INTRODUCTION

Chapter Twenty-Four

Symbolic Systems

If physical reality is composed of tiny quantum systems we call atoms, and biological reality is made up of small prototypical systems called cells, then human reality must be made up, not of individuals with autonomous brains, but of symbols. Everything in the human world is symbolic, and symbols are the stuff of human experience. Even things normally thought of in an objective fashion as scientific or factual or real, are upon some level of our comprehension, symbolic in structure and character.

Human knowledge, language, culture and social organization all comprise components of what can be referred to as human symbolic systems or systems of symbolization. All aspects of the human world are symbolic, and even those things, like tools, or books, or eating and cooking utensils, etc., the practical everyday things by which people make their livings, have intrinsic symbolic dimensions and associations. The entire human reality may be said to be symbolically integrated, and it is this fact of symbolic integration that makes it interesting and special for consideration.

Human madness, the tendency to experience things not really there, to have fixed ideas of reference, to project upon the world the stuff of internal fantasy and dream, the disconnection between the thought, the word and the deed, all can be seen as a failure of the very human system of symbolization, a kind of psychic state of chronic confusion of meaning, reference, and identity, the dysfunction of the very basic mechanism of human adaptation. It is apparent that humans have been symbolic creatures for a very long time on earth, and it is the growth of this symbolic character of human nature that most distinguishes what it is to be human.

Language systems, cognitive systems of mind, knowledge systems, formal or tacit, human cultural systems of transmission and social systems of interaciton and organization, are all aspects and types of human symbolic systems. We cannot stratify these into different levels except to specify the individual processes and the group processes, and progressively larger groups. Collective symbolizations facilitate larger and larger human group organization, especially upon the level of ethnocultural and shared ideological or paradigmatic consonance. We can say that human language, cognition, symbolization, knowledge, socieyt and culture are not so much distinctive systems, as they are perhaps alternative perspectives upon what might be thought of as a single comprehensive system--the human system.

Human identity and human reality are symbolic in structure and character.

Symbolization

Basic Elements and Emblems of Human Civilization

To claim that human reality and behavior is essentially symbolic has become a trite way of saying a little about a lot. Humankind on earth has long trafficked in symbols, the rise of human civilization can be understood as the synergistic culture-historical patterning and developmental processes of elaborate symbolization, symbolisms and symbolic chains have been the warp and weft of the rich, unfolding tapestry of human culture history, and individual symbolic processes have been the primary mechanism of the psycho-social integration of social reality and the principle means of mediating the boundaries and relationships of the organism with the environment.

Symbolization has been the basic "evolutionary" process at the heart of the basic human transformations of the world and in the world, and it is by the elucidation of the basic process of human civilization that we can better understand from where we have come, how and why we are what we are, our basic relationship to a larger natural context, and where we are headed in our transformation of the world. Symbols come incorporate human experience and we come to embody symbolisms in our being, belief and behavior. Our experience, both psychologically/phenomenologically, and collectively, becomes expressed symbolically in terms we are familiar with, linguistically encoded, visually materialized.

Human symbolic activity provides the relational context and culture-historical background against which we can configure our understanding about human language. Symbolization works systematically in a way very similar to how linguistic aactivity becomes structured and situated in social context, and though language is a particular and especially interesting mode of communication, it is also a kind of symbolization, intrinsically, that is part of a larger contextual, culture-historical background itself articulated in terms of symbolization and symbolic complexes. It is both specialized and generalized, simultaneously, and this perspective forms the foundation for symbolic linguistics. Linguistic activity, in either an analytical sense or holistically, cannot be understood apart from its symbolic context, which is synthetic, and it is primarily through language in everyday settings in the world that we can better understand this larger symbolic context.

Symbols are anything and everything that comes within the purview of human reality. All symbols by definition have both some 'formal' or 'nomic' significance and some 'functional' or 'intentional' use. Even the most basic of hand tools, or tools that make tools that make other tools, or parts of tools, have a symbolic value, as "machines" that are both formal and function in latent content, implication and pragmatic function. This symbolic value, composite, multifaceted, variable, is both in spite of and alongside of the history of the tool as a thing in the world. Similarly, all ideas, however abstract, remote, or apparently pure and "a priori," nevertheless have some measure of symbolic use value and symbolic purposefulness that relates it to a larger constellation of ideas, values, meanings and associated behaviors.

Symbols have fuzzy, soft edges, and form harder, more resilient "cores." It is the fuzziness and stickiness of the boundaries of symbols that renders them easily adhesive to other symbols. It is their malleability and plasticity which makes them so good to reshape in the hands of the human imagination, fashionable and conformable to whatever framework or mold we find it convenient to fit them to. Symbols thus tend to cohere together to form symbolic chains, clusters, complexes and larger organismic structures, and which sometimes coalesce into crystal-like formations that gain some measure of historical stability as self-organizational systems.

It is the fuzziness of symbols that allows them to be easily "transacted"--to be broken off from larger symbol groupings and associated with other groupings in a modular manner. It is also the fuzziness of the edges that makes particular symbols relatively difficult to "isolate" as separate, clearly definable entities with their own distinct boundaries. Symbols are especially difficult to explicitly define or delimit within larger relational contexts, in which they are naturally embedded, but it is in such frameworks that we develop a form of gestalt pattern recognition by which we easily understand and comprehend symbolisms, context bound, in a focal manner.

Symbols are analogous to the "molecules" of human cultural reality--they can be arranged and rearranged in particular conglomerations and configurations, to confer different "properties" of basic cultural materials. They can be broken down into their elemental "atoms"--the basic paradigmatic, periodic table of universal human elements, or perhaps what Rodney Needham has referred to as basic symbolic archetypes--unilateral figures, incorporating dimensions of reversal, symmetry/asymmetry, of dialectical antinomies such as space/time, is/isn't, up/down, right/left, etc., that may in turn be "deconstructed" into "primary factors" of human experience such as tactile physical contrasts like hard and soft or warm and cold, basic color representations and sensations, symbolic use of basic numbers, certain sounds such as percussion, basic phonetic articulations, basic geometric shapes and naturalistic forms like animals, trees, etc., and perhaps certain basic emotions or feelings, gestures like laughing or crying, and psycho-physiological patterns of response like aggression, impulse, sexual attraction, social affiliation, etc.

Like language, symbols can be reduced down to the compositon of basic signs that are concrete and metonymical in function. Signs may be themselves symbols, or at least symbolic manifestations or materializations, but the particular arrangement of signs, like the particular arrangement of phonemes and morphemes in a word or sentence, configure to produce a derivative, symbolic significance, context bound, that is holistically greater than the some of its parts, part of a larger symbolic system, synergistic, and the significance of which is "lifted" from the particular, concretized significations carried in an atomistic and analytic manner by particular individual signs or even strings of signs. Signs are iconographic in function and purely mechanical in structural organization, but symbols become metaphorical in reference/inference and analogical in structural relation.

Like language, symbolisms carry "duality of structure." Symbols also have a signification function in that they "stand" for something else that is abstract and immediately displaced from the immediate context of its signs. In terms of the psychological analysis of symbolism, this structural function is referred to as "representation" and is the most important aspect of human symbolic behavior--the basis for the foundation of human culture and comprehension of the world. All symbols are both signified and substantive in experience, and significant and ideational or "contextual" in referring to something else besides its own signification.

Symbols have a "mediative" or integrative function in ordering human experience. Human experience is symbolically integrated. We analytically separate out its dimensions of "syntagmatic and paradigmatic" and of diachronic and synchronic structure after the fact of its integrated experience through our combined channels and modalities of sensory awareness and pattern comprehension. We do not experience the world in a "non-symbolic" or "proto-symbolic" manner. This constitutes the basis for the anthropological relativity of all human knowledge and behavior--human behavior and understanding is symbolically constructed, and filtered through the mechanisms of symbolization. This constrains, shapes and to a certain extent limits what we know and how we can know it. But at the same time, it offers us a mechanism for transcending these limitations to achieve a sense of symbolic integration that, however imperfect, has at least the appearance of being complete, whole, and comprehensive.

Symbols are used in one of two classificatory schemas--analogical and homological. Analogical schemas correspond to synchronic and paradigmatic classes, while homological schemes refer to the particlar arrangements in which signs are regularly put, and the constraints governing such arrangement. Another way of referring to this is in terms of referential or contextual/relational structure and inferential or intentional structure. The former relates, the latter differentiates and tends to isolate. The former unites elements within a single sense of order or a general configuration or symbolic domain of experience, while the latter interrelates different symbolic domains of experience expressed in terms of particular, isolatable elements distinguished from each domain. The former structure is typological and hence tends to stereotype, the latter structure is taxonomical and tends towards individuality.

Homological schemas require the utilization of symbols as active parts, as mechanisms, in a process of production. Hence, constraints governing homological schemas are greater and more restrictive than those governing analogical schemas that are by definition more open and less constrained in either a formal or functional manner. We recognize homological schemas in the form of taxonomies of knowledge systems that name things and set things into schematic frameworks of relationship, contrast and similarities derived through properties of inheritance.

The two systems are "coordinate" in human reality. They are convergent in the on-going symbolic construction of the experiential fabric of human reality. It is to be speculated whether such symbolic coordination is not due to the lateralization of brain function in the integration of spatial and temporal dimensions of experience.

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We may speculate that there are many orders and kinds of symbolism, distinguished according to their form and function. We may even speculate that there are certain "meta-rules" for the organization of these different classes, orders and kinds of symbolism in a systematic manner. We may refer for instance to linguistic symbolisms, technological symbolisms, to somatic symbolisms, relational symbolisms, psychological symbolisms, social symbolisms, etc, depending upon our reference framework.

A key feature of symbols is that they must occupy time and space--though they are contextually bound and relative, they are nevertheless discrete. Symbolisms can be merged or amalgamated, but two separate or distinct symbolisms cannot occupy the same place at the same time, without one displacing, limiting or altering the other. Symbols can be said to have a certain "mass" that can be described as the minimal threshold of their integrative value, before they are altered or displaced from a significant context or configuration. Symbol systems exhibit a kind of cumulative momentum or historical movement that confers upon their trajectory a certain fundamental stability and predictability of direction of change.

A particularly interesting order of symbolism is the "emblem." The emblem is ultimately a kind of totemic symbolism that in its own expressive elaboration can come to "stand for itself" and thus create its own context that is both inferentially and referentially independent of any other order or relation of experience. It is something like a proverb or an idiomatic expression in a language that carries its own framework as a single unit of meaning.

