The way you look at the problem shapes the solution.
Abstract: Phase Constructs of Mind
This is a black box problem: In science, computing, engineering, and psychology, a black box is a metaphor for a device, system or object which can be analyzed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics) without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its internal working is ‘opaque’ (black). While we have a vague understanding of the inner workings of the brain – we have no such opportunity with the Mind. To analyze something, as an open system, with a typical ‘black box approach’, only the behavior of the stimulus/response will be accounted for, to infer the unknown in the box. While we can ask and get answers about what the thoughts were between the stimulus and response, we cannot accept these responses a totally valid since we know that the levels of communication between the experience and the report vary; and there is additionally the opportunity for deceit. We can, however, check the response with the description for degrees of consistency. The usual representation of this black box system is a data flow diagram centered in the box. However, there is potential for many different diagrams based upon how we end up perceiving the problem.
We will attempt to explore the evolutionary development of the Mind and determine how it functions in the present. We will start with what we perceive as the evolutionary construction of mental processes (thinking) and seek to find the self-healing processes of the Mind and body.
Constructs of Mentality
Human beings develop their own reality through the process of thinking. It is, therefore, important to have some understanding of the nature of a thought in hand as we explore this territory. Neuroscientists are aware that thoughts are electrical impulses that trigger electrical and chemical switches in the brain. This means that thoughts are not just psychological in nature, they are physiological – electrochemical triggers that direct and affect the chemical activity.
“When given an electrical command – a thought – the brain immediately does several things: It responds to the thought by releasing appropriate control chemicals into the body, and it alerts the central nervous system to any required response or action.” Shad Helmstetter
What this in essence means is that something directs the brain to activate the biological body to carry out the intentions. I will posit that that something is the Mind, but I am not ready yet to support this conclusion.
This exercise is to examine when and how the Mind might come to fruition and to address the mechanisms that make it so. There appear to be four (4) phase states that this thinking process passes through in the process. To enhance that process, I have identified what I consider to be ‘construct states’ of the mind and to examine the phase transformation that might occur. Since this is a mental experiment, it can be considered as pure conjecture. However, the experiment may lead to some fruitful conclusions.
Phase States
State One – Instincts: These consist of the epigenetic rules of the species, normally this type of information is considered to be carried within the chemical constructs contained in the DNA. These are the species survival strategies. The list below is not inclusive of all the guidelines for human species, but generally represents major aspects. Along with the basic survival system, fear, humans are wired or organized with three [03] primary systems for the management of nonverbal information.
It is interesting to note that the earliest form of life, prokaryote, do not have DNA, which is generally thought of as the storage of information component of the entity, but do have survival instincts. Somehow at this most primitive level, the information about survival responses (e.g., eating, reproducing and avoiding predators) exists within the nature of the system and is utilized effectively.Fear: sensory, not emotional. This is the most primal of all of the instincts connected strongly to survival. This is a biological response that leads to fight, flee or freeze responses. This may be the Fear/Terror affect (see below).
Pain: The most primitive of the three sensory systems involves pain, which is both localizing and motivating. It is the report that motivates us by drawing our attention to the site of the injury so we may do something to limit the damage. Since the report is not directly connected to the injured tissue, the pain can be created or diminished within the human mind. [Question: does the creation of pain (hypochondria) lead to creation of an injury?]
Drives: The drives are a system of reports, and have the following characteristics:
They call attention to the fact that some body function needs to be performed (usually transport of a substance into or out of the body as in hunger, the urge to eliminate, or sex);
They tell us where required action is to take place (we are hungry only in the mouth, aroused primarily in the genitals, tired in the eyes that must be closed in order for us to sleep);
They initiate the process of consumption (sucking movements, hand to genital, or closure of eyelids). And
They tell an organism what must be done and how to do it when that organism is incapable of making the conscious decision to do so.
Affect: is neither the stimulus itself nor our appraisal of it, but a report about that stimulus based on the way [speed & density] the information is received by the neural apparatus. We use the term ‘affect’ to represent any of the nine [09] types of physiological mechanisms that underlie all emotion.
The affects are a group of highly patterned muscular and circulatory actions primarily displayed as ‘facial expressions’ but also as certain odors, postures, and vocalizations. The affect system adds meaning to information derived from other systems. When we accept or pay attention to the affect that has been triggered by one of the mechanisms, it becomes what we conventionally call a ‘feeling’.
The combination of an affect with our memory of previous experiences of that affect is given the formal name of ‘emotion’; Affect is always biology, whereas emotion always represents biography. Each person has the same nine innate affects, but our life experience makes our emotions quite different.
The Innate Affects:
Surprise-startle affect
Fear-terror affect
Interest-excitement affect
Enjoyment-joy affect
Distress-anguish affect
Anger-rage affect
These six [06] innate mechanisms are triggered by nothing more than the densities (intensity) and gradients (speed) of neural stimulation. It is only after an affect has been triggered that we are motivated to pay attention to whatever triggered it. We proceed to interpret this experience in light of our memory of prior experiences.
There are three [03] other innate mechanisms that have evolved from other sources but have become incorporated into the affect system:
Dissmell affect
Disgust affect
Shame affect
The physiological mechanism of Shame is triggered only when we have been in the throes of one of the two positive affects (the only ones that feel good), interest-excitement or enjoyment-joy.
An affect is both analogous to its trigger and calls attention to that trigger. Thus, whenever anything interrupts one of these two pleasant types of feeling, the interruption itself is amplified as an affective reaction through which the head and neck slump, the eyes droop and are turned away, the upper body goes limp, the face (and sometimes neck and upper chest) become red, and all communication with the other person is lost for a moment.
The eight [08] categories of experience in which shame affect will be triggered is both simple and obvious:
Matters of size, strength, ability, skill;
Dependence/Independence;
Competition;
Sense of self;
Personal Attractiveness;
Sexuality;
Issues of seeing and being seen;
Wishes and fears about closeness.
Failure in any of these areas triggers shame, just as success brings on a moment of pride.
Instincts are the basics in the process of creating the Mind. While they are dominant in early life, both of the individual entity and the species, they never really lose their capacity. They can, however, be overridden by an enlightened Mind.
The curious question is how the instincts first came into being. Obviously, over time, the individual would learn, but how did the individual survive before it learned. We might assume that the first life form had no predators, but is this enough? How about any automatic functions?
