Effects of written language (English/Japanese, private/published) on journal writing for teacher development

My poster presentation at AILA 2014 on the Mezzanine Level of the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on Friday August 15, 2014.

"MIND TIME" by Benjamin Libet (and some thoughts of mine)

Summary

Libet (2004) - MIND TIME (Harvard University Press) - reports two very important findings concerning two important aspects of consciousness: awareness and free will.

Finding 1 [about awareness]: The brain needs a relatively long period of appropriate activations, up to about half a second, to elicit awareness of the event. (p. 33)

Finding 2 [about free will]: The process leading to a voluntary act is initiated by the brain uncousciously, well before the conscious will to act appears. (p. 136)
The conscious will could decide to allow the volitional process to go to completion, resulting in the motor act itself. Or, the conscious will could block or "veto" the process, so that no motor act occurs. (p. 138)

These two findings (F1 & F2) invites two tough questions.

Question 1 [from F1]: How can one explain the fact that subjectively we feel that we are aware at the actual moment of a sensory event? (pp. 70-71)

Question 2 [from F2]: If the veto itself were to be initiated and developed uncousciously, the choice to veto would then become an uncouscious choice of which we become conscous, rather than a consciously causal event. (p. 145) [Translation: Is free will to be totally denied?]

Let's first take a look at the two findings. I'll add my analogy of a football coach to explain the function of consciousness when I mention the second finding.



F1: The brain needs about half a second to elicit awareness of the event.

Definitions

Before we discuss, we need to clarify some of the possibly confusing concepts.

First, about consciousness and mental functions. Consciousness is only a tiny (and edited) reflection of mental functions. As Libet says, "many of our mental functions are carried out uncousciously, without conscious awareness. (p. 2)" To borrow Edelman's term, many of mental functions are carried out nonconsciously.

The second point is about awareness being the essential featrue of consciousness. Libet maintains that "the essential feature of introspective reports of conscious experience is awareness, or being aware of something." (p. 13) For Libet, the different contents of awareness do not matter. He argues from his experimental evidence that "awareness per se is a unique phenomenon, and it is associated with unique neuronal activities that are a necessary condition for all conscious experiences. (pp. 13-14)

The third point is the difference between the awareness of a signal and the detection of a signal. Whereas becoming consciously aware of a signal requires the relatively long time, detecting a signal can occur unconsciously, without any awareness of the signal. (p. 34) For example, we can discriminate between two different frequencies of tactile vibration, even though the intervals between two pulses in each vibratin frequency are only a few milliseconds (msec) in lenghth. (p. 33)


Discussion

Libet discuss 12 points from this finding. Here are the first five. For some readers, Point (1) may sound like a confirmation of the contention of Julian Jaynes, (2) that of Stephen Krashen. The remaining three points may be like scientific affirmation of our common experience.

(1) Perhaps all conscious mental events actually begin uncousciously before any awareness appears. ... Thoughts of various kinds, imaginations, attitudes, creative ideas, solving of problems, and so on initially develop uncousciously. Such uncouscious thougths only reach a person's conscious awareness if the appropriate brain actitivies last a long enough time. (p. 107)


(2) Vocalizing, speaking, and writing fall into the same category; that is, they are all likely to be initiated uncousciously. ... In the case of speech, for example, this means that the process to start speaking, and even the content of what is to be spoken, has been initiated and prepared unconsciously before the speaking begins. If the time-on requirement for awareness holds here, it would be manifestly impossible to rapidly speak a series of words, in the usual fashion, if one first had to become consciously aware of each word. ... In smoothly flowing speech, words are allowed to appear "on their own," in other words, they are initiated unconciously. As E. M. Forster reportedly stated, "How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?" (p. 108)


(3) The playing of a musical instrument, like the piano or violin, or singing must also involve a similar uncouscious performance of the actions. (p. 109)


(4) All quick behavioral, motor responses to a sensory signal are performed uncousciously. These are responses that can be made withing 100-200 msec after the singal, well before arareness of the signal could be expected. Many actions in sports fall into this category. (p. 109)


(5) Uncouscious mental functions can proceed at higher speed, if they are carried out by shorter-lasting neuronal activities. This implies that the series of uncouscious processes involveld in solving a problem can proceed speedily, each brief process after another. (p. 111)

It seems that these implications are particulary important for those of us obsessed with the modern notion of conscious-self, the grand master that takes a complete control of our action. We seem to need not just psychatry but also neuroscience to be free from this notion. (If you're a Buddhist, you'd have no trouble in the first place.)




F2: Our conscious will does not really initiate our action; it can only veto the action. (Or analogy of a football coach)


This finding was actually implied in the five points above. Our conscious will is not the grand master of our action.

At this point, I'd like to indulge in some analogical thought.

Consciousness is like a boy on an elephant, trying to control the elephant's move. His control is not to his satisfaction, because, after all, it is the elephant that moves. Indeed, it is the elephant that initiates the move. However, once the elephant begins to move, the boy can lead it to move in a certain direction over the long period of time. He is not useless.


Or, if I may introduce my analogy, consciousness is like a football coach. He may try to, but he cannot dictate every single move of his eleven players. Contrary to his ambitious expectation, the coach can only attempt to change the course of actions taken by the players after he saw their movements. Likewise, the control our consciousness has over our actions is only delayed and very limited.


What you should do as the football coach/concsious will is let the player/body practce and play/act. You just give a general instruction.

Don't try to give specific command to every sigle movement of the players/body. You'll never succeed for you cannot give commands as specific or as fast as the play/act demands. Should you synchronize the movement of the players/body with your command, the play/act is awefully slow and not functional at all.

When you direct the players/body generally, always remember that you (the coach/conscious will) is not the actor. You're not even the agent (at least as you wish to be). The players/body are the actor. They are the agent, too, althogh they are incapable of representing their collective sense of agency by themselves. Each one of the eleven players moves respectively in his complex interaction with the environment (the ball, the other players, the field and so on). He improvises his complex action because he responds to the complexity of the situation in which he's embedded. Only you, the coach, who try to observe the entire game can have a unitary sense of the entire game.

You, the coach/conscious will, can only help and direct the players/body in a lmited way. However, you're not useless. Far from it. Your wise long-term strategy can make the players/body better in the long run. However indirect and delayed your connection is to the players/body, you're the one that is the most responsible for their actions.

Yet, because you're not the actor or agent, don't forget that your direction does not constitute the action. If you spend most of the time of practice just talking, not letting the players/body move, you're completely mistaken. The coach doesn't play; consciousness doesn't act. It's categorical. It's a categorical mistake if the coach thinks he can play in the field or if you as the conscious-will are the body movement.

You can't even make the players/body move in the first place. It is the players/body that initiates the move. You only clap your hands and cheer them up as the players enter the field, reminding them of the general strategy you taught. When they fail miserably, you can stop the game and give them a new strategy. But when the interval is over, you keep staying outside of the field and start observing again.

This is how I interprets Libet when he says: The process leading to a voluntary act is initiated by the brain uncousciously, well before the conscious will to act appears (p. 136); The conscious will could decide to allow the volitional process to go to completion, resulting in the motor act itself. Or, the conscious will could block or "veto" the process, so that no motor act occurs (p. 138).



OK, now that explanation of the two findings are over for the moment, let's go back to the tougher part of the argument: the two questions that the two findings invite.

Q1 [from F1]: How come we don't usually feel we're as late as half a second in our awareness of the sensation?

This question comes from Finding 1: The brain needs about half a second to elicit awareness of the event. But how did Libet know this in the first place? Isn't 500 msec too long for a neural response?

Libet, in his exceptional experimental environment (which is completely ethical, of course), had electrode contacts sitting on the surface of the primary somatosensory cortex of the subject (the primary somatosensory cortex is the area of cerebral cortex that receives the directo sensory input from all the areas of the body and skin). Electroical stimulation to this area elicits a conscious sensation (awareness) in some specific skin or body structure (we don't feel any sensation in the brain itself). (p. 35)

The most interesting finding was that, to elicit a report of a weak, threshold-level sensation, the stimulus had to continue for about 0.5 sec. If the stimulus is shorter than that, the subject may detect it at the sub-conscious level, but not become consciously aware of it. Therefore, it is argued that to be conscious/aware of a stimulus takes about half a second after its onset (the duration time of half a second is called "Time-On").


Given that, though, the finding is couter-intuitive because we don't usually feel that we're so late in sensation. As I tap the keyboard now, I feel that the touch and the sensation, more or less, at the same time. The gap of half a second between the touch and the sensation seems too long.

Then comes a new experiment (p. 72-79). Libet stimulated the subject in two different places: one in the sensory cortex and the other in the skin. The time when the the sensory cortex is stimulated is to be called "neuronal time", whereas the time when the subject become conscious/aware of the perception (produced either by the stimulus in the sensory cortex or the one in the skin) is to be called "subjective time." So there are two lines of stimulus-perception.

(SC) Stimulus in the cortex ==> (PSC)Perception of SC (to be felt, though, in some part of the body, not in the brain itself)
(SS) Stimulus in the skin ==> (PSS) Perception of SS

After learning to distinguish the two different Stimulus/perception (SC ==> PSC and SS ==>PSS), the subject was given the two types of stimulus either at the same time or at different times.

(SC/SS) SC and SS are given at the same time.
(SC->SS) SC is given first and then SS.
(SS->SC) SS is given first and then SC.

In SC/SS, the subject reported that they felt that SS was given first, althogh both SC and SS were given at the same time.

In SC->SS, the subject also reported that they felt SS before SC when the delay of SS after SC is a few hundreds of miliseconds; the subject reported that they felt the sensation almost simultaneously when the SS is given 500 msec later than SC.

In SS->SC, the subject always felt SS before SC.


A conclusion to be drawn here is that stimulus in the skin was subjectively felt earlier than the stimulus in the cortex. Given the physical distance between the skin (where the skin stimulus is given) and the cortex (the destination to which the neural message of the skin stimulus is to be transmitted), it is unlikely that SS ==> PSS is faster than SC ==> PSC. (The opposite would be quite possible considering that SS ==> PSS should take a longer time because of the physical distance of the transmission of the stimulus). The paradox is this: how come the subjective time is perceived earlier than the actual neuronal time.

The hypothesis that Libet gives to account for the paradox is that there must be a subjective referral of the timing for the experience back to the time of the time of the neuronal time (p. 75). The subjective time must be created or invented to be perceived before the physical stimulus time. In other words, the brain cheats us into believing that the brain is giving a perception more or less simultaneously with the actual experience.

Given that the brain often edits the information to make a coherent story to our consciousness, I guess this trick is not so surprising. After all, the evolution has made the brain as it is so that it promotes our survival. The evolutionary brain is not committed to the truth (The chance of survival should be higher, if it is closer to truth, though.)

Moreover, we have just seen that the brain "refers" the stimulus in the cortex in a different place of the body. If there is a subjective projection in space, we might guess that a subjective projection in time is also possible.

A candidate for this subjective projection in time is unconscious suppression of vision. When a highly prudish man is shown a picture of a naked lady, he might report seeing something quite different and he is not lying (a Freudian topic) (p. 71). If he perceived the naked lady and was aware of the image simultaneously, the brain would have no time to suppress and distort the image. If we assume that there's a time lag between the stimulus and the awareness/consciousness, we can readily explain that the suppression is possible because the brain has time to distort the content of the vision.)

So there's an answer to Q1. We don't feel the time lag between the stimulus and its awareness because the brain cheats us and creates the subjective time. This is probably a better, or fitter way of living when we have the neural delay of 500 msec and still want to believe that we're a reasonable being, responding to the environment.


Additional note: I now remembered that a tape recorder for professional use has two contacts to the tape. The first contact to the tape is to pass on the sound that the microphone picks up (that is, for recording), and the second contact is to listen to the recording that the first contact has made only a short time ago (that is, for monitoring). Thus, the technician monitoring on the professional tape recorder listens to the music always a bit later than the actual performance. This delay is necessary to check that the sound was really recorded. To respond to a professional demand, you have to pay a price.

However, the usual tape recorder has only one contact for recording only. Someone who "monitors" the recording on such a tape recorder actually only listens to the sound that the microphone picks up, the sound that is to be recorded onto the tape. He therefore cannot really monitor the recording, and on some unfortunate situations, he may find that the sound was not really recorded at all (or awfully recorded) because of some mechanical problems only after the music was over.

Apparently, the professional tape recorder is more functional. However, it must have been a rather uncomfortable experience when someone monitors on the professional tape recorder and sees the music performance at the same time. The sound he monitors comes slightly after the vision. The sound and the vision do not synchronize. If it had been technically possible, people would have wanted a device to listen to the recorded sound for monitoring as he sees the visual image. A special tape recorder which can magically project the recorded sound earlier than the actual recording time to synchronize the sound with the vision would be a solution. Our brain may be like such a magical device.




Q2 : If the conscious will is actually initiated unconsciously before and the function of the consciousness is only to veto the continuation of the unconscious initiation, is it not the case that the conscious veto, too, was actually initiated unconsciously? Aren't we completely determined unconsciously and there is not such a thing as free will?


This question which stems from F2 (Our conscious will does not really initiate our action; it can only veto the action) is tougher because, it seems to me, the hypothesis that Libet provides to deal with this question is not as strong as the hypothesis in Q1. The hypothesis Libet provides in Q2 is only a possible hypothesis, not necessarily a plausible one.

If the veto is part of consciousness, it is likely that the veto-consciousness is also initiated unconsciously. That leads to total denial of our free will as we know it. To which possibility, Libet proposes as follows:

I propose, instead, that the conscious veto may not require, or be the result of, preceding unconscious processes. The conscious veto is a control function, different from simply becoming aware of the wish to act. (p. 146)

He defends this proposal as follows:

There is no logical imperative in any mind-brain theory, even in identity theory, that requires specific neural activity to precede and determine the nature of a conscious control function. And there is no experimental evidence against the possibility that the control process may appear without specific development by prior unconscious processes. (p. 146)

OK, it is possible. And since I don't have a more plausible hypothesis, let's assume that the conscious veto doesn't need prior unconscious processes. An answer is given: In the veto function of consciousness, we have free will.



But still, a new question arises.

Q3: Is what we call 'free will' only the veto? Is our 'free will' only a matter of cancellation of an ongoing processes that was initiated unconsciously? Are we 'free' only in such a short term? Are we otherwise determined?


Here's my attempt to give an answer.


I have the short term freedom of the veto, but that's not the end of the story of my freedom. I attain something close to 'free will' or at least I can influence my future course of action in the long run by externalizing my consciousness to make it the environment of the autopoietic system, that is commonly called 'I'.

Providing that I'm an autopoietic system, my action is self-produced by the complex interaction of the multitudes of components within the system. This view accords with the above view that our action is unconsciously initiated, only partially realized in consciousness later. In this sense, we have almost no free will.

However, the consciousness that I become conscious of, typically in the linguistic form, becomes conspicuously physical. The consciousness becomes a sound that echos in my mind, which is retained in my short term memory just like sounds from the outside world (i.e. the environment).

To make the argument simpler, let's suppose that I write down the consciousness on a piece of paper "DON'T EAT TOO MUCH." I always carries the piece and put it on the table when I eat.

The message "DON'T EAT TOO MUCH", which originally was in my mind, is now externalized. It is part of the environment to the system called "I". The piece of paper is beyond the immediate influence of "I". It stays there irrespective of my status. Even when my uncousciousness wants otherwise, the message stays there and becomes an independent stimulus to the system called 'I' and affects 'I'. In other words, an Ex-'I' affects the current 'I'. The current 'I' has only the veto function over the action that was initiated my unconsciousness. But this ex-'I' which is now the enviromnent to the system constantly 'irritates' me as an independent stimulus. ('Irriation' is a term used by Luhmann in his systems theory.)

Let's also suppose that I have a variety of other means to guide me into the direction that I want. I often say my principles to my friends and they sometimes quote these to me or ridicule me when I fail to respect these principles. I buy books that are very close to my free will and make it a rule to read them regularly. I keep a good TO-DO list so that I can behave as I wanted to behave when I planned.

Despite these various means, I may still fail to do what I wanted to do. But over a long period of time, if I keep these part of my environment, constantly affecting or 'irritating'the system ('I'), independent of the status of 'I', I may successfully lead myself to do what I wanted; I may even change myself in a way I wanted. I'd like to call this sort of guidance "free will".

This may be a distortion of the concept of 'free will', but this is my current response: You have free will: You can choose to do what your conscious will wants, or at least you can influence yourself to do what your conscious will wants, by changing the environment in which you're embedded.

Externalizing yourself is what you do in psychiatry and narrative and both have some special functions which otherwise cannot be achieved.

Do we have layers of us?: nonconsciousness / primary consciousness / higher-order consciousness / externalized consciousness in some linguistic form. Do we have a still higher layer, publicly shared wisdom in some linguistic form? Can we be free to the extent we make ourselves go up the layers?

Let me think more. Thank you for your reading.

Go to Questia Online Library

"wider than the sky" by Gerald Edelman

Quotation from

wider than the sky

By Gerald M. Edelman

Yale University Press, 2004

A great book written by a great researcher in great clarity.
Here are some points that I found most interesting.



Definition of primary consciousness

Edelman divides consciousness into primary consciousness and higher-order consciousness. The former is defined as follows:

Primary consciousness is the state of being mentally aware of things in the world, of having mental images in the present. (p. 9)

Definition of higher-order consciousness

Humans and other animals with semantic or linguistic capabilities also have higher-order consciousness.

[H]igher-order consciousness involves the ability to be conscious of being conscious, and it allows the recognition by a thinking subject of his or her own acts and affections. (p. 9)

Theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS)

Edelman uses the theory of neuronal group selection (TNGS), a.k.a. Neural Darwinism, in order to explain consciousness, both primary and higher-order. (Thereafter when the term "consciousness" appears, it means both.) TNGS has three tenets: (1) Developmental selection; (2) Experiential selection; (3) Reentry. Of particular importance is the notion of reentry.

Reentry is the ongoing recursive interchange of parallel signals among brain areas, which serves to coordinate the activities of different brain areas in space and time. Unlike feedback, reentry is not a sequential transmission of an error signal in a simple loop. Instead, it is simultaneously involves many parallel reciprocal paths and has no prescribed error function attached to it. (p. 41)

Explanation of primary consciousness

With this idea of reentry, Edelman explains primary consciousness; primary consciousness is the dynamic interactions between perception and memory to make "the remembered present."

These dynamic reentrant interactions in the thalamocortical system must be thought of as successive in time -- new perceptual categorizations are reentrantly connected to memory systems before they themselves become part of an altered memory system. This bootstrapping between memory and perception is assumed to be stabilized within time periods ranging from hundreds of milliseconds to seconds -- the so-called specious present of William James. I have called this period "the remembered present" to point up the dynamic interaction between memory and ongoing perception that gives rise to consciousness. (p. 55)

Explanation of higher-order consciousness

Higher-order consciousness is indeed higher-order, or more extensive than primary consciousness because of the use of symbols. Symbols, typically language, created higher-order consciousness. Reentry in primary consciousness in the form of language made it possible to deal explicitly with the future, the past and the self. Use of symbols altered primary consciousness into higher-order consciousness.

[T]he subsequent evolution of additional reentrant circuits permitting the acquisition of semantic capability, and finally language, gave rise to higher-order consciousness in certain higher primates, including our hominine ancestors (and arguably a number of other ape species). Higher-order consciousness confers the ability to imagine the future, explicitly recall the past, and to be conscious of being conscious. (pp. 58-59)

Mechanism of primary consciousness

Then, how consciousness works in our physical body? If we are to regard consciousness as the mental, in strict opposition to the physical, we're trapped in the dualism and have to break out of the physical of physical causalities; claiming that the non-physical causes the physical phenomena is untenable in science. On the other hand, if we are to strip consciousness of any causal features associated with it, it betrays our common sense too much.

Edelman's solution is to regard consciousness as a phenomenal transform, a process, (C) that is entailed by the neural activity (C').

We have pointed out that C is a process, not a thing, that it reflects higher-order discriminations, and that it does not occur in the absence of C'. but, given the laws of physics, C itself cannot be causal; it reflects a relationship and cannot exert a physical force either directly or through field properties. It is entailed by C', however, and the detailed discriminatory activity of C' is causal.
that is, although C accompanies C', it is C' that is causal of other neural events and certain bodily actions. The world is causally closed -- no spooks or spirits are present -- and occurrences in the world can only respond to the neural events constituting C'. (pp. 78-79)

After all, the capacity of our consciousness (C) is quite limited to cover all the neural activities (C'). C is only a partial and biased reflection of C's and such a reflection, just like a glimpse in an unclear and broken mirror, cannot directly affect the true thing. A reflection can only monitor the thing to a reasonable degree.


Mechanism of higher-order consciousness

However, when this self-reflective process (C) is harnessed by language, it is not only a reasonable monitor of C' but also a good means in communication to understand of mutual C's between language users. (p. 80)

On top of that, with many linguistic means, the possibilities of the worlds that can be dealt with increase.

Clearly, one of the largest steps toward the acquisition of true language is the realization that an arbitrary token -- a gesture or a word -- stands for a thing or an event. When a sufficiently large lexicon of such tokens is subsequently accumulated, higher-order consciousness can greatly expand in range. Associations can be made by metaphors, and with ongoing activity, early metaphor can be transformed into more precise categories of intrapersonal and interpersonal experience. The gift of narrative and an expanded sense of temporal succession then follow. While the remembered present is, in fact, a reflection of true physical time, higher-order consciousness makes it possible to relate a socially constructed self t past recollections and future imaginations. (p. 103)

(Read a very interesting report of how a "language-less person" experienced such a difficulty in acquiring language, particularly words of metaphorical concepts: Life without language



Consciousness and truth

We must abandon the idea, perhaps a modern idea, that our consciousness is the true master of our actions. Consciousness is only a partial and biased reflection of our neural activities; the phenomenal process of our self-reflection can only have a limited and indirect control over our actions, which are, after all, physical events.

Why did God make us so incomplete? Well, it is because, if you don't mind, it's evolution, not God, that made us.

The take-home lesson is that our body, our brain, and our consciousness did not evolve to yield a scientific picture of the world. Instead, sufficient adaptation to an econiche is what saves the day, even in the presence of emotions and imaginings that would be irrelevant or unavailable to a precise third-person description. (pp. 136-137)

Consciousness and unconsciousness

Likewise, Levit's contention that consciousness emerges up to half a second later than its corresponding neural activity is no paradox.

Primary consciousness is, however, tied only to successive intervals of present time -- the remembered present. The lag of up to five hundred milliseconds that is found between intended action, neural response, and conscious awareness is not a paradox if one understands the relationship between nonconscious automaticity and conscious planning. Consciousness is not involved in automatic motor processes (except during the learning leading to automaticity), but instead is related to planning and to the creation of new combination of already automatic routines. (p. 144)

We have to be clear here that nonconsciousness, the term coined to avoid the ambiguity of unconsciousness, is different from Freudian unconsciousness. A larger part of our actions is determined by nonconsciousness rather than Freudian unconsciousness.

Nonconscious. Refers to brain activities unable to become conscious, in contradistinction to the Freudian uncouscious. (p. 169)

Freudian unconscious. A domain of which a subject is not conscious but that is capable of being made conscious by psychoanalytic techniques. (p. 159)

Consciousness is "wider than the sky," but its capacity is not as wide as we wanted to believe.

Go to Questia Online Library

"Psychodynamics of orality" by Ong

Quotation from

Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the World

By Walter J. Ong

Routledge: London, 2002 (first published in 1982).

also available in Questia

Chapter 3, SOME PSYCHODYNAMICS OF ORALITY: SOUNDED WORD AS POWER AND ACTION

How do you think in the primary oral culture?

For us who have been embedded in the writing culture, it is extremely difficult what it was like to live in the primary oral culture, with no knowledge or possibility of writing down words.(p. 31)

Complex thought is highly unlikely with no written text. If you are ever to think consistently or coherently for long, you'd need another person as a partner in dialogue. (p. 34)

However, even with an interlocutor, it is extremely difficult to recall all you two have thought in the dialogue. How do you think and recall the thought?

The only answer is: Think memorable thoughts. In a primary oral culture, to solve effectively the problem of retaining and retrieving carefully articulated thought, you have to do your thinking in mnemonic patterns, shaped for ready oral recurrence. Your thought must come into being in heavily rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetitions or antitheses, in alliterations and assonances, in epithetic and other formulary expressions, in standard thematic settings (the assembly, the meal, the duel, the hero’s ‘helper’, and so on), in proverbs which are constantly heard by everyone so that they come to mind readily and which themselves are patterned for retention and ready recall, or in other mnemonic form. Serious thought is intertwined with memory systems. Mnemonic needs determine even syntax (Havelock 1963, pp. 87-96, 131-2, 294-6). (p. 34)

Some characteristics of orally based thought and expression

With this mnemonic base of the thought and expression, Ong suggests some of the plausible features of the orally based thought and expression as opposed to the chirographically based, typographically based, and electronically based thought and expression. Below is a short list.

(i) Additive rather than subordinative (p. 37)
(ii) Aggregative rather than analytic (p. 38)
(iii) Redundant or ‘copious’ (p. 39)
(iv) Conservative or traditionalist (p. 41)
(v) Close to the human lifeworld (p. 41)
(vi) Agonistically toned (p. 43)
(vii) Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced (p. 45)
(viii) Homeostatic (p. 46)
(ix) Situational rather than abstract (p. 49)

(i) Additive rather than subordinative
You may combine sentences with "and" or "but", but sentence structures with complex subordinate conjunctions are not likely to occur in the primary oral culture.

(ii) Aggregative rather than analytic
It is advantageous to express your thought in a memorable whole.

Oral expression thus carries a load of epithets and other formulary baggage which high literacy rejects as cumbersome and tiresomely redundant because of its aggregative weight (Ong 1977, pp. 188-212).

The cliches in political denunciations in many low-technology, developing cultures - enemy of the people, capitalist war-mongers - that strike high literates as mindless are residual formulary essentials of oral thought processes. (p. 38)

(iii) Redundant or ‘copious’

Redundancy, repetition of the just-said, keeps both speaker and hearer surely on the track.
Since redundancy characterizes oral thought and speech, it is in a profound sense more natural to thought and speech than is sparse linearity. Sparsely linear or analytic thought and speech are artificial creations, structured by the technology of writing. Eliminating redundancy on a significant scale demands a time-obviating technology, writing, which imposes some kind of strain on the psyche in preventing expression from falling into its more natural patterns. (p. 40)

(iv) Conservative or traditionalist

The cost of storing knowledge is very high in a culture which has no text. "This need establishes a highly traditionalist or conservative set of mind that with good reason inhibits intellectual experimentation. (p. 41)"


(v) Close to the human lifeworld
Because the language use is limited in immediate contexts of speakers, context-free abstract thinking is not likely in the primary oral culture. (p. 42)


(vi) Agonistically toned
Unlike people in writing cultures where they learn to objectify and depersonalize their thoughts in written texts, people in the primary oral culture tend to associate thoughts with the speakers. Arguments often become combative and aggressive. (p. 44)


(vii) Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced

For an oral culture learning or knowing means achieving close, empathetic, communal identification with the known (Havelock 1963, pp. 145-6), ‘getting with it’. Writing separates the knower from the known and thus sets up conditions for ‘objectivity’, in the sense of personal disengagement or distancing. (p. 45)

(viii) Homeostatic

Oral cultures of course have no dictionaries and few semantic discrepancies. The meaning of each word is controlled by what Goody and Watt (1968, p. 29) call ‘direct semantic ratification’, that is, by the real-life situations in which the word is used here and now. (p. 46)


(ix) Situational rather than abstract

Quoting A.R. Luria’s Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations (1976), Ong exemplifies how the 'intelligence' as we take it is shaped in writing cultures.

Even self-analysis requires decentralization and decontextualization of the self, which usually doesn't happen in the human lifeworld of oral cultures.

Luria’s illiterates had difficulty in articulate self-analysis. Self-analysis requires a certain demolition of situational thinking. It calls for isolation of the self, around which the entire lived world swirls for each individual person, removal of the center of every situation from that situation enough to allow the center, the self, to be examined and described. (...) (p. 54)

'Intelligence' of the modern time is not a natural development of human nature.

[A]n oral culture simply does not deal in such items as geometrical figures, abstract categorization, formally logical reasoning processes, definitions, or even comprehensive descriptions, or articulated self-analysis, all of which derive not simply from thought itself but from text-formed thought. Luria’s questions are schoolroom questions associated with the use of texts, and indeed closely resemble or are identical with standard intelligence test questions got up by literates. They are legitimate, but they come from a world the oral respondent does not share. (pp. 54-55)

Communal culture and private culture?

We may characterize the oral culture and the writing culture as 'communal versus private'

Primary orality fosters personality structures that in certain ways are more communal and externalized, and less introspective than those common among literates. Oral communication unites people in groups. Writing and reading are solitary activities that throw the psyche back on itself. (p. 68)

This contrast may come from the very nature of vision and sound.

By contrast with vision, the dissecting sense, sound is thus a unifying sense. A typical visual ideal is clarity and distinctness, a taking apart (Descartes’ campaigning for clarity and distinctness registered an intensification of vision in the human sensorium - Ong 1967b, pp. 63, 221). The auditory ideal, by contrast, is harmony, a putting together. (p. 71)

If an analysis of the post-modern is a critique of the modern, so is an analysis of the pre-modern.

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Metaphors and analogies as an important source of intelligence

There is no doubt that the central feature of human language lies in recursion, which makes possible creativity, processing infinite number of expressions with finite number of elements. Syntax is by no means is linguists' prime concern. The recursive computational system, formal and abstract, is the Faculty of language -- narrow sense (FLN). (Hauser, Chomsky & Fitch, 2002

The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve? Science 22 November 2002: Vol. 298. no. 5598, pp. 1569 - 1579

). Although the human share the universal code of DNA with other animals to a large degree, human language is distinctively different from those of animals in terms of recursion and creativity.

However, human language is not a singular example of recursive language. Computer languages, if we are to call them 'languages' at all, are recursive and can generate expressions infinitely.

Is a computer language 'creative' as well?

Notice my use of quotation marks for the term 'creative'. By that notation, I suggest of course that my second use of the term may not be exactly the same as the first use (processing infinite number of expressions with finite number of elements). I question the use of the term and I am ready to extend the use analogously.

A computer program, say a chess program, is capable of amazing amount of computation with its limited number of codes. It can deal with any situations which the rules of chess permit. It is 'creative' in this sense.

However, could the chess program, current or future, deal with the world beyond the chess board? Would it suggest to the chess competitor (we assume it to be human) that they should have a short break when the game becomes too long? Would it argue, when beaten bitterly in the game, that true intelligence cannot be measured by chess and propose to compete in a different game (or even create a new one)? Is the computer program 'creative' in this sense?

In other words, assuming that human intelligence (in comparison with the intelligence of other animals) is made possible by recursive human language, why does a computer language which is also recursive NOT make the computer as 'creative' like human beings?

Is this a matter of computational capacity of the computer? (Yet, the computational power of the current computer is far superior to that of the human brain.) Is it a matter of the complexity of the computer intelligence (Yet, the complexity of the computer intelligence could perhaps be as complex as the human intelligence if it uses its massive computational power recursively onto itself.)


So far at least, the artificial intelligence is distinctively different from the human intelligence. It is smarter (in fact much too smarter) than us only in a specific domain for which it is made. It wouldn't try to step outside its domain (as we often stupidly do). It is always precise (or too precise) in its deductive computation, whereas our 'inference' is full of deviations, leaps and bounds. It is always right, too right to make a mistake.

That is probably why it doesn't outgrow itself. The capacity of learning of the computer is quite limited; the computer would not radically change itself. We do. That's why we often fail miserably and sometimes achieve someting that surprises ourselves.

Can deviation, leaps and bounds be a source of the human intelligence as opposed to the computer intelligence? We differ from other animals with recursion. Are we different from the other recursive being, the computer, in aberration? Are we more intelligent because we sometimes blunder?


Here is what Walter J. Ong says in Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (2002, Routledge, also availabel in Questia). By the word "consciousness" he means something explicitly specified, and by "unconscious" something only implicitly associated.

We are not here concerned with so-called computer ‘languages’, which resemble human languages (English, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Mandarin Chinese, Twi or Shoshone etc.) in some ways but are forever totally unlike human languages in that they do not grow out of the unconscious but directly out of consciousness. Computer language rules (‘grammar’) are stated first and thereafter used.(p. 7)

With a larger definition of 'grammar' or 'rules' than the standard definition in linguistics (notice the use of the quotation marks), Ong contines to argue that while the 'rules' of grammar of the computer language stay as they were specified, those of the human language outgrows themselves beyond our epistemological limits.

The ‘rules’ of grammar in natural human languages are used first and can be abstracted from usage and stated explicitly in words only with difficulty and never completely. (p. 7)

Would it be the case, then, by metaphors and analogies, often regarded as abberent and anomalous, we self-organize ourselves beyond our preconceptions (no matter how glorious or disastrous our new selves may be).


Julian Jaynes, the author of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976, 1990, 2000) also argues that metaphors (and analogies) are highly essential in understanding our cognition.


Jaynes points out metaphors, rather than recursive syntax, as the 'most fascinating.'

The most fascinating property of language is its capacity to make metaphors. (p. 48)

With examples such as "the head of an army, table, page, bed, ship, household, or nail" or "force, acceleration, inertia, impedance, resistance, fields and charm", Jaynes suggests that our cognition, from daily life to science, is maintained by metaphors, just like George Lakoff does in his Metaphors we live by (1980, The University of Chicago Press).

The human body is a particularly generative metaphier, creating previously unspeakable distinctions in a throng of areas. (p. 49)

The concepts of science are all of this kind, abstract concepts generated by concrete metaphors. (p. 50)

According to Jaynes, metaphors are the devices for discovery as well as for communication.

All of these concrete metaphors increase enormously our powers of perception of the world about us and our understanding of it, and literally create new objects. Indeed, language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication. (p. 50)

If there is syntactic creativity, there can be metaphorical creativity.

The lexicon of language, then, is a finite set of terms that by metaphor is able to stretch out over an infinite set of circumstances, even to creating new circumstances thereby. (p. 52)

We may be more intelligent than computer because we 'err' in metaphors and analogies. (After all, to err is human; to stay correct computer.)

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Introduction in Nair's "Narrative Gravity"

From

Introduction in

Narrative Gravity:

Conversation, Cognition, Culture

By Rukmini Bhaya Nair

Published by Routledge: New York, 2003

(Also available in Questia)

Prof. Rukmini Bhaya Nair at Indian Institute of Technology offers a very good theoretical framework of narrative.



Working definition of narrative:

Nair's working definition of narrative is "a dynamic structure that converts 'talk' into 'text'". Narrative turns conversation "detachable and iterable" to make a story, one that can be "repeated in other conversations, other contexts, other cultures." As she puts it, "the structure of narrative appears beautifully adapted to time-transfer, to taking away, to having and holding in some kind of formal permanence." (p. 5)

"Fragility" and "durability" as a critical criterion in narrative:

Nair does not see narrative in terms of 'truth' and 'non-truth'. her framework is a "cline from most fragile(implausible, boring and culturally alienated) to most durable(plausible, interesting and culturally salient). So an apparent fiction, if it is a good story, still retains 'durability' and tits audience has a "willing suspension of disbelief". (p. 9)

N.B. Nair uses "plausibility" to mean "durability" on page 10.

Balance between the expected and the unexpected:

One interesting feature of narrative is that it must have the foreground of what is unexpected, a surprise in the story against the background of what is expected and taken for granted. A story teller must maintain a good balance between them and cannot make her story too fancy or too mundane. (p. 11)

Reviewing and reforming ourselves with wider horizons:

Because the criterion of narrative is durability/fragility rather than truth/falseness, understanding caused by narrative allows "contradictions and irrationalities without having to abandon a basic commitment to 'rational' choices, causal explanations and so on" (p. 16). Thus, narrative gives us wider horizons of understanding.

Story-telling seems to me to permit high quality resolutions of experience, either representing it analytically as fiction or reappraising its contingencies as factual narrative. It is this ability to crystallize experience, re-form it, so that it allows us to reform, or at least review, ourselves, that we celebrate when we share our stories. (p. 11)

"Authorless narrative" or "co-authored narrative"?

Nair takes the view, together with Dennett (1991), that narrative is not produced bu a singular 'self'. However, she "wants to replace Dennett's 'authorless narrative' with the idea of a 'co-authored narrative'" (p. 22). Describing her position, she explains as follows.

All our narratives have to be communally authored, and authorized, by listeners whose job it is to 'correctly' process tellers' implicultural meanings. Even though the single authorships of selves is a convenient fiction, which, given our physical separation from each other, all societies must, in general, underwrite, Nair holds that narrative activity depends on tacit acceptance of the notion of multiple authorship in all human communities. (p. 22)

Summary

Narrative is an integrated story made from detachable and iterable parts of our daily discourse. It is evaluated by its degree of durability/fragility rather than by the dichotomy of true or false. It allows wider horizons than the positivist dictum of truth, making flexible understanding of ourselves. It is an act of a community, not an act of an individual person in isolation.

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Consciousness from the media ecology perspective

From

The Future of Consciousness.

By Lance Strate

In ETC.: A Review of General Semantics.

Volume: 66. Issue: 1. Publication Year: 2009. Page Number: 63+

(Available from Questia)

Prof. Lance Strate's brief summary of consciousness from the media ecology perspective is highly enlightening. Surely, a wise way to speculate on the future is to look back on the past and think about the present, for we're all blind to the future.

To quote his passage is quite tempting. But copying a 1485 word passage may not be quite decent (I want to read Lawrence Lessig's Remix!) So what follows is my clumsy summary and paraphrases of the passage. The original thought is contaminated by me. If you're interested, please refer to the original paper.




* We began to interiorize speech after we developed spoken language.

* Through the internalization of speech, we began to interiorize the speaker, the other human beings we interact with.

* Written language was first just a means of recording spoken language. Later, written words were also interiorized, to create a new form of consciousness, a literate consciousness. Words were regarded more as fixed static objects than as a passing event in speech.

* Writing separated the knower from the known. Our thoughts, which were only fleeting and could not be captured in mind or in speech before the invention of writing, were now written down. They were separated from us, and we were on a new level of self-consciousness, where it was possible to (re)view ourselves as the other.

* Literacy is isolating, Whereas we listen all together, we read or write alone. With the invention of printing, a new form of consciousness emerged, where we began to see ourselves as the individual. Our sense of collective consciousness began to recede. (Welcome to the Modern!)

* We developed the generalized other: when we write for publication we imagine a fictitious being, the reader; when we read a printed book we often imagine the role of a imaginary being, the writer.

* With novels, popularized because of printing, we interiorized writing and our individual minds more. Narrative shifted from telling stories about agents doing action to the interior examination of the individual consciousness. (It was probably no accident that Freud followed the spread of the novel.)

* However, there came a new turn of media development. Radio and film revived our sense of collective consciousness (or created a new one). (Literacy remained as the norm of higher education, though.)

* The future of consciousness may lie in how we interiorize contemporary communication technologies. The current heterogeneous mix of oral, literate, and visual modes of communication may 'undo' the fixed and/or separated sense of consciousness. There may be more selves for each of us and a more fragmented and complex inner life.


The original article is based on a presentation given at the Envisioning the Emerging Future Colloquium sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics, following the fifty-third Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, April 23, 2005.

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Chapter 2 of Narrative and Consciousness, edited by Fireman, Mccay and Flanagan

Quotation from

Chapter 2 Narrative and the Emergence of a Consciousness of Self

By Katherine Nelson

of

Narrative and Consciousness

Edited by Gary Fireman, Ted McVay and Owen Flanagan

Published by Oxford University Press (New York) in 2003

(Also available in Questia)

We don't learn to narrate alone. Narrative is a social and cultural act. We grow from a biological being to a social-cultural being through narrative.

Narratives emerge as social forms,which include explanatory myths, among other genres that support the coherence and cohesiveness of the community. In this framework narrative making is a specifically human characteristic. However, it is not an individual capacity but a social-cultural one. It results from a long historical process of the development of social communicative skills at different levels (motoric and linguistic) and of concurrent development of group construction of communities. These are complex system developments that go beyond individual participants, wherein narrative emerges as an explanatory format of the cultural group. (p. 22)

Development of consciousness through narratives in children are summarized as follows. Through narratives children learn to see others as independent beings, begin to see themselves the self-observed ME as well as the Experiencing I.

A new level of consciousness emerges in the early childhood years that is based on the differentiation of the self-awareness of the early years and the self-and other awareness of the transition period. The first is consciousness of the here and now, informed by previous experience but without conscious reflection on that experience. The strong hypothesis that emerges from this perspective is that the new level of consciousness is dependent upon language used to exchange views of self and other, primarily through narratives but also through commentary on the self by others, as well as on their own feelings, thoughts, and expectations of what might happen (Nelson, 1993). This new kind of consciousness is a different kind of self-consciousness that brings the self into the observed world where others have been playing out their roles in the child's view of the experiential world. This is James's or Mead's ME rather than the Experiencing I (Nelson, 2001). The I of the transition period can be self-aware and therefore bashful and embarrassed but is not yet capable of both acting and observing at the same time. Perhaps this sketchily presented development (see Nelson, 1997, 2001), with such profound implications, seems too weighty to place on the vehicle of narrative. Yet it is worth the effort to see how far such a proposal can take us in understanding the early development of self, language, and cultural consciousness.

In brief, the account here is that narrative emerges from and belongs to the community, but in the individual lives of children it is a vehicle through which consciousness of both self and the wider social and temporal world becomes manifest and gradually emerges as a new subjective level of conscious awareness, with a sense of a specific past and awareness of a possible future, as well as with new insight into the consciousness of other people. (p. 33)

Nelson, K. (1993). Events, narratives, memories: What develops? In C. Nelson (Ed.),Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology: Vol. 26 (pp. 1-24). Memory and affect in development Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Nelson, K. (1997). Finding oneself in time. In J. G. Snodgrass & R. I. Thompson (Eds.),The self across psychology: Self-recognition, self-awareness, and the self-concept, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 818, 103-118.

Nelson, K. (2001). From the Experiencing I to the Continuing Me. In C. Moore & K. Lemmon (Eds.), The self in time: Developmental issues(pp. 15-34). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Chapter 1 of Narrative and Consciousness, edited by Fireman, McVey and Flanagan

Quotation from

Chapter 1 Introduction

By Gary Fireman, Ted McVay and Owen Flanagan

of

Narrative and Consciousness

Edited by Gary Fireman, Ted McVay and Owen Flanagan

Published by Oxford University Press (New York) in 2003

(Also available in Questia)

A very general understanding of narrative is given first.

The stories we tell to ourselves and others, for ourselves and others, are a central means by which we come to know ourselves and others, thereby enriching our conscious awareness. (p. 3)

Of more importance is theoretical understandings of narrative by various late 20th century thinkers. Many aspects of our cognition seem possble through narratives, if not entirely by it. (I have to read Dennett (1991)!

The concept of narrative has been called “one of the more prominent currents in late 20th-century intellectual life” (Neisser & Fivush, 1994, p. vii), and a number of philosophers of mind have argued that the portions of human consciousness beyond the purely somatic- self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-knowledge - are products of personal narratives (e.g., Dennett, 1991). It is “because of the nature of our minds,” as Dan P. McAdams (1993) claims, that “we are impelled as adults to make sense of our lives in terms of narrative” (p. 134). This powerful role for narrative is realized by the linking of personal memories to present conditions and future hopes, by organizing, translating, and providing continuity and coherence to experience. Self-awareness and self-knowledge are constructed, to a significant degree, through narrative as we compose and assemble stories for ourselves and our world. In a complex interplay between the experience that makes for the personal story and the personal story that structures the experience, the narrator discovers the meaning and significance of the experience. It is through narrating that we learn about our selves, our community, and the social world (Bruner, 1986, 1990). (p.4)

Bruner, J. (1986).Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. S. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown.

McAdams, D. P (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self.New York: Guilford.

Neisser, U., & Fivush, R. (1994). The remembering self: Construction and accuracy in the self-narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

One common criticism against narrative studies is that they are "subjective and relativistic." Critics of such a remark, true believers of positivism, seem to have a narrow understanding of objectivity. However, objective inquirey is possible even for something mechanically immesurable. The criterion of objectivity, in my understanding, is that an inquiry is publicly observable.

As the various chapters in this book demonstrate, personal stories are jointly constructed through social relations, are shaped by our nature and culture, and are logically compatible with the naturalistic scientific method of investigation. If yesterday's model of positivist naturalism (with the constraints of causal explanation, prediction, and control) is surrendered, then a plurality of methodological approaches are available and may be used to understand the meaning that informs a person's action in the world as lived. Narratives are available for observation; they are public and shared, and as a result their examination does not of necessity result in subjectivism and relativism. (p. 5)

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"The collective cognitive imperative" or the power of socially accepted stories

Hypnosis, like placebo effect, is dubious and mysterious. The trouble is that it is a fact.


Julian Jaynes gives a highly interesting account of hypnosis. ("Hypnosis" Chapter 4, Book II)

Jaynes (1976/1990, pp. 380-383) points out that early forms of hypnosis were based on metaphorical interpretations. The first metaphor used in modern times is animal gravitation, of which, according to Anton Mesmer (1734 - 1815), Newton's (1643 -1727) gravitation is a special case. Mesmer then began to use the term animal magnetism from his association of magnetic attraction with gravitational attraction. His wild imagination did not stop there and he later began to use the metaphor of static electricity, the scientific concept popularized with the famous experiment by Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790). It seems that Mesmer just needed to authorize what he did to make it work with people of his age.


Jaynes uses his scheme of "metaphier/paraphier => metaphrand/paraphrand" to explain hypnosis.

In order to explain what he was able to do (later termed as hypnosis by James Braid), he used better known, and well accepted, words like "gravitation", "magnetism" and "static electricity" as metahiers. Together with the metaphiers were conveyed paraphiers, associations of the metaphiers, like penetrating or transferring power between things. Thus, his "trick" began to be accepted by people as a metaphrand, a novel concept familiarized by the metaphiers. Also accepted were parahrands like the penetrating or transferring power. Mesmer and his people shared this story.


Jaynes states (1975/1990, p. 383):

That the phenomenon of hypnosis is under the control of a collective cognitive imperative or group belief system is clearly demonstrated by its continual changing in history. As beliefs about hypnosis changed, so also its very nature.

Jaynes argues that the collective cognitive imperative was behind the phenomena known as hypnosis.

Jaynes (ibid) then cites the shift of the type of hyponsis from strange sensations and convulsions (with Mesmer), to spontaneous speech during trance state (a few decades after Mesmer), then to self-diagnosis of one's own illness (around 1825), and to responses that ought to happen if you believed in phrenology (and people believed this pseudo science at that time).

An interesting thing was that the new types of hypnosis had not been recoginzed before their appearaces (you may argue that if hypnosis were an objective (ie, human independent) phenomenon, the 'new' types of hypnosis must have been observed before they became popoular (there's nothing new under the sun!)).

New types of hypnosis continued but the above should be enough to make the point of the power of the collective cognitive imperative.



Here is Jaynes's summary (pp. 384 - 385):

It is not simply that the operator, Mesmer or Charcot or whoever, was suggesting to the pliant patient what the operator believed hypnosis to be. Rather, there had been developed within the group in which he worked a cognitive imperative as to what the phenomenon was 'known' to be. Such historical changes then clearly show that hypnosis is not a stable response to gven stimuli, but changes as do the expectations and preconceptions of a particular age.

Jaynes (p. 385) then cites the case of "stage hypnosis" as an example of demostrating the power of group expectation or belief (the same is true with feligious feeling and belief enhanced by crowds in churches and oracles by the throngs that attend them.)



It may be after all that 'trust' between people that make hypnosis possible.

Indeed, most students of the subject insist that there must be developed a special kind of trust relationship between the subject and the operator. One common test of the susceptibility to hypnosis is to stand behind the prospective subject and ask him to permit himself to fall voluntarily to see what it feels like to 'let go'. If the subject steps back to break his fall, some part of him lacking confidence that he will be caught, he almost invariably turns out to be a poor hypnotic subject for that particular operator. (Jaynes 1975/1990, p. 394)

What happens to consciousness at the time of hypnosis? Jaynes says that the consciousness of a subject under hypnotic trance is diminished.

Narratization is severely restricted. The analog 'I' is more or less effaced. The hypnotized subject is not living in a subjective world. He does not introspect as we do, does not know he is hypnotized, and is not constantly monitoring himself as, in an unhypnotized state, he does. (p. 387)

Jaynes argues that consciousness can be diminished because it is only a learned feature.

Learned features, such as analog 'I,' can uder the proper cultural imperative be taken over by a different initiative, and one such instance is what we cally hypnosis. (p. 398).

Consciousness is not the complete master of our actions. The narratization of the analog 'I' is only an attempt to monitor and partially control the self in the complexity of the world around him and the uncounscious impulses within him.

We live in a buzzing cloud to whys and wherefores, the purposes and reasonings of our narratizations, the many-routed adventures of our analog 'I's. And this constant spinning out of possibilities is precisely what is neccessary to save us from behavior of too impulsive a sort. The analog 'I' and the metahor 'me' are always resting at the confluence of many collective cognitive imperatives. (p. 402)

Narrative in self-referential consciousness is not the ultimate cause of our actions. Rather, it seems to me, it is a fleeting story of self-observation that you create to live in your learned, thus unnatural, environment, better known as society. You feel assurance by telling yourself your story. You feel empowered. If the story is shared by other people around you, you feel much more empowered. On a rare occasion, even to the extent to do what you don't usually do under the guidance from a hypnotist.




Reference
Julian Jaynes (1975/1990) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. New York: Mariner Books.


See also some Wikipedia articles.

Hypnosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnosis

History of hypnosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hypnosis

Franz Mesmer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Mesmer

James Braid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)



Related articles in this blog:

Language and consciousness according to Julian Jaynes
http://yosukeyanase.blogspot.com/2010/02/language-and-consciousness-according-to.html

Science of socially shared stories
http://yosukeyanase.blogspot.com/2010/03/science-of-socially-shared-stories.html

Consciousness according to Julian Jaynes
http://yosukeyanase.blogspot.com/2010/03/consciousness-according-to-julian.html

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Who is Harry Stack Sullivan and what did he say?

Quotation from

Harry Stack Sullivan: Interpersonal Theory and Psychotherapy.

By F. Barton Evans III

Routledge: London, 1996.

(Also available in Questia)

Harry Stack Sullivan, "was the founder and chief proponent of a branch of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic thinking called variously interpersonal psychiatry or interpersonal psychoanalysis." (p. 3)



Sullivan is often criticized for his "lack of concern for intrapsychic phenomena." However, Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) believe that the criticism is mistaken:

The belief that Sullivan's theory ignores intrapsychic phenomena is what one usually hears from psychoanalytic colleagues, indicating that it is deeply in the lore of the psychoanalytic community. Yet, as Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) state, the criticism that Sullivan favored interpersonal over intrapsychic phenomena is largely due to a misreading or lack of understanding of Sullivan. Regarding the so-called debate between interpersonal versus intrapsychic models, Sullivan pointed out that human experience is a dynamically unfolding interaction between interpersonal, environmental influences and the internal (i.e. intrapsychic) meaning system of self and other personifications which interpretatively modify one's perception and responses to these external experiences. (p. 7)

Greenberg, J.R. and Mitchell, S.A. (1983) Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

Sullivan's theory is to be described as an interpersonal theory of psychiatry.

Whereas great thinkers like Freud, Jung, and Kraepelin oriented their penetrating insights on the functioning of the individual, Sullivan offered a systematic conception of humankind in its social world or context. (p. 55)

It is not that Sullivan neglected the intra-psychic.

For Sullivan, that which is truly intra-psychic is purely private and essentially unknowable. Once a person discusses, or even anticipates discussing, an “internal” experience, it is no longer private or internal, but becomes an interpersonal event, affected by social forces. (p. 57)

A psychiatrist or indeed any observer interferes with her own observation and everything she observes is at least partially affected by her: other observer would see a different picture and no one is the true observer.

As Sullivan observed, everyone has his or her own conception of human living (i.e. our personal “theories of personality”) which is experienced and strongly held as intuitively correct. This deeply personal conception of “reality” is central in bringing coherence to the personal and non-personal world around us and to whom we are in that world.
...
Similar to Heisenberg's (1958) principle of indeterminacy (which, in sub-atomic physics, is where the measurement of a phenomenon with the same level of phenomenon alters the phenomena measured), the psychiatrist observer participates in and alters every interaction that he or she observes. Unlike Heisenberg's measurement electrons whose properties are well known, the properties of the psychiatrist are far more puzzling. (p.58)

Heisenberg, W. (1958) Physics and Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row.

Likewise, other persons around a person constitutes what the person is through interactions.

Sullivan's central definition and most distinguishing contribution is a revision of psychiatry as the science of interpersonal living,that personality could not be separated from the interpersonal world in which the person lives. The interpersonal theory is a significant critique and reworking of Freud's psychoanalytic approach and major departure from Kraepelin's descriptive psychiatry. (p.60)

Sullivan also takes a developmental approach. Of great interest is his distinction of prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic modes of experience.

The following is a summary of Sullivan's idea of epochs of development.

Sullivan defined infancy as the period from birth until the development of articulate speech. Childhood marks the appearance of the need for playmates, both adult and child, and is the first step in developing interpersonal communication through language. The juvenile era begins with the child's entrance into school and continues until the child finds a chum. Most importantly, it was the first developmental stage where family limitations and peculiarities were open to substantial modification. In pre-adolescence, the need for chumship, an intimate relationship with a compeer, a person of comparable age and status, is the central developmental event. Early adolescence begins with puberty and genital sexuality, the psychologically strong interest in members of opposite sex, and involves resolving the complex interplay between the dynamisms of lust, security, and intimacy. In late adolescence, the person begins to integrate the partially developed aspects of the personality into an age-appropriate, early adult identity. The task of adulthood is to establish a relationship of love with another person, someone who becomes as important as oneself. For Sullivan, this adult intimacy is “not the primary business of life, but is, perhaps the principal source of satisfactions in life” (1953:34). (p. 73)

Sullivan, Harry Stack (1953) The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

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