An emblem is defined as "a visible symbol of a thing, idea, class of people, etc.; object or representation that stands for or suggests something else." Originally, emblem was any kind of in-lay or mosaic work or embossed relief on tiles. Tiles so embossed formed units that could be arranged, transported and reconfigured in alternative arrangements, the emblematic unit retaining its sense of individual wholeness. Emblems came to be elaborated as allegorical pictures with a motto and verse, suggesting some moral message or truthful "conceit."

An emblem became a kind of symbolism, or symbolic representation, that contained three essential elements--a "Motto," an "Icon" and some explanatory verses or the "Epigram." The symbolic value of the emblem emerges from the interaction of these three elements, such that "the three parts mutually elucidate each other, and in doing so, convey the meaning of the whole emblem. In the construction of the emblem, the three parts are integral to one another. They do not occur in isolation or separately from one another, but within the same symbolic "frame" of reference.

Emblems serve two basic functions--representation and interpretation. "A res picta, an object from nature, art or mythology, becomes a res significans, expressing a general truth or insight. It is important to realize that all three parts of the emblem can share in the double function of representation and interpretation." (Karl Holtgen; Aspects of the Emblem, 1986: page 24)

There are different kinds of emblems. "Devises" were a particular class of emblems that become its own literary pictorial genre. Emblems themselves were said to come from the seals, crests and signs on shields that ancient soldiers carried into war with them. Such emblems often had a rebus reading, were talismans with magical properties, had "propaganda" or persuasive power over people, and were used to reinforce alliances and relations of dependency. In this regard, such emblems have had an important place among populations that were illiterate or semi-literate, making dissemination of their value widely available. It is no coincidence that emblems are today typically found on different forms of money or currency, and play an important part in the function of money in exchange and recognition. Even today, in many Chinese temples, such emblems can be found on painted tiles bearing scenes of Buddhist Gods, telling a story with a Confucian moral attached. These epitomize the "conflation" of the three teachings that is so characteristic of traditional Chinese "religionism" that is thought of as inherently syncretic and synthetic in orientation.

Today there are many derivative forms that are emblematic. Official badges and seals are survivals of a by-gone era of heraldic emblems, crests and shields. Tattoos are often emblematic in design and purpose. Cartoon strips combining words and pictures into a kind of story-line, often with predictable characters, are an extension of emblems and emblematic function on a very basic level, as are many illustrations in children's literature--for instance, in Beatrice Potter or Lewis Carroll. Even illustrations in much adult literature is emblematic or derivative of emblems in that the pictures and their captions are held to be representative of something important within a text, and within the larger world, and if one peruses old illustrations of old books before the age of photography especially, one finds them used in a clearly emblematic manner. Military or other decorative uniforms are emblematic, as are the kinds of medals and medallions that are usually associated with such uniforms. All forms of money, coins, bills and stamps, are emblematic in form and function, as are many advertisements, company logos and signs. Posters are similar kinds of emblematic devises.

Emblematic symbolisms can express several forms and functions. They can be "authoritative" or confer a sense of identity or legitimacy. They can be "enacted" and be "performative" such as the signing of a declaration of war, or an armistice, or a speech that accomplishes the same thing, or the breaking of a bottle over the stern of a ship during its christening ceremony with a new name, and a prayer, or the cutting of a ribbon of a new architectural building or monument, the unveiling of a statue, or a ground breaking ceremony, or the breaking of a ribbon at a finish line. By ritual and ceremonial extension, we can speak of the action of emblems during certain rites of passage such as birthdays, marriages, graduations, funerals, coming of age ceremonies, promotions, etc.

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A particular kind of emblem is the flag. The flag was originally a totem, which is also a special kind of emblem in traditional cultural context. The totemic function of the flag is to embody and sacralize the collective identity of a group or the social order. They are thus "collective representations" with clear territorial, political and social implications. Early totems were frequently spirit familiars derived directly from the natural order, and were most often identifying animals or other living thing--the "dog clan" or the bear clan or the snake people. Related to this is the notion of the sacrament, the tabooing of certain kinds of food, or the taking of a holy sacrament. In this case, such an emblem becomes symbolically what it stands for--for instance, the wafer represent the blood and body of Christ. Burning the American flag can be seen as an epitome of the expression of the basic freedom of expression that the flag represents, while simultaneously representing the desecration of the very culture historical order within which such freedom of expression is safe-guarded.

The culture historical study of flag history and symbolism is referred to as "vexillogy." Early flags were "vexilloids"--usually a geometric figure or an animal totem on top of a pole. The Romans legions had their fasci, which emblem the Nazi's of Germany later adopted. Later "vexillums" were made of cloth, and became the banners and streamers ancient and medieval armies carried into battle.

Flags may be understood in reference to their symbolic context combining four kinds of symbolism--active, verbal, concrete and graphic. Ritual contexts of the presentation and handling of flags on ceremonial occasions, for the prescribed display of the flag under special circumstances, provide a kind of symbolic "grammar" for the ritual use of such symbolism.

…..Active symbolism involves motion: the upraised clenched fist, the triumphal parade, the coronation ceremony, and a salute to the flag are all examples. Verbal symbols convey their meaning through written or spoken words--the propaganda pamphlet, national anthem, and oaths of allegiance coming to mind under this category. A concrete symbol is any object that, in addition to its practical purposes, has been imbued with a special symbolic meaning. When protestors gather under a tree which recalls an event that is sacred for them, when a building or mountain is the object of reverent pilgrims, or when some other ordinary object acquires a mystic force in the minds of people it constitutes a concrete symbol. The most potent symbols are those which combine all four aspects simultaneously. This has long been understood in religion, where worshippers may gather in a temple (concrete symbol), decorated with holy icons (graphic symbols) while they perform rituals (active symbolism) by reading from holy scriptures (verbal symbolism.) Many political activities are based on the model of religious worship….(Whitney Smith, Flags through the Ages and Across the World: pages 34-5)

Flags are more than just decorative or representational devices. They are symbolic and communicative, constituting factors affecting the world directly as they manipulate and are manipulated by groups of people.

In general, the more widespread a particular symbolism, the more abstract and simplified its basic form. Local flags and emblems almost always tend to be more complex and explicit than those similar symbols for nations and states. Flags have certain recurrent symbolisms--a geometric sun or star, an eagle, Garuda, phoenix or dragon, or griffin, a lion or bear or some other animal, certain basic distinctive colors, certain geometric designs--a cross, circle, a wheel or Mandalas, or a crescent. Bars and stripes have come to represent topographical elements of flags, trees, ships, floral arrangements, and basic tools, and certain basic logos or inscriptions.

Many rules of custom and etiquette govern the ritual use of different kinds of flags. Ritual surrounds and reinforces the sacredness of a flag. The usage and manipulation of flags is always by ceremonial ritual--raising the flag, flying it, folding it, its use in parades, at half-mast, etc.

Flags are displayed in relation to each other in certain ways again governed by ritual protocol. Larger order flags must always be flown above lower ranking flags. Flags at international events are flown side-by-side with one another as a demonstration of equality. At the Olympics, it is not insignificant that the gold medal winner stands highest above the second and third place winners, respectively, as the flags are flown above in a similar manner. In battle, the sign of victory is the hoisting of the flag over the highest point of the enemy's position, and the greatest defeat of a unit is the loss of its colors or standards in battle to an enemy.

The history of flags can be seen as through their alteration and change through time. For instance the adding of stars for each state of the Union, the rearrangement of the pattern of these stars on the American Flag. The Civil War brought with it the Rebel flag with crossed stars and strips. Eras of peace or alliance are sometimes signified and represented by composite flags that are made by sewing together the individual flags of participating nations into a single large square.

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It has been the individual distinctive symbolic elements and their designs and "stimulus generalization" that has been the substance of human civilization as a pan-cultural historical process of development. Basic symbolic elements become carried or transmitted between people, reconstructed, elaborated, modified and made to fit within new culture historical contexts.

Elemental designs of symbols become simplified and "stream-lined" over time as they become reproduced and reworked and continuously modified to fit new environmental arrangements. New elements are created to replace old elements that better "fit" into new environmental contexts. The design, selection and displacement of elements is determined by both their forma and function. They may work better than previous elements or their overall design may be more "in harmony" with the prevalent context into which they are currently fit.

In general, there has been an overall tendency for new elements to be selected for which allows greater directional patterning of development, toward increased "intensification" and control of the symbolic power that underlies the development of human civilization. A particular element of culture may work where previous elements may no longer fit. It is not enough for elements to be merely different in a random fashion, but they must change in a more integrative, intensive direction depending upon prevalent foci of elaborative interest. History then becomes a great repository and store-house of symbolisms, once pase', retrofitted, reactivated, then moth-balled for some later date when the emblematic associations may once again become meaningful and possibly even useful in some functional manner.

In this regard, we can see the advantages that a culture would have that had the bow and arrow over those without, who had feathers on the ends of their arrows as opposed to those without, who had a conception of zero, or the use of the wheel, or of metallurgy or gun-powder, or a conception of a single God, or literacy, or a Republican assembly, or a court system with codified laws, or social stratification, or bureaucracy, over those lacking these things. Whatever their form and function, such elements were primarily symbolic in allowing the integration and intensification of culture-historical patterning, a process we refer to as civilization. Once invented, devised or "discovered," such symbolisms were readily transmittable to other groupings, especially when there is no alternate form to compete for cultural space. The borrowing of complex symbol systems often also results in the modification, adaptation and improvement of such systems, as can be demonstrated clearly in the history of writing and the transfer of syllabaries from one group to another. The silk-worm and the secretes of making fine porcelain were well-kept strategic interests of a xenophobic China, but its eventual leakage and transformational consequences upon the Western World were inevitable.

Any given "element" of civilization can be identified by its "paradigmatic proto-typicality" in subsuming a range of possible alternative "profiles" or instantiations. A paradigmatic even "horizon" within which change is constrained. No single element is purely technological or purely social or purely symbolic. Each element has symbolic, social and technological aspects and consequences in its realization. A tool or a weapon is never just a device for mechanical manipulation, but also always carries certain symbolic and social values. The conception of a God is never purely disembodied or abstract, that it does not somehow become "trans-substantiated" through symbolic material forms and social ritual process.

Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations are temporal-spatial dimensions of the on-going instantiation of the historical patterning of human reality. They dialectically precondition one another such that syntagmatic order or recursive homological structure determines the selection of paradigmatic, analogical alternatives, and syntagmatic ordering is determined by the selection of available, over-arching, paradigmatic categories.

The only a priori rule governing these arrangements are that they "make sense" given the contextual environment of relations in which they occur. The environment itself is changing and developing in certain directions and their occasionally arises an appropriate arrangement of circumstances preconditioning or making possible the invention, reception or innovation of new elements to fill in the "gaps" created by the changing contexts. In this way, there occurs independent simultaneous inventions or changes when contextual conditions become "ripe" for their creation to take place.

New elements, with new forms and new functions, create new horizons of possible patterning, and lead to alteration in the "systemic" structure of the whole context. In the endeavor to devise completely new forms and functions, humankind has been notoriously short-sighted. For a long time it was believed to be physically impossible for people to fly, until the Wright brothers demonstrated otherwise. Since then, less than a hundred years of of many Millennia, humankind has taken the basic discovery and fact of human flight and transformed the entire world of its civilization, such that now we have walked upon the moon and regularly fly around the globe as an everyday, taken for granted facet of contemporary society. Humankind has been much better innovators than original inventors, much better at elaboration than the creation of entirely new elements. And this process of symbolic elaboration and continuous functional adaptation continues today in an on-going manner.

Symbolic Systems & the Human Construction of Reality

Heinz Werner, in his thorough treatment of the problem of human symbolization as organic process, defined symbolism as the capacity, uniquely human, for allowing one thing to stand for, or represent, another, so much so that we can refer to a form of symbolic displacement in which the symbol frequently becomes the stand-in, the proxy, and the effective substitute for the reality it represents.

The cognitive structure of symbolic behavior has been sufficiently analyzed and empirically documented, in terms of the gestalt pattern recognition functions, grouping, linking, and the use of analogical relational structures in the organization of everyday experience. The dialectical structure of this in mythology and in meaning has been aptly substantiated by Claude Levi-Strauss, and the semantic construction of symbolism in language elaborated by Giles Fauconnier. The use of logic and its influence to symbolism has been aptly demonstrated as well.

It is safe to say that human experience, understanding and the behavioral encounter and response with the larger world, is symbolically structured and preconditioned by previous symbolically organized experience that is brought to bear unconsciously upon the current moment of apprehension.

It is also safe to say that this experience and its symbolic structure is organized in a complex but fairly ordered manner that is available to our systematic study and measurement. In other words, the structure of symbolic logic that is characteristic of human cognition and cognitive function is available ultimately to our understanding and modeling, and guides our endeavors in learning how the brain functions organically, and in developing models of artificial intelligence.

I have in the course of my own anthropological research developed symbolic framing methodologies, in language, visual recognition, cognition, memory, and in behavioral applications, that yield direct empirical evidence to the structural patterning of human symbolic structure, its cultural and psychological patterns of variation, and its application to various kinds of problem sets. This kind of methodological framework has proven itself to be of great value in the facilitation of learning in many areas, at all age levels, in testing and evaluation, and potentially in rehabilitation. It has as yet unexplored value in linguistics and in language acquisition, in cognition and in cognitive development, and in social relations and human development and individual/group behavior. The productivity of this methodological framework, and its adaptability to a broad range of alternative applications makes it a preferred choice of techniques in the systematic study of human systems.

Theoretically, it leads to an empirically substantive resolution of the classic worldview problem, especially when we combine with this notions of complementary and relativistic frames of reference.

The application of symbolic framing methodologies points clearly to an empirical ground for the presumption that symbolic structure underlies human cognition, perception and behavior, and has a consistent order of its patterning that takes on predictable results in testing and experimentation. The implication of this is that by these methodologies we have significant empirical evidence to support a claim for the human symbolic construction of reality, as a natural process of human adaptation and survival that leads to cultural patterns of social organization.

It was in the research and development of these methodological frameworks that I was lead to development of a human systems framework, and by extension to natural systems and meta-systems frameworks of understanding. The discovery of general systems thinking was only after the fact of this development.

Theory and models of the human or anthropological construction of reality stem directly from this methodology and its application to real systems. Human reality may be said to be symbolically constructed, and even though we may be inclined first to see pragmatic or utilitarian functions in things we have and do, we can never fully alienate the symbolic components of those functions, or their implications for their value and function in the world. We can even make the case that the symbolic component of any constructed system is the primary function of that system, not matter what its other material or pragmatic functions may serve as well.

We refer to the symbolic transformation of experience as being when the symbols come to take the place of the real referents to which symbols originally referred, and hence human behavior becomes symbolically motivated and 'sublimated' in ways that may not otherwise be forthcoming from a person on the basis of purely pragmatic or functional considerations. This transformation occurs unconsciously and psychologically as much as it may occur in crowds or groups, or in social contexts.

This symbolic transformation of experience is related directly to issues of child cognitive development as well as to issues of behavioral reform and rehabilitation of abnormal or aberrant behavior. Child cognitive development is symbolic in its growth and transformation, and this process is largely one of increasing differentiation of form and function of experience, and increasing degrees of displacement and flexibility of application of symbolic referents in behavioral response, upon increasing levels of sophistication. This process is directly tied to primary language acquisition processes, and for this reason language is considered intrinsic to the symbolic mechanism of human consciousness.

This reference of symbolism and symbolization is not merely the material forms of symbols, flags or religious icons, that are common and immediately apprehended as such, but refers instead to a very basic level of human cognition and apprehension of everyday experience in the world, in all or most areas of human behavioral involvement. Normal waking consciousness is as symbolically constructed as is our dreaming awareness. These two worlds become confused for schizophrenics, for instance, as it may become for normal people under unusual circumstances.

Symbolic Transformation & Differentials of Human Symbolic Behavior

Acquired human behavior is environmentally rooted and the process of acquisition is largely a symbolically structured one, serving symbolic purposes and functions as well. Symbolic acquisition of behavioral response pattern serves purposes of internalization of control structures, sublimation and channeling of libidinal impulse and aggression to more constructive forms of behavior, motivating action and initiative, and providing a context for creativity, imaginative play and constructive behavior. Unlike biological control mechanisms which are largely set, automatic, and sometimes triggered by specific kinds of stimuli, the symbolic control mechanisms that surround culturally defined and shaped behavior needs to be regularly reinforced and reemphasized in order to remain strong and powerful. It requires an external context for effective demonstration and ritual reinforcement. It requires as well regular participation, inculcation and the use of mechanisms for inter-subjective evaluation and rehabilitation. Educational institutions are some of the forms of socio-cultural institutions that have been developed specifically serving these sets of needs in human beings.

I refer to the phenomenon of symbolic transformation as the somewhat revolutionary cultural consequences that the acquisition of symbolic behavior has had for human beings, both upon individual and group levels of articulation. Symbolic transformation refers in a gross sense to the sense of displacement of symbolic reference and attachment to forms that may be disconnected or otherwise dissimilar to the original causes or referents to which they are attached through a process referred to as symbolic transference. As an example of the consequences of symbolic transformation, we may refer to the capacity to set entire nations of people to make war and to risk their lives in the process, based upon what are entirely ideological symbolisms that are not directly tied to the problems of survival of the organism or reproductive success of the individual as a biological entity.

In other words, symbolic behavior affects the capacity in human beings to acquire alternative, variable forms of human behavior, in consistent ways, that are not the immediate result of biological factors of determination or biological control mechanisms, and which serve either directly or indirectly any sense of biological interest of the organism, either in terms of response to immediate circumstances or adaptive behavior to local or general conditions. Human beings can be in fact quite readily induced into consistent forms of behavior that actually may hurt individual or group capacity for survival, or run deliberately against the grain of their biological well being as a organism in the world.

Of course, the fallacy of symbolic reification, that serves somewhat as a symbolic mediation device that serves to naturalize and make seem normal and inherent what is otherwise and in a fundamental sense arbitrary and artificial, and that serves frequently as a system of defensive rationalization maintaining the integrity of life-experience, can often take the form of biological naturalization of behaviors or acquired patterns of behavior, that can therefore be acted upon as if natural or instinctual and construed that way.

Money is a great symbolic device--it stands for many things--wealth, power, freedom, well-being. Making money, often by whatever means, is received commonly as a principle objective of human behavior, whether it proves to be by hook or by crook. Though the value orientation towards making money is regarded largely as a "materialistic" value system, the concept and function of money in the world, in state societies with large scale market economies, is almost entirely symbolic. This is not to claim that money cannot buy things that are necessary, or that it cannot lead to survivorship and affluence. But it is to say that money may be used for the purchase of things needed for survival, like food or water, etc., but it is more often than not used for a much wider range of purposes, most of which have little or nothing directly to do with human survival. We can frequently trade in kind for food, and we can even hunt or gather our own food, as our ancestors once commonly did, or grow our food and cultivate it by our own efforts. But money can allow us to buy food, clothing, etc., eliminating the necessity of acquiring or making it for ourselves.

Thus we can see that it has been by means of a basic and common symbolic form, a device like money, that we have effected a basic transformation of human social organization from that of a cultural pattern rooted in hunting and gathering, to that of one that is rooted on the market exchange of commodities, ownership of property and capital, and the organization and appropriation of productive labor. This has been a symbolic transformation that has been accompanied by a transformation of our social organization and of the way we adapt in our material world.

If we make the claim that money is a tool, an object of material possession, then we can say that a tool is a symbol, and a symbol is a tool as well. The fact that the earliest stone tools used by Hominids were generalized to a range of functions, and were deliberately shaped and adapted to special functions, came thereby to acquire cognitive and symbolic significance for the tool maker/tool user, and this does not thereby render insignificant the symbolic value of tools or the functional value of symbols as tools, or the requirement for an enlarged cerebral-cranial capacity to learn to use and adapt tools more effectively, as symbolisms and as tools.

It may be argued as well, especially by cultural or historical materialists, that the economy and material means of production and social organization changed before the need for money arose as a common, standard medium of exchange was introduced. This may well be true, but certainly the rise of situations that demanded such a standard medium, particularly in state societies, also created the context for the symbolic importance and function of money, and the pattern of organization and adaptation itself became possible as a result of this symbolic transformation in the use of money as a standard medium of exchange.

The symbolic transformation of humankind from a species of animal bound by the constraints of nature, to an individual and a social entity that is capable of arbitrary, intentional and independent behavior, in the process becoming thereby bound to the constraints of symbolic behavior and culture instead, has been both a boon and a bane to human kind. It has permitted an unprecedented level of evolutionary success, the rise of sophisticated civilizations based upon scientific knowledge, the cultivation of the arts, refinement of values and sensibilities. It has permitted the realization of alternative realities through the development of human constructive and creative capacities that are the outcomes of they symbolic adaptation and acquisition. But at the same time, it has been a mixed blessing, as it has assured us of well of almost equally destructive and violent capacities, capacities for individual and social deviancy and perversion of behavior, for cheating and manipulation and exploitation of both people and nature.

By means of symbolic transformation, we are capable of behavior in ways far out of proportion to our natural biological limitations, needs or capacities. By such means as well we are capable of modifying our behavior quite flexibly, and are capable thereby of learning new forms of symbolism and acquiring new kinds of adaptive behaviors.

If we observe wolves, for instance, we can observe one troop of wolves, and pretty much describe the entire behavioral repertory of all members of that wolf species. We can generalize from a single pack of wolves to all packs of the same kind of wolf. We can do the same for almost all species of animal, except perhaps for a few species of primates for whom rudimentary cultural patterns of acquisition and transmission has been documented, and possibly as well for some pods or family groups of cetaceans, who may also have acquired learned, proto-cultural patterns of behavior.

It is primarily and especially in human beings that we cannot easily generalize or explain behavior from one group to the next, or even from one individual to another, and the problem of comparison and comparative analysis of behavior becomes especially complex and problematic. And this is primarily because almost all of human behavior has been symbolically transformed and culturally acquired and transmitted. If we hypothesize anywhere from 7,000 to more than 30,000 distinct languages that once occurred within the past millennium, we can specify at least that many if not more distinctive cultural systems that were associated with each of those languages, and this does not include the dialectical patterns of variation found within and between traditional culture areas, or the sub-cultural groupings, marked by distinctive style patterns and behavioral sets unique to particular groupings in particular periods and places.

We cannot expect so much variation of pattern among human groupings to be accounted for on the basis of genetic variation alone, as the human species simply is not that genetically variable. We are all basically of a single common species with but minor sub-species and iso-clinal variations. We are no where near the genetic variation encompassed by the household dog, Canis familiaris, that has been the result of cultural selection and breeding regimes for many centuries, and that has led to at least 150 unique types of distinct canine breed, each with their distinct patterns of appearance and associated dog behaviors.

What we can say, beyond any reasonable doubt, is that human cultural patterning and behavior, often quite conservative in form and structure, is quite variable and permits of a wide range of alternative possibilities that lead to possibly an infinite number of possible cultural configurations. No two cultural patterns in the history of humanity have been alike, though there have been many cases of parallel or analogous development of aspects and traits of culture, and frequent cases of homologous development due to shared heritage or as the product of acculturative transmission.

The fact that cultural acquisition and transmission is non-genetic, occurs as the result of learning and environmental relation, entails that cultural traits and patterns can be transmitted widely and very quickly, and cultures can change rather dramatically over short periods of time.

It becomes the case therefore, clearly, that there is a wide range of variation of pattern of response behavior associated with different cultural backgrounds and trajectories, and that we can speak of symbolic differentials of such behavior as characteristic of all human beings and as reflecting in a rather particularistic and relative manner the cultural and sub-cultural differences occurring between groups of people, as well as the psychological differences between individuals.

The basis of my dissertation thesis was that such differentials were probably less random and idiosyncratically variable, and more systematic and indicative of multi-level sharing between different groupings, than might otherwise be thought to occur if we are looking at surface patterns alone. It was hypothesized that structural isomorphisms and consistencies of pattern, often not directly available to immediate observation, would emerge and become available through comprehensive and detailed analysis and logical deduction. I believe this is pretty much what we uncovered, in spite of the challenges of conducting such research, such as issues of statistical significance & random sampling, issues of interpretation, biased response, distinguishing between psychologically idiosyncratic and culturally nomothetic responses, etc.

Understanding such differentials in a systematic way, and being able to correlate these differentials strongly to basic groupings, provided not only an empirical handle for measuring cultural pattern, defined in terms of symbolic behavior, as well as a means for systematically comparing different patterns of cultural and symbolic behavior, but it provided as well a vehicle for investigating the structure of human symbolic behavior and cognition, patterns of deviance from normal symbolic function, and finally it offered what proved subsequently to be a very productive set of tools for both rehabilitating and facilitating the acquisition and adjustment of symbolic behavior.

If we are to get at a true sense of the organization of diversity in human reality, then we must do so in an ordered and systematic way that allows us to make sense of so much complexity. We must find the structural reasons and variables for such diversity and for its capacity for adaptive organization, and then we must learn to apply these reasons in our schemes for constructing a better world that can not only handle and tolerate such differences, but promote such pattern variation in a way that it can be truly productive and adaptive for all humanity.

There is every justification for wanting to do so. The reasons, though complex, resolve to a simple set of central issues that have always affected humankind in the most dramatic and tragic of ways. If these kinds of symbolic cultural differentials underlie the kind of parallax frequently occurring between people, psychologically and behaviorally, and between groups of people socially and culturally, that lead, among other things, to destructive aggression and perpetration of acts of violence against people or the coercive use of the threat of violence in order to exploit people, then understanding these differentials in a precise, measurable and systematic manner may provide us the means for designing symbolic-cultural systems that effectively mediate human adaptation and serve to prevent or at least inhibit the occurrence and prevalence of human violence and exploitation in the world. If we wish to create a more secure and peaceful world, provide an effective framework for the mediation of differences and the resolution of conflict leading to war and violence, then we must consider the scope and possibilities afforded by such an approach to human cultural adaptation.

Human Power Motivation & the Symbolic Transformation of Human Nature

If we are seek a sense of universal motive in human behavior, whether we are referring to the behavior of people in collectives, or as lone-individuals, or as investigators or jurors in a adjudication of a crime, we must refer ultimately to the human drive for power, especially power that is expressed socially in terms of human relationships and symbolically in terms of the manipulation of the elements of one's life world.

From the standpoint of the anthropological relativity of knowledge in the understanding of human behavior, I would make a strong claim that all human purposive activity that involves even a minimal degree of intentionality and planning, is primarily and ultimately motivated by what amounts to a drive for power, whether this is expressed in social contexts or in personal ways. Therefore, almost all organized human behavior, and even much behavior that appears otherwise disorganized, is behavior that can be explained, motivationally speaking, in terms of the need for power and the sense of satisfaction that is gained from power.

This claim being made, it becomes incumbent to define "power" in a way that is relevant to our argument. In a fundamental sense, I would say that power is the ability to control change in a deterministic manner, especially as change relations to other people and to social relationships. In social terms, power translates into a sense of status and a sense of control that is gained from the ability to determine a course of events, especially as these events affect other people.

The drive for power can be largely unconscious, and yet remains a prime mover in the organization of behavior. Because the sense of status and control that is achieved from power is symbolic, it becomes a powerful psychological motivator and inducement for behavior, so powerful in fact that it may override almost any other drive or human need that may be claimed to occur. Because power is at the basis of the symbolic transformation of the human psyche, as the source of will and driver for purposive determination, and because symbolic experience allows for the flexible encoding and analogical transference of value and meaning from one form into a variety of alternate forms, the drive for power is very plastic and very malleable and itself can be sublimated and transformed in very different and often interesting if not completely frightening ways.

The drive for power has one central weakness--it is largely a vicarious and fleeting, impermanent experience. Once having achieved power through the actual determination of an outcome, the experience, status and sense of satisfaction gained quickly dissipates, lost in the stream of on-going experience, and hence, as the sense gained from the achievement of power sinks back below the surface of conscious awareness, the need to regain this sense of power arises back up in however a rationalized and convoluted a manner.

It is apparent too that the drive for power is largely an insatiable and unending need, and the achievement of power induces an even greater need for gaining more power. We can speculate therefore that at the core of the need and drive for power, especially when this appears to occur in an extreme or inordinately large degree, is a deep seated and fundamental sense of dissatisfaction and insecurity of one's own sense of ego identity in the world. This sense of deep dissatisfaction I believe comes from the experience of the loss of control, and the achievement of vicarious or displaced symbolic control, in one's early years of development, mediated as these experiences are by significant others and the often uncontrollable vicissitudes of one's effective environment. We might relate this deep need to a sense of separation, loss and rejection experienced by an immature ego, especially in relation to significant others, and the inability to effectively compensate for this sense of loss by replacement with others or displacement onto healthy forms. We may suggest a fundamental sense of discrepancy in the personality and character of an individual human being, bifurcated between a largely unconscious, libidinally driven, power hungry persona, and a weak and fragile sense of ego that is incapable of controlling the "controller."

In making these remarks I do not separate qualitatively or distinguish clearly between what I would consider to be normal cases and examples of the need for power and what can be considered clinically or criminally pathological drives for power. The differences seem to be in the degree to which this drive for power becomes the controlling factor of one's behavior, and the manner in which this drive is symbolically transformed and transferred onto a larger set of relationships in the world. In this sense, writer who lives through the characters and plot structure of a novel may be working with similar drives as a dictator who lives through the suffering and repression of an entire nation, or a sadistic sexual psycho-path who lives vicariously through the torture and cruel suffering of their victims.

What this drive for power is critically linked to, at least in terms of human systems theory, is what I have elsewhere referred to as the symbolic transformation of human nature that is most marked by the idea of world openness and the lack of instinctive or other forms of natural constraint upon human behavior. Human behavior is invariably transformed and becomes symbolically expressed and mediated. Because it is highly plastic and highly volatile, it is capable of being manipulated symbolically in a wide variety of ways, often in ways that may be considered extreme, bizarre and naturally perverse. Human behavior frequently shows signs of symbolically transformed perversity largely not encountered in the natural animal world. Our tendency towards aggressive action and violence, especially in group contexts, is therefore probably not the show of an instinct for natural aggression arising for instance from intra-specific agonism, nor can we attribute it to some genetic predisposition per se. Rather, it is evident, that human aggression in the forms it takes and in the ways we are familiar with it especially in modern social contexts, is largely the result of the lack of natural mechanisms of control over human "nature" and the consequences of the symbolic transformation of this "nature" in ways probably not intended by nature.

The plasticity by which this drive for power can be shaped in so many divergent forms, and the degree to which the symbolic displacement and transformation of human character can take, even to the point of overriding what can be considered natural sexual urges and other natural drives for food, a stable body temperature, etc., is indeed quite remarkable, and I believe a very strong case can be made for the influence of hormones and also the release of endorphines and other psycho-active agents as a by-product of the quest and actual achievement of a sense of power. These "psycho-somatic" side-effects of the drive for power may be the essential component that predisposes humanity to a chronic abuse of psycho-tropic drugs and narcotics and what is considered by some the universal need for the achievement of alternative states of consciousness. This need for periodically experiencing alternative states of consciousness, however induced, including various forms of hallucination as well as hyper-suggestive states of trance and other "out-of-body" experiences, seems to me to be a consequence of the symbolic possibilities of the active human brain that quickly finds tedious and monotonous the pace of normal experience.

If we watch animals in their sleep, we an have little doubt that they are dreaming and that the subjective experience of their dreams is very like the way in which we experience our dreams. Dreaming serves therefore a very fundamental purpose for the active mammalian brain. The functions of dreaming are not well understood, but must have a lot to do with the reorganization of the brain, the filtering and integration of new experience, and the symbolic processing of new experience in relation to old experience that is stored as forms of memory or possibly posited in the neural encoding of the brain itself. But it becomes equally evident that dreaming for human beings takes on an entirely different level and order of meaning than it does for instance in dogs, and that for human beings, states of waking consciousness can at times become confused with dream states, the two commingling at the edge of conscious awareness. Not to revisit old stereotypes, but in severe schizophrenics we find people who are awake and yet who are as if in a dream world of their own making. If schizophrenia occurs in dogs in a manner and degree we find it in human beings, it would be a surprise to me as I've not seen a dog yet I would call schizophrenic. But then we can assume that dogs are more instinctively bound to nature, to a closed Uexkullian world of "dog nature" than human beings seem to be.

It is not my intention here to rhetorically belabor a scientific argument with only anecdotal evidence and an appeal to common sense. I would say that the drive to some kind of power is resident in many forms of animals, particularly in animals we refer to as active predators.

The capacity to control the outcomes of events in the world are a direct extension of the capacity to control one's own behavior in response to events in the world, however this is achieved, whether by instinct or by symbolic construction. Biological survival, and an "instinct" to live, especially for animals, is predicated on the capacity to interact with a world in terms of one's behavioral controls. This "instinct" even supercedes and hence precludes any drives toward reproductive success, which in its way can be considered an extension and further expression of the self-same set of instincts for survival. We may call it a "natural" will to live or will to survive. This drive exists within us whether we are challenged by our environments in any critical manner or otherwise. It seems often in ordinary life, many of these kinds of rudimentary challenges are removed by design, by cultural preference and by social directive, and often as not, with little to replace it in any ordinary sense of lived experience. But whether suitable contexts exist for its expression or not, the need for its expression may continue doing its own thing regardless.

There is one last point that I must question in relation to this thesis about the universality of the human drive for power and the symbolic transformation of human nature, and this has to do with what can be called a preoccupation for death and, possibly the fear or at least sense of symbolic marginalization that comes from the experience of death, the threat of death, or even just the existence of death. A perverse fascination with death, with killing and the dead, seems to psychologists to be a pathological expression of innate curiosity in life, and of a need to control one's experiences of life.

The preoccupation with death and dying seems to me to be a rudimentary expression of the drive for life and survival. In living systems, and especially I think in living systems as sophisticated as human systems, there can be no greater expression of power than the control of life or death over another living being, for death is not just final, ultimate, irreversible, but, I think often overlooked, it represents in a fundamental sense a "win" in a kind of zero-sum game of living and an essential form of competition between organisms. In this sense, the taking the life of another, whether this is done on a field of battle, in a robbery, or as a consequence of a psycho-pathic perversion, represent what might be referred as a presymbolic affirmation of one's own life experiences and chances for success in life. This is by no means a justification of why it is humans so commonly and frequently take the life of other organisms, not just humans but of many forms of life, and appear often to be fascinated by this scenario in their life such that they would want to watch it over and over again played out in movies or on television or in the news media. It is rather merely an attempt to understand how it is that we can be thus fascinated by such a perverse and seemingly destructive interest on such a basic level, and an at least tentative explanation of why this just might be so.

Perhaps needless to conclude, the drive for power is in all of us and may become expressed in many different ways. Many ways are in fact constructive and healthy, and many other ways are obviously not. To become psychologically and behaviorally caught in a particular trajectory of development of this drive for power and its behavioral and social expression in the world, versus some alternative pathway, is critical to answer and yet probably so complex and multivariate that it is impossible to answer in any final way.

Whatever trajectory we achieve in the course of our life, and in the course of events in our life, we get caught into what can be called a "circle of power" in which one set of events leads to another, to social consequences and reactions, that in turn drive the need for power to even greater heights, and power can become both psychologically and sociologically amplified thereby. I'm exhibiting my need for power in writing this overwrought essay, and, if you have read thus far, you are probably exhibit some will for power in reading it to the end. The proverbial slave exhibits power through the dependency of the master on the slave's powerlessness. The will to power takes many forms symbolically in human behavioral response in the world. It is shaped, harnessed and made available to the world by the society in which we are a part and in which we enact our parts.

It is something of a mistake to cast the drive for power as an abnormal or pathological characteristic of human nature, and to portray it only in terms of sociopaths and other criminals. The drive to power characterizes all human beings both equally and in uniquely individual ways. We all manifest this drive, more or less, along a multi-dimensional continuum of its expression in terms of strength, direction and transformation of affect, aggression, activity and rationalization.

am of the opinion that human achievement motivation (McClelland et. al.) that in the modern global system is primarily expressed by means of money, that translates into resource acquisition and appropriation, is what can be called a structurally and socially normalized extension of fundamental human power motivation, and the neverending quest to make money and to get rich is merely one more culturally and socially sanctioned form of the manifestation of the drive for power.

I think, as a refrain, that it is easy to overlook the motive of power in our lives and in our world, especially if we are caught up in the grip of power and its circles in our lives. We can repress our confrontation with it, attempt to stifle, manipulate, alter or even extinguish it, not only in ourselves but in others around us. We can especially rationalize its ends and means in our life in practically any manner we choose to see it in, thereby justifying it to ourselves in a satisfactory way if not completely to others in the world. We can act out the drive and fantasies that the need for power manifests itself in, and we can vicariously displaces and project it out onto the world in all kinds of ways. I would even say, that in some social settings, the drive for power can become so manifest and so overwhelming in social life, that it must needs thereby be denied or ideologically justified in a collective manner that not only "makes sense of it" but serves to neutralize or remove any possibly negative consequences that apperceptive realization of its possibilities (and potential horrors) might bring. As it has been said recently, the fish rots from the head down. I think it is in this regard, in a sense of projective symbolic displacement, much easier to recognize the true intent and designs of power in others than to see and acknowledge how it may play out in our own lives. Our ability to symbolically manipulate and transform power is a form of power itself, uniquely human it seems.

Symbolic Cognition & Human Knowledge Systems: The Noetic Revolution of Human Civilization

The binding problem is a central problem in overcoming the mind-body dilemma in both philosophical perspectives of human reality and epistemology as well as in cognitive science and artificial intelligence models of the human brain and mental operation. Basically, we must ask how the brain organizes itself, and integrates its various networks and centers of neural activity, to achieve human consciousness and mind, especially in consideration of highly developed states of human reason and intellect. Analytical approaches have sought mechanical solutions to this central problem, in terms of neural networks and models of the neuron, but these solutions fall short of a complete solution to this kind of problem.

In the anthropology of knowledge there occurs a very similar problem in the question of (1) linking human cognition to symbolic behavior and (2) extending symbolic behavior to the cultural construction of human reality and to definitions of human culture. This problem is not in fact unrelated, and the theoretical-methodological solution I developed for the latter question in terms of symbolic framing provides a potential solution for the former problem as well.

We may say at the outset that if the human brain is looked at from the standpoint of human systems theory, then we can understand clearly that the mind is the central emergent property of the integration of the brain, and the components of the brain maintain themselves in a complex and dynamic kind of equilibrium, involving normally a diurnal-nocturnal cycle of sleep and wakefulness. We can further say that because symbolic behavior and integration appears to be the uniquely defining characteristic of human mind, as opposed to that of other known animals, then we can understand that the emergent integration of the mind has to do with the mechanical organization of the brain to produce symbolic awareness. This symbolic awareness is behaviorally expressed and linguistically encoded and articulated.

We can attribute by inference states of mind to other species of animal, especially obvious in highly intelligent animals. Experiments with primates teach us that primate intelligence is as sophisticated as human intelligence in many dimensions and shows many of the same basic components of symbolic self-awareness and self-reflection that is characteristic of human conscious awareness. Primates in captivity take readily to human cultural preoccupations and patterns, and primates in natural settings have demonstrated the emergence of rudimentary cultural adaptations and expectable variability of patterning between different groupings.

If we examine what is unique about human knowledge systems, and universal to these systems, compared to inferable animal states and systems of knowledge, we can apply primarily the trait of "world openness" to human knowledge systems versus what can be called an "Uexkullian closed world" of the animal. We may state a continuing human plasticity to learn and adapt to the environment on the basis of cognitive processing of perceptual inputs and behavioral interactions that continues throughout the life cycle. We can refer as well to what can be called the cognitively directed behavior that is relatively independent of instinctual constraints or basic drives, though obviously influenced by these drives. Human beings demonstrate a remarkable degree of voluntarism and arbitrary willpower, as well as a cunning of foresight and planning.

Human knowledge systems can be said to be symbolic systems of encoded signals that have a material form and that demonstrate basic design features of human language. We may refer to these as linguistically encoded cultural texts. These systems provide largely directive or alternative relative templates that are used for guiding human behavior, or alternatively for the symbolic justification and rationalization of events. In preliterate or oral societies, knowledge systems largely took the form of mythologies and associated magical lore that were utilized to explain and organize the world, including human social relationships. Story telling has been an important part of this process. Encoding often to the form of ritual performance and even architectural construction and aesthetic design in folk arts.

With the advent of systems of writing, attributed in the main to the need for record-keeping connected to the rise of large scale state-organized systems, and the advent of craft and labor specialization as well as the rise of a formal priesthood, human knowledge systems took on a sense of developmental differentiation that allowed a new level of understanding and comprehension of the world to be achieved. Associated with this is a sense of abstraction and awareness of conceptual independence of ideas from realities. Associated with this also is the classical idea of the "Birth of Tragedy"--the rise of an Apollonian virtue theory of the rule of law and order and the regulated organization of human society. Vast repositories of knowledge thus developed that represented organized collections of texts and these provided a framework for extended and systematic systems of knowledge transmission.

The next revolution of human civilization arrived with the advent of mass printing technologies, which allowed the broad dissemination of texts and provided a basis for increasing rates of literacy. Associated with the advent of printing in Europe was the rise of the Renaissance as well as the early development of a form of market capitalism and early forms of craft and cottage industrialization. The key noetic transformation of human knowledge systems was at this period of time the rise of science and the rise of a non-idealized and naturalized view of humankind. With this came the active exploration of the world and of worldview, and the development of a broader range of alternative systems of knowledge. Associated with this was the questioning of basic precepts and dogmas by which traditional cultural knowledge and worldview had been organized, particularly as a product of a Medieval Scholasticism that was focused on the problem of the exegetical translation and interpretation of sacred texts.

