|
A peer-reviewed
electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and ISSN
1541-0099 17(1)
– May 2008 |
The Role of Meaning in Human Thinking
Sky Marsen, Victoria University, New Zealand
Journal of Evolution and
Technology - Vol. 17 Issue 1 –
March 2008 - pgs 45-58
http://jetpress.org/v17/marsen.html
Abstract
The creation of meaning to interpret and
communicate perceived phenomena is a fundamental trait of human intelligence.
This article explains some major ways in which this is achieved, focusing on
language and the perception of embodiment. It examines the representational
aspects of natural language, which account for the ambiguity of linguistic
signs, and describes how these manifest in metaphor, connotation and emotive
expression. The article argues that the human propensity to create meaning lies
largely in this representational ambiguity, which underlies all forms of
symbolism. However, the ambiguity of natural language has a paradoxical side,
since it is also at fault in many shortcomings of human communication, such as
misunderstanding and prejudicial stereotyping. This article argues that any
attempt to emulate human ways of thinking, for example in Artificial
Intelligence research, should take this paradoxical factor into account.
He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns
What varied being peoples every star
May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.
(Alexander Pope: Essay
on Man.)
Humans create meaning. In
fact, it is a fundamental trait of humans to attach meaning to the objects they
perceive in the world, to their relationships with others, to their own
physical form, and to the various manifestations of agency encompassed by the
category “self” – a trait that is as universal as that of language. The complex
operations that characterize human cognition carry this meaning-generating
function on many levels. Classifying an object according to selected criteria,
attaching value to it, and judging its aesthetic appeal, are all mental
operations that, in one way or another, give meaning to the phenomenal world.
This article explores some
ways in which meaning is produced, especially with the use of language. Using a
semio-linguistic approach, it explains some of the basic principles of human
language that affect thinking and underpin communication. Its aim is to discuss
some aspects of Human Intelligence that distinguish it from Artificial
Intelligence (AI) in its current state, and to suggest some areas that would
require improvement if humans are to reach a post- or trans-human stage. I
begin with an overview of theoretical approaches to meaning, continue with a
description of pertinent linguistic features of communication, and end with an
overview of areas where communication is problematic, if not defective.
Approaches
to Meaning
Linguists and philosophers
have created numerous definitions of meaning. Do we see what exists in the
mind-independent, or external, world, or do we project assumptions,
expectations and moods, and see what our minds create? Extreme relativists
would claim that the signifying subject’s beliefs and knowledge determine the
meaning given to an object. This approach privileges subjectivity, and could
lead to at least one of two problematic situations. One such situation would be
where any sign could have any meaning, where no interpretation is “wrong,” and
where the producer of a set of signs, such as a speaker, writer, painter, etc.,
has no way of expressing intention in the signs he or she produces. The other
situation would be where all meaning is reduced to the mental state of a
subject, and where interpretation reflects the psychology of the interpreter
and has nothing to say about the qualities of the interpreted object. As Marvin
Minsky points out in his description of goal-setting (a meaningful activity),
psychological definitions are limiting because they lead to an infinite regress
continually pointing to a mystifying “self” as the central cause of everything
(Minsky 2006, 187).
Similarly, extreme
empiricists would claim that the world and its objects already have meaning
before any attempts are made to interpret them. This approach could lead to a
situation where the human subject is seen to be always finding meaning but
never to be giving it, and where perceptions are either true or false. Such an
approach would overlook the fact that someone has to determine this truth-value,
even though this “authority” would also be part of the world of which it is
deemed an expert, and would therefore be influenced by its constraints.
A semiotic and
phenomenological position, like the one adopted in this essay, would
acknowledge the importance of the interpreter in attributing meaning, but would
also recognize the inherent qualities of the object that direct the
interpretations that can be produced. Meaning, for this approach, arises from
the interaction of qualities of the perceived object with qualities of the
perceiving subject. In the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, for instance,
meaning is presented as a non-causal phenomenon, emerging in the various
“existential fields” in which the human subject acts in his/her everyday life (Merleau-Ponty
1945; Marsen 2006b). The causes of meaning (in the unconscious, personality,
genes, or any other kind of causal factor chosen by other philosophies) are
indeterminate for Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology – a principle that
turns meaning into a quality of being-in-the-world rather than knowing-the-world.
