Mind Field

B. Thoughts into words

Any cursory examination of the nature of humanity will reveal the intimate association of words and symbols with most everything that people do. The very fact that people are able to communicate with each other the way we do goes a long way towards explaining how we are able to build civilizations that enable us to live the way we do. This has been obvious for a long time. A case in point is the story in the Bible of the Tower of Babel. In it, God, who feared that mankind was becoming too powerful because they had only one language, confused their tongues so that they could not understand each other. They promptly quit what they were doing (building a city with a tower to reach the heavens) and scattered across the face of the earth. While this myth was used to explain the origin of different languages, it also implicitly recognized the power of words to unite or divide people. There is little doubt that other ancient peoples also recognized this as well, even if they did not all leave such colorful tales as evidence of it.

1. The struggle over definitions

The words that people use aren’t defined for them through some sort of divine revelation. Like with anything else having to do with human activity, natural processes are at work when it comes to defining words. It often happens, however, that the meaning of a word or phrase (or a set of them) is held onto with such tenacity by some that it might just as well have been handed down from on high, being set in stone, as it were, by the tradition of its divine or semi-divine provenance. Nor is this tendency to absolutize the definitions of words a phenomenon exclusively reserved for the religious faithful. Many adherents of secular philosophies display a similar esteem for the sources of their terminology, and a similar capacity to hold on to these definitions for dear life.

On the other hand, there are those who seem to have no trouble in coining their own terms as they see fit without regard to common usage.

There is also plenty of middle ground between these two extremes (if one were to classify them as such). Many would accept a definition given to them from a source they consider somewhat authoritative without much question, until they became aware of a dispute or controversy concerning the term, also involving a somewhat authoritative source. After that, they might not be so sure. An example of this would be a dictionary definition of a technical term versus the opinion of a respected practitioner from the field in question. Those interested enough in the subject of dispute might make the effort to seek further clarification from additional sources, while others would just move on.

What can be said about groups of people, as opposed to individuals?

A common language is a key element in cultural cohesion. A common set of meanings for a given set of words is one of the foundations for that language. In some groups during some historical periods there is more consensus in this regard, and in some there is less. Certain types of words, though, seldom generate much dispute. For example, the word for the number “two” generates very little controversy among speakers of a given language, and means pretty much the same thing to everyone. On the other hand, words that convey political, religious, or philosophical ideas, for instance, are much more likely to have definitions that are in dispute among those who speak the same language. For example, ask for the definition of the “soul” from a number of people and you’ll quickly see how many different and mutually exclusive definitions you’ll receive.

The nature and scope of this type of semantic division among people varies from group to group and from one time period to the next. My impression is that, generally speaking, the greater the number of distinct religious or philosophical sects or factions you have in a society, the more frequent, and often more intense, will be the struggle or dispute over those words used in common discourse which relate to issues that are relevant to those belief systems. Also, whenever you have a period of intensified theological or ideological struggle among or within various sects or factions–especially when this is also played out in the political realm–you are likely to have a period of more intense semantic struggle as well.

A good example of a struggle over a definition is the controversy over the words “homoousian” and “homoiousian” which were at the heart of one of the early crises in the development of Christian doctrine. In this case, the dispute was over which word was the proper one to use to define the relationship of the first person of the Trinity to the second person (that is, the Father and the Son). There were adherents of a number of different factions at the time, including those who held that the Son was created by the Father and was not divine; those who held that the Father and Son were not really distinct persons but merely temporary manifestations of the divine essence; and those who held that the Father and Son were distinct persons, both co-eternal and of the same substance.

The words I mentioned, homoousian and homoiousian–which mean “of the same substance” and “of like substance” respectively–though differing in only one letter (both in English and in the original Greek), are symbolic of the importance each faction attached to the most subtle distinctions among different descriptions of the relationship between the Father and the Son. What may seem to some nowadays to be a trivial matter of dispute was for most of the theologians of the early Church (and for many today as well) the most profound and serious topic imaginable.

At the Council of Nicaea, which was convened in order to meet the crisis of this and other issues which threatened to divide the Church, a creed was adopted that, among other things, used the term homoousian to describe this relationship; and even though the controversy took many more years to finally work itself out, and though many more crises still lay ahead, the adoption of this term had the effect of influencing the future course of the evolution of Christian doctrine in a decisive way. What later became commonly known as the “Nicene Creed” incorporated much of the language accepted by this Council and is familiar to millions of Christians today, who recite it at weekly services.

