

Human art is not just a matter of form. It is a matter of a body that feels, a symbol that is inhabited, and a wholeness that is yearned for. And that, for now, remains the exclusive patrimony of the living.

 

And if AI developed consciousness? A note on the future

A recurring argument among proponents of "AI art" is that machines might develop consciousness in the future. If that happened —if an AI had sensations, emotions, a biography, and a sense of self— then the question would be completely reformulated.

But that is not the current state of technology, nor even a near horizon. Today, AI systems are statistical machines that process vast amounts of data and generate probabilistic outputs. There is no one home. There is no self contemplating the result of its own generation and finding it beautiful or empty. And without that self, there is no art in the fully human sense.

As Yang rightly notes, AI is a complementary tool. It can amplify human creativity, offer unexpected variations, accelerate technical processes. But it cannot replace the artist, because the artist is not just a generator of forms. The artist is an embodied, situated, mortal being who uses art to survive symbolically, to construct meaning, and to achieve, even if only for an instant, the sensation of wholeness.

 

Conclusion: art as testimony of the living

Hengran Yang's article has the merit of posing the right questions and offering a balanced analysis, far from both uncritical technological enthusiasm and conservative rejection. However, from the perspective of my research —which integrates neuroscience, philosophy, and anthropology within the framework of Surgical Philosophy and the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C— his analysis falls short in one crucial aspect: it does not address why human art matters biologically, not just culturally.

Art is not a luxury of the cerebral cortex. It is an expression of the single function of the nervous system: a function that needs to survive, symbolise, and achieve wholeness. AI can imitate form, but it cannot generate the living substrate from which that form emerges. That is why the future of art is not the replacement of the human by the machine, but collaboration between the two, provided we do not forget who brings the body, the history, and the meaning.

And that, perhaps, is the true philosophical challenge of our time: to distinguish the tool from the craftsman, the algorithm from embodiment, simulation from lived experience. Surgical Philosophy offers us the tools to make that cut with precision. Applying them is the task of those who still believe that art is, above all, an irreplaceable testimony of the living.

 

References

López Mallo, J. B. (2026). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C  

López Mallo, J. B. (2026). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1  

López Mallo, J. B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Tesis doctoral]. Universidad del País Vasco - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. Repositorio ADDI. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701 

https://catalogo.sanchoelsabio.eus  

Yang, H. (2025). Artificial intelligence art robots: the future of technological art or the end of the human artist? International Theory and Practice in Humanities and Social Sciences, *2*(1), 243–251. https://doi.org/10.70693/itphss.v2i1.85

 

 

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
 Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
 

Bernabé Mallo
 PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed:  https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects: 
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens

 

The Strange Blindness That Stopped Time: When the Brain Can No Longer See Motion

 Bernabé Mallo

Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.

  

A commentary on akinetopsia and what it reveals about our perception of reality

What would happen if the world suddenly transformed into a succession of frozen images, like an old film projector missing most of its frames? For most people, this idea evokes science fiction scenarios. Yet there exists a real neurological disorder that produces exactly that experience. It is called akinetopsia, also known as "motion blindness," and those who suffer from it describe a reality where objects, vehicles, and even people seem to move in jerks, as if time itself had fragmented.

The journalistic article I comment on here, published by the site Mi Punto de Vista, presents this fascinating syndrome in an accessible manner, drawing on one of the most famous cases documented by neuroscience: that of patient "LM," studied in the 1980s by neurologist Semir Zeki and his collaborators. LM, who suffered bilateral damage to her visual cortex following a series of strokes, described how coffee seemed to fill the cup in a single jump, how cars suddenly appeared in different positions with no intermediate trajectory, and how the gestures of her interlocutors fragmented into disconnected scenes.

This is a fascinating case that opens a privileged window into the deepest mechanisms of human perception. In this commentary, I offer a complementary perspective from Surgical Philosophy and the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C that form the core of my current research on the origin of art in the Homo species, to show how such a singular neurological disorder can illuminate fundamental aspects of our relationship with time, movement, and the construction of reality.

 

The MT/V5 Area: The Brain's Engineering of Motion

The article clearly explains that akinetopsia is associated with lesions in a specific region of the visual cortex known as the MT (Middle Temporal) area or V5, located in the middle temporal lobe of the brain. This region plays a crucial role in interpreting visual motion, integrating thousands of continuous visual changes per second to create the fluid sensation of displacement.

The existence of a brain region specialised in motion —and not, for example, in colour, shape, or depth— reveals something fundamental about the architecture of the mind. As contemporary neuroscience has shown, human vision does not function like a camera passively capturing complete images. Rather, it functions like a modular system composed of multiple semi-autonomous subsystems, each responsible for a specific aspect of perception. There are areas that process colours, others that recognise faces, others that detect edges, and others, like area MT/V5, that analyse motion.

Akinetopsia empirically demonstrates that the fluid perception of motion is not a direct given of reality, but rather an active construction of the brain. When area MT/V5 is damaged, this construction fails. The patient continues to see shapes and colours —because the areas responsible for those functions remain intact— but the world becomes a sequence of static scenes, as if someone had broken the invisible thread connecting instants into a temporal continuity.

 

Surgical Philosophy and the Paradox of Static Motion

From the perspective of Surgical Philosophy that I develop in my work, a case like akinetopsia offers an opportunity to apply the surgical method's phases to the analysis of a complex phenomenon.