According to this approach,
the human subject perceives properties of the object in particular fields of
existence, and the meaning of the object is formed in the subject’s consciousness
through this act. This allows for an object to have different meanings for
different subjects since the subject perceives, or is solicited by, particular
properties of the object, which may not appear to another subject. It also
allows for the same object to have different meanings for the same subject in
different fields, since each field allows particular properties of the object
to appear. This way, both empiricism (philosophies that position meaning in the
object), and intellectualism (philosophies that position meaning in the
subject) are questioned. In the words of Merleau-Ponty,
What is missing
from empiricism is the internal connection of the object and of the act that
triggers it. What is missing from intellectualism is the contingency of occasions
to think. In the first case, consciousness is too poor, and in the second too
rich for a phenomenon to solicit it. Empiricism does not see that we need to
know what we are looking for, otherwise we would not be looking for it; and
intellectualism does not see that we need to be ignorant of what we are looking
for, otherwise, again, we would not be looking for it (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 34,
my translation).
In a similar vein, semiotic
approaches attempt to identify the mechanisms through which meaning is produced
in texts and in social life situations. The object whose meaning we seek
becomes a datum of our senses, through which it enters our consciousness: its
reality and ours merge in the process of interpretation. For this
meaning-creating merging to occur, the independent existence of the object is
as necessary as the independent existence of the subject. As Umberto Eco notes,
“if there is something to be interpreted, the interpretation must speak of
something which must be found somewhere, and in some way respected” (Eco 1992,
43). The same author gives a colorful illustration of the limits of purely
subjective interpretations when he points out that we would have difficulty in
trying to interpret a book by the Marquis de Sade as if it were written by St
Thomas Aquinas, because of the intrinsic differences between the ideologies of
these two authors, which produce contrasting textual patterns (Eco 1990, 26).
Within this theoretical
framework, I propose a definition of meaning that will guide the subsequent
discussion: Meaning is the judgment and evaluation of an object, word
or phenomenon that leads us to see, feel and understand this object, word or
phenomenon in a certain way.
Meaning and Truth
It is important to
distinguish “meaning” from “truth” or “reality.” Meaning is associated with
semiosis – that is, sign-producing activity. Semiosis does not depend on
factual verifiability, statistical frequency or logical possibility, and
therefore occurs independently of “truth.” Imaginary constructs, such as
fictional worlds, fairy tales, and myths consist of signs, and so produce
meaning according to their own rationalities, but they are not “true” in the
sense of the word as it is used in analytical philosophy. In fact, meaning is
related to conceptual thinking, which in turn draws from perception – and
perceptions can be “false” as often as they can be “true” (Gibbs 1994).
However, much post-Fregean analytical philosophy focuses on ways in which
language refers to physical entities, leading to a true-false classification of
utterances. Such approaches link language with formal propositional logic, at
the expense of its more social and individual manifestations that involve
utterances of aesthetic experience and subjective perception (Devitt and Hanley
2006).
Interpretative and
qualitative semanticists, who attempt to trace links among speakers,
utterances, reality and meaning, generally agree that language is used for
various purposes, and that different kinds of utterances and contexts produce
different modalities of truth, that is, they relate to the mind-independent
world in different ways. For example, Alain Berrendonner has proposed a
tripartite typology of statements in relation to their truth-value. Onto-alethic propositions have an
axiomatic aspect and carry their own truth in their composition, such as formal
statements such as “2+2=4.” Koino-alethic propositions are culturally
based and reflect the values and principles of a community in their composition
such as “killing is wrong.” Idio-alethic propositions can be judged as
“true” only in relation to the mental and emotive state of the speaker such as
“I am happy” (Berrendonner 1981). These propositional truth-values are more
than criteria of classification: they underlie different ways of engaging with
the world and interacting with others.
Consider, for instance,
koino-alethic propositions, which are “true” in relation to community values,
and are therefore pivotal in understanding the social dimension of
communication. It is generally recognized among social scientists that much
social interaction depends on shared beliefs among members of a community, more
than it does on a transcendental or universal truth. In fact, access to
resources depends to a large extent on expertise in using socially legitimate
signs of identity and exchange. Presenting oneself suitably dressed and attired
for a job interview, for example, increases credibility and maximizes the
chances for success, as does possessing socially appropriate signs of identity
legitimation, such as passports, identity cards, driver’s licences, etc. –
whatever a community deems as “proof" of who one is.
Money is another example of
interaction through social values. Money as a physical object is nothing but
pieces of metal or paper with numbers and faces drawn on them. What gives it
meaning and appeal is not what it is in itself, but its adoption as an object
of value and exchange by the community. Language is in many ways equivalent to
money as a source of signs of exchange. Linguistic expertise is vital for
success in many areas of social life. For example, forensic linguists have
found that the linguistically adept (that is, those who can use language
strategically to support their interests) have a far greater chance of swaying
legal decisions than the linguistically inept or inarticulate – whatever the
“objective” or ethical merits of the latter may be (Gibbons 2003).
These observations indicate
that meaning, being related to values and beliefs, tends to have closer links
with persuasion than with an objective demonstration of “truth.” Discourses
that rely on mass appeal by falsely individualizing the audience (for example,
by using a second person pronominal construction, “you,” that individual
recipients are led to identify with) may be motivating and persuasive, and,
therefore, meaningful, but it is doubtful whether they have any relation to
“truth.” Such discourses, which include New Age self-help texts and much
marketing, employ discursive techniques that activate human responses of empathy
and identification, inducing recipients to recognize vague or arbitrary
statements as “true.” As Ludwig Wittgenstein said of the mass-appeal discourses
of psychoanalysis, “If you are led by psychoanalysis to say that really you
thought so and so or that really your motive was so and so, this is not a
matter of discovery, but of persuasion. In a different way you could have been
persuaded of something different” (Wittgenstein 1967: 27).
Finally, any attempt to
theorize the ways in which human thinking distinguishes between meaning and
truth, or between subjectivity and formal logic, would need to take into
account the different systems of logic and of propositional structure that
humans have created. For example, the Western system that we have inherited
from classical Greek thought seems rather restrictive compared to other
possibilities. Some non-Western systems of thought have broader classifications
of statements about the world than the true-false dichotomy and accept
indeterminacy as a logical principle. For example, John Barrow describes the
Jainian logic of ancient India, which recognizes seven categories of statement
classification: “1) maybe it is; 2) maybe it is not; 3) maybe it is, but it is
not; 4) maybe it is indeterminate; 5) maybe it is but is indeterminate; 6)
maybe it is not but is indeterminate; 7) maybe it is and it is not, and is also
indeterminate” (Barrow 1992: 15).
Embodiment
Embodiment, that is,
existence in a physical form, is vital in the meaning-making process. In fact,
there seems to be general theoretical consensus on this: cognitive linguists
(Lakoff and Johnson 1999), computer game theorists (Myers 2003), and
phenomenologists (Ruthrof 2000) agree that human conceptual forms are
determined by embodied consciousness and a sensory experience of things.
Although the language function provides important structures for
conceptualizing and thinking, it is not necessary for our perceptions to be
meaningful. For example, if we taste or smell something, or feel the water on
our skin when swimming, we do not need a word to explain what this sensation
is. The fact that we like or dislike, are attracted or repulsed by, a sensation
shows that this sensation has some meaning for us. The verbal aspect would be
an ulterior rationalization of the immediate sensation. The verbal component,
however, does have a normative effect in that it will create a mental category
(a set of expectations) that will activate when we experience the sensation
another time or when we attempt to describe it to someone else.
Actually, it is not so much
that we signify through the body, but more that the body itself signifies.
Physical traits, gender, race, movement, shape and appearance are already
invested with socially constructed meanings, which exist independently of
conscious intentions. As signifying and speaking subjects, humans have some
power of negotiation over how they are seen and what reactions they attract,
but this power is constrained by cultural beliefs and filtered by social
stereotypes.
To give just one example of
this, Terasem Movement organized a mock trial involving Bina48, an imaginary
conscious computer (The trials of Bina48, 2007). This trial hypothesized
a social situation where the civil rights of such a being would be scrutinized,
and speculated on the various debates, definitions and reasoning that would
accompany this scrutiny. What is significant for our present purpose is that
Bina48 “chose” to represent itself as a black woman, which, in Western
societies, is a sign of “otherness” – “woman” is culturally positioned as the
negative form of “man” and “black” as the negative form of “white,” giving the
double sign “black woman” a stronger connotation of “alien.” The choice of this
embodiment, therefore, is not arbitrary but strategic. It would be justified to
say that a different embodiment, say as a middle-aged, white, male business
executive, would have a completely different effect, and would influence
considerably the discourses that were produced concerning the computer’s identity
and rights. This is compounded by the fact that in North American culture the
black body also signifies its history in the slave system, making the arguments
in the mock trial over what defines an independent person, as opposed to
property, even more poignant.
In the phenomenological
tradition, which sees meaning as inextricably linked with lived experience, the
body assumes a pivotal role in the process of signification. According to this
approach, the body is not the vessel of a transcendental self – it is the
material forming the intentions, ideas and actions that present the various
phenomena we classify as “self.” The body-mind duality is put to question in a
similar way as the dichotomy between subject-object is challenged. Existence as
“being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself” converge in embodied experience. In
subjective perception, the body cannot be an object like the others, because
the space it occupies is the home of the consciousness through which all others
are understood. However, it is also an object, since it exists in the world,
and its objectivity allows consciousness to act (Marsen 2006b, 107). In the
words of Merleau-Ponty,
It has always
been noted that movement and speech transformed the body, but it was generally
accepted that they developed or manifested another force, thought or soul. It
was not recognized that, in order to express them, the body must, in the final
analysis, become the thought or intention that it signifies. It is the body
that shows, the body that speaks (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 230, my translation).
Language
Besides embodiment, language
is crucial in the creation and communication of meaning. As is known, there are
two main categories of language: formal and natural. Formal
languages use numbers, equations, and algorithms to communicate, and are based
on precise measurement and unambiguous reference. Natural (also known as conventional)
languages are based on the verbal signs that we use to communicate in our
everyday interactions. They are representational, or symbolic, systems of signs
– that is, their signs always refer to something else. For example, the word
“tree” (the signifier in Saussure’s linguistics, Saussure 1983) and the
plant it denotes in the world (the signified in Saussure’s linguistics)
are separate, and speakers can conjure images of the plant by using the word,
even if no physical tree is present. Also, the image of a tree in one speaker’s
mind may be considerably different from the image of a tree in another
speaker’s mind, yet on a certain level, both understand the general properties
of the object that the word denotes – a quality of “tree-ness” that makes
communication in natural language possible.
Accordingly, natural
languages depend on vagueness and carry the potential of individual and social
negotiation. For instance, “tree” is polysemic,
containing more than one denotation – we can denote hierarchical diagrams as
“trees” because of their resemblances in shape to the plant “tree.” Speakers
also have the power to agree that the word “tree” will be used as a signal for
something other than the object(s) it denotes, and thereby create a code, able
to be decoded only by those who know or can decipher its syntactic patterns,
without any reference to the natural world. This power too is part of the
negotiative aspects of language, and also underlies artistic expression.
Formal language systems are
universal and exact. Natural language systems, on the other hand, are varied
and dynamic. There are currently 6,912 living languages (www.ethnologue.com),
many of which are divided into dialects and sub-dialects. Natural languages
lend themselves to the formation of discourses, that is, specialized variants
of the main language reflecting the idiom and usage of specific social groups –
slang, jargon and “honorific,” status-related speech are examples of such
discourses. For instance, technical jargon serves to minimize the risks of
misunderstanding and ambiguity by delimiting the uses of particular words to
specific instances, and by capturing distinctions that everyday language, with
its polysemic aspect, misses.
Despite the
misunderstandings it can bring, ambiguity is not a disadvantage of natural
language, but rather a necessary quality of social communication. There are
countless instances where precision, formalization through abstraction, or
quantification would be contextually inappropriate, and would hinder or
obfuscate the transmission of the intended message. A zesty illustration of
this comes from Leo Finkelstein’s advice on clear communication for engineers,
where he notes the inappropriateness of the following jargon-dependent
statement in the context of a romantic encounter: “Whenever I look into your
eyes, I know that, from my perspective, I share with you a strong,
interpersonal passion or enthusiasm statistically related at .05 or better to
increased levels of self-disclosing behavior” (Finkelstein 2000, 7).
In fact, the opacity of
representational sign systems underpins symbolism, humor, and negotiation of
meaning, and enables the creative use of signs to challenge established norms
and prejudicial conventions – as the example of Bina48 described above
illustrated. Horst Ruthrof explains,
The approach to
language by formal semantics tends to begin by seeing opacity as an enemy to be
sought, identified, and exterminated. However, our inability to pin down the
meanings of ordinary and literary discourse can be seen from quite the opposite
position: as an indication of an emancipatory potential which needs to be
recognized (Ruthrof 1992, 7).
It would seem, therefore,
that the greatest human strengths, such as reflecting on contradiction, which
is the basis of humor, are closely connected with the greatest human
weaknesses, such as prejudice, and both are connected with the inherent
ambiguity of representational signs. I will return to this issue in the final
section; I will now turn to three major manifestations of the ambiguity of
linguistic signs: metaphor, connotation and emotive language.
Metaphor
As mentioned earlier, humans
give meanings to observed behaviors and to felt sensations, and, over time,
these meanings become codified into cultural and linguistic systems. The
representational and sensory qualities of natural language converge in metaphor.
Metaphor is much more than a play on words; it is a way in which humans
understand their relationship to the world, and a basic cognitive process
underlying the production of meaning. As Aristotle aptly pointed out, “midway
between the unintelligible and the commonplace, it is metaphor which most
produces knowledge” (Aristotle 1952, III, 1410b). Interestingly, the word
“metaphor” itself is a metaphor, meaning “to carry elsewhere.” It signals the
spatial aspect “movement,” and the process of creating meaning by abstracting
perceived qualities from two objects that are not physically connected, and
combining them to form a conceptual image.
The work of cognitive
linguists, such as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1999 and 2003), has shown
the pervasiveness of metaphorical expressions in human communication. What is
more, such research has underlined that not only is metaphor ubiquitous as a
cognitive faculty, but also it is closely connected with awareness of
embodiment and with sensory perception. Theories of art support this. For
example, in his seminal study of visual perception, Rudolf Arnheim showed how
verbal and non-verbal systems of representation are connected, because both are
based on similar sensory modelling forms (Arnheim 1974). These findings indicate
that abstract or conceptual thinking is constructed systematically from
physical data through metaphorical reasoning.
The study of metaphor is
also productive in tracing universal cognitive patterns and distinguishing them
from culture-specific manifestations. To illustrate this, consider the spatial
concepts “high” and “low,” and the numerous metaphorical expressions that have
become idiomatic in English. I can feel low, or be in high spirits; I can live
the high life, or be a low-life; I can rise high in status or fall from grace;
I can have high principles or stoop low; I can have a high or low profile; I
can have high aspirations or lie low; I can aim high or accept a low station in
life. All these metaphors allude to two things: first, they allude to sensory
experience, since the spatial relation between high and low must first be
physically perceived before it is cognitively understood; and, second, they
allude to cultural knowledge, in that all these metaphors evaluate “high”
positively and “low” negatively. Similarly, there seems to be a universal
pattern of metaphors of heat to describe emotional states of arousal (Kövecses
1986). Unrelated languages, such as the Indo-European family, Chinese, Hebrew,
and Thai, describe physical states of rage, enthusiasm, and sexual stimulation
with metaphors of heat, possibly because of the rise in body temperature that
accompanies these states. This suggests that the physiological condition of the
human species is the basis of many metaphorical concepts, although cultural
values come into play in judging this condition and making it meaningful.
The metaphorical structures
of language and of experience are fundamental traits of human thinking.
Together with the human ability to hold contradictory beliefs (to which
metaphor is related), they still pose a lot of difficulties for AI specialists.
There is a long-standing joke among linguists about the computer that
translated the expression “out of sight, out of mind” as “invisible idiot.”
Although, admittedly, recent developments in AI technology have made this
rather outdated, the fact remains that metaphor, and its related linguistic
construct, irony, are still difficult to emulate in non-human intelligences.
What is important is that not only do humans recognize and use idiomatic
metaphors, but also they continually create new ones, and use them to comment
on what they perceive in the world. Significantly, a study found that a speaker
of English produces on average 3,000 new metaphors each week (Danesi 2003).
Connotation
The idea that reality is
constructed and not just described by language is further supported by the
existence of words with different connotations, whose meaning is not related to
reference but to the speaker’s attitude and to contextual factors. We can
choose to designate a phenomenon as “appetite” or as “gluttony,” another as
“perverse” or as “erotic.” We can refer to a person as “child” or “brat,” and
to another as “human subject,” “man,” or “dude.” We can designate an action as
“collateral damage” or as a “terrorist act,” and we can describe a military act
as “liberation” or as “invasion.” In all such cases, the connotative nature of
language allows us to implicitly but powerfully evaluate and classify
appearance and behavior, without explicitly justifying our ideological
assumptions–and in many cases without even being aware of them (Marsen 2006a).