State Two – Intuition: The second phase of thinking consist of the interpretations of the body’s sensory modalities used in internal and external regulation and include qualia or submodalities. Some type of organizing principle or Mind is implemented. These interpretations use sensory information without concepts or language. Quirks: hunches, gut feelings, etc. are how we describe these interpretations. This is the first unifying experience of the total entity; the sum of the parts exceeds the whole. Intuitions (Quirks) provide the primary cognitive process until around four years of age at which point some conceptual processes begin. Somewhere around seven years of age is when the conceptual process founded on language becomes primary. Certain sensory arousals such as anticipation or curiosity occur that demonstrate how the individual senses but cannot describe the ‘feelings’ in concepts or words. Yet, we know that something has changed; something is different. Did you ever feel that someone was watching you? Later we will discuss how the sensory organs work by identifying difference. When the difference occurs too slowly or too minimally, you cannot fully take it in, but may sense cues that indicate something is occurring while you don’t yet know what it is. Most people don’t pay attention to these sensory signals after the advent of what many believe is ‘rational thought’.
Up until the dominance of conceptual processes, the individual is vulnerable to apparently unsolvable negative Quirks because there are no words to describe these Quirks and therefore they cannot be brought into consciousness for ‘debugging’ (reprogramming).
Sensory modalities expand the dimensions beyond thoughts to include mental representations of images, smells, tastes, distances, brightness, etc. Within each representational system, we make fine distinctions. Each sense can have different qualitative characteristics.
Visual submodalities: shape, color/black-and white, movement, brightness/dimness, distance, location…
Auditory submodalities: volume, tempo, pitch, frequency…
Kinesthetic submodalities: temperature, pressure, texture, moisture, pain, pleasure…
Taste submodalities: sweet, sour, salty, bitter… Think of the list of words used by wine tasters. These words are attempts by tasters to convey a taste concept to others. The term ‘woody’ has no meaning except in the mind of the taster. A recipient might have a totally different concept of what ‘woody’ tastes like, but if s/he uses the term in the same way, they have agreement. However, if the person does not like the ‘woody’ taste, s/he may find that it becomes more palatable if given a different name.
Olfactory submodalities: the sense that enables one to perceive odors; it depends on the stimulation of sense organs in the nose by small particles carried in inhaled air. It is important not only for the detection of odors, but also for the enjoyment of food, since flavor is a blend of taste and smell. Taste registers only four qualities: salt, sour, bitter, and sweet; other qualities of flavor depend on smell. Different people smell different odors, and most of these differences are caused by genetic differences although others may be from habituated preferences. Partially because of this, there are few standard smells and names and concepts are not applied consistently. Since it is not the experience that is important, but the interpretation of the experience, it is the designation or naming of a smell that is similar to the wine tasters skill that identifies the specific submodalities. And by changing the concept and/or context, you can change the smell.
When you smell a skunk – think of burnt coffee.
Remember how important the interpretation of sensory data is to the context of the experience. What you see, hear, feel, taste and smell is contingent upon many factors, including, but not limited to what you believe and therefore expect to see, to what you are habituated, to what the group perceives, etc. All of these influencing factors can be minimized, but only if you decide to do so and are willing to participate in a self-organizing regimen.
Through habituation (the action of forming a customary practice), the Quirks of intuition also continue to have remnants in later life and because there is no concept to describe them, they are difficult to bring to consciousness in order to change. We have found that an enlightened Mind can seek to answer the unanswerable and begin to shape out the understanding of a hither to unknown but emotionally charged Quirk meaning.
Another way to deplete the emotional charge of an upsetting, but unknown Quirk is to switch the emotional basis for its existence. Each emotion uses different submodalities. The switching of these submodalities through the use of imagination has an apparent effect upon thinking. Imagination is a critical feature of human beings and we will need to explore it more thoroughly later.
The human creature is prone to give values based upon the concepts they accept, whether real or imagined. Animals in the wild operate substantially on pragmatic interpretations of sensory clues with the specific goals in mind of survival and reproduction. Humans, on the other hand have a built in value methodology. When the fetus has a first experience – a difference that makes a difference (contains information) they make an immediate judgement based upon utility, e.g., is this good or bad, helpful or harmful, pleasurable or painful? When the second experience is recorded, the entity has a second judgement key, association – is this like the first experience or different. Since all sensory signals are based upon difference, this is an expected expansion. Thus, in addition to the imagination of past and future, humans have built many external webs within which they operate, the most profound being culture.
State Three – Intellect: Concepts & Language: While our vocabulary for articulating the separation of these structural qualities is limited and there is a great deal of overlap, this is the stage that most people would consider the beginning of thinking and therefore, the beginning of the Mind. Obviously, however, the prior constructs also represent thinking at perhaps a more primitive level. Is an amoeba thinking when it instinctively seeks to survive?
John Von Neumann, a mathematician who pioneered the development of computer science, pointed out thirty years ago, in his Theory of Games, that the behavioral sciences lack any reduced model that would do for biology and psychology what the Newtonian particle did for physics. We propose that we can now enlist a bit of information (an idea) to meet these requirements. First proposed by Gregory Bateman in 1969, by presupposing “that science is a way of perceiving and making what we may call ‘sense’ of our precepts. All receipt of information is necessarily the receipt of news of difference, and sensory thresholds limit all perception of difference. Differences that are too slight or too slowly presented are not perceivable.”
Bateman went on to indicate, “it takes at least two somethings to create a difference. To produce news of difference, i.e., information, there must be two entities [real or imagined] such that the difference between them can be intrinsic in their mutual relationship.
Human sense organs can receive only news of difference, and the differences must be coded into events in time [i.e., into changes] in order to be perceptible. Ordinary static differences that remain constant for more than a few seconds become perceptible only by scanning. Similarly, very slow changes become perceptible only by a combination of scanning and bringing together observations from separated moments in the continuum of time. The whole affair must be such that news of difference can be represented as a difference through interpretation and an idea [thought] inside some information-processing entity, such as a brain or, perhaps, a Mind.
Thinking is tied closely to physiology. People’s thought processes change their physiological state. Sufficiently sensitive sensory acuity will help a communicator fine-tune their communication to a person in ways over and above mere linguistics.
[NOTE: A thought could be thought of as similar to a virtual particle – which pops in and out of a quantum vacuum. Where is a thought (noun) before it is thought (verb)?
At the time it becomes conscious, it could be considered a composite particle consisting of both psychological (matter) and cognitive (energy) with a variable force (emotion) holding it together.]
Bateson defined information as “the difference that makes a difference” – without knowledge of death, there could be no knowledge of life. To know what heat is, we must know what cold is, etc. All concepts contain differences as a prerequisite for their existence as concepts, either as opposites or as levels on a scale. [See Also: George Kelly – Personal Constructs]
Biological Underpinnings
There is an acute incompatibility between observations and existing theories about the mind. Oliver Sacks in his article A New Vision of the Mind suggests that new theories arise from a crisis in scientific understanding, which virtually excludes the concepts of ‘mind’ and consciousness’. The new vision that he reports on is a theory developed by Gerald Edelman with his colleagues at the Neurosciences Institute at Rockefeller University. This biological theory of the mind, which he calls Neural Darwinism, or the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection [TNGS], serves quite well as the underpinnings for the management of cognitive behavior. What follows is a synopsis of the Sacks article. Any errors in concept or intent are mine.
Edelman proposes that an evolutionary process takes place – not one that selects organisms and takes millions of years, but one that occurs within each particular organism, and within its lifetime, by competition among cells, or selection of groups of cells in the brain.
Edelman discusses two kinds of selection in the evolution of the nervous system; ‘developmental’ and ‘experimental’. The first takes place largely before birth. The genetic instructions in each organism provide general constraints for neural development, but they cannot specify the exact destination of each developing nerve cell, for these grow and die, migrate in great numbers and in entirely unpredictable ways; or, as Edelman says, all of them are ‘gypsies’, Thus the vicissitudes of fetal development themselves produce in every brain unique patterns of neurons and neuronal groups [‘developmental selection’]. Even identical twins with identical genes will not have identical brains at birth; the fine details of cortical circuitry will be quite different. Such variability, Edelman points out, would be a catastrophe in virtually any mechanical or computational system, where exactness and reproducibility are of the essence, but in a system in which selection is central, the consequences are different, here variation and diversity are themselves of the essence.
The fetus is born, thrown into the world, there to be exposed to a new form of selection based upon experience [‘experiential selection’]. Despite a sudden, incomprehensible [perhaps terrifying] explosion of electromagnetic radiation, sound waves, and chemical stimuli; the world encountered is not one of complete meaninglessness and pandemonium, for the infant shows selective attention and preferences from the start. These (innate) biases, Edelman calls ‘values’. Such values are essential for adaptation and survival. These ‘values’ – drives, instincts, intentionalities – serve to weigh experiences differently, to orient the organism toward survival and adaptation, to allow what Edelman calls ‘categorization on value’. ‘Values’ are experienced, internally, as feelings: without feeling there can be no animal life. Cognitive approaches acknowledge that emotions place value; thus what a person loves or hates are the most important objects, propositions or schema to them. This is highly compatible with the ‘value’ of Edelman.
At a more elementary physiological level, there are various sensory and motor ‘givens’, from the reflexes that automatically occur [for example the response to pain] to innate mechanisms in the brain, as, for example, the feature detectors in the visual cortex that, as soon as they are activated, detect verticals, horizontals, angles, etc., in the visual world. Thus we have a certain amount of basic equipment; but very little else is programmed or built in.
It is up to the infant animal, to create its own categories and to use them to make sense of, to construct a world – and it’s not just a world that the infant constructs, but its his or her own world, a world constituted from the first by personal meaning (‘inner logic’) and reference. The personality of the individual is just such a construction, built upon the ‘categories’ that make up the schema which make up the whole person.
A unique neuronal pattern of connections is created and then, experience acts upon this pattern, modifying it by selectively strengthening or weakening connections between neuronal groups, or creating entirely new connections.
The connection that Edelman identifies is what some biologists might refer to as ‘hard-wiring’. However, as we shall see, the wiring is not so ‘hard’ after all.
Thus experience itself is not passive, a matter of ‘impressions’ or ‘sense-data’, but active as the individual interprets the ‘sensory data’ and constructs models of reality, This ‘imagining’ or ‘cognitive modeling’ is carried out by the organism from the start. Every perception is an act of creation. This perceptual generalization is dynamic and not static, and depends on the active and incessant orchestration of countless details. Such a correlation is possible because of the very rich connections between the brain’s map connections, which are reciprocal, and may contain millions of fibers. A continuous ‘communication’ occurs between the active maps themselves, which enables a coherent construct such as ‘chair’ to be made. But we remember Korsybski’s admonition; the map is not the territory!
Alfred Korsybski’s statement asserts that in all thought or perception or communication about perception, there is a transformation, a coding, between the report and the thing reported. Above all, the relation between the report and that mysterious thing reported tends to have the nature of a classification, an assignment of the thing to a class. Naming is always classifying, and mapping is essentially the same as naming.
The outputs of innumerable maps not only compliment one another at a perceptual level but are also built at higher and higher levels of abstraction. The brain ‘categorizes its own categorizations’, and does so by a process that can ascend indefinitely to yield more generalized pictures of the world, providing a world view; or in our general terminology – a ‘theory of meaning’, from which, of course, follows an ‘inner logic’ that directs the way one responds to the environment.
Perceptual categorization is the first step, and it is crucial for learning, but is not something fixed, something that occurs once and for all. On the contrary – there is then a continual recategorization, and this itself constitutes memory. Unlike computer-based memory, brain-based memory is inexact, but it is also capable of great degrees of generalization.
The essential achievement of primary consciousness, or as we would refer to it “intuition”, is to bring together the many categorizations involved in perception into a scene. The advantage of this is that ‘events that may have had significance to an individual’s past learning can be related to new events.’ The relation established will not be a causal one, one necessarily related to anything in the outside world; it will be an individual (or ‘subjective’) one, based on what has had ‘value’ or ‘meaning’ for the individual in the past.
Higher order consciousness (or intellectualism) arises from primary consciousness- it supplements it, it does not replace it. It is dependent on the evolutionary development of language, together with the evolution of symbols, of cultural exchange; and with this brings an unprecedented power of detachment, generation, and reflection, so that finally self-consciousness is achieved, the consciousness of being a self in the world, with human experience and imagination to call upon – the creation of the Mind.
Language immensely facilitates and expands this by making possible previously unattainable conceptual and symbolic powers. The use of words to describe the variation of emotional levels is the cognitive construct that links here. Teaching a person to discriminate between rage and irritation is not simply an expansion of vocabulary; it is an expansion of conceptual and symbolic powers making possible new responses.
The importance of language or other symbols of communication cannot be underestimated. However, this communication can be misleading, as we will see later.
As Edelman has suggested, we do not operate directly on the world in which we live, but rather we create cognitive models or maps of the world and use these maps to guide our behavior. Our representation of the world determines to a large degree what our experience of the world will be, how we will perceive the world, what choices we will see available to use as we live in the world. These models of the world that each of us creates will themselves be different.
Our nervous system and its sensory constraints (e.g., blindness), then, initially determined genetically, constitutes the first set of filters that distinguish the world – the territory – from our representations of the world – the map. Each of us perceives the world with different senses – the old story of the blind men and the elephant (see Appendix) is a good example of how our senses stratify what we perceive. The story also leads to the expression of Dr. Ron Farkas – Don’t believe everything you think!
These genetic differences are only the first of the filters; another has to do with social constraints. Often referred to as social genetic filters they include all the categories or filters to which we are subject as members of a social system: our language, our accepted ways of perceiving, and the socially agreed upon fictions. As an example Bandler and Grinder indicate that human beings can identify 7.5 million shades of color, but a certain tribe uses only three words to describe them. English speakers generally use blue, green, orange, red, yellow, purple, and black, although teal and mauve are becoming popular. But the point is that our culture constrains us in perceiving roaches as food and in many other ways.
A third filter that determines what we perceive is individual constraints. By individual constraints we refer to all the representations we create as human beings based upon our unique personal history. Every human being has a set of experiences that constitute his or her own personal history and are as unique to him or her as are his or her fingerprints.
The individual constraints (perhaps best identified by ‘I Cants’ or You Shoulds’, constitute the basis for the profound differences among us as humans and the way we create models of the world. These differences in our models can either be ones that alter our socially given prescriptions [shoulds] in a way that enriches our experiences and offers us more choices, or ones that impoverish our experience in a way that limits our ability to act effectively. The upside is that these individual constraints can be selectively changed through a process of consciously examining the validity or absurdity of their value.
The Illusions of Language
Not all illusions are optical. “This sentence is false”, is a verbal illusion of only one type. This type is paradoxical, since if the sentence is true, it is obviously false; while if it is false, it is obviously true. Yet the words have not changed.
What does that mean?
Contrary to common sense, there is no justification to the belief that what you just said has meaning to the people who heard it. Words, in and of themselves, have no meaning until meaning is given to them through interpretation within the context of the listener.
The most obvious understanding of this contrarian notion is when you, the speaker, do not speak the same language as the listener. Less obvious, but still apparent is when your colloquial usage and pronunciation are different – people in the United Kingdom and the United States, both are English speakers, but often are confused by the other.
Another misunderstanding is when the speaker uses words differently – ‘bad’ is not always bad to hip youngsters. Thus one might perceive the illusion that the speaker is talking about evil, instead of in an older perversion – ‘cool’.
Because languages are constantly evolving through mutation in varying groups, misunderstanding can occur.
But how about when the principal at the high school who has spent close to an hour trying to calm a student down and in his/her most diplomatic style explains why the student’s behavior was unacceptable; and after finally coming to a truce, excuses the student with a friendly “Have a good day!”. And the student is offended, blows up and starts the whole process over again. What happened here?
This is not just a misunderstanding of words; it is a misunderstanding of perception. The student perceived sarcasm, while the principal only meant to be pleasant.
The meaning of a message is the behavior it induces. Charles S. Peirce
The meaning of a message from one person to another is always in in the recipient. If you compliment someone and they slap you – perhaps you need to try something else. Unfortunately, we tend to resent how the other interprets our messages and then want to respond in kind – this is a good way to get into an argument.
Language is a process of assumptions. Interpreting the meaning of utterances is only possible because listeners implicitly assume that speakers intend their utterances to be responsive to the surrounding discourse, relevant, and [for the most part] truthful.
Dialogue is the usual form of communication between two people. However, we can not NOT communicate if we are in the same space together. It is estimated that words provide only 07% of the meaning transmitted. Facial expression provides 55% and tone of voice 38%. Communication is therefore primarily through the right brain and autonomic nervous system where we hear, interpret and understand what the other has said. If we remember that such systems operate nonconsciously, we may begin to understand how a distorted ‘inner logic’ provides ‘noise’ or static, that alters the meaning of the message.
As an example of ‘tone of voice’ ambiguity we offer the following.
I didn’t tell you she fired him for stealing.
The meaning depends on the words you choose to emphasize; we can indicate, for example, five [05] different meanings:
I didn’t tell you she fired him for stealing.
He was fired for stealing, but you must have heard it from someone else.
I didn’t tell you she fired him for stealing.
I told Bob that Harris was fired; I didn’t tell you.
I didn’t tell you she fired him for stealing.
She didn’t fire him, someone else did.
I didn’t tell you she fired him for stealing.
It wasn’t Harris! It was Bob.
I didn’t tell you she fired him for stealing.
He got caught for destruction of property, not stealing.
As we listen to somebody speaking, for example – we silently speak together with the speaker. We might even hear what was not said without noticing a discrepancy, but if we notice this – our hearing falls into disarray, and we either stop the speaker, or find a new starting point and continue to silently speak with the speaker. Damir Ibrisimovic
The recipient may also be predisposed by their individual constraints to perceive the meaning other than intended by their own patterns: attitudes and personality. In chaos theory, outcomes are strongly affected by both primary circumstances and by attractors. The primary circumstances of a dialogue may include preconceived notions about the other person. We are all familiar with the ‘intimate dances’ that take place between familiar participants: son says “Can I use the car” – Father replies “you never put gas in it” – Son says, you never give me any money”, Father replies ‘you need to get a job” – and so we have a battle that never answers directly the original question.
The attractor aspect is the situation where relationships, including dialogue, always break on the same points, even though the players change. Thus some people never are able to commit to a romantic relationship without coming to the issue of jealousy. Like the water in the creek flowing around the rock, each iteration is different, but somehow always the same. The patterns of individual personalities and relationships are often quite consistent and shape the content of the dialogue.
Further confusion arises based on the construct of language as articulated by the Transformational Grammar of Noam Chomsky, and the elaboration developed by Grinder and Bandler of neurolinguistic programming.
Three fundamental language structures exist. The Reference Structure is first created as we see, hear, feel, taste and/or smell in representations called submodalities. This is the sensory input of an experience. This remains at the level of intuition and rarely is fully articulated.
The Deep Structure is created when we represent the experience in language symbols, as we are experiencing. Within this structure are both concepts and Quirks – we know what happened but cannot even re-experience it. Certainly a potential source of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The Surface Structure occurs when we attempt to convey these representations to others – we make certain errors that distort the experience. Since we who use language as a representational system, our linguistic representations are subject to three universal errors:
Generalization is the process by which elements or pieces of a person’s model become detached from their original experience and come to represent the entire category of which the experience is an example. Our ability to generalize is essential to coping with the world.
Deletion is a process by which we selectively pay attention to certain dimensions of our experiences and exclude others. She said – who is she?
Distortion is a process that allows us to make shifts in our experience of sensory data. Fantasy, for example, allows us to prepare for experiences that we may have before they occur.
This process allows two people to see the very same perception and still report it differently.
What we call ‘rational thought’ thus has many obstacles that can interfere with a ‘true’ representation of our experiences.
State Three A – Conceptualization: Emotions: Contrary to popular belief, people learn how to emote, and all emotion is biographical, not biological. Part of the confusion comes from the use of the term ‘feelings’ to indicate both sensations and emotions. There is, of course, a sensory feeling component to emotions, but this is after the fact of incidence and is periphery to the concept. [Like Red Skeleton ‘scared’ himself with his thoughts – am I aging myself?] Nonetheless, emotions are indicative of the way one places value. If a person is either strongly for or against something, they place a positive [love] or negative [hate] evaluation (utility). Think of an almost infinite Likert Scale with one end positive and one negative – and then we rank every experience on the scale and the first x number on the bottom bring intense feelings as do the x number at the top. The extent of x is contingent on the emotional IQ of the participant.
Emotions are a very significant part of the conceptualization state, yet have a very different role and function than do concepts. Conceptually, we may have a neutral perspective, but value may be added. I can perhaps understand clearly that an animal is not dangerous, but have a psychological anathema for it – snakes and spiders come to mind – the non-venomous ones of course. This raises a question of how much does imagination plays a role in the development of emotions.
Fear: Is both a sensory response to danger and an interpretation of the danger and a conceptual description of that danger. Ergo, it has differences to other such constructs. Within the construct of emotions, fear can be purely imaginary developed through a self-constructed model as opposed to a sensory fear that is based upon sensory gradations. Thus emotions only occur when intellectual reason, distorted though it might be, is brought into the equation.
Love: Is a process of attraction and attachment. The attraction may be biological (pheromones, hormones), but the attachment is conscious and conceptual.
Hate: Is a process of fear, repulsion and attachment. One cannot and does not hate that to which s/he is not connected, except in a very conceptual, not emotional way.
Curiosity: a process of interest and often leads to creative imagining and exploration.
Anticipation: the expectation that something is going to happen.
We humans have evolved as a species to use mental narratives to organize, predict, and understand the complexities of our lived experiences. Our choices are shaped largely by the meanings we attribute to events and to the options we are considering. A problem may have personal, psychological, sociocultural, or biological roots – or, more likely, a complex mix of the above.
To the best of our knowledge, animals do not place value, i.e. emote. This is, of course, open to some question, as animals such as elephants, appear to mourn. If we assume, that some animals do emote, we must question the degree of conceptualization required to create value.
So if these constructs provide the basis for thinking and the outcomes of thinking; e.g. reality and personality, how do these pieces fit together? None of the phases ever completely disappear, and their relationship to each other can vary in part or in total, depending on the individual hierarchy of logic.
One of the ways to think of this cohesion is the level of abstraction. Bertrand Russell called the hierarchal structure of thought logical typing. Logical typing would be the process of identifying logical levels of abstraction, with the understanding that each logical level contains the one below it.
According to the Theory of Logical Types, proposed by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell (1910 – 1913), one must distinguish between a class (set, generalization, family, genre, etc.) and the members (elements) of the class. A statement that refers to a class manifests a higher level of abstraction – in other words, is of a higher logical type – than does a statement that refers to the elements of a class. Dog is a higher level of abstraction than Collie.
If each of the constructs of thinking (instincts, intuition, intellectual conceptualization and emotion) were a generalization – each would represent a level of abstraction. It would follow that the thinking of prokaryotes (one celled entities) would be of a lower level of abstraction than the thinking of a mammal, since intuition, as a class would contain the class of instinct. This seems to work up to the third level: conceptualization. Emotion, while clearly a method of thinking and adding value to concepts, does not specifically appear to contain the prior three sets.
Is emotion a level of abstraction in and of itself, or merely an add on to other levels? After all, we have stated that individuals must conceptualize (imagine?) what is expected of them and how to behave given the value they have attached to an experience, e.g., biographical – based on history.
According to Mirriam-Webster Dictionary a concept is something conceived in the mind: a thought or notion.
I find it not very helpful to define the word with the word – concept/conceived. I would define a concept as an individual’s mental representation of a subject. Thus I might have the concept of a UFO as an unidentified flying object, while you represent it as a flying saucer. Either method of definition does not make the concept utile: on a pleasurable or painful scale, and therefore, is not prone to emotion. However, if you see a UFO and get very excited or fearful about “little grey men” – the concept has changed color (green/grey) over the years – you add an emotion (change) to the concept.
I am not sure this approach is very helpful. Perhaps a different tact is needed.
Can we approach from the idea of seeking what precedes emotion? Plants and animals, excepting human beings, do interpret (‘feel’ – that word which covers both sensory and psychological input) – fear, pain, and affect even though they do not all conceptualize it. At the point of intuition, they may plan actions based on the unsayable and unconceptualized interpretation (Quirk) founded on sensory input. Thus, emotional input (affect), but not emotion may be a continuum and an expanding part of the evolution process of thinking.
If this is so, the state we have identified as emotion (value) may or may not constitute a level of abstraction, but it is an increasingly important addition as the physiological to psychological evolution takes place. It is the psychological strata that expands and increase as levels of abstraction go from the purely physical sensory instincts to the physical sensory intuitive interpretation to the psychological sensory conception process. The physiological sensory instincts recognize the utility aspects of experience from the very beginning of life; but it is only when the psychological conceptualization of the experience occurs that the concept of emotion is added and becomes a potential for creating an inner dialogue that can become its own problem in living.
Life itself it seems, has from the very beginning the capacity to be aware on a sensory level and that capacity increases as it evolves its ability to think and create Mind increases as complexity and psychological capacity increase. “Every evolutionary step is an addition of information to an already existing system” (Bateson). This new transcending meta-information is able to modulate action downwards. Older – lower level information is less likely to modulate action upwards. Thus, a system of higher-level control is built into the system of evolution of psychological information.
In this context of increasing capacity, we must conclude that this can only really occur through learning. But who or what learns. We know that the fetal brain has little neurocomplexity, being limited to the epigenetic rules for survival, until such time as the entity experiences and interprets (has a thought about) the experience. Such thoughts create neuro networks or connections in the brain. If used often it strengthens and can become an automatic thought connection.
Where do the thoughts come from? We indicated very early that it is the Mind that is having these thoughts, programming the brain and in the process creating the entity’s reality (attitudes towards self, others and the future prospects) through teaching (interpreting experiences) and learning. The Mind does this even before it becomes an organizing principle or has the capacity to describe its ‘inner logic’. Thus the entity is able to create capacity to climb the ladder of abstraction to every increasing psychological creation.
One wonders whether this process helps diminish the sensory sensitivity as the cognitive capacity increases, since we seem to be less likely to trust our ‘gut’, both as humanity evolves and as the child grows into an adult and as the individual increases his or her knowledge capacity. It appears that the more innocent one is in knowledge of the world, the more willing and skilled they are in accepting intuitive knowing. Perhaps this should be tested to determine whether it is utile.
Mind is built by each individual on its own model based on its own experiences and interpretations of those experiences. Mind is the culture (personality/attitude) of the individual. The essence of the psychological development (enlightenment) is contingent on what and how much the individual chooses to learn and how creatively s/he interprets experiences. Perhaps some maintenance of the intuitive is necessary to avoid complete automation of cognitive and physical processes.
One of the most promising findings in this decade of the brain is how amenable the brain is to effecting change in its own function, if only it is given appropriate cues. Siegfried Othmer
This is the essence of cognitive behavior management sm. With the provision of the appropriate cues through conscious ‘debugging’, emotional or electrical feedback; the brain can learn to overcome errors of its own development and beyond. If Buddhist monks can learn how to control their own metabolism to sleep at night outside in wet blankets in the Himalayas, the capacity is enormous. Yet, as a society, we, by policy, prefer to poison ourselves with toxic chemicals used to control that which we could change.
As an automatic system, information that moves up logical levels causes new features to emerge that do not exist at the lower levels. This emergence of new information at higher levels involves, in systems language, summitivity (Michael Hall). In other words, the emergent property does not exist only as the sum of the parts, but new properties and qualities arise over ‘time’ within the system making the sum greater than the parts.
Reflexivity describes one of the new features that emerge in logical levels. In living organisms this results in self-reflexivity or self-consciousness.
As a system with feedback properties, logical levels operates by self-reflexivity, the whole system becomes cybernetic. It becomes a “system that feeds back onto and changes itself” (Dilts). This makes it self-organizing. Thus self-consciousness leads to the creation of the Mind, which is a personal creation based upon the self-reflective enlightenment.
But we digress.
Hierarchical logical levels function as a system; the higher levels arise out of the lower and feed back information into the system to influence the lower levels. This creates recursiveness within logical levels and sets the stage for antinomies and paradox (Hall). Paradox in language and mathematics allows for errors in thinking and degenerates outcomes. People with problems in living suffer from such errors in thinking about self, other and expectations for the future and thus may interpret experiences negatively, building upon each negative to reinforce the belief that what they think is true. This is reinforced by what psychologists call a confirmation bias. Thus we search for information that reinforces what we already believe and will ignore information that disconfirms our already held thinking.
Through an understanding of the levels of abstraction and its comparison with other designations of life evolution, we can perhaps understand how thinking and the self-origin of the Mind can work best. There seem to be several such designations:
At the cellular level sensory responses of the entity operate without an organizing principle.
Lynn Margulis and her daughter Dorion Sagan in their book Micro Cosmos (1986) were to my knowledge the first to posit that complex organisms were self-organized by colonies of microorganisms through a process of parasitic and symbiotic procedures. This would indicate that individual cellular entities had a stake in the evolution of the composite creature. It is interesting to note, that the neurons in the brain seem to approximate consensus vote in making responses. Not all neurons fire in the process of reaching consensus. While firing is dependent upon the information (difference) that is carried by the sensory organs, such differences can be symbolically blended rather than observed through bifocal lenses. Thus a decision as to whether the object observed is white or red (based upon the wave length of the light received), a mixed version may be pink.
The intuitive process is the first indication of an organizing principle (an emerging self or Mind), as a method of overcoming disorganized voting and maintaining a balance among competing elements of the living entity. This introduction slows the reactive process (reflex responses), but obviously has evolutionary value at the higher end of abstraction. The organizing principle allows for all points of view to be considered, but a concise position chosen.
Godel’s incompleteness theorem is sort of the uncertainty principle of the abstract. Logic is the formal method of using basic principles of reasoning and correct inference, either from the general to the particular [which is deductive logic] or from the particular to the general [which is inductive logic]. The formal rules of a logical system are supposed to provide one with a rational understanding or ‘knowing’. However, Godel’s theorem indicates quite clearly that even the most powerful formal logical system, mathematics, cannot prove all true propositions. Essentially what this means is that ‘even though we know the truth of something’, we cannot know why we know it. The problem is caused by certain self-referential aspects, which are most easily described in language (since I among others, do not fully understand higher mathematics) through statements such as: This sentence is false! We know intuitively that a paradox exists – if the sentence is false as it says, it is true.
The significant question is: How do we know that a truth that cannot be proven is true or that a paradox exists? Is this knowledge truly intuitive? Do we know what we know, but are unable to express it?
Conclusion:
We have identified three thinking structures: instincts, intuition and intellectualism. Instincts comprise survival activities and automatic functions necessary for survival. Just how the entities from single cell to humans acquired these survival notions is interesting and unknown. For humans, of course, we could speculate that the survival techniques built up over time, but how could the species survive long enough to habituate these techniques? And how did any living thing survive without them? Did single cell prokaryote survive without them before they habituated them?
While instincts appeared without an apparent mechanism, we can better speculate on intuition. It is apparent that sensory organisms measure the differences apparent in the environment and report these differences to the living entity. At some point the entity needed to bring these differences to the attention of some organizing principle, and this organizing principle was able to asses the meaning of these variable differences. Motion as opposed to immobility of an identical entity did not pose much of a danger to survival; but motion as opposed to immobility of a much larger entity raised the danger of survival and the receiving entity needed to react in some way to protect itself. Over time the most successful (fittest) of these assessments and self-preserving reactions became habituated to the entity and somehow (we don’t know how) became stored in DNA. This DNA conveyed an historical record of successful responses to future generations.
In addition, the physiological soma of the entity began building pharmaceutical responses to survivable injuries from both internal and external sources. Ultimately the human body became able to become a self-healing organism. Unfortunately, later thinking aspects (conceptualization) advanced technologies that both increased the dangerous aspects of the environment and diminished the capacity for self-preserving functions. This self-preserving capacity, however, is, as demonstrated by the Tibetan Buddhist, still capable of being enhanced.
Illustrious thinkers since the middle ages have insisted that logic, a product of being able to conceptualize, is the most powerful process in human thinking. It certainly has been highly successful in technology and science, but is it really superior? Since Bertram Russell and Kurt Godel, we have discovered that there is no certainty in either science or mathematics, and still in the last ten years scientist and mathematicians are writing books about seeking certainty because of their failure to build a solid base to logic and mathematics.
Our physicists have even abandoned logic and rationality to faith in their advocacy for, multiverse theory, string or M theory and other quantum mechanics. The fact is that formal systems are flawed and the hostility towards intuition needs to be rethought. Knowing in your ‘heart’ is superior to knowing in your head. The major difficulty with this is that we cannot say what is in our ‘heart’. Belief (faith) is something powerful that is trapped in the automaticity of intuition. This power can work to either the positive or negative, but in our age it is primarily a negative force since we tend to reject natural Quirks and emphasize Quirk convictions, e.g., habituated conceptions: maladaptive judgements about self, others and future prospects are the major cause of problems in living – commonly referred to by the pejorative language of the professionals as mental illness, delinquency, addiction, disability (learning and otherwise), etc. Such language causes a great deal of the problem as it gives the general public ways to describe ineffable problems.
Modern society’s overwhelming adoration of the intellect causes the failure to understand that our humanity lies in the intuitive. I am currently reading a book entitled Exact Thinking in Demented Times by Karl Sigmund. It discusses the thinking of such brilliant people as Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath, Hans Hahn, Friedrich Adler, Kurt Godel, Rudolph, Carnap, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. These were important names in the World War I era. Yet these brilliant men all were socialists, a philosophy, which has failed every test since that time. Adler, a ‘socialist pacifist’, shot and killed the Prime Minister of Austria to promote his socialist beliefs (incidentally, he got away with it, despite starting the world war). Socialism/Communism can only work with fewer that 1000 and at best 500 people – since only then everyone can know everyone else in a face to face (intuitive) relationships. Larger groups eliminate the intuitive ability to judge the character of the other and demand an elite class to run everything and therefore trust, equality and accountability are all eliminated (see Adler above). The fact that all of the ‘brilliant’ people still have such beliefs is a continuing commentary on the limits of ‘rational thinking’.
Wittgenstein is an outrageous example of non-thinking as he keeps postulating ‘brilliant’ ideas that, as stated in the book, he and others all agree nobody understands. An example of his brilliance:
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.” –Ludwig Wittgenstein
This is, of course, completely untrue, since the intuitive state provides the ability to fill in the gap in mathematics and life, but cannot articulate it.
The ‘exact’ thinkers made as clear as possible that their manifesto was – “a collective crusade against all metaphysical and theological doctrines” – thus setting in motion the incredible ignorance of what makes us human. While Wittgenstein had a legitimate interest in the meaning of language and made some interesting observations, he failed to understand that words have no meaning, including his. Mathematician Hans Hahn “wanted to relegate all metaphysical and theological gimcrackery (sic) to the dustbin of mystification, hoping thereby to gain a less obstructed view of the real problems of philosophy” (Sigmund). Sigmund further reports that “Hahn appears to anticipate Wittgenstein’s use of “language games” when he writes: “Whoever does not accept logical inferences does not hold a different opinion from mine about the behavior of objects, but rather refuses to talk about these objects following the same rules as I do. It is not that I cannot convince such a person, but rather that I have to cut off our conversation, just as I would refuse to keep on playing Tarot with a partner who persisted in claiming that it is possible to take a Fool card with a Moon card.”
I don’t even know what the cards of Tarot are, but the intellectuals have effectively cut off conversation with people who do not accept the intellectual’s premise, while despite their own objections they continue in the mystical and spiritual mystification. The group’s leader Schlick was a spiritualist and Hahn was both a spiritualist and played Tarot. Sounds like our intellectuals of today who insist on renaming everything in their “language games”, refuse to discuss ideas which are not their own and insist that you do what I say, not what I do.
I may change my mind when I finish the book, but so far it seems like the ‘intellectuals have always and will always miss the boat when it comes to understanding ‘street smarts’.
One thing that interests me is the group’s worship of Albert Einstein, a man who makes the following quote:
Imagination is greater than knowledge
While the etymology and the common understanding of the word image is as a visual experience, imagination of all of the senses is available. One can, in a relaxation technique, see oneself on a beach, feel the heat of the sun and sand, smell the ocean and hear the sea gulls. Assuming the beach is a relaxing image for you, this replication can act as the real thing. In fact, neurologists have indicated to us, that for the brain, this is the real thing. The brain, it seems, cannot distinguish between imagining and being and scans the same in either case. Since You know the difference, it make one wonder just who You are. You, in this case, could be construed as the Mind, an organizing principle that manages the brain and body.
Imagining thus might be better thought of as cognitive replication or, better, cognitive modeling. We build models in our Minds to either remember or create. Albert Einstein, along with Bertram Russell, a hero of the Vienna Circle of idiot savants, made immense use of imagination as the quote above admits. He cognitively modeled himself riding on the front of a ray of light in his development of his Special Theory of Relativity and in an elevator in space for his General Theory of Relativity – obviously a creative endeavor.
Now imagining seems to involve rationale thinking, but doesn’t it also smack of intuition? Through an intuitive process, the Mind creates or recreates a sensory model, which is then rationally speculated upon. The circle does not seem to sense this almost mystical process. Further the membership generally does not seem to have much imagination. Is imagination the missing ingredient in psychological fitness?
So our goal was to determine how human cognition works. We have followed a winding trail to identify instincts, intuition and intellect (conceptualization) as the key phases through which thinking evolves and recognize emotional value as a basically a conceptual endeavor, based on the individual’s experiences and cultural norms. We have recognized the hierarchy of abstraction as an important evolutionary step, and that each lower level of abstraction is contained in the higher level. We have noted that any formal logical structure is flawed and that instinctual thinking has the potential to fill in the gaps. We also note, however, that intuitive thinking can be distorted by maladaptive Quirks created in the growth process or by convictions that become habituated. Finally, we discover that imagination is a powerful adjunct to thinking and is probably the basis for enhancement of positive thinking, good health and control of automatic functions of the body. Creating positive models creates positive thinking and confidence. In fact, cognitive modeling may be the only thinking that raises us above the animal world and enable us to perhaps create the world in which we exist.