Philosophical Anamnesis: Gathering Data on the Phenomenon

Akinetopsia presents us with a clinical fact that challenges our intuitive understanding of perception. The patient continues to see —they recognise objects, colours, shapes— but has lost the ability to perceive continuous displacement. The philosophical question that emerges from this anamnesis is: what does this disorder tell us about the relationship between time, movement, and consciousness?

Analytical Incision: Separating the Components of Perception

The phenomenon allows us to perform a precise analytical cut. Under normal conditions, we perceive movement as an intrinsic property of objects: a moving car, a rising hand, flowing water. But akinetopsia demonstrates that what we call "perceived motion" is, in fact, the result of the integration of multiple visual signals by a specific brain mechanism. When that mechanism fails, motion as a subjective experience simply disappears, even though objects continue to move in the external world.

Extraction of Contradictions: The Tension Between Physical Reality and Perceptual Experience

Here emerges the central contradiction that akinetopsia brings to light: there exists a dissociation between the physical reality of motion (objects change position in space-time) and the subjective experience of motion (the perception of continuous, fluid displacement). For the patient with motion blindness, physical reality continues to occur —the car moves, the hand rises— but that reality becomes inaccessible to conscious experience in its continued temporal dimension.

Ethical Suturing: Reconstituting the Problem of Lived Time

The ethical and philosophical lesson we can draw is that our experience of time is not a direct reflection of physical time, but rather a neurological construction. The temporal continuity we take for granted —that sensation that the present flows into the past and projects into the future— is a feat of brain engineering, not a given of external reality. Understanding this allows us to approach with greater humility and precision fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of time, consciousness, and the construction of reality.

 

S/ Y/ C: The Single Neuronal Function Model and the Experience of Motion

These reflections connect directly with the Law of Biological Coherence S/Y/C that forms the theoretical core of my research on the origin of art. Let us briefly recall its three dimensions:

• S (Survival) is the primordial substrate of neuronal functioning: the preservation of the organism, the optimisation of resources, the avoidance of threats. The MT/V5 area does not exist by chance: it evolved because detecting motion —an approaching predator, a fleeing prey— is crucial for survival. Akinetopsia, by deactivating this function, shows us what happens when that adaptive mechanism fails: the world becomes dangerous, incomprehensible, uncertain.

• Y (Symbolon) is the capacity to create, manipulate, and share symbols: the bridge between the internal and external world through language, art, and shared representations. The perception of motion is not just survival: it is also meaning. When we see a hand rising, we do not merely detect displacement; we interpret an intention, a gesture, a message. Akinetopsia also damages this symbolic dimension: gestures cease to be gestures because they fragment; communication becomes unintelligible.

• C (Wholeness) is the driving force toward totality, the need to integrate parts into a coherent whole. The brain does not settle for processing fragments: it seeks to close the form, to construct a unified narrative. In normal motion perception, wholeness manifests as the experience of a fluid continuity, a temporal totality that transcends isolated instants. Akinetopsia is, above all, a fracture of wholeness: the world breaks into disconnected fragments, and with it, the sense of a stable self in time also breaks.

These three dimensions —S / Y / C— do not operate separately. There is no first survival, then symbol, then wholeness. They are three concatenated subfunctions of a single primordial neuronal function that constitutes the substrate of all conscious experience. Akinetopsia shows us, dramatically, what happens when one of these dimensions is compromised by a brain lesion. It is not that only the S component (survival) disappears, nor only the Y (symbolisation), nor only the C (wholeness). It is that the functional unity of the nervous system fractures, and with it, the experience of the world as a coherent and meaningful whole also fractures.

 

What Does Akinetopsia Teach Us About the Origin of Art?

This question is central to my current research project, titled The Origin of Art in the Homo Species: from Makapansgat to MoMA, from Primate to Sapiens.

If the perception of motion is a neural construction that can fail —and which, under normal conditions, integrates S, Y, and C into a unified experience— then art, and especially figurative art, can be understood as an exploration and expansion of this constructive capacity. When a Palaeolithic artist painted a galloping horse on the walls of the Chauvet cave, they were not passively copying an external movement. They were activating the same neural mechanisms —S for the detection of relevant motion, Y for the symbolisation of form, C for the wholeness of the scene— but now in the context of a symbolic creation.

Art, from this perspective, is not a late cultural luxury. It is a tool of biological coherence: a means by which the nervous system explores, trains, and celebrates its capacity to construct meaningful totalities from perceptual fragments. The motion represented in a cave painting is not real motion, but it activates the same neural circuits. It is a symbolon that evokes survival (the hunt) while simultaneously satisfying the need for wholeness (the closed scene, the resolved visual rhythm).

In this sense, akinetopsia shows us, through absence, what art does through presence: suture continuity between the fragments of the world, reconstructing a meaningful totality where motion —and with it, time and life— can flow without interruption. 

References

López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C  

López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1  

Zeki, S. (1991). Cerebral akinetopsia (visual motion blindness): A review. Brain, 114(2), 811-824.

Zihl, J., von Cramon, D., & Mai, N. (1983). Selective disturbance of movement vision after bilateral brain damage. Brain, 106(2), 313-340.

Original article commented on: Las personas que dejaron de ver el movimiento. (2026). Mi Punto de Vista. https://www.mipuntodevista.com.mx/las-personas-que-dejaron-de-ver-el-movimiento/

 

Autor / Author

Bernabé Mallo
 Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
 

Bernabé Mallo
 PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
 Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.

Enlaces / Links

Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed:  https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects: 
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens