Chapter XIV

Symbolic Integration

Symbolic Mediation & the Psychological Construction of Reality

by Hugh M. Lewis

This symbolic processing is a direct result of the complex cerebral structures that are built upon more basic brain structures. In an evolutionary sense, the human brain is an outcome of selection for these structures, and therefore symbolic processing must be seen as a natural outcome of the hyper-development of more basic structures in the brain, and the basis for their integration in the life of the mind. The basic functions that symbolic processing serve are no different than the functions served by most animal brains at different levels, and it can be most clearly understood in these terms. It is a difference both of quantity and inherent quality of this processing, that results in a structural informational patterning that is fundamentally symbolic.

Mind is the self-aware human brain that has a sense of biographical, traditional, and historical context within a cultural system. Mind is the synergistic product of the functioning brain that is situated within some anthropologically coherent context. Mind is therefore the net and total symbolic patterning that the functioning of the brain achieves.

This sense of mind is fundamentally symbolic, and therefore, it is basically culture. We can say unequivocally that the human brain evolved as such, as a device for the carrying and creation of human culture. It follows that if we are to better understand the structure of cultural patterning, we must understand the functioning of the brain, and if we are to understand the patterning of the brain and mind, then we must understand better how the brain functions to create and transmit this patterning.

It does this primarily and exclusively through the use of symbolization, such that if we are to understand either the brain or culture, we must first have a clear idea of what human symbolization is and exactly how it functions in the organization of our lives.

This argument is for a strong connection between brain and culture, and implicitly, between brain, culture and language. This connection is not deterministic in a one way sense of cause and effect. Again, the information system described is a non-linear control system with feedback cycles involved at multiple levels. Therefore, straight- forward attributions of linear causality are misleading. It implies a strong form of cultural and linguistic relativism, and a cultural cognition hypothesis.

While I am a relativist, and do adopt a relativistic argument, the issue of relativism is one of inherent limitations of knowledge and should not be confused with theoretical construction. Of course, a relativistic hypothesis of a connection between culture and cognition does not preclude the role of the brain or language in mediating this process. Just because people of different cultures tend to think and act in different terms, which is quite obvious to anyone, does not mean that in an organic and structural sense most brains are not essentially the same.

The essential similarity and comparability of brain structure among all humans accounts for the fact that on a fundamental level, the structural patterning of symbolization, culture, and language will all be quite similar and fundamentally inter-translatable. At the same time, this does not preclude the notion that different languages frame thoughts in different ways, and these thoughts lead to different patternings in the brain.

The argument I present herein is mostly derived from advanced research I have conducted on symbolic framing over the past few years. It has led to a fine tuned understanding of human symbolization, especially as this is situated within cross-cultural contexts. It takes this to be mostly a psychological argument, and I would argue for it being the basis for a distinctive form of psychological knowledge that I call symbolic psychology. It leads to the notion of the psychological construction of reality as but part of a larger phase of cultural integration of human reality.

At the outset, I would say that in the cultural context of a social grouping, symbolic psychology has definite linguistic, social and cognitive facets. These must be understood as the consequences that the symbolic structure of human informational patterning plays upon our lives, as cerebral and brain-based as this may be.

The basis of human symbolization is rooted in the design principles of Gestalt psychology. It is rooted in progressively refined processes of basic perceptual pattern recognition that leads to reflexive and refined feedback loops of organic human response. Memory patterns are organized by means of the progressive embedding of perception-based patterns in the human brain built upon multiple levels, and form the foundation of human cognition and conceptualization or abstraction. Memory processes are themselves largely pattern recognition in their organization.

We may make several preliminary statements regarding the pattern-recognition processes of human symbolic consciousness.

Generally, figure-ground relationships are expected perception-based patterns, such that, any disturbance of the figure or ground, will result in either a confusion of the relational pattern, or else a substitution of the pattern with expected material from the subconscious.

In other words, holes normally occur in the perceptual field as a result of irrelation between figure-ground patterns. These holes are regularly filed in with "mental" material that is derived from memory processes of the brain, or else directly from perceptual stimuli borrowed from the background.

The central symbolic function of the brain is essentially to disambiguate its normal field of perception. Disambiguation is tied directly to the issue of clear and correct perception, what can be called immediate apperception or concrete perception. But in humans especially this process is fundamentally mediated by higher order cerebral functions, such that the framework of perception is referenced against an internalized cognitive map or worldview that has its own sense of independent coherence.

Ambiguity of the perceptual field results in a kind of noise that interferes with the symbolic processes of the brain. This can be called a form of cognitive dissonance except that this term has other psychological implications that are not necessarily intended here. It can be said that the brain will naturally attempt to minimize ambiguity of its normal field by attempting to disambiguate that field. It will either borrow material from the environment in a kind of feedback process, or borrow internalized material straight from memory, in a kind of feed-forward process.

Humans expect a coherent and undisturbed field of view. In general, stimuli within this field are considered as neutral and therefore are ignored. Focus is given to figures embedded in the background. Normally, there is a differential gradient in a human being's perceptual fields, between a central focus and a periphery that lacks focus. There may be distinct zones of perception occurring between these extremes of a perceptual continuum. This generalization is applicable to both vision and audition, and, to a lesser extent, I believe, the sense of touch, especially as this comes to focus on the tips of the fingers. The senses of smell and taste appear to be less refined in human beings, though I have not done research in these areas.

Not only is there differential focus, especially of vision and audition, but there is the ability to scan quickly the entire field, that may be related to a secondary intermediate zone of perception, in search of incipient or residual pattern clues. This scanning appears to be searching for relationships that connect the focus to the periphery.

Scanning is also accomplished by searching focus that goes to all corners of the field looking for clues. In vision, this searching focus appears to be aligned to a horizontal axis, which seems inherently more stable than a vertical or diagonal axis. I do not know what an equivalent might be in auditory search patterns, although I suspect that it is an issue of front to back, side-to-side, and proximate-to-distal relationships. In visual fields, we can speak figure-ground, frame or field relationships, relative symmetry-asymmetry, similar, dissimilar, proportion--tall/short, large small above-below front-back, side-by-side and hidden form relationships. These reflect spatial clues and cues. These patterns suggest to me that stereoscopic and stereophonic triangulation is involved in focusing and in selection and discrimination of the background field.

The paradox of this is that audition is primarily a temporal phenomenon. One would expect disambiguation to occur in a sequential as well as a synchronic sense. Sequential temporal disambiguation has a lot to do with the selection process from a field of alternative choices, involving a refinement of the total field. I believe that memory processes are inherently tied to this aspect of disambiguation and perceptual selection, such that at different levels there is an attempt to tie together phenomena, especially change processes, in a temporal pattern or arrangement.

Thus we can describe various kinds and levels of memory, for instance short-term memory, working memory, daily intermediate memory and longer-term memory processes, depending on the function they serve in linking together stimuli at various levels of functioning. These memory processes all operate simultaneously in the background of one's consciousness, and compose largely the subconscious of the individual.

If we are to see parallel-processing occurring, it is not only on the level of concrete multi-sensory inputs, but in the background level of the multi-functional levels of human memory processes that are symbolically mediated.

Needless to say, the progressive organization or stratification of these memory processes are based on thematic and structural properties of the information being received, in accordance to frames of expectation and reference that are symbolically defined and are linked to differential patterns of response. We can identify, I believe, the primary structural properties of pattern recognition at each level of memory process.

Short-term memory processes serve the function of immediate apprehension of the perceptual field. That it has a finite limit of 7-11 sequential units suggests several things about it. First, it is concerned with the functional organization of immediate experience, the ability to deal with new and incoming stimuli that is a function of change processes. It must do so very rapidly, almost reflexively. There is an automatic quality of its occurrence, such that, as in second-language learning, when this breaks down, there is no basic framework of connection between the inner world and the outer world and only cognitive dissonance and confusion can result. It is working on the fly so to speak. I can imagine it as a kind of first-end, first-out feed-forward organization of information process. It is, as in a card game analogy, what the individual holds in one's hand at any one moment. Of course, the cards are always changing, and in a sense, have to change.

This is the second aspect of this first-level memory process. It is very fugitive and transient and disappears quickly. We lose it unless we repeat it. It vaporizes rapid. It therefore depends on new incoming messages being received through the perceptual field. It expects this, anticipates it, and needs it, otherwise it becomes rapidly dysfunctional.

The fourth aspect of short-term memory process is that it deals primarily on a purely concrete, figure- ground level. In this, primary and basic forms of of paramount importance, whether these are abstract or derivative of nature. It deals with the discrimination of basic sights and sounds that have only concrete symbolic significance in forming stimuli for larger gestalt patterns. Thus the brain does not invest much of its resources into it, though there is a fundamental sense of anxiety or neurotic perception and field or frame dependency that seems to be associated with it and to some extent interferes with it.

Thus, short-term memory process is the most matter of fact level of functioning about which there is little or no attachment of feeling, conscious or reflexive apperception or feedback usually involved. This does not mean that there is not an extrinsic context or intrinsic context in which stimuli becomes selected and apprehended as such, but the actual concrete apperception of such stimuli seems to me to be fundamentally neutral, and perhaps must be. It may not be completely neutral, or appear so, as fright-reactions and evocative stimuli of basic emotions suggests that even at the primary level, perception, attention and selection are regulated by certain characteristic and definitive response patterns associated with pattern recognition and experience at this level.