Identification and definition
Intellect – conceptualizing – the capacity for language, logical abstraction, thinking and understanding and the accumulation of knowledge.
Intuition – sensing – the capacity for sensing the gradation of differences in all sensory input and developing Quirks: hunches, ‘gut feelings’ that give indications of future events
Imagining – modeling – the capacity for replication and alteration of any sensory or mental representation in order to create new scenarios or thoughts – e.g., reconstructing the past or predicting the future.
These three high level functions combined with our instincts present the best possible explanation for how human cognition works. All that is necessary to make this triad function is information. A bit, that makes a difference.
Finally, we must note that the Vienna Circle, just like our present intellectuals rail against both the metaphysical (intuition) and theology (imagination). I have my own concerns with organized religion, since I believe all theology is based upon conjecture. If God is unknowable, how do we know? However, there is one spiritual model – Gnosis – that is based on the concept that we have the basis of God within us, and can use the powers given by God. Might Mind with its three-fold capacity fit this bill? Regardless, thinking about a good God can help us create positive models to improve our lives and expectations.
Perhaps, now that we have some brief outline of how we have come to think, flawed though it might be, we ought to rethink how we think and what we value.
Imagination – the If/Then Function
Of all of the capacities of human beings, the if/then function seems to be the most profound.
If I were a giant, then I could …. If I were a midget, then I would …. If a were b, then c would play the role of b since it is the next letter up. Fantasy? Daydreaming? Perhaps not.
The if/then function allows us to remember the past, since remembering is a reconstruction rather than a simple recall.
The if/then function allows us to predict the future, since we can construct our expectations.
Imagination allows human beings to create the past, the future and beyond. By posing if, we can imagine any set of elements we choose (those that are acceptable to our consciousness) to then address the proposition. Imagination, not being limited to the acquisition of exact knowledge by the requirements of practical necessity is largely free from objective restraints. Such elements as sensory modalities and submodalities can be shifted to our liking.
And since we can select any elements, we can habituate ourselves to them and control the physical process of being – see the Buddhists monks who imagined that they could heat their bodies to dry sheets in the Himalayas.
There are at least two outcomes to the if/then function in language:
If this is or is not true – I expect this to occur based on belief/conviction – this predicted outcome may or may not occur – it is purely contingent on the validity of the belief or conviction, the truth of the proposition and the accuracy of the prediction – since prediction is tenuous, at best, it is unlikely to occur in the specific manner predicted unless very simple
If this is or is not true – I imagine this (speculation) – none of these speculations is likely to occur – however, if one speculation is proved to be possible to occur – creation can happen.
Imagining thus might be better thought of as cognitive modeling. We build models in our Minds to either remember or create. IF a bit of information makes a difference THEN we can IMAGINE (form images, ideas, and sensations in the mind without any immediate input of the sensory apparatus) making knowledge applicable in solving problems and integrating experience into a learning process.
This may be the most powerful function of energy in the universe (remember thoughts are energy driven).
If an enclosed elevator is falling through space everything in it (a person and a ball) would float in the form of zero gravitation. But THEN I accelerate the elevator and everything falls to the floor – thus acceleration equals gravity and a Theory of General Relativity is developed.
Using If/Then-Or statements expands the potential creative process, since it involves multiple choices for consideration. The ability to imagine one’s self in another person’s place is very important to social relations and understanding. The whole ‘debugging’ process of Baar is driven by consciously imagining a different response to a ‘problem in living’.
The ability to take control of our lives demands the ability to imagine what IF, you were not depressed – THEN what would you do? You can only do what you imagine is possible to do.
If there is a void, then God will stir and create.
POST SCRIPT
I have noted many time over the years that I write in order to learn. I find that I can think out problems by puttying them down on paper. Sometime, I find surprising new thoughts. Of course, there is no verification that these new thoughts are right, but they are most interesting. Unfortunately, in the process, the written outcome is choppy. Each new thought leads me off in a digression, and when I come to some conclusion, I don’t always go back and clean up the material. For example, I discovered two new thoughts in this paper: 1) that true beliefs are right brain automatic thoughts and cannot even be articulated. While rational convictions can be habituated, these don’t seem – at least now – to bee as deep. We may not even know we have a belief, until it is made apparent by some event; and 2) that imagination is not only fiercely powerful, but is significant in cognitive behavior management sm. As an example see CBT#22 – Six Step Reframing & CBT#41 Solutions focused Brief Counseling. The first asks the client to carry on a conversation with him/herself – e.g., the part that wants to quit smoking with the part that doesn’t want to quit – pure imagination, but very effective. The second asks the client to answer an unanswerable question. Since it is unanswerable, we can only imagine. But since we only imagine what we can accept, this leads to some substantial potential. I hope you have learned something as well
Jerome R. Gardner – May 2018
Bibliography
Baars, Bernard J., A Cognitive Theory Of Consciousness, Cambridge University Press1988
Bateson, Gregory, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Wildwood House, London: Bookwise, Australia, 1969
Brody, Howard, The Placebo Response, Cliff Street Books, 2000
Margolis, Lynn & Sagan, Dorion, Microcosmos, Four Billion Years of
Microbial Evolution, Summit Books, New York, 1986
McTaggart, Lynne, The Intention Experiment: Using Your
Thoughts to Change Your Life and The World, Free Press, New
York, London, Toronto, Sydney, 2007
Sigmund, Karl, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The
Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Basic
Books, New York, 2017
New York Times Archives, Science Watch; Heat from Meditation,
1982
Cognitivebehaviormanagement.com – Practice – Tools –
Techniques – Assessment Technique #6 Repertory Grid (base on the
theory of George Kelly
Appendix
The Blind Man and the Elephant
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant~(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation~Might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side, ~ At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! But the Elephant ~ Is very like a wall!”
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho! What have we here?
So very round and smooth and sharp? ~ To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant ~ Is very like a spear!”
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands, ~ Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant ~ Is very like a snake!”
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee.
“What most this wondrous beast is like ~ Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“‘Tis clear enough the Elephant ~ Is very like a tree!”
The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most; ~ Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant ~ Is very like a fan!”
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail ~ That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant ~ Is very like a rope!
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion ~ Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right ~ And all were in the wrong!