Describing an animal as
“dog,” “puppy,” or “cur,” for example, may refer to, or denote, the same
object in the world. However, not many would trust their dog to a vet who
refers to it as “cur,” because each choice of word connotes the
speaker’s attitude toward the object, and therefore each word constructs the
object differently. Through connotation, language carries markers, or traces,
of the speaker’s emotional relation to the objects described, and often to the
social “personas” that are expected to embody these emotions. For example, if
we consider words such as “puppy,” “kitty,” or “bunny” to be infantile
expressions, we should not overlook that children learn to use these words to
reflect the emotional attachment to animals or objects that society attributes
to the social role “child,” and that any speaker who chooses these words is,
intentionally or not, alluding to the characteristics of this role.
An interesting manifestation
of connotations lies in the linguistic category of “cross-varietal synonyms,”
which are words classified on a continuum according to their level of social
appropriateness. Euphemism, “sweet-talk” or polite speech, is on one
end, dysphemism or impolite (and sometimes informal) speech is on the
other, and orthophemism or neutral, speech lies between the two (Allan
and Burridge 1991 and 2006). Consider, for instance, the connotative
distinctions among the cross-varietal synonyms “disabled” (orthophemism),
“physically challenged” (euphemism) and “crippled” (dysphemism), or “died”
(orthophemism), “passed away” (euphemism) and “snuffed it” (dysphemism), or
“overweight” (orthophemism), “plump” (euphemism) and “fat” (dysphemism).
Choosing one out of the three options affects considerably the meaning of the
object or phenomenon described. The choice of a word with euphemistic or
dysphemistic connotations appeals to a set of established expectations about
how language can access the emotional state of the speaker and reflect his/her
relationship with the recipient – expectations that can be adhered to or
challenged.
Cross-varietal synonyms are
dynamic classifications that are in constant flux, reflecting changes in social
values: what used to be a dysphemism may now be an orthophemism, or an
orthophemism may once have been a euphemism, etc. For example, the verb
“occupy” was a dysphemistic term for “copulate” in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. It was re-introduced in its current meaning when it was
no longer used as a dysphemism (Allan and Burridge 2006, 43). Also, context is
very important for this linguistic category. Dysphemisms may be taboo words in
some contexts, but be the appropriate choice in others: “crippled” would be
more appropriate in a poem, for example, than “physically challenged,” because
of its dramatic impact due to its emotive connotation. Also, technical jargon
may be dysphemistic in a context where the speaker/writer is addressing a lay
audience.
In cases where the term
describes an emotional state (Berrendonner’s idio-alethic propositions,
described above), the situation is complicated. Consider, for example
“depressed.” By selecting this term we perceive a set of phenomena as symptoms
of a disease, which would not be the case if we selected “sad” or “unhappy” for
the same set of phenomena. However, behavioral signs that we interpret as
“depression,” such as apathy, withdrawal, or lack of energy, can represent a
response to powerlessness as much as they can indicate a physical illness. So,
if one says “I am depressed,” one is seeing oneself from an external position,
through the lens of medical science. If one says “you are depressed” or “he/she
is depressed,” one is not only seeing the person referred to from a scientific
perspective, but is also containing that person within that perpective (in
other words, one is implicitly dictating a form of behavior to that person). In
fact, as Wittgenstein suggested, saying I activates an entirely
different “language game” than saying he in statements that involve
subjective states (Wittgenstein 1957).
The situation is that we
have a limited number of ways to symbolize and communicate wishes, fears and
desired identities. Some of these ways overlap with signs which already carry
meanings from authoritative discourses, and may be stifled by them. This
situation makes the process of defining, classifying and interpreting not only
semantic but also political.
Emotive Expression
The social dimension of
connotations is clearly evident in the case of taboo language – language that a
community considers anti-social. Interestingly, most taboo language universally
involves aspects of body functions, especially sexuality, excretion, disease
and dying (Allan and Burridge 2006). Also, taboo language, such as cursing, is
highly emotive and has been shown to activate the limbic system of the brain,
which includes the brain's emotion-processing areas (Jay 2000). Therefore, it
presents a clear case of the connection among embodiment, emotion, language and
community.