The most recent revolution of human civilization has occurred essentially in the last fifty years with the rise of electronic broad-casting media and especially digital forms of knowledge recording and storage. I see the advent of the Internet and newer satellite based wireless technologies to be an extension of the same processes begun with the radio and television broadcasting of the previous era, as well as with photographic and film recording technologies.

We are today in the midst of this newest knowledge revolution and we do not know the consequences of this in terms of the patterns of integration of our world. We may say clearly that we are dealing with symbolic and organizational structures in the world that are essentially obsolete and that are anachronisms of the past standing in the way of future progress. There is also no way to knowing for certain the outcomes of this direction of development. What can we expect from the future of development. I'm inclined to think that the next knowledge revolution of human civilization will be the achievement of comprehensive systems of integration that are fully automated and that might be based upon hybrid or exotic forms of quantum knowledge storage and manipulation.

Dialectical Symbolism

Symbols may stand for themselves as well as each other and for other things of relative significance in the human environment. Symbols have both a substantial, empirical basis in physical reality, by being embodied within some 'thing' or set of things which come to literally represent the symbol and its associated significances. Symbols also have a metaphysical 'essence' which phenomenologically and experientially transcends their corporeal substance and figuratively represent the things they stand for. Thus symbols and symbolisms stand between heaven and earth, the physical and the metaphysical, and mind and body. It is their function to 'inter-integrate' and mediate these two different and otherwise separate kinds of reality.

Symbolisms provide a sense of unity and integration to human reality in a very basic kind of way. And we can look at the separate realities of Man as but the two sides of the same symbolic coin of human reality and thus understand that while we believe our feet are planted firmly in one kind of reality and our head is obscured in the clouds of another, we are actually only in a single kind of human reality which is preeminently symbolic and usually two sided. Seeing a single, whole, un-dichotomizes symbolic human reality, we no longer need to be so vexed by the dilemmas and illusions of being simultaneously in two separate realities at once.

It is the substantial human physicality of the things which stand for our symbols and the ethereal insubstantiality of the things which our symbols stand for, that lead us to such chronic confusion over symbols, ideas and things. It is sometimes difficult to fathom the ideology that regards a gigantic arsenal of nuclear warheads with their promise of total devastation as primarily of non-substantial symbolic value. They exist not so much as weapons of potential or actual destruction, but as symbols of power, control, mutually assured deterrence, strength and even perennial peace. They have been allowed into our lives primarily as symbols of the kind of political economic authority they represent and this is how their otherwise incredible and horrible presence has become fostered into our lives. They stand forever poised as both our weapons of ultimate force and as out symbols of ultimate power.

Automobiles are another example of objects of possession and control which are primarily symbolic embodiments of our personal mobility, status, success, power and freedom, and yet which we habitually even compulsively use as functional vehicles for transportation. In this case, the fossil fuel automobile has become a predominant cornerstone of our collective modern existence as symbolisms of technological and industrial dominance and success over our physical environments--inspite of the fact that they are dangerous, polluting, expensive and ecologically unaffordable. They have become the mainstay of our modern lives not so much because they are symbols of the success of progress, but because they functionally mediate our physical environments, whether we really need them or not. They have become symbolically foisted upon our collective imagination because they have become a real physical need of modern Homo automobiles.

It is the failure to understand that our realities, whether ideological or material, are primarily and ultimately symbolic, that leads us to mistakenly identify as inevitable matters of fact such things as nuclear missiles and petro-powered cars.

Dialectical symbolism is a central theory in the culture historical studies of the developmental processes of human civilization, explaining how the dynamics of social movement, cultural change and historical patterning function in a self organizing but predictable way. It is a systematic theory about mind, how it works and the ways it becomes manifest in the civilizing processes of culture history. It is a theory explaining how mindness as culture historical frames of mind, has become expressed symbolically and dialectically in the evolution and ecology of mind. It outlines this evolutionary and ecological process of development of mind as the central thesis of the study of culture history.

Dialectical symbolism stands Marx back upon his head--it converts Marxism political economy and materialistic arguments back to an Hegelian unfolding of Geist or Idea, except that it is not a theory of the progressive immanation of Spirit, but holds the notion of the dialectics of symbolism as the principle form and function of the expression of human mind--all symbolisms leaves substantively real, epi-phenomenal 'things in the world' which can become 'objects' of scientific verification and all symbolisms has pragmatic, adaptive function in the empirical world which serves to scientifically explain itself.

The gradual but increasing rapid, even explosive, emergence of global human civilization is seen as an inevitable, mathematical outcome of a long term process of the structuring of many different but interrelated processes of patterned human phenomena. Given enough time and the relatively irreversible character of many kinds of changes, the self organizing critical state made up of many local culture historical processes of change.

The unfolding of mind has been a dialectical process--its main thesis has always embodied its own contradictions which eventual leads, through environmental change, to its self transformation. As a dialectic it is always a synthesizing reality which transcends itself through the fusion of opposites--it is a never ending process of revolution and resolution about a central, common axis of directional change. The synthetic transcendence of this continuous dialectical counterpoint is never an inevitable outcome of this contrapuntal movement--it is the power of metaphor as vital symbolism to combine contradictory opposites as if a single unity, but this is always outside of the main axis of movement of the dialectic.

It is a movement from thesis to antithesis and back to a new thesis without a necessary sense of progressive fulfillment or realization. The dialectics simply describe the resultant patterning of the social movement of symbolization about directional axis of transition and change. The movement characteristically turns about a central axis and describes an undulating, to and fro, cyclical movement of change through time and across space.

Besides being essentially self organized and non-progressive, the dialectics of symbolism are also complex in being multi-modal and multi-thematic. Unlike the 'simple' dialectics of dialectical materialism in which there is a single axis of movement, dialectical symbolism involves the multiple movements about several axis of structural change simultaneously--and these multiple axis of change are interrelated one with another such that there is a net synergistic patterning of the entire process of developmental unfolding. It is this synergism which confers upon the patterning of culture historical process a 'life of its own' independent of its separable or component patterns. We cannot understand the total dialectic merely by analyzing the separate movements of each of its axis of change--the whole dialectic can only be understood by revealing how each axis is interrelated to the others and how the functioning of each is interdependent with the functioning of the others.

Dialectical symbolism substitutes for the basic materialism as the driving motto of Marx's theory the basic pan human reality of symbolism and symbolization as the focal 'prime mover' of culture historical process. The principle mode of expression of mind has been metaphorical and symbolic--and it is from the starting point of the metaphor as the basic symbol of mind that we are to understand its process, purpose and pattern of development. The pan human processes of symbolization which 'drive' this complex dialectic of culture history give to change the sense of patterned form--the regularity we associate with stability--symbolisms are the vessels and vehicles which contain and carry change. symbolization does not so much energize culture historical process, so much as channelize the available human energies and potentialities into focal directions of development. It harnesses these forces around the central axis of change. symbols carry significance which mobilizes people into action and metabolizes social systems to change. the function of symbolization is primarily organizational--it interrelates and articulates otherwise disparate elements in order to provide an overarching continuity to change and action.

Symbolism organizes not only our metaphysical sense of world view or mindness, but our physical representational worlds as well. Symbolism intermediates our two worlds--the life of mind and our experience of the environment.

Dialectical symbolism also integrates in the study of culture history the different levels of analysis and synthesis, the general and the particular, the universal and the individual. It shows how the pan human problematics of mind are expressed and mediated on an everyday level of the individual within larger contexts of relational sets. It shows that the fundamental symbolic process is identical at every level of analysis and helps to confer a sense of theoretical and philosophical unity to the whole range of realities, from experiential to the conceptual.

Dialectical symbolism thus focuses the brunt and burden of culture historical process, of change, of civilization, upon the understanding of the individual in daily interaction with other people. It shows how relative context is always generally defined in metaphorical terms and how this context always symbolically influences the attitudes, orientations and actions of the individual. It does so neither through passive constraint or predetermination--the symbolic dialectic on the level of the individual's reality is always one of continuous negotiation, compromise, transaction, give and take, and contingency with ever changing complex environments.

Dialectical symbolism is in a sense a complete theoretical orientation which qualifies it as a systematic 'science' of culture history--its symbolic referents have a real, scientifically amenable basis in empirical reality--but it is simultaneously something more than this in also being a metaphysical and metalogical philosophical orientation which informs such scientific theory--it asks ultimate questions and seeks relative answers.

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Dialectical symbolism is dialectical in the sense of encompassing a movement of mind from thesis to antithesis and back again through synthetic transcendence, and yet the process is non-revolutionary in the sense that there is no sense of governing necessity or purpose in its development. Mind is not immanent or emergent from the dialectic, rather it is only the result of the patterning of the dialectic. The movement of the dialectic from thesis to counterpoint and back again, and the transformations it involves, are always relative and relationally contextualized. It is the total set of universal relations of mind which is evolving in an anti-entropic, directional sense, in the process of its working out of its own possibilities and it is this evolving context which accounts for the sense of transcendent development of the dialectic within any given provenience.

Only in a universal sense is mind developing--in a local culture historical context mind is simply changing in a less than more random way. Though mind is evolving in a universal sense, we in our local frames of mindness cannot ever know in any non-relative way that general direction or how this evolution is occurring except to vaguely sense and infer its directionality and systematicity from a broader sense of history and the changes of mind in the so called structure of the long run. We can redefine our understanding of this 'evolution of mind' from the ecological changes which have come from it, but we can never conclusively prove that mind is evolving or what its ultimate direction or purpose is.

The evolution of mind is not a metaphysical phenomena--but it is a physical process of transformation which is experienced perceptively through the senses. Mind is the potential total possibility of self organized relational patterning of humankind in the physical universe. The brain and its abstract functioning, the electronic super computer, DNA and cultural transmission, exist in the world because mind exists as the expression of the patterning of mind. As self organizing principles and properties of the physical universe, its patterning is 'dumb' in a random, non-reflexive sense, and yet its evolution is based upon an inherent 'anti-entropic' tendency to maintain a weakly chaotic sense of order in the face of natural disorder and randomization. It came into being as a statistical possibility of the long run, as the epi-phenomena of a unique concatenation of 'forces' or 'events' which lead to its self sustained growth and development.