The fifth aspect of first-level, short-term memory process is that it is represents a kind of informational bottleneck for new incoming stimuli. It appears that the human brain is designed to deal only with a few incoming new stimuli at one time, and this has to be somehow interconnected to form a pattern. It leads to a frame-film view of the internal introjection of new stimuli, a feed-forward process, that appears to take in discrete amounts at a time, rather than on a continuous basis. In this sense, front-end memory processes must be limited and fundamentally selective, else the brain would be quickly overloaded with new stimuli on a continuous basis that it cannot discriminate against.

In other words, the brain chops up the stream of consciousness on a basic level of concrete experience in ways that are quickly and automatically processed by the brain. It does this naturally. Of course, it puts this all back together again such that our internal experience of reality appears continuous and animated.

This leads to a related question of channel switching such that the brain appears to be capable of automatically and quickly switching its mode of primary attention from one perceptual stream of inputs to another on the fly. Thus, at the level of primary attention, it must be considered that incoming bits and pieces are chopped in such a way that they are essentially equivalent units that are exchangeable in the flow process. This is an important clue to understanding how this works. Clues in audition appear to be basic sounds that are either natural, phonemic hence linguistic, or unusual sounds, calls, screams, bangs, etc. Clues in vision appear to be basic geometric constructs, like circles, triangles, squares, lines, dots, very basic natural forms, like trees, four legged animals, leaves, etc., and highly unusual forms that stick out--very odd shapes, and basic colors which are I believe importantly, always associated with some thing.

Automatic channel switching also suggests two other similar kinds of phenomena, channeling of perception along one track, and state dependent perceptual recognition such that altered states of consciousness result in differential patterns of short-term memory and primary attention.

The crossing over or synaesthesia of perceptual processes between auditory and visual pattern-based recognition and, to a lesser extent, the sense of touch and smell, may be related to the tying together of these patterns in stereoscopic and stereophonic terms. In terms of memory processes that link together temporally and spatially arranged stimuli, these patterns may be integrated such that they create an inner "field" of possible or virtual perception. Deja vue experiences are, I believe, examples of the synaesthetic aspects of human pattern recognition, however else we may seek to explain these processes.

It can be seen that cultural influences of pattern recognition can normally occur in concrete apperception in affecting our primary perception and processing of new information. Different cultural patterns lead to different conscious processes that result in parsing the world in fundamentally different ways.

The clearest example of this is in different language patterns themselves in terms of the morphophonemic organization of sound patterns. The broad range of variation of language pattern, by which the spectrum of possible sounds created by the human speech apparatus is carved up in different ways, does not need elucidation. That these differential patternings are evocative of meaning on a very basic and concrete level for the native speaker, and permit native listener intuition, goes beyond question. To claim, as some do, that this parsing process results in the same basic picture of the world for all people of cultures is ridiculous. There is basic convergence of these patterning in terms of basic forms of stimuli, especially drawn from nature--but the nuances of association, feeling, response tend to be different in their configuration. The virtue and universal structure of this process is that the mechanisms organically involved are species specific and structurally the same for all normal human beings. This means that people can learn new languages, and to see and think in terms of alternative languages.

This brings up a final point about short-term primary processes of memory and pattern recognition, and this has to do with the centrality of language. Short-term memory processes appear to be highly correlated with basic oral patterns of sentential structuration of language. Sentential structuration of language has a lot to do with the syntactic and syntagmatic/paradigmatic organization of language process on the basic level of the automatic production and recognition of sounds in coherent patterns. This issue will be explored in the next chapter relating to symbolic linguistics, but at this stage it is important to emphasize that it involves memory processes on a primary level. In oral languages especially, sentences generally are parsed in units that reflect the average capacity of short-term memory--the magical number 9. Languages appear designed to handle naturally just about this many constructs "in a period" or "at one time" and its structure is defined in this way.

Up to this point, this appears to have little to do with human symbolization, except to explain the fundamental structure of such symbolic process in human pattern recognition processes. Even very primitive animals demonstrate very similar processes of concrete pattern recognition at the primary level, though they lack human language and possibly the sophistication of our short-term memory, but even our short-term memory on average appears very limited and primitive.

Symbolic processes I believe really take hold on the secondary level of memory processing, and this is what is defined as the working memory processes. It is at this stage that a great deal of attention should be focused. I will define working memory as that breadth of active memory that is defined by a person's average attention span. In fact, it is possible that people actually have several attention spans co-occurring simultaneously, some short and others longer. If we try to count backwards from 100, we do not usually get very far before being distracted, even if no distractions are there to impede our progress. It takes great training of the mind to accomplish such a task. Another example is to try to hold one thought in mind, unchanging, for as long as possible. It does not require very long to loose one's train of thought. I will define this as short span memory.

A more clinical definition of attention span, what I would call intermediate span memory, is the kind of formula like a child's attention span is the number of minutes per year of age, give or take a minute or two. I doubt this is a correct kind of formula to apply consistently to all people, but it suggests that we can tend to specific subjects or projects for a period of time, before we tend to become distracted or shift attention towards other subjects or projects. If one listens to a free and open conversation, it is not hard to notice the drift that occurs over time from subject to subject, and theme to theme. It becomes irritating to listen to someone who keeps coming back to the same subject, or repeats a theme over and over again, albeit in various ways. The length of intermediate span probably has a lot to do with the received importance we attach to what it is we are attending to. If something is of great importance to us, symbolically speaking, then likely we will tend to it for a longer period of time than if it is of neutral or trivial consequence. This is a caveat that teachers of any age group should keep in mind. Students will become quickly bored with subjects to which they can attach little importance.

In terms of the card analogy, if we consider the cards in one's current hand as the equivalent of short-term memory, then we must consider that any one round of play will be the context in which working memory becomes defined. In this sense, it is not important to remember what has happened from one round to the next. Indeed, it may be important in order to achieve full attention in each round, to purposefully forget what happened in the previous rounds, such that the limited channel capacity of one's working memory are not entirely clogged with old and irrelevant information. Thus, a single round might last 5 minutes or linger for ten minutes. In any one kind of card game, it is predictable that the average length of a round would be more or less the same, such that if these boundaries are not tended to, then distraction or irritation will be expected.

If we engage in an open conversation, for which all people appear to have a basic need at times, perhaps just to exercise and stimulate certain aspects of their secondary pattern recognition processes, it is evident that as a conversation drifts about from topic to topic. If we afterwards query each person about the course of the topics, their order, or even what were exactly the first or next topics talked about, we are likely to get different answers that lack agreement. This would indicate a lack of detailed memory or knowledge, hence a wide margin for error.

Working memory process is therefore of variable span, depending on the intrinsic and extrinsic importance of the tasks involved. I would venture that the extreme limits of this span is short-span and what I would call long-span working memory process, and the intermediate-span represents some kind of fluctuating average that is a product of the carving up of the manifold of experience in one's daily life. The long-term limits of working memory appear to me to be quite variable in fact. If we take examples from work, play and education derived from around the world, we would find that in classrooms, the maximum length of a period is usually just under one hour, and in this period, there is framework for from 2 to 5 subdivisions of span. We would find also that in the course of a day, there must be divisions every three or four hours and that the maximum length of a work day ranges between 6 and 10 hours. If we broach these kinds of limits, it is expectable that people lose their efficiency in tending to the tasks they are supposed to be tending to, and diminishing returns set in.

In the organization of tasks, such as in schools, it is evident that from period to period, subjects are varied, such that the contents of a previous subject do not normally spill over into the subject matter of the current subject. Students should not be bothered with questions of the history of English if their present purposes are to study mathematics or physics.

This brings up several critical points about variable span working memory. First, some kind of learning process is usually involved, such that there is a sense of carry over from one period to the next or from one like episode to the next similar episode. In playing, working or studying, humans learn things at a different level of attention and organization of experience, and this learning is progressive in the sense that it affects their ability to perform and play and function in subsequent periods. This brings up an important issue about secondary processing, as there appears to be refinement and modification of performance attached to that processing, such that we might say, "practice makes perfect." There appears to be a sigmoidal learning curve, or set of sigmoidal learning curves that occur over different periods of time, such that in any one period or cycle of learning, there is an optimum level of learning achieved, beyond which, negative feedback sets in.

It is clear that if we are amateurs at a game of cards, even a purely chance game like poker, we are liable to lose on average to one who has, by dent of long-term experience, played the game over and over again. We cannot fully explain what it is we learn, such that if we were asked what it is we know, or how do we do it, we are liable to return "I am not sure" than a detailed report.

It is also true that we tend to naturally sort out at different skill levels at anything we might try to do. There are different skill levels in chess, such that if we are good, or even talented we rise to a high level of performance fairly rapidly. Some people just have a knack for playing chess, and others do not. If a poor chess player plays all his life, he or she may still lose consistently to even a mediocre chess player. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the poor chess player is poor at everything that person does. That person may be a talented artist or a gifted musician, or a great cook. And the gifted chess player may know to do little more than play chess.

Working memory is associated with skills and task performance. Upper limits of working memory have been suggested, such that on average people may only have command of a few hundred elements in any given period. Such periods define behavioral frameworks, or settings that are well defined culturally in certain ways.

In China, students tried to teach me a game of Chinese cards that was similar to poker. I tried to learn the game several times over, but after about an hour, I still did not get it. I had no "aha" experience about the game that allowed me to understand what it was my students were doing. I tried to reason through the game, and they tried to explain it logically to me, but still the pieces of the puzzle did not fall into place. I do not think that it was a sign of lack of intelligence, as I tried teaching them a game or two I remembered from my childhood, like King's Corner and 5-card draw or even go-fish. They appeared to become quite frustrated and disinterested with either game after just a couple of hands.

If this is our definition of intelligence then it is very narrowly defined and culturally limited in critical ways. It does bring up the problem solving and puzzle-working aspects of working secondary processes, associated with skill, learning, and performance, that are conventionally associated with intelligence, talent and other positive qualities, especially as these tend to be culturally defined.

Somehow, we come to stereotypically expect that all Koreans should be great violinists, and that all Chinese are natural mathematicians, students and businessmen. We expect Americans somehow know to "shoot center" and invent new gadgets, and Japanese have green thumbs and rake sand, and Germans create ideal bureaucracies, and British people make wonderful naturalists, detectives and sailors. Many people even play up such stereotypes in intercultural interactions. Many of these myths come tumbling down in cross-cultural fieldwork, when we discover in our samples of experience and surveys, that the average Chinese is no better or worse in business or math than the average American. There is some sense of cultural focus and behavioral patterning in shared contexts that creates a differential of experience, training and attention. And this can be said to be true of about anything and anybody we pick to describe.

Indeed, the more we work a problem, or solve a kind of puzzle, the better we are liable to become at it, and this is regardless of what it is we are doing. But there appears also to be wide variability in the natural distribution of talent and also in the cultural differentiation of working fields of activity and knowledge. Obviously there are some innate factors of human intelligence operating, but even in problem solving terms, this becomes very difficult to pin-down, especially in consideration of cross-cultural differentials. How can we say someone who has no experience in an area, by cultural definition, is less intelligent than one who, by cultural focus, has a great amount of such experience. And cultures do come to emphasize some things in the continuum of possible experiences at the expense of others. We expect Balinese to be wonderful artists and performers. We expect that all Blacks can dance and sing and make music. We expect that all Englishmen are writers and statesmen, and all Italians make good food, wine and love.

In the theory of secondary recognition processes and working, variable span memory, several points can be made. First, it appears that fairly formal "rules" apply in most such contexts that determine performance and ranges of performance, and also determine errors. These rules may be formalized to some greater or less extent, but naturally occur as informal or even purely implicit to the performance itself. We do not need to be a great anthropologists to know how to play the game of Trobriand cricket or to engage in effective exchange relations with other societies. We may be good anthropologists and define clearly the rules of these kinds of exchange games, such that we can predict success and failure, but that doesn't mean we know how to necessarily play the same games or apply the rules in our own experience.

Our measure of the expert is largely on how well the individual has learned the "implicit rules of the game" whether they are formalized or not. This implies some degree of logic, and fairly mechanical cognitive processing such as counting, comparing, and estimating. If we want to derive the whole of mathematics from this basic pattern of cognitive skill and operation, then this might become our game too. So logic exists in game playing and normal human performance, even if the performance we participate in seems inherently illogical in its own patterning. Magic is a wonderful example of this. Magic is usually defined by rules of analogy that in a strict sense are illogical. And yet, to perform magic well, it is probable that we must apply logic on some level of its articulation.

Not only are rules learned at this level, whether formal or informal, implicit or explicit, practical or general, heuristic or logical, but also, ranges of relationships and things are also learned. We learn, in other words, taxonomies of knowledge that are associated with the rules. To some extent, the rules describe the taxonomic structure of what we learn, but also, we learn things in different sets and larger constellations that may be separate from the rules we come to apply to these things. Just as there appears to be variable limits to the span of attention and memory in secondary processing, there appear to be variable limits to the size and complexity of the taxonomies that we associate with such processes. Generally, such taxonomies have some external system of indexical reference by which we can keep track of them. Thus, they depend for their sharing, reiteration and reinforcement on their externalization in symbolic form, particularly in culturally defined contexts.

Taxonomies, whatever form they take, have certain predictable organizational aspects about them. However they are ranked or grouped, they form some kind of "table of organization" that is usually at least a two dimensional matrix. Minimally, like goes with like, and different are set apart.

We come to think of an expert in a certain thing as one who has a certain amount of detail of knowledge, and reliability of such detail, such that this person will yield better than average results, if not perfect results. If we are to see the whole structural organization of society, we can see it in these terms. We do not want classrooms with too many kids in a class, if we value one-to-one and interpersonal contact between the teacher and the student. And if we are creating mega-sized cattle classes, it indicates that we are devaluing such interpersonal experience in teaching, and instead valuing rather impersonal models of such training.

Reliability of an expert is associated with experience and training, such that an expert in a given area can give very predictable results, and such that two experts in the same area will give better than average similarity of results. If a medical problem is very serious and important to us and the outcomes are great in costs or risks, then we are liable not to believe the first doctor's opinion we receive. If we seek a second opinion on a medical diagnosis, and if we find wide discrepancy with the first opinion, then we are likely to go find a third or more opinions. But if we find close agreement, we are more likely to accept it as the bottom line.

Another related issue is our expectations of teaching and coaching in skill areas. We can always blame the teacher for the poor performance of students, and bureaucrats in America especially love to do this. Average skill levels in any one area, besides being largely culturally defined and preconditioned, vary substantially from individual to individual. We can throw a hundred students into one class, and expect the teacher to achieve progress with all the students on an equal footing, but it will never be possible. Ideally, a super teacher who is practically perfect in every way and who carries magical remedies in her bag and who has infinite, time, patience, skill and knowledge, should be able to do this. The standards we come to impose on teachers therefore appear to be abnormally unrealistic to the extent that they are normally idealistic.

Even given a hypothetically perfect teacher, students would still vary substantially in their achievable skill levels in any one area, even if they scored approximately the same on a standard achievement or "IQ" test. This is to be expected, such that any teacher, no matter how good, would be fundamentally challenged to bring out the best in each and every student.

But it is true that a good teacher can bring out a new level of improved skill in a student. Exactly how this happens in any one area is open to debate. We can formalize rules, but with our Trobriand anthropologist this may make little functional difference. We can get the students to play their skill games, but they may make little average improvement in their overall level of performance. We may hire a special coach or tutor, and perhaps that coach has to go back down to basics, and re-teach the entire game on a new foundation, to get the student to achieve new levels of expertise previously impossible. Perhaps its all in the wrist, or the stance, or perhaps in the first chess move or the first sentence. It has a lot to do with an "aha" kind of pattern recognition that says "the pieces all finally fit together" and that "I have the correct answer, not just any answer, but the right one."

There are two sides of this in consideration of secondary pattern recognition. First, there is at this level usually some standard of performance, some sense of being correct or incorrect, from which we deviate and by which we are measured. It demands a kind of perfectionism that humans seem both obsessively prone to and yet imperfectly fit for. "To err is human" but error can only be comprehended from some standard of correctness.

The second side of this is that it is largely a "aha" pattern recognition kind of system we are attempting to learn and achieve in our performance. Unless we get the overall pattern of the "system" involved, we cannot do the game or thing at all. There is a sense that in complex informational systems at the secondary level, the greater the "aha" experience we have in relation to any one system, the better our performance of that system, and the less the rate of error and ambiguity associated with that system.

To say this is fundamentally symbolic in a way we might argue with the primary level, by which contrast we can call significant in a pre-symbolic kind of way, is fairly straight-forward.

Obviously to replay the game over and over again, from one round to the next, and especially if we are intending to improve our performance, then it is necessary that we have some kind of cognitive set of instructions and codifications associated with that performance. Like our mental tools, we do not have to carry about each physical instance of the tool in order to effectively use the template of the tool. At this level, we are talking not just of one kind of tool, but a set of associated tools that serve specific kinds of tasks.

We can say that symbolically we carry with us a set of symbolic pattern recognition templates that function like tools by which we can perform in certain ways under certain conditions and circumstances, and that we can compare and judge our performance from one episode or period to the next. I would call this a minimal definition of what is symbolic about human experience.

This speaks a kind of cognitive symbolic differentiation of experience into sets, systems, and periods that are fundamentally irrelevant at the primary level of processing. The same primary processing applies in any area or set or system we apply it to, but the same rules and knowledge constructs and tools do not apply in the same way to every event engaging primary processing.

There is a sense that once we achieve the "aha" ness associated with a particular framework of behavior and performance, we do not easily lose that in a symbolic way. Once we learn to ride a bicycle, no matter how difficult the coordination of balancing, steering and pedaling might be at first, we never forget it. We may be in or out of practice, but even after fifty years we can get back on a bicycle and in five minutes ride it like we've been riding one all our lives.

This is true with almost any kind of structured activity we can think of, be it surfing, or swimming, or driving or cooking or cleaning. We have in our mind a hard wired symbolic template that organizes our behaviors in a coordinated manner that allows us to accomplish a certain kind of feat. It may take us time to acquire such a template. Obviously, a set of patterns in the brain is set up such that there is a reticulated pathway between the important areas associated with the complex performance. When the feedback loop begins, again always defined in the framework of some external context, it happens automatically and reflexively, without a great deal of investment in thinking about it or having to relearn the basic process.

This brings up the related issue. Surely, at the level of secondary processing, there is some sense of aversion and appetite, positive and negative association, frustration and response associated to different kinds of tasks and things we do in the course of a day. Surely, much of what is defined as abnormally neurotic comes from adaptational dysfunctions associated with such secondary functioning. There is a sense to that we will tend to excel in those things we are good at and become recognized for, and that lack of recognition can even choke off the most talented among us. We tend to like what we are good at, and love what we spend a great deal of time doing, otherwise we may become very unhappy and neurotic creatures after all.

At this level too, there is a sense that our performance and our choices in performance can be influenced by many other life factors in the background of our experience. We may have bad days and good days. It could come from a sleepless night, but a sleepless night might come from a variety of causes. We may have unconscious hang ups--writer's blocks, golfer's elbows, football knees or ribs. If we drink alcohol, we cannot perform as well. If we are distracted by an attractive person then we may lose our round. There may be more deep-seated factors influencing our performance and ability to achieve either in any given moment, or throughout our entire lives.

This brings up a third basic level of memory processing, but before I go to that, I would like to reiterate some symbolic aspects of the secondary level of processing. It appears to be a level that carries of heavy load in terms of conscious attention. In fact, it defines the majority of conscious experience, especially to the extent that such experience is directed to tasks or by goals. It is the level at which everyday language is normally used and articulated. It is the level at which culture, too, appears to exhibit the greatest degree of sharing and emphasis of consonance. It may not be so important whether we really believe in God or angels or the devil, or whether we like or respect the minister, as long as we show up for Sunday each week and fulfill our social obligations in this way. This is not being necessarily hypocritical. It is merely being functional in terms set down by a society. The environment of the individual's life-world is to be readily seen as divided up in terms of this level of cognitive processing. Cultural context is also organized and differentiated in these terms as well.

To a great extent, there does not appear to be a great affect associated with this level of operation. Most action at this level seems to be relatively mechanical and indexical--somewhat boring like a librarian in a library, unless of course the skill has implicit affective associations in its performance. Dance with a lot of music is likely to be inherently more playful and enjoyable for most people, even the most or least skilled, than, say marching in drill.

Human beings seem to derive a natural pleasure and enjoyment from being able to do something well, even if the skills involved are themselves limited or even perverse in some way. At the same time, any task can become tedious if no diversion is allowed, and no variation permitted, or if one is constrained to repeat a task over and over and over again without interruption or new learning involved. Captains of industry who are proud of mass-production assembly lines should pay heed to this anthropological warning. Frustration from such conditions can result in many different types of neurotic and averse reactions.

The third level of memory process is conventionally ascribed to long-term memory. I will ascribe it rather to a sense of biographical memory that is described in terms of an individual's life experiences and organization of their total life-world. It is sort of like Shakespeare's famous lines following "All the world's a stage..." To the extent that the person's experience is consonant or disconsonance with that person's cultural and social realities, this experience will exhibit a measure of affinity and sharing with other persons. It thus will find greater room for social expression, objectification and external reinforcement, such that they become "typical." But at this level, there is great room for variation of pattern, and especially much idiosyncracy that can lead into psychosis and socio-pathological disordering of an individual's sense of reality and behavioral functioning in society. The vast social and cultural relativity of this must be acknowledged also, as the important contribution of Ruth Benedict to our understanding of human reality. To be deviant with a narrow and itself relative set of social or cultural norms in any one area or set of areas of life, particularly if these are associated with secondary levels of performance, is not necessarily to be intrinsically disordered in a deeper or more fundamental sense. It only means to be relatively discrepant with the implicit norms and standards imposed within the context or society.

The biographical memory functioning is the most classically psychoanalytic and therefore the most conventionally symbolic of the three levels of function. In this sense, there may be little that is mechanical about such memory, as affective dimensions and other aspects may have more importance than the logic or the working value of the experience. It is more the stuff of dreams.

It is difficult to describe a universal patterning of organization for this, as it is deeply defined by cultural standards that are themselves implicit to such patterning in the world. At the same time, they tend to be highly variable from individual to individual. It is true that it is hard to put a time value on it in the way that we can to variable span memory or even short-term memory. In a sense it is inherently timeless, such that we might more easily remember an experience from a year ago than we remember yesterday or even an hour ago. We might remember last week better than the previous week. There is a sense that clarity and accuracy of memory erodes fundamentally with time, such that with greater age, there are greater holes, hence greater ambiguity, hence greater filling in with background constructs.

But at the same time, what gets remembered, even with crystal clarity, and what gets forgotten forever, may have more to do with affective association and magnitude of associated events in ones life, as "critical" or shaping or defining events, than with its sense of importance in any more day-to-day or functional manner. This memory appears to be often associational and therefore repressible as 'sets' of experience. If we have some traumatic experience, it can be repressed out of conscious experience and rendered normally unavailable to us. It may plague us in our day-to-day functioning like a shadow hanging over our life. It causes unconscious reactions to things we experience without our direct knowledge or understanding of the origins of this experience. If, under certain conditions, we are made aware of the deeply repressed material, it can come flooding back to consciousness as if it happened yesterday or were happening at the moment. Even very minor details can thus be recalled.

Thus it is apparent that the stuff of the tertiary level of cognitive processing is largely the stuff of the Freudian and Psychoanalytic unconscious, perhaps less all the psychosexual mumbo-jumbo.

It is thus that I refer to this tertiary level of cognitive processing as the store-room memory. It tends to be large, or at least of varying dimensions. It is more like multiple rooms all connected by doors that can be opened and closed. In a certain room, we may clear out the things kept inside, to make more room for other things. We may even tear down the walls that partition the memory to make larger spaces, or build new walls to subdivide spaces. At this level, we rarely go into all the storerooms at the same time. We visit one at a time, or we stand outside, in the hallway of one level, and look at all the labels on the doors. At any one time, on average, there is some room that is open to us to explore, and sometimes, somewhat ambiguously, more than one. Thus, at any one moment of our experience, whether waking or in sleep, or conscious or otherwise, some kind of content from this tertiary level is available for us for processing. It provides a kind of internalized background by which we can configure our own figure-ground relationships with the world. Those who appear hopelessly psychotic are sometimes permanently lost in this inner world of their own making. It is like conscious dreaming that they cannot wake up from.

As such, this background unconscious material constitutes the substrate of inner meaning that comes to resonate quite deeply with the background of our everyday experience of the external world. On very basic and unconscious levels, we normally derive inner content to use in filling in and solving the puzzles presented by our external experiences. This process is quite apparent on projective tasks, especially ones involving inherent ambiguity as in inkblot tasks. When called upon, we can superimpose on otherwise quite neutral and inherently meaningless stimuli rather significant and highly symbolic content that is derived from and organized by our subconscious psyche.

Though there is tremendous variation on this level, it is still strongly circumscribed by cultural patterning, and it does exhibit certain inherent structural designs that suggest universality about this patterning.

First, from a cultural standpoint, on a cultural level that appears rather superficial compared to deeper psycho-symbolic dimensions, such patterning can be highly stereotypical in a symbolic sense. I believe that it can be best characterized as being thematically organized on this level, such that there is grouping of experience under complex symbolic categories that are thematically organized. What is a thematic category of experience.

I would say that anything may become a thematic category if so construed. Any normal everyday performance on a secondary level of experience can take on deeper symbolic resonances and ramifications in our life that go beyond the mere mechanical aspects of what it is we are doing or are supposed to be doing. And this is what turns the fact of going to church on Sundays, whether we believe in God or the Devil or like the minister or not, into an act of faith with many deeper religious connotations than just appear "good" in the eyes of the elders of the community. In this way, going to a barber or visiting the grocery store can take on thematic symbolic dimensions that are in great disproportion to the actual facts of the process itself. It can become a traumatic or quite dramatic experience in our lives, particularly if, on the way to the grocery store, we have a headlong collision or we witness an armed robbery. For most people, taking an airplane trip is a normal experience, particularly if one is a businessperson who regularly flies. But if a person survives a bad accident in an airplane, it is likely that the person will never go on a plane again, or if they do, they will find it an extremely uncomfortable experience, and for reasons they cannot fully control or account for.

At this symbolic level, there is more than a little real voodoo magic involved. Action by similitude or action by connection in the symbolic world mean that things like one another, though of dissimilar frameworks, may resonate in the same sorts of ways. Things normally or otherwise dissociated with one another but found within the same odd symbolic framework may come to resonate in similar ways. Therefore, a pumpkin in a pumpkin patch may have the same significances as a jack-o-lantern at Halloween, and by analogical extension, it could become quite similar to a skull with a candle in it at a seance.

Thematic organization is largely cultural and biographical in patterning and arrangement. People pick and choose their own thematic categories, and create their own symbolic taxonomies. They create themata from their experience, often rewriting their histories or experiences, in ways that fit their symbolic sense of order. Thus the inner world that people construct for themselves, largely built on unconscious themata, may have little direct connection with the actual world of their experience. But there is an important connection between the two, such that the external world serves as an objective frame of reference for this inner world, largely mediated in everyday experience on primary and secondary levels. At the same time, the internal world serves as a symbolic frame of reference for the interpretation, and even the experience of the external world on very basic levels of perception that can become loaded with affect.

On a deeper level, the design features of this thematic-biographical storeroom of tertiary processing seem to be fundamentally mediated by certain characteristic parameters of personality, relationship, natural associations, and organic functioning. It is evident that some people are by character more extroverted or introverted, more aggressive or dependent, more selfish or selfless. It is evident also that people come to have their status identity defined in basic ways that resonate on very deep levels the basic relationships between the mother and the child, the father and the child, husband and wife, between siblings and friends. We come to see authority figures as being like father symbols. If we had a negative or antipathetic relationship with our fathers, we are likely to have a "problem with authority" that affects about secondary socialization and ability to identify and extend ourselves in everyday life to more complex role patterns.

There appear to be very basic natural associations as well. We tend to follow a kind of basic plant, animal, mineral, human or abstract kind of symbolic consonance such that our experience on this deep symbolic level is like a kind of living Thesaurus of meaning, homology and analogy. We seem to have basic pathogenic associations of monsters and demons, and, antithetically, idealistic associations of supermen and heroes and stars. Organic functioning can influence this deeper structural patterning of the unconscious as well, such that illness and drugs can induce dramatically altered frameworks of experience and consciousness.

Thematic symbolisms and themata can also be organized and expressive of deeper affective associates, drives, impulses and deep-seated motivations related to sexuality and aggression. The value of Freudian theory is that it taught us how conflicts that can be deeply rooted in our psyche can be repressed, only to surface symbolically in indirect ways.

Indeed, the entire function of symbolization, as a mediation system in terms of the externalization of drive and meaning and the internalization of cultural order and experience, is in a sense the normal repression and expression of experiences that would be otherwise incongruent or discrepant in some way with external reality. That this is accomplished by means of symbolic displacement, projection and introjection is therefore understandable and not surprising. The same mechanisms that can cause repression, can also be the mechanisms of de-repression.

All three levels of pattern recognition and symbolic process operate simultaneously in normal conscious awareness to shape our worlds and our lives in characteristic ways. This patterning is deeply influenced at all levels by cultural sharing and reinforcement, and by the cultural structuration of our external world. Symbolisms operate to integrate our world at all three levels, largely because symbolisms take on meaning at all three levels simultaneously in the inner world, while usually having some external form of expression or frame of reference as well.

Thus each symbol is by definition a concrete signal device, a mechanical device for the organization of knowledge, and a symbolic device for meaning and projection of experience. Of course, as in language, some things tend to be more one than another. It is hard to attach much symbolic content to the word the that mostly has a mechanical reference function in English as a determining article for a noun. A neutral pronoun "it" also has little intrinsic value. A world as simple as "I" or "is" might have much greater value and significance, as it points inherently to something in English that has much greater symbolic importance and presence.

Symbolisms not only organize experience and pattern recognition in a passive manner, but they also tend to organize patterns of response to our recognition of pattern. They determine and define the frameworks for behavior and action, and even serve to pattern that behavior itself in fundamental ways. Thus, not only do we think symbolically, but we come to act symbolically as well and every action can come to take on symbolic significance.

Symbolic systems are defined by their openness. Openness means that the elements that compose them can be rearranged into an infinite number of alternative connotations to produce an infinite range of meanings. The analogical structuration of symbols, as especially developed by Levi-Strauss, entails that symbolism is largely flexible such that one thing may stand for something entire different, even, at some level, its direct opposite. Symbols can thus be substituted readily for other symbols. It is this great flexibility of symbolic analogical chaining that permits symbols to help integrate otherwise different or even contradictory experiences, and also, at the same time, to continually rework and revise the interpretation of the experience, or even the perception of the experience itself.

Another important aspect of human symbolization that is related to its inherent relativity is its relative contextuality. To understand the full significance of a symbol system, we must get inside it. Most symbol systems exist within a culturally defined context, indeed, all symbol systems arise from and must be contextualized within some kind of culturally constructed context. This makes the meanings and associations found within all symbolic systems relative to the contexts in which they arise, take shape, find expression and change within. This relativity is expressed psychologically, linguistically, socially, historically, and culturally. In a general sense, all these various forms of relativity arise from and are based upon the fundamental relativity of symbolization, and since all knowledge is symbolic in structure and manifestation, all knowledge is also relative to the knower.

Of course, scientists would argue especially that their knowledge, being objective, is not relative to the knower. In a basic sense this is true, as scientific knowledge tends to be more contextually independent a form of knowledge, than say religious knowledge. The relative objectivity of knowledge is a measure of its relative decontextualization or context-independence of the symbol systems that define that knowledge. In fact, technically speaking, such knowledge remains context bound on some level, as is demonstrated in this book. The contexts that scientific knowledge normally refers to is defined not by people, but are inherent to the patterning of nature, even if this nature is basically human in definition.

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The model of symbolic cognitive processing presented so far demonstrates a fundamental tripartite structure of the human brain in functional terms of symbolic processing and pattern organization. Tripartite structures, as in psychoanalytic theory, have been proposed, but should be considered as fundamentally different than the model proposed herein. It is not to say that these are mutually exclusive models. Superego processes in this model find their place in the background of our lives and unconscious structures, and they are largely the measure of the degree of consonance that we share with some cultural orientation.

There is a sense that sociopaths that lack a moral or ethical conscious, and who can nevertheless behave in rather normal ways, do not have the kinds of internalized control structures that "normal" people have. This is a symptom and a sign of a certain variety of mental illnesses that will come to express itself characteristically in these people's lives. To some extent, this can be measured by the degree of "de-individuation" that a person experiences in some social contexts, a process that leads to permanent derepression of the person's ego. On the other hand, it is well known that certain conditions, such as crowding, darkness, stress, and heat, can cause people in such contexts to become temporarily "de-individuated" and to behave in ways that are not normal according to the control structures of their society. These in general are aberrant social psychological phenomena, but they do illustrate the social and cultural relativity of symbolic processes, especially as these become internalized and arise from the internal processes in the organization of mental functioning.

This kind of psychological relativity is important to understand, because it illustrates the deep and vital interdependency of the brain as a symbolic organ and the environment in which it is normally situated. The tripartite structure of human symbolization as I have described it demonstrates in fairly precise and general terms how it is the brain functions to achieve a sense of consonance and coordination with the external world. Other tripartite structures can be described, and these are no less true or accurate a description of what is involved in the structure of the psyche. The point of view adopted here rests on empirical research in cross-cultural frameworks based upon symbolic framing methods. The model therefore arose from and attempts to explain symbolic processes, and cultural patternings of symbolization, as these were found in such contexts.

Symbolic framing methodology has been important to the development of this theory. It has demonstrated, among other things, the degree to which culture comes to define the content and organization of our symbolic construction of our world, even on very basic perceptual levels. One would think that such patterned differences were so great, that people would be totally isolated in their own solipsistic mental bubbles.

In some strict sense of psychological relativism, they probably are, except that their bubbles are always situated in some shared external framework. From this is derived much of the material in their construction, and the basic design that the brain permits for this construction process is more or less the same for all human beings. This is the basis for the so-called psychic unity of humankind. That people can become trapped in their own bubbles is clearly demonstrated by some forms of mental illness, and that there can be great disconsonance between the inner world and the outer world is often found in neurosis and deviance. These can be thought of as natural consequences of the pattern of variation possible within such a framework.

Individuals in any cultural configuration become distributed out in some kind of bell-shaped curve of hyper-volume. Most individuals can be found occurring within one or two standard deviations of the norm, but some individuals will always be found along the tails. Curves may be broad or narrow, high or low, multi-modal or otherwise. In general, in terms of symbolic framing, the difference of such composite curves, as demonstrated on different kinds of symbolic framing tasks, between different cultural orientations is marked such that two different sets of curves must be considered as fundamentally different.

Symbolic framing methodologies may be employed to track systematically these kinds of cross-cultural differentials, but they can also be employed to track differentials occurring in the process of cognitive development, based on the concept of the symbolic differentiation of the phenomenal field. In general, stages of development have been identified in this pattern of development, and these patterns are to some extent tied to the cultural framework in which they are situated. Stages of timing or scheduling of significant cognitive developments vary both individually and culturally, and are complexly patterned. The brain is developing in multiple places and in numerous ways simultaneously, such that straightforward and general descriptions of the entire process warrant further research.

It should be remembered that such development is always behaviorally reinforced and symbolically situated on some kind of defining contexts. Brent Berlin's example of cross-cultural differentials of color acquisition is a fine example of this. It is evident, as in language acquisition that a lot of preprocessing and preliminary development of basic structures occurs. Much of the babbling of a young baby can be understood as the exercising of the basic speech apparatus before real productivity ensues. There is much semantic association and encoding on a concrete level that is fundamentally pre-linguistic. There is a real sense that some symbolic forms are much more basic and primary than others, and that predictably come before the development of derivate symbolic structures, which tend to be much more culturally and psychologically variable. It suggests that on some rudimentary level, there is a basic substrate pattern of meaning that is shared almost universally, and these will be reflected in the acquisition patterns of children, more or less. The difficulty in determining this rests in the clear and definitive isolation of such basic structures from the cultural overlay that always comes attached to it. The entire cultural universe always presents itself pretty much at birth to the child, and remains always present in the background of the child.

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In our everyday experience, if the relationship between perceptual ground and conceptual figure is not clear, then the natural tendency is to try to fill the figure in. We attempt to complete its identity on the basis of previous experience derived from the organism's "frame of expectations" that might relate to that stimulus field. In this regard, understanding error patterns of perceptual constancy and mistaken recognition become interesting, as they lead to an understanding of implicit frameworks of expectations that individuals share culturally and that lead to differential patterns of response.