Another example is the way that the word “dialectic” has been used by a number of different thinkers over a number of centuries within their particular schemes of thought. Socrates is credited with having used the word “dialectic” to describe his method of argument through questioning. To Plato, the word meant the supreme type of knowledge, that of the ideal Forms. To Aristotle, it referred to reasoning logically from generally accepted premises. To Kant, the “transcendental dialectic” was a more advanced stage of thinking. To Hegel, “dialectic” described the series of stages that characterized the process of reasoning. To Marx, this series of stages was also at work in the realm of economics, politics and history. Who knows what it might mean to some philosopher in the future? If the past is any guide, one thing for sure is that it will continue to remain a semantic battleground.

By zeroing in on particular terms or issues which seem to be at the center of semantic struggles, not only can we often gain the inside track on deciphering the key points of particular systems of thought, but we can also, perhaps, learn something about the dynamics of the interplay among minds which takes place in the public arena.

2. A window into the mind

The struggle over definitions would be so much sound and fury, signifying nothing, were it not that the words and symbols that we employ have their counterparts within the mind. However imperfect, the correspondence between our own thoughts and the words we use to express them is of such a nature that we are able to surmise that a similar correspondence exists between the words and thoughts of others. HOW thoughts might be manifested as they are–in words and symbols–is still largely a mystery, but because they are, they can be used as a sort of window into the mind (at least to my way of thinking).

The ways by which such a window might be used I will not discuss here in detail; like with much else, it depends upon the background knowledge the individual might possess at a particular point in time. The one bit of advice I can offer (for what it’s worth) is that the attainment of a measure of understanding into how one’s own views are reflected in the words one uses is a prerequisite, I think, to the gaining of insight into how the words of others might reveal their underlying assumptions and beliefs about the world. For this to happen, it is first necessary to understand what one, in fact, believes about the world, and to pay attention to the words one uses. Beyond this, I would say that the more exposure one has to the thoughts of others which are expressed in words, and the more seriously one tries to understand the views being expressed by those words, the better.

C. Concepts into frameworks

What do I mean when I say that concepts form frameworks?

It should first be noted that this is obviously a metaphor rather than a literal description. When I say we think in terms of conceptual frameworks, I mean that many of the concepts we hold to seem to be linked to each other in some fundamental way, in that they reinforce and complement rather than undermine or contradict each other, and that these groups of linked concepts exhibit some sort of internal synergy by virtue of their being organized in a systematic way by the processes of the mind. There will always be complications standing in the path of attempts to describe these structures of thought in clear and concise ways, due to the limitations of our own subjective understanding and of the language we use to express it, and also cases which seem to give us more problems than others, such as when someone influenced by two or more discordant systems of belief hasn’t quite gotten to the point of making up one’s mind about what to believe, or hasn’t yet quite managed to reconcile the discrepancies between them, but I do believe that these structures of thought are manifestations of some of the most basic laws governing the workings of the human mind, and that no description of the mind would be complete without their mention.

As for a detailed description of this phenomenon, this will have to be left for the future; if deemed to be worth pursuing, it will require the work of serious and dedicated scholars from a variety of fields and the development of novel methodologies to figure it all out and put it into words. The most I can offer here are a few observations and a bit of speculation regarding how such frameworks might become established within the mind.

1. Grasping basic principles

Whatever the underlying mechanism, people DO learn things. Algebra, for example, involves methods for solving certain mathematical problems. Most people who are exposed to it are able to understand the basic principles and use them to solve these problems. In fact, it is the solving of the problems that helps to teach them the basic principles. Other subjects require a student to digest a lot of facts in order to be able to learn the principles of the discipline. Chemistry, for example, involves facts about the behavior of a number of different elements and compounds, which manifest the general principles of the science, such as the concepts of valence and equilibrium. Once such basic principles are understood, more complex ones are taught which build upon these.

When speaking of a religious or philosophical system of thought, one also tends to start with the basics and gradually move on to progressively more complex aspects. Since there is so much we don’t know about this process, it’s hard to say exactly what’s going on, but I believe it can reasonably be surmised that no one immediately shifts into an entirely new way of thinking without some prior exposure to a number of different elements that make up that system. If one examines, say, the process by which members of a religious denomination attempt to indoctrinate new prospects, there is an emphasis on teaching particular segments of the overall doctrine one after another in a stepwise fashion, whether they are taught in the form of a lecture, a sermon, in the liturgy, or in some other way. Bit by bit, the pieces of the puzzle come to fit together into a comprehensible form. By getting the big picture–the basic principles–settled first, and using these principles as a sort of “gate keeper” on what concepts are to be believed in afterwards, an internally self-consistent framework of thought is brought into being.