In our limited and local framework we are forced to accept the possibility of mind on the basis of a grand leap of faith, without the possibility of conclusive demonstration and yet without it we cannot achieve a coherent sense of order in the experiential universe of our collective being.

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Dialectical symbolism is a theoretical orientation based upon Hegelian dialectics applied to the evolution of symbolism as the principle process of human culture historical development. It is neither strictly a form of philosophical idealism nor a brand of materialism--symbols are partly ideational and always materially expressed. Symbolism cohere naturally to form 'synergism' of mind which embody contradictions of beingness and non-beingness and which transcends these contradictions in their own development.

Dialectical symbolisms is the central theoretical orientations of culture history. The human being is by definition a symbolizing creatures--it is an essential and vital part of our nature and character. Symbolizing is a 'need' just like the needs of breathing, drinking water or nutrition--without it we must perish as something less than fully human. Neither can we distance ourselves from its omnipresence in our worlds nor separate ourselves from its ultimate sense of realism. Symbolism confers upon our reality an indivisible unity, and it brings to our sense of realism the possibility for its own dichotomization.

The dialectic of symbolism is developmental, but it is non-progressive and always incomplete. It revolves and resolves itself around central directional axis of change in the unfolding of mind as an objective of time, reality of beingness in the world. This central axis is that of time, and it is irreversible in an absolute, non-relative sense. Our measure of change as time is the measure of the duration of all things which have been and will ever be. The dialectics of symbolism has as its basis the spatial mediation of time--mind is the spatialization of time in human consciousness.

The symbolic spatialization of time is expressed as beingness in the world--we know it as 'experience'. Mind thus becomes expressible in terms of and through our experience of the world. The construction of culture and the process of civilization is the expression of the realization of our experience of mind--culture and civilization become symbolically patterned in their unfolding dialectics in the form of mind. As symbolic process, the development of civilization becomes the patterning of the function of mind.

The dialectics of symbolism become experienced cyclically, as recursive patterning and revolution about the axis of time.

All symbolisms have as their ultimate referents the representation of time as the formal/functional mediators of change. its spatialized manifestations are the expression of its beingness in the world--of the human experience of the world.

Dialectical symbolisms integrates and idealist versions of reality, and through integration transcends its own inherent contradictions.

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Many natural communication systems contain symbolisms however mechanical or rudimentary. But it has been only humankind of all the species of nature who have developed the capacity for the spontaneous creation of symbolisms, their generalizations and metaphorical elaboration. Symbols encompass human reality complete. All things and acts which are primarily functional in the human world are also always symbolic but not all symbolisms are necessarily functional or pragmatic in any concrete sense. Sometimes they occur for a purely symbolic purposes, or spontaneously happen for no apparent reason at all.

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Symbols intermediate between the ideational constructs of the human mind and the many physical signs occurring in the environment--they are the synthesis of this intermediation, always having analytically an ideational component and a sign set. It may also be said that ideas are the synthesis of the dialectic between symbols as such and signs, and signs are what remains once we've removed ideas from symbols. This informs a kind of complex dialectic in which each may be a synthesis of the other two components. Mind thinks symbolically and dialectically--deduction is the inference of signs and/or symbols from the dialectic between ideas and symbols. Induction is the synthesis of ideas from the conjunction and signs and symbolisms. Symbolic abduction is the derivation of a symbol from the dialectic between ideas and signs. Another way of putting this is to refer to ideas as general metaphysical concepts and signs as particular, metonymical percepts. The intermediate level consists of metaphorical symbolisms.

Symbolic development underwent a critical shift in orientation, from extensiveness of mind to intensiveness of world view, when symbols went from being based upon primitive ideas rooted in signs of the natural environment to being based upon derivative signs based upon independently existing ideas. The environment became transformed from being one of a field of natural signs to one of a socio-cultural construction of conceptual signs as reified ideas. Symbols switched from being 'sign oriented' to being 'idea oriented'. The function of symbols shifted from a general purpose mechanicalness to a special purpose organismic orientation.

'Signs/symbols/ideas' like 'mind/language/culture' is in fact an integral, singly unified reality. The categories are useful analytical divisions which in fact describe a single complex process of mind as an unfolding stream of collective human consciousness within environmental contexts. It describes the dialectic of mind in terms of how mind creates itself--tracing the movement of 'meaning' between intensive center and extensive environment. There is no way of clearly separating exactly what a sign is from a symbol or what an idea is without reference to some symbolic sign. Signs, symbols and ideas do not have exclusively concise boundaries.

This complex dialectic describes the developmental or unfolding process of mind interacting or symbolically mediating with the environment--or rather as the process of mind as a dialectical synthesis as the mediation between environment and experiential human beingness. Symbols mediate, negotiate, transact, identify the critical boundary between self and world--symbols create a 'boundary' of identity which relates our beingness to the world.

Symbols have an 'evocative' function vital to human identity and beingness in the world. It is this which empowers symbolism as the expression of mind.

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A reflexive characteristic of our metalogical metalogue about the question of 'what is human reality?' is that our definitions, meanings and our information and communication are all primarily symbolic and metaphorical in construction and function, and we may refer to metaphorical symbolism or symbolic metaphors which compose the fundamental quality of human beingness.

'Metaphor' comes from the Greek word meaning 'to bear over', 'referring to a transfer of the sense of one word to another', and is defined 'a figure of speech in which one thing is likened to another, different thing by being spoken of as if it were that other; implied comparison, in which a word or phrase ordinarily and primarily used of one thing is applied to another…'

A 'symbol' is defined as '1. Something that represents something else by association, resemblance or convention. 2. A printed or written sign used to represent an operation, element, quantity, quality or relation as in mathematics or music.' It comes from the Greek 'symbolon' which means 'token for identification'. A sign, token, pledge by which one infers something, from 'symballein' or 'to throw together'. It is also defined as 'something that stands for or represents another thing, especially an object used to represent something abstract; an emblem; a written or printed mark, letter, abbreviation, etc. standing fort an object, quality, process, quantity, etc.'

The key symbol of meaning is the 'word as metaphor'. Without language, humankind would have no culture nor civilization: Language is the principle symboling system of human culture--it is the voice of mind. Meaning is principally metaphorical, phenomenological, psychological and abstracted from basic concrete percepts. Meaning is something suggesting something else or its antithesis to human rationality. The word as metaphor functions as analogy, comparison of similarities and the relationship between different or disparate things, 'affecting' a meaningful crossover, or 'identification' between previously unrelated symbols, bridging differences and creating new possibilities of relationship, patterns and integrities and imposing alternative frames of reference out of an original context of meaning, fusing together different meanings of different symbols to create new meanings and new symbols.

Metaphor is connotative, suggesting new associations and possibilities of meaning, expanding meaning qualitatively beyond mere one to one correspondences between words and their dictionary definitions, as if they were mere numbers or names or signs with the most immediate referents. It is this metaphorical quality which allows us to reference more than is immediately available to our sense, that allows us to go further in our meaning structures to posit inferences and to ask and answer questions.

"A metaphor, and, by extension, a trope generally, equates on conventional point of reference with another, or substitutes one for another, and obliges the interpreter to draw his or her conclusions as to the consequences. It elicits analogies, as perceptions through language, so to speak, and those analogies or perceptions become the intent and the content, of the expression.

Figurative usage, then, because it makes a kind of prism of conventional reference, cannot provide a literal field of reference. It is not formed by 'indicating' things or by referencing them, but by setting pointers or reference points into a relation with one another, by making them into a relation that is innovative upon the original order of reference. It 'conveys' a re-negotiated relation, but, not being 'literal' in any sense, cannot 'point' to it. Thus we may say that it 'embodies' or 'images' its object, figuring sympathetically by becoming itself that which it expresses. When we speak of things that do not have conventional referents, then out manner of speaking must itself become the referent. The effect of the construction is embodied in its impingement upon conventional reference; this impingement is simultaneously what it is and what it is about." (Roy Wagner; Symbols That Stand For Themselves; 1986:6)

To write 'metaphorical symbolism' is something akin to 'mixed metaphor' but more like 'power politics'. It is difficult to say exactly which term, 'metaphorical' or 'symbolism' is the more general and inclusive. The expression metaphorical symbolism is used to suggest more than just a category of mind or a class of symbols--but to emphasize the point that all symbols are by their intrinsic nature 'metaphorical' and thus to emphasize as well the 'something standing for something else' function of symbols. Furthermore, metaphorical symbolisms express or stand for a characteristic feature of human inter-relatedness to reality--human beings define meaning, express significance, relate to reality through the use of metaphorical symbolisms. In a sense, it is a propos to refer to human reality or to human relativity within reality, as irreducibly metaphorical and symbolic in nature, and in structure.

"Any symbolic metaphor provides a conceptually definitive frame of reference/inference serving to dichotomously separate and distinguish aspects of reality--internal/external, subjective/objective, figure/ground--'outer forms frame an inner meanings'. One may refer to alternative symbolic functions, like 'dominant symbol', 'master symbol', 'key symbol' or 'summarizing metaphor' or 'elaborating metaphor' but the primary function of all metaphorical symbolisms is to serve as a frame of reference for the conveyance of human meaning. In order to do so, any symbol must have a primary referent which serves as 'signifier' or a 'denotation' which is concrete and derived from the physical environment. To reiterate, all symbols are ultimately derived from and refer to nature, no matter how abstractly or indirectly. This primary referent may be simple or complex, either taken directly from empirical, perceptual reality or else composed of many diverse elements drawn directly from or abstracted indirectly from Mother Nature. This primary referent serves as significant marker in that it embodies and incorporates relatively significant meanings which are recognizable, however unconsciously or structurally or concretely by the knower. The act of recognition is a form of humanological involvement, an expression of the inter-relatedness of human reality, bringing meaning to it.

The symbolic metaphor is applied, or recognized and created within a universal reality of human meaning which is both continuous and ever changing--a dynamic continuum which forms both a relational context which is all encompassing and within which symbols are created, destroyed and recreated, and reconstituted by new meanings and new relationships. Meaning is derived from the human inter-relatedness with symbolic metaphors. The act of recognition of a symbolic metaphor as a frame of reference/inference is properly known as the function of 'identification'. The marker or primary referent serves as a cognitive, symbolic boundary which identifies meaningful differences--defining the identity of human meaning. Identification is a process of differentiation of meaning inside and outside of the boundary of the symbolic marker. Differences between relationships or 'things' or meanings outside of the boundary and inside of the boundary are emphasized as relatively significant, while the similarities are de-emphasized as relatively insignificant. Attention is focused upon the figure in the foreground, outlined by the symbolic frame of reference/inference, while the background if ignored. Furthermore, differences within the boundaries of the symbolic marker become emphasized, the similarities ignored, while the similarities outside of the boundary are emphasized to the ignorance of differences.