To a great extent, though not exclusively, this organization of the symbolic processes of the brain, and particularly of memory structures, is mediated by language. Language behaves like symbolic keys that can unlock different areas of meaning as these can are embedded in differential patterns of the brain. Of course, memory process, though organized by language, can also function separately from language, and thus the two are fundamentally independent cognitive structures though in their functioning they become interdependent.

It must be understood that at all levels, this informational patterning of the brain is organized by two sets of constraints operating in relation to one another. The first set of constraints is the built-in design parameters of the universal structural mechanisms of the organic brain itself. The second set of constraints, no less important than the first, is the culturally constrained informational patterns that are presented in the environment of the individual. To a great extent, normal everyday brain functioning requires its reference and continual interaction with a structured external environment that is organized in meaningful ways within the brain. The brain can frequently shortcut its own circuitry by finding immediate reference to the environmental context it is situated within. This short-cutting of cerebral function can even take the form of reflexive responsiveness in relation to fairly sophisticated tasks.

I would conjecture that the original external patterns of the brain were mostly natural patterns presented by the behavioral life-world of the proto-human. At this stage, human culture was mostly defined by its direct relationship with nature. Thus, at this first stage, there was strong isomorphism of identity between genetic and cultural patterning in the world. They served the same purposes, followed the same patterns, and led to the same sorts of conclusions. But even at this early first stage, that natural environment had one important difference in that it was culturally mediated by other individuals of a group of which the individual is also a member. In particular, it became a natural landscape that was symbolically enlivened with human attributions of qualities and mysteries.

The internalized brain, completely isolated, doesn't go very far, and this is one of its intrinsic shortcomings. Sensory deprivation studies demonstrate the consequences of shutting stimuli off from the brain over the long run. It can rapidly lead into psychosis. The brain is therefore an organ that is fully adaptive to external environments, and indeed requires these environments in order to be functionally complete and effective. In this regard, we can make several generalizations:

Stimuli commonly embedded in the background of one's life and that are neutral in effect do not normally need to be deposited on deep levels of memory. We might remember the grass of the field we played in five minutes or five hours before as green. Similarly, we might have some prototypical notion of what a blade of grass looks like, but if hard pressed, we would probably not remember much else outstanding about that grass unless there was something unusual about it that "caught our eye" and attracted our attention.

Another way of putting this is to say that human perception and cognition is "selective" and this selectivity of basic processes can become extremely sophisticated, as it defines a central symbolic function of the human brain to discriminate important from unimportant signals. What gets construed as important is largely a subconscious matter. We do not have to think about issues very long or deeply if we see a train headed straight for us.

The selectivity of perception and cognition is in essence the super-positioning of internalized symbolic frames of reference and expectation, including what can be called intentionality structures and motivational structures, upon our experience. Exactly what does all this mean, and how does it work? I believe that the brain boils signals down on a progressive sense to get at basic embedded patterns which it can interpret in one way or another. Symbolic frames of reference are almost as variable and diverse as the signal stimulus itself. Largely, individuals bring into any particular behavioral settings a set of expectations, derived from previous experiences from similar conditions. If an individual comes into an entirely new and different situation, then there is little it has to compare the experience to, though it may still try to draw from analogical relationships it can establish in the field of relations.

Analogy is at the heart of the symbolic structuration of experience, and permits the flexibility to define and redefine experience in a variety of ways that may be suitable and consonant with one's expectations, ambitions, feelings, etc. Analogy can be narrowed through rational frames of reference to stricter forms of verisimilitude, identity, or relationship. But a review of any literature of magic and religion will demonstrate that analogy is a powerful force of symbolic human consciousness that is not constrained by any necessary pre-constructions or reality testing.

Frames of reference and expectation are largely constructed analogically on the fly of experience so to speak--in a manner of loose association. Association generally begins on a wide and loose way, and there is in the first stages little agreement, and therefore, little reliability, upon what is construed. But association becomes narrowed with greater attention and deliberation, such that the mind finally draws some kind of conclusion. It may be the right or wrong conclusion, but the mind has made itself up. It has disambiguated the field sufficiently not to require further investment.

In general, even in figure-ground relationships that are partially ambiguous, there is a tendency and an effort to search even for very local patterns that may be disconnected with the whole set of relationships. Any clues or keys are sought in the earliest stages of pattern recognition that will facilitate resolution of the problem of ambiguity. Things then get connected as much as possible, leading to some guesswork and the superimposition of alternative analogical constructs. Generally, in this regard, asymmetric forms are easier to disambiguate and decipher than forms with symmetry. It is as if there is nothing in a symmetrical form to hook on to. Instead, symmetrical forms are the subjects of direct projection of basic shapes that may have little relation to the actual object in question.

Just like the brain requires some kind of organized environment to function in, an environment that is hopefully minimally non-chaotic, so also the brain needs some internalized sense of order to impose upon that environment. Ambiguation of figure-ground relation is largely a sense of discrepancy that arises from our inner view of the world and our actual experience of that world. The "figure" we find, even perceptually, and interpret as meaningful, against the "field" is largely the symbolic figure we "configure" and impose upon the field from our own mental point of view. We may therefore misinterpret what we see, especially under extremely ambiguous conditions, or even see what we want to see.

Just as we need a normal frame of reference to construe and organize the information of our environment, cognitive dissonance and internal confusion can interfere with our normal patterns of perception, ambiguating figure-field relationships that are otherwise basic and objectively unambiguous. This is characteristic of people afflicted with neurotic or psychotic dysfunctions. Their symbolic pattern recognition processes are disconnected to the reality of the stimuli around them, or disproportionate to that stimulus. Thus response patterns that result from that stimulus-recognition are usually discordant with what would be normal in similar circumstances.

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To a great extent the symbolic frames of reference and expectation that we interiorize in our memory processes and rely upon in our everyday functioning are culturally constructed and derived from our own life-worlds. The organization of the interior "cognitive mapping" of experience reflects, represents and orders itself on the basis of its interpretation of the external world of relationships, patterns and processes.

Thus, symbolic perception, cognition and apperception can be understood essentially as a form of projection and introjection of symbolic stimuli that evokes patterned response. This perception is normally ordered by basic and natural frames of reference and basic preconceptions, the common sense of experience that we do not usually even take notice of. But times do arise, as in darkness, when we come to fill in the gaps of our pattern recognition with symbolic stimuli that comes from other times and places. We miscalculate distances without normal frames of reference and trip over things in our path. We can even see things in the shadows that are not really there.

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The analogical chaining pattern of symbolization characteristic of human mental function is not unlike what is described by Levi-Strauss. It is built on very basic and core structures that are constituted by minimal pairs or contrasts. By association these pairs are linked in ever more complex chains of association to larger and larger sets of items, such that there is a metonymic function involved. Constituent things can come to represent the total, and symbolically represent them, or the larger sets can acquire their own independent symbolic identity. In a sense, in symbolic chaining, everything is interconnected to everything else either by principles of identity or of contrast and difference.

To a great extent, the content of this pattern is determined culturally, especially in traditional cultures that have strong focal religious orientations. Much of the chaining associations actually arises from and is embedded in the external cultural framework of understanding. Associations are derived from the observation and experience of relationships actually occurring in the world, or that at least are imputed, on some level, to occur in the world. Supernaturalism and naturalism go hand in hand in the organization of the world. However much we may want to systematically exclude supernaturalism from a scientific worldview, at the edges of our knowledge it always tries to creep back in.

It is by virtue of this analogical chaining of symbolisms, as they are situated within representative cultural contexts, that both integration of the individual's internal sense of the world, or worldview, is achieved as if unitary and whole. The individual point of view, and patterning of response, is made more-or-less consonant with the cultural grouping of which that member is a part.

This pattern of analogical chaining can be demonstrated to have its own minimal structure that can, in conditions of shared structures, guide inference and reference functions of meaning. This structure is rooted ontogenetically in the development of the child of emblematic recognition of the perceptual world, which constitutes the minimum symbolic parsing of the world into basic forms and their relations. Emblematic recognition can be considered to be the first developmental stage of the child leading to the symbolic organization of consciousness. It is characterized by discrete patterns, such as analogy, diffuseness of object representation and relation, syncretic-synaesthesic concatenation of different modalities of eidectic experience. It implies a lack of differentiation between the thing and the inner experience of the thing, or the unit of such experience in eidectic concretization of symbolic experience, and direct displacement upon which analogical chains are based.

Emblematic recognition is fairly mechanical and incorporates basic figure-ground pattern relationship of direct imagery in a very stereotypical form of emblematic devices. Emblematic recognition appears to be fairly context dependent and bound, lacking a great sense of duality between sign and signification. In other words, there is not great symbolic displacement at this initial level. Emblematic symbolizations thus are additively accreted in longer and more elaborated chains within which networks of associations between symbolizations are built up in time.

In time, a more stable symbolic constancy of form emerges that permits and is a sign of greater symbolic displacement. These symbolic systems appear fundamentally undetermined, relatively unproductive, but fundamentally open in at least one sense, in that they permit the child a very rapid rate of acquisition.

Emblematic symbolisms in society, like seals, flags, and badges, can be very basic and powerful in the effect of reinforcing the basic ties that bind us in the world to the world. The experience of emblematic symbolism is immediate, direct, concrete, diffuse, and mechanical. It therefore has strength of affect which more derivative symbolisms often lack. Emblematic does not go away with the development of more sophisticated symbolic structures, but only becomes embedded on a very basic level of our awareness and patterning of response.