An interesting example is
found in Tourette Syndrome, where sufferers are compelled to vocalize obscene
words and phrases. Significantly, it is precisely the taboo nature of the
words, not the words themselves, that induces sufferers to select them (Berecz
1992). In fact, Tourette is a case where the brain seems to be hi-jacked by
cultural prejudice. For instance, sufferers are not able to replace a
dysphemistic word with a euphemistic one that denotes the same act or object,
nor can they replace a dysphemism with a similar sounding word. In one example,
a five-year-old vocalized words that he thought were dysphemistic. When he
realized that he was mistaken, and that in fact they were not, he stopped using
them. In another case, a sufferer from the southern United States was compelled
to vocalize the word “nigger” (Allan and Burridge 2006, 247-8). Although he was not at all racist himself,
“nigger” is one of the worst insults in his community, so his vocalisations did
not reflect his beliefs, nor did they refer to individuals of a particular
race. Instead, they symbolized the anti-social itself, and reflected his
culture’s values in an inverted way. So, in Tourette Syndrome, although biology
determines the form of the disease, it is culture that shapes how it is
expressed. In the words of the mother of the five-year-old sufferer described
above, “society shapes the noise that is made” (Allan and Burridge 2006, 249)
Emotions play a major role
in other aspects of human thinking, besides linguistic expression. Memory is
one of these aspects. Brain research has shown that emotive memories (such as
remembering a car accident) are processed differently from non-emotive ones
(such as remembering a routine business meeting). In non-emotive memory
processing, information from the visual cortex goes to the hippocampus, the
brain’s central memory processor. After processing, the information of the
event goes to the pre-frontal cortex for long-term storage. In emotive memory
processing, the amygdala, the brain’s emotion processor, becomes active and
instructs the hippocampus to increase the strength of the memory, and thereby
distinguish it from other, non-emotive, memories. Because of the
amygdala-hippocampus crosstalk, memories of emotive or traumatic events are
engraved deeper into the mind, and may become persistent, leading to symptoms
described as “post-traumatic stress disorder” (Anderson and Phelps 2001; Dolcos
et al 2005).
These findings support the
claim that humans are designed to give meaning to their experiences, and that
this meaning is influenced by physical, emotive and social factors. This
combination of what we may consider the cornerstones of human thinking –
embodiment, emotion and language, all modified by community – prevents humans
from understanding the world only as quantifiable data or information, and
distinguishes human from non-human intelligence.
Problems of Human
Communication
The preceding section
described some major aspects in which humans give meaning to the world, and
communicate this meaning to others and to themselves. The question that arises
form this is: Does human communication need improvement? I propose that the
answer is yes, and suggest two reasons why this is so.
First, human communication
is riddled with hurtful and awkward misunderstandings and prejudices. We
evolved to “read” cues and emotions so as to co-exist more effectively, but we
constantly “misread” them, and, consequently, often wrongly restrict or
disadvantage others. In fact, using a software design metaphor, we could say
that human communication has serious “programming bugs.” We are designed to see
a human form and to immediately analyze it in terms of its objective features,
such as appearance, age, gender, etc. We then very rapidly infer its status,
emotional condition and attitude, and draw conclusions about the form’s
potential behavior and its possible interactions with us. Such perceptions
evolved as a protective device in recognizing danger, and as selective focus in
identifying potential mates. However, such perceptions are fundamentally
primitive, and so they are just as likely to be wrong as they are to be right.
The more sophisticated, complex and diverse the population with which we
interact becomes, the more pronounced the risk of misinterpretation. We have
developed ways to monitor and check our responses, through techniques such as
questions and reasoning, but these are language-based and therefore suffer from
the problems entailed by linguistic ambiguity, as described above. So, they are
not likely to produce accurate results, or to “get to the bottom of things” –
to use one of the numerous spatial metaphors that equate “depth” and “the
invisible” with “truth” in English.
The prejudice that saturates
first impressions, or reasoning by appearance, becomes codified into a cultural
practice and is manifest in such phenomena as racism, ageism, and the exclusion
of individuals seen as challenging the norm. This is compounded by the fact
that humans are designed to rationalize and legitimize their behaviors in order
to distinguish themselves from other animals (including humans from other
communities) – the idealization of “culture” over “nature” being a universal
human trait. Powerful mythologies are constructed around this legitimation of
behavior, from whose grasp the “experts” are not always spared. The well-known
case of Dr Cartwright’s 1851 description of “drapetomania,” the disease causing
slaves to run away, and the fact that the American Psychiatric Association did
not discard the term “homosexuality” from the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders until 1994 (Jutel 2006, 2269) show that science
is not as free of such systematic prejudice as it would like. They also
indicate that the disadvantaged, the “different,” and the “ugly” remain the
ones who are most readily under scrutiny, and the ones who are called upon to
justify their actions.