2. Making new connections

As the basic principles of a given ideological system are internalized, a kind of synergy begins to develop. Stimuli from the outside world that either passed unnoticed or were interpreted in one way are now noticed or are understood in a different way. This can clearly be seen in the case of someone learning the fundamentals of some scientific discipline: as the mechanisms of the external world become better understood, stimuli from that external world are acquired and interpreted in a manner different from the way they were before. For anyone who has ever studied astronomy, biology, or any other natural science field, the experience of learning new facts and theories and then connecting them to things they notice in the outside world is one they should be very familiar with.

The same is also true for a system such as a religion or a political ideology. Since the doctrine partly consists of explanations about the nature and workings of the external world, new connections are often made which determine how stimuli from the external world are interpreted. An example of this is the notion of the “will of God” in everyday life. Before a person is converted to a particular sect that teaches such a concept, they might view certain events that happen to them as due to a wide variety of natural or supernatural causes, or they might not think about causes at all. A near accident on the road, say, might just lead to a curse of “jerk!” under one’s breath, which is a response many of us might have had in such a situation. After a conversion, a similar circumstance might lead a person to conclude, either then and there or upon later reflection and/or discussion with other believers, that there was some sign from God involved or some moral lesson to be learned. A new mode of thinking would have kicked in–one which leads to the drawing of such conclusions.

Another, more unusual but by no means rare, example is that of members of certain apocalyptic sects seeing signs of the coming end of the world in the nightly news, aided by those teachers in their faith who instruct them in the proper doctrine to believe in and who point out what signs to look for. In a related vein, there are still those Marxists who interpret events as leading to the coming world revolution any day now. The list could go on and on, but the common thread is that these beliefs, as they are incorporated into a person’s general view of the world, DO affect the selection of the information that a person will pay attention to, and the way in which that information will be interpreted.

Some new connections have to do with relationships among elements of the system of thought itself, rather than with the external world. For instance, the Christian doctrines of original sin, the Incarnation, and the Last Judgment weave themselves together into a single tapestry in the minds of many believers. The same can be said for elements of many other systems, from animism to Zoroastrianism.

Other systems, which may be comprised of concepts that may seem somewhat incoherent or self-contradictory, still manage to maintain some measure of connectedness among those concepts, at least in the minds of the believers. The ways in which these apparent inconsistencies are resolved, often with certain interpretations which might seem to be forced or stretched, is, in fact, one of the more fascinating demonstrations of the human need for, and capacity to create, a coherent view of things. It is interesting to note that some of the more coherent belief systems of today had stages in which apparently incoherent or contradictory elements were made–or interpreted in such a way as to seem–less so through the efforts of “great thinkers” in those belief systems. It may be that this task is one of the most important contributions that theologians or philosophers can make in the service of their respective faiths or philosophies. It should also be noted that the minds of the believers themselves have been essential partners in this task.

3. Making sense of it all

At some point, we can say that all the new ideas and connections may be interpreted as constituting an ideology–a framework of concepts that bends the experiences of the world (or some aspect of it) into a discernible shape and enables one to make sense of them. This new ideology may or may not have replaced a prior one, and a person may be considered to have one, a few, or quite a number of them in use at any given point in time, depending on how one wants to think of them.

Depending on the specifics of the particular set of ideas in question, such a thing can take many forms: It could be the acceptance of a certain religious creed that opens up a whole new way of looking at life and death and which permeates every waking thought; it could be the learning of one or more subsets of one or more of the natural sciences, which might bring along with it an appreciation for the existence of the laws of nature and an abiding faith in their universality, or perhaps only a certain level of technical knowledge of some practical application; or it might even be conceiving a system in which the whole point has to do with the notion that the universe is an inherently irrational place that DOESN’T make sense, and that any attempt to make it seem like it does is doomed to failure.

Whatever the case, the framework of concepts in question serves a central role in defining our consciousness. Subjectivity itself –whatever that is–is wrapped up in an integral way with the structures of thought within our minds, at least in my view. Whatever details might be discovered in the future about exactly how they function, any workable theory of cognition, in my opinion, will have to put them front and center.