The next stage of the ontogenetic development of human symbolization appears to be the organization of these emblematic chains and their relational values and connections, into larger categories that are largely cultural prescribed. This system of classification and symbolic organization is largely implicit and out of awareness, rendering it both common sense and transparent to the subject-knower. Though the category may be only loosely define and hence also undetermined in a basic sense, the category as a whole tends to take on symbolic significance in place of its many parts. At this place with a clear form of symbolic displacement occurring that is clearly cultural constructed. Such categories thus carve out spaces or regions of the culture-bearers "mindscape" that takes on a characteristic of feeling "natural." As natural categories, they may comprise sets of relations and symbolisms that appear very coherent with the natural patterning of the world in a concrete way, and thus permit the insertion of symbolic meta-relations between categories to be extended easily upon reference to the external reality. Though the symbolic construct for the category may appear with a concreteness of everyday experience, they may comprise actual relations and significations that in fact are quite polytypic and fuzzy at the edges of inclusiveness.

Cultural categories are good to think in human terms. They appear to emerge in a child's second year and form the early basis of a child's first world-view. Categories emerge and become more discrete and flexible, and embedded in a sense that categories become parts of other categories. Categories are very basic in our thought and symbolic processes. We think in categories when we stereotype the world. This we do almost automatically. It happens when we divide the world up, including our social world. It helps to define our own identity in the world, and the roles we come to assume in that world. Thus, we follow a categorical imperative in our cultural lives that help to regulate our relationships and identity in that world in very basic ways that are largely taken for granted as if these were natural rather than just constructed.

Categorization of the world also entails a labeling process that is inherent to the symbolic naming of the category, which is the "nomic" function of language. Hence, categorization of the world permits not only its carving up of experience and this arrangement into some ordered set of relations in a shared space, but it permits us to reintegrate and to manipulate this order and the relations and content it entails, in sophisticated ways. Categories come to comprise sets of labels that exist in an implicitly ordered arrangement with one another. They thus, in terms of their labels, form associational chains of symbolisms that on another level comprise and summarize a great deal of experience and meaning that is embedded symbolically within the categories being represented. This can be referred to as the symbolic representation of experience that permits its integration of a secondary level of patterning, and which permits the secondary institutional patterning of society.

The diversity, sophistication and complexity of the categories of our worldview tends to increase, and becomes more differentiated as we develop, such that we move to more sophisticated and effectively realistic meta-models as we develop and mature. This sophistication and diffeentiation can become reflected in the complexity and stratification of the social world that we inhabit, and these functions are indirectly correlated with one another.

It can be seen therefore that the secondary level of categorization has a basic symbolic function that can be understood in terms of design. This describes the categorical function of the symbol in the differentiation, mediation and construction of reality. Categories are organized by rules that permit no internal contradiction leading to incoherence. Categories are summarized by a label that functions metaphorically and indexically point to a variety of possible subsumed meanings and associations. The label defines the nomic function of language, and can stand symbolically for and in place of the whole category or any part of the category it subsumes. Thus, we can act and respond in terms of the labels as if we were dealing with the entire category, and we do not have to invoke the full range or even part of the range of associations it invokes. At the same time, the label can become itself part of another category, or can be subsumed in some other arrangement or readily expanded in its reference, to meet the needs of a changing context upon demand.

Categorization is very important to the understanding of the function of symbolization in human information systems. When we can respond to labels, we can eliminate otherwise a great deal of noise and possible ambiguity of our field. It allows us even to behave in ways that are automatic and implicit unquestioned. They constitute the foundation of our cultural models of the world, and indeed, of the worldview itself, in a very basic way, providing that worldview with a sense of universality, or comprehensiveness as well as of the appearance of integration and non-contradiction. Categorization helps us to render a view of the world that is consonant with our cultural context, and permits us to define and shape our cultural context in a way that is consonant with our categorical imperative. This is fundamental to the symbolic construction of reality.

Furthermore, categorization gives us a very powerful handle to reinforce and alter our categories in inter-subjective relations with others, that permits sharing, reality testing, and coordination of our symbolic constructs. This is done primarily through what is referred to as the conversational apparatus--basically the oral chitchat that people engage in daily between one another, mostly on an informal basis in everyday life. It helps us to stay in touch and in tune with the world, and to adjust our attitudes and views of the world in ways that promotes coherence and integration. Categorization through the nomic function of language is very central to this process in casual conversation.

We can see clearly how this functions in gossip and information exchange in small, closed communities, and directly how it ties in with structural pattern of social relationships, especially as these may be asymmetrically defined. Categorization defines in shared contexts conventional and common knowledge that permits a degree of communication, consonance and coordination of activities between people. Sharing the same or similar symbolic constructs makes this possible. This is always in a state of dynamic tension to idiosyncratic and individualistic constructions that are part of a private universe of meanings. This kind of dynamic sets up a dialectical and dialogical differential between psychological and cultural constructs of meaning upon a very basic level. We can speak of the divergence of discrepant realities between people, and also of the intrinsic incoherence and contradiction of meaning to be found within shared symbolic constructs.

Categorization links and ties together emblematic sets and chains of relations in meaningful ways. Labeling of categories makes meanings and significations often implicit to our categories more available to our experience and more functional available to our behavior. Categories, labels, and categorical elements themselves can be bound into chains of associations and larger structures, which can be governed by sets of rules. At this level, we can tall about a relational-inferential symbolic structure that has to do with the evaluation of truth-vale and the phrase structure of symbolic language. This has a lot to do with our ability to test our knowledge structures for their credibility and sense of realism in relation to our experience.

This level of interrelation between categories is articulated in patterns of linguistic structure and production that involve implicit relational propositions about the credibility of something being true or false. This is referred to as the relational-propositional structure of worldview. It can be found to be embedded in the structure of our language, in the implicit logical structure of our semantic understandings of the world across different cultural contexts, and in the organization of cultural pre-understanding and inferences regarding social relationships in different societies. The relational structure is basically inferential and referential in function, whereas the categorical construction of reality is primarily only referential in function. I will not at this point elaborate the propositional structure of our worldview, but will save this for the next chapter. Here, suffice it to say that it is foundational to the symbolic structure of human consciousness, and it underlies both our view of the world and our means of responding to and constructing the world. This is an inherent part of the meta-logical function of symbolization in human reality.

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It is evident therefore that symbolic processing and pattern recognition are tied to a coherent view of the world, allowed for by symbolic integration of experience between internalized and externalized cultural worlds. In order to remain consistent and coherent with the external world, there must be regular attachment and reinforcement with the world. People in a sense have a built in need to constantly test their reality structures for fitness and performance in the world. They may do this in many different ways, in talking, behavior, relation, etc.

Watching the news or reading a newspaper on a daily basis is an important mechanism for maintaining a view of the world that is up-to-date, broad based and relevant to what is going on in the world. In such a role, news media have important functions in reinforcing and even manipulating people's worldviews on a daily basis. This kind of manipulation is most obvious and marked in totalitarian societies that put a premium on propagandistic control of the media. In such societies, the average person's worldview will be clearly shaped by such limited parameters, where it is relatively easy to hide the truth and rewrite history. But the same process is no less true even in relatively open systems where media often takes its cues through private sponsorship and government suggestion that can at times be both subtle and all powerful.

The news is a fitting analogy for the process of symbolic reinforcement that most people require on a daily basis. It is defined as a horizontal form of transmission, but the study of its structure suggests that it can operate on many levels of the individual's psyche. News can be written not only to selectively inform, but also to selectively persuade, and the rhetorical function of the news is no less subtle and no less important than its informational function. That is why media announcement of disasters, wars, or tragic events, can cause mass hysteria, and major psychological reactions in people whose daily lives might actually be distant and remote from the source of the news itself.

Symbolic reinforcement and testing is also importantly done through what is referred to as the conversational apparatus that describes the central role of informal, oral discourse in daily life. In this sense, an important distinction is made between subjectivation of external stimuli, as if this comes to constitute an important part of the person's inner life, and even organic being in the world, and the objectivation of the symbolic stimuli that is often derived from inner experience.

The daily conversationally apparatus allows people to stay in synch and in tune with one another on basic levels of their identity and being. It permits people to regularly test their frames of reference and inference about reality, and to revise these in ways that are coordinate with that of others.

Symbolic reinforcement of reality structures works both ways, therefore, and allows cultures to accomplish transmission and integration of itself through time and across space. Particularly, it serves the purpose of the cross-generational reproduction of cultural patterning, and its adaptive functioning in a larger context through chronic revision and redefinition.

We refer to processes of enculturation and socialization as primary vehicles by which the symbolic world of an individual's group becomes internalized and planted into the life-world of the individual, and by which this symbolic world becomes reiterated and perpetuated in subsequent generations. This aspect of cultural transmission is very similar in its general form to that of genetic transmission, as both cultural and biological processes rely upon the same organism for its perpetuation. Needless to say, cultural patterning is largely post-zygomatic and phenotypic in expression. The entire possibility for cultural patterning arises from the inherent behavioral and functional plasticity of the human brain. If the brain were not so plastic and variable in its phenotypic patterning, then we would not need to speak of cultural differences between people, and then we could have a genuinely successful sociobiology of human culture.