Since communication involves
a balance among body, language and emotion, any excess in one direction would
jeopardize the effectiveness of intended meaning. Therefore, in addition to
social prejudice, self-defeat can be a problem of communication. Humans have
difficulty in projecting their desired meanings, or in “coming across” as they
wish. When intentions conflict with beliefs and both conflict with contextual
factors, humans are prone to sabotaging themselves. Since the body is
meaningful irrespective of one’s words, there are cases where one’s body says
one thing while one’s words say another. Inhibition, lack of confidence,
over-confidence, inaccurate judgment of context, and contradictory desires are
some reasons for this unintentional self-misrepresentation, and they are, in
some way or another, related to the elements of meaning-creation described
above. Søren Kierkegaard described colorfully the vicissitudes of desire and
communication, of being and world, in his Seducer’s Diary.
In this, the “hero” attempts to gain the favors of and elicit a loving response
from the “heroine” by complimenting and otherwise articulating his admiration
for her in words. Every time he succeeds in winning her over, and she tries to
express her affection for him, he stops her by giving her a sarcastic look
(Kierkegaard 1987 [1843]).
Fear and guilt are often at
play in the phenomenon of self-sabotage, and, once again, they are examples of
evolved emotions whose primary function (fear is related to self-preservation,
and guilt to pro-social behavior) is overshadowed by the many instances where
the programming bugs take over. Humans often fear those they should trust, and
trust those they should fear, because of the prejudicial inaccuracies of
judgment mentioned earlier. Also, while guilt may lead one to act morally, it
can also deceive victims into believing they are responsible for their
suffering – as is often the case with rape and child abuse victims.
The second reason why human
communication requires improvement lies in the ideological positioning of the
human and the human’s life. This positioning is based on modernist ideology,
which favors continuity, progression through accumulation, and permanence in
identity. Our social imagination is saturated with metaphors which reflect this
ideology, such as “at this stage in life,” “life direction,” “life is a
journey,” and the many popular metaphors of “growth” (“to grow through
experience”, “to outgrow a belief,” etc.). At the same time, contemporary
post-industrial life has already started to contradict such attitudes. Many
professions, for example, favor skill and innovation as opposed to experience,
while the linear, climactic, continuity of modernism is rapidly being replaced
with the serial, random access of the digital era. Also, many post-modern
individuals share a value system with peer groups, often scattered throughout
the world, rather than with families or immediate communities, as they did in
the past.
Based on modernist ideology,
existing conceptual structures and metaphors may restrict recognition of these
changes, and may prevent contemporary, pre-posthumans from engaging with them
creatively. In fact, a shortage of symbolic forms that would help to legitimize
these developments may well account for what is sometimes described as the
hypocrisy of contemporary life. It seems that, although human conceptual and
representational systems, such as language, are dynamic and adaptive, they do
not adapt quickly enough to cater for the socio-emotional upheavals of
transitional periods of human evolution, such as the one we are arguably
undergoing now.
Weaknesses in human thinking
and communication, such as those described above, require more research. The
quest to design artificial intelligences that resemble human intelligence
should not obscure the fact that human design is as defective as artificial
design can be. Also, designing artificial life that is more intelligent and
more powerful than human life but which carries all the prejudices of humans is
a danger we must guard against. Indeed, this situation has been explored in
dystopian science fiction, which has shown that it is not a pleasant prospect.
At the same time, however, the higher emotions of humans, their ability to
represent, create symbolism, laugh, personify qualities and play different
roles, and tell jokes are connected with their tendencies to misunderstand, stereotype,
deceive and be deceived. Understanding how we can retain the creative aspects,
without falling into the traps of the prejudicial biases, would be a great leap
forward in a positive transformation of the human.
In this endeavor,
storytellers, artists and interpretative scholars need to play a role as
important as that of scientists. In contrast to scientists, humanistic
theorists and artists explore, analyze and speculate on individual cases, which
statistical averages ignore. This enables them to single out and describe the
exceptions to rules, the ones that defy the odds, and the ones that do not
easily fit pre-established categories. This way, they can express and interpret
symbolic worlds where we may find new ways to create meaning. Such worlds can
use language and other representational sign systems to construct images of
reality, ourselves, and our relations with others so that more possibilities of
existence may become apparent.
Acknowledgments
A version of this paper was
presented at Transvision 2007 conference, on July 24, 2007 in Chicago. I thank
Michael LaTorra, Anders Sandberg and Mark Walker for their valuable feedback
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