The psychic unity of humankind is based on its deep functional structure of the brain as an organ that accomplishes certain specific and general functions. All people see, hear and think in more or less the same way on the most basic and mechanical level, which we can call the "stream of perception" level. There are of course differences. Some people cannot hear certain ranges of sound, and others are color blind, and people vary considerably and somewhat continuously in numerous traits of intelligence. Red as a concrete perception remains, as a perceived color, essentially red for most people, however it may be termed or identified or related to other colors or not. But from that point on, from the initial parsing to more sophisticated symbolic framing, cultural and psychological differentials come to insert themselves with increasing variability and determination into the identity and being of the brain. And because the brain functions as a symbolically integrated and integrative organ, to render a seemingly coherent and whole view of the world, it becomes impossible to distinguish clearly where one kind of influence leaves off and another begins.

The wonderful symbolic plasticity of the human brain therefore has made culture possible, indeed, necessary, in the adaptive success and survival of the human being. Just as meaning of a word is independent of the sign values that compose the word, so is the symbolic plasticity of the brain. Hence also the symbolic plasticity of the cultural world, fundamentally independent in its patterning from the organic and genetic structures that composes and makes this capacity possible in the first place.

This is the fundamental paradox that besets our human sciences, as it underlies the mind-body dichotomy and the nature-nurture dichotomy that remains the perennial hot-topic of debate at all levels. The plasticity of the human brain to be shaped in different ways is undeniable. Those who would want to analytically and exclusively reduce this plasticity down to finite genetic explanations of one-to-one trait correspondences in personality in some grand ontogenetic calculus are implicitly denying the central and most important aspect of this plasticity. This is its duality of patterning in its fundamental design that renders it a symbolic phenomenon that transcends genetic predeterminations. The young child is, culturally speaking, and symbolically speaking, a "blank slate" or tabula rasa, even if the slate itself is the organic and material vessel upon which subsequent writing and work gets done. It is not to say that some kind of genetic predeterminations do not have a post-zygomatic and ontogenetic influence in the unfolding of personality structures. There are obvious and many differences in the organic patterning and organization of organic brain structures and nervous networks that are without a doubt genetic or at least genotypic in origin. There are characteristic differences between males and females and possibly on some levels between very different populations of people. It is to be expected that classical Neanderthals, even if they were but a subspecies variation of archaic homo saipiens may still have had some fundamentally different brain structures than their "wise" counterparts. But this kind of genetic variability of the organic brain appears to me to be somewhat like the genetic variation found in Darwin's finches, but nowhere in the contemporary world do these kinds of variation of pattern appear to mark a zygomatic boundary between human populations. Evidence of language acquisition and cognitive development universally suggests amazing structural uniformity of the brain on a basic level, even to the extent that basic symbolic forms are widely shared, and may even be genetically embedded as some form of instinctive memes.

But in the symbolic and epigenetic patterning of this information and functioning, it becomes almost impossible to discriminate clearly in almost any case where organic structure leaves off and cultural plasticity of symbolic trait-patterns take over.

The evolution and explanation of brain plasticity of human beings appears "obvious" on the surface but is not yet sufficient in a scientific sense. Undoubtedly, the neuronal structures of the brain are enormously complex and they behave in certain ways that permit variability of response patterning, learning, forgetting, and remembering. Behaviorist models of human behavior at least demonstrate that conditioning can occur on fundamental mechanical levels, and that response pattern can be varied on these levels.

It is somewhat reductionist to see every human behavior or thought as a response pattern to basic stimuli in the environment comparable to the classic Pavlovdog. It is not so reductionist to see this patterning of stimulus-response as being symbolically defined and mediated in the human being, such that basic stimuli can evoke complex response patterns, and simple organic responses can be controlled by very complex and symbolically defined forms of stimuli.

In this sense, the notion of stimulus generalization so important to models of conditioning are important to understanding symbolic mediation of such processes. For every symbolic frame, there can be expected to be some minimally ordered pattern of response. The plasticity of the brain appears partially explainable in a functional sense in these terms. Thus remote and otherwise directly unrelated stimuli can evoke complex patterns of response due to symbolic integration of experience. Patterns of basic response can be organized through the same modes of symbolic integration into complex sets of behavior that appear to have little direct bearing on the nature of the stimuli itself.

It is a case that neural network patterns in the brain can be complexly interconnected, grouped and extended on many levels to make symbolic generalization of basic response patterning possible. This is clearly the difference between a dog and a person. The dog responds to stimuli in its life-world in a way very much like the conventional model of behaviorism. The human being responds to the same sets of stimuli in the same life world in ways that are fundamentally symbolic. A dog might watch momentarily the screen of a television during a program, but a human being will watch that program in fundamentally different and more intensely convoluted ways.

To a great extent, language is implicated in this process and makes it possible. We can speak of the evocative and pragmatic function of language, such that words can become like stones thrown, and such that words alone can evoke complex response patterns in human beings. We can tell a dog to sit, lie down, roll over, fetch, and it does so in a mechanical way, usually with the expectation of a treat at the end of it. Humans can tell one another so much more than this, and must do this if they are to remain coherent and survive in the world. An example of the extreme influence that symbolization can take in evoking complex and basic organic response patterns, are the observed incidences of death by suggestion and to a lesser extent, the physiological response patterns to accusations and persecutions of witchcraft in many different societies. Somatization of mental states is common to many people and in many societies, and to some extent, even these patterns can be culturally and symbolically differentiated.

Undoubtedly, the evolution of human language, and the organic brain capacity for linguistic functioning and production, represented an important gradational step in the tree of life. Whether this happened all at once, or only emerged over several million years of selection and trial and error, remains perhaps unanswerable.

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Consideration of transmission, reproduction and reinforcement patterns of human symbolization, as this affects socialization and enculturation of the individual to the group, and the articulation, integration and transmission of cultural patterns, leads to a consideration of the relationship of these processes to abnormal psychology.

Symbolic processes, as informational patterning, are no where complete or perfect. Noise, in the form of dissonance is everywhere possible and everywhere apparent. Noise is expressed psychologically on multiple levels as ambiguity of experience and incongruity of internal and external frames of reference. With the complex plasticity of the human brain, there is possible, indeed, quite common, the inherent disorganization of this pattern on many different levels and in many ways. It is true that all people experience some measure of neurosis, dysfunction and even mild psychotic episodes in the course of their daily lives. It is to be expected as a natural consequence of both the hyper-complexity of cultural informational patterning and stress attendant to such complexity, and as a natural consequence of the inherent complexity and plasticity of the human brain.

The study of human abnormality has offered a perfect natural laboratory for the understanding of human normality on many different levels. The entire theory of psychoanalysis was derived from the study of aberrant behavioral and psychological patterns in society. Indeed, any pattern of error offers critical insight into the organization of pattern itself, this is true whether we are speaking of primary acquisition of language or the behavioral consequences of different kinds of diseases or aphasias of the brain. Criminality and social deviance lends insight into the psychological organization of society and culture as well, and mental illness offers insight into both symbolic and organic patterns of mental organization. It is difficult and not to the point to offer any general theories regarding this relationship of abnormality to patterned normality. We can speak of discrepant patterns of personality and sociality in individuals that are symbolically based and perhaps, symbolically disordered about some implicit normal structure.

From a symbolic standpoint, and from the point of view of ontogenetic development, there is a sense that earlier, basic structures acquired or developed early, that are a part of what is construed as primary acquisition, to some extent pre-structure and predefine later and more differentiated patterns that are added to it, somewhat super-structurally, especially in maturity and adulthood.

Thus we speak of primary and secondary socialization, as if there is some clear boundary or critical difference between the two forms of development. About the most that can be said in this regard is that early cognitive development of basic structures of symbolic function must happen, usually within an optimum period, before other forms of more elaborated development can take place. If these early stages of development are missed somehow, later development will be fundamentally retarded, absent or rendered abnormal.

The result has been described as the occurrence of discrepant realities, especially between internalized and externalized symbolic constructions, and between primary and subsequent phases of its development. These discrepant realities are not unlike the discrepancies experienced in intercultural contact and the sense of disorientation and dissonance can be similar in both kinds of cases. Discrepancies of symbolic integration are in a sense homologous on another level of cultural patterning to what are considered normal ambiguities of pattern recognition and processing of information. Discrepant structures may occur at any level of the human brain, and may constitute relatively basic and permanent patterns, or may be temporary and relatively minor.

And if these kinds of discrepancy patterns are rooted in symbolic dissonance, it is evident that they can become culturally shared between people and frequently are. Thus, cases can be demonstrated of entire societies adopting mass hysteria or of developing some form of social archosis. The entire model of revitalization movements, of maze-way reformulation of world-view and the resulting revolution that follows is the direct symbolic extension and homological equivalent of the kind of conversion experience in the life-world of an individual who accomplishes a basic symbolic redefinition and reidentification of their life-world

In this sense, we can legitimately refer to a basic ecology of mind. Human symbolization normally functions to maintain a basic equilibrium or balance of patterning between internalized and external states, between the individual and society, and on a collective level, between the society and the rest of the world. To a great extent, this patterning is cultural and symbolic, and the basis for the transformation of human consciousness and civilization in the world. A disordered or incoherent view of the world is one that is inherently ambiguous and that prevents maintenance of ordered and functional relationships with the world. Disordered relationships with the world can be both a cause and effect of such internal coherence, and thus is defined the human system of symbolic integration of reality that underlies the cultural construction of reality.

Natural Systems

2001