Humans create their meaningful reality through the process of symbolic identification. Furthermore, as frames of reference/inference, metaphorical symbols also function as symbolic mirrors of meaning, as a vehicle of both subjective reflection and of objective projection of the self. Identification within human reality is properly a process of self identification through the reflective/projective process of human interrelationship. Symbolic identification expressed as a process of interrelationship between external differences/internal similarities and between subjective reflection/objective projection, defines the secondary referents of symbols and metaphors. The primary symbolic referent serves as a metaphorical mediator, or a medium of expression, a frame of reference for the identification and recognition of the relationships of secondary reference." (Lewis; unpublished manuscript, 1986: 53-55)

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Symbolisms 'relate things' in an unmarked manner, and 'thing relations' in a marked manner. Symbolisms come in two basic forms--things to be related and relations between things. Unmarked things and relations imply contextual neutrality--a lack of significant emphasis which reinforces the status quo of the identity of experience. The usual or 'normal' state of being in the world is such an 'unmarked' manner of experience.

Marking significance is a matter of emphasis and may have either a positive or negative connotation and lead to either positive or negative evaluations of experience. If the 'normal' state is positively valued, the tendency would be to mark negative evaluations of difference in a covert way, i.e., unconscious symbolic context of experience and to overtly mark positively evaluative 'things'.

'Relating things' temporizes space, and 'thinging relations' spatializes time. Symbolisms of things are expressed spatially--relational symbolisms are temporal. Matter is made of 'things' and the 'thingness of relations; and mind is composed of the relations of things.

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Analytically, human experience may be divided into cognitive, emotive and conative or motivational categories or modalities. Like 'mind/language/culture', and 'idea/symbol/sign' it is better to consider experience wholly as a unified field of 'cognition/emotion/conation'. This unity is achieved through articulation of symbolisms in the environment and can be spoken of as being 'synthetic' in dialectical structure. There can be no clear separations between cognitive, emotive or motive components of experiential events--all ideas have an emotional and a motivational dimension and all emotions have an ideational construction and motivational implication.

It is by the 'cognitive/emotive/conative' unity of experience that we can usefully recognize the internal structure of human experience as a process of dialectical symbolization. All is experience is structured, or integrated in this way.

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Human consciousness is engaged in the process of fixing symbolisms in the environment to fit intentional frames of mind or ideas, and also in fitting frames of mindness in order to fix symbolisms in the environment. Fix and fit are the mediation processes of human symbolization which constitute its dialectic. This symbolic dialectic is critically related to human adaptation to environmental change. There is a human predisposition to preserve the constancy of symbols across differing contexts. But the process of change, variation in the context, disrupts the symbolic continuity of experience, so the need for fixing and fitting symbols within their contexts in order to make sense of them is continuous and never ending as a process of human consciousness. Failure to do so creates psychological incoherence which is unsettling and dysfunctionally maladaptive. The process of fixing and fitting symbolisms is referred to as 'framing' and there is a proclivity towards preserving constancy and consistency of symbolic 'frames' across different contexts.

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The two functions of symbolization are reference and inference. Reference is the process of relating a thing to its contextual relations with other things. Inference is the process of determining a thing by its interrelationships within its context of understanding. Symbolisms used referentially are 'names' for things. Symbolisms used inferentially describe the 'verbal' relations between things.

Reference related to the denotation of a thing--inference to connotation of relationship. Reference is deductive in deriving something logically from something else--inference is inductive in something else being derived from a thing.

Symbolic frames are simultaneously frames of reference/inference. Mind functions according to the dialectic of reference/inference frames. Any symbolism entails both an explicit reference and implicit inference functions.

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Symbolisms become 'fixed' by investment of certain emotive 'values' in their structure. These values are achieved by 'marking' or highlighting the symbolism in a figure/ground context. There is an emphasis upon certain significances or order of significances and of stress which leads to metaphorical salience and metaphysical importance. Emotions become encoded through symbolisms into our cognitive mappings of experience and are recalled through 'elicitation' and read by 'evaluation'. It is the cognitive evaluation of symbolisms which leads to our sense of 'understanding'--it is their emotive evaluation which leads us to their 'feeling' or 'sense of relevance'.

'Values' as organizing principles of the lifeways of people and their ways of life have a symbolic structure of 'evaluation' which is emotively fixed or fitting. Symbolisms have come to have an evaluative structure in the way in which they dialectically articulate human cognition, emotion and behavior.

Linguistic practices, through marking/unmarked, over/covert categories or relative inter-or intra-sentential code switching/mixing in our everyday usage of language, reveals the subtlety of the symbolic process.

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The primary human function of symbolisms is evocative (to call forth, to elicit or bring forth). This evocative function always has cognitive, emotive and perceptive elements. Symbolisms evoke meaning and reaction. Evocations are basic stimuli to complex attitudinal and behavioral responses. Specific signs or sign patterns act as triggers which actually precipitate response--symbols generalize this stimulus function of signs from their particular contexts of occurrence.

Symbols also 'fix' this evocative function in certain environmental configurations--similar symbolisms evoke similar ranges of response and experience. This 'fixing' stores latent or potential 'energy' in environmental configurations--complex symbolisms become a reservoir of pooled 'response potential' which can have a delayed release and a triggering threshold. Thus symbolisms come to have a relative value in their evocative potential. This evocative potential 'empowers' symbolisms as the mediators of transformational experiences in changing environmental contexts.

From the standpoint of the individual, an important point of this evocative function is its emotional expression. The symbolic synthesis is part of an emotional expression. The symbolic synthesis is part of an emotional dialectic which integrates psychological and physiological processes in natural and social environments. Emotional energy becomes 'stored away' in certain symbolism--evocation of these symbolisms provokes or precipitates the release of the flood of feelings--the stored potential emotionally expressed energy dammed by behind symbolic frames.

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Experiential isomorphism of mind and matter confers a sense of symbolic symmetry of experience--a symmetry reflected by cognitive consonance, emotive harmony and symbolic resonance within the environment. It renders human reality reflexive. Cognitive dissonance is the result of a lack of symmetry between experience and the environment. Experience and identity seeks an equilibrium between mind and matter, a sense of ecology of beingness in the world. Disequilibrium results in cognitive dissonance, and requires readjustment of mind and matter in order to reestablish symbolic symmetry.

Such a synthesis presupposes a normative conception of mind as a balanced, 'steady state system'--it is precisely this sense of the identity of experience which makes possible a normative conception of the world. It is actually a mechanism for the mediation of environmental change in the environment, allowing ecological adaptation of the individual in the world. As such, it is a mechanism of evolution. It presupposes a sense of adaptive, functional integration in the world, which may or may not exist except as a relative state.

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Symbols are derived from configurations of signs--all symbols are contextual in that they are derived from and conditioned by the sign context in which they occur. As such, symbols depend upon their contextual framework as an 'extrinsic' part of their 'negative definition' or connotation by association with other elements. It is this contextuality of symbolism which gives to symbols their unconscious depth of multidimensionality if meaning and which renders them the vehicles of empowerment in motivating and directing human action.

Symbols cannot stand completely isolated and separated from all relational contexts--their coherence and relevance would dissolve away into a chaotic disarray of separate signs. As such symbols are always found interconnected with other symbols and thus become grouped according to different 'principles' of patterning. Symbols have a boundary of their possible experience--an outline which distinguishes their outer contextual 'horizon' and an inner structural 'horizon' which carries it across different contextual frameworks and incorporated a range of variation of profiles. It is this boundary which is transformative, variable and malleable and yet which retains a net, overall thematic consistency in the life and function of the symbol.

Symbols are composites of signs--they are epi-phenomenal artifacts of human experience and the vehicles of human condition.

It is this contextuality of symbolism which makes them relational and relative and the by products of dialectical transformation.

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Unconsciousness is the internalization or introjection for the symbolic contextuality of our environments. It is always encompassing and comprehending, always relational and yet indirect. It is total and complete in its openness and all inclusiveness and yet our consciousness can only cast light on only small portions of it at any time. All symbolisms must be found or fit within a relational context in order to carry meaning--the contextual relations of symbolisms must become internalized in the unconscious as implicit, connotative, latent and over components of meaning which 'configure' the outlines of symbols upon a background.

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Symbols are commonly related to other symbols, normally occurring in groups or 'symbolic complexes'. People come to have sets of expectations as to the cognitive coherence and perceptual consistency of such complexes--these sets of expectations are quite cognitive and behavioral 'frames' into which experience becomes sorted and rendered significant.

Cultural environments are 'universes' composed of interconnected 'symbolic constellations' or groupings of centrally oriented or focal 'symbolic complexes'. A library is a culture historical cosmos of mind composed of many books, each a symbolic 'constellation' made up of chapters, paragraphs and sentences that represent interconnected 'symbolic complexes'. A word is a 'sign symbol' or a 'symbolic marker' made up of sets of signs and sign relations. Signs are relatively independent and arbitrary but when grouped together in different arrangements create different symbolisms.

A cultural universe provides the unconscious framework of an individual's consciousness--an individual's conscious is constrained in definite ways by the kinds of symbolic constellations which compose his culture historical contextuality. Different symbolic contexts constrain the consciousness of the individual in different, but distinctive ways. An individual's consciousness is an active, normative, energetic, evaluating, selecting, focusing, defining, decision making instru-mentality of mind which arbitrarily or customarily assigns values to various symbolisms and symbolic complexes within respective contexts--it functions symbolically, referentially reading from and inferentially reading into the environmental experiences of people.

It is by means of the dialectic between the unconscious substrate, or introjected relational context, and the symbolic consciousness that people normally manipulate the elements and relations of their environments and navigate through their collective shared worlds.

The unconscious, both individual and collective is composed of experiential, referential and inferential 'frames within frames within frames' that are drawn from the background of the culture historical context and the 'cosmos of mind'. There occurs between mind, encompassing the dialectic between consciousness and the unconscious, and the culture historical context, a cybernetic interaction of symbolization. The on going conscious experiences of people are 'fitted' into unconscious 'frames of expectation' derived from similar relational contexts as elicited by the present sets of experience.

Symbols recur and resonate in environmental contexts in regular, ritualized and expected ways which are directly or indirectly constrained by both the 'culture historical' flow of events and the past relational contexts of understanding which are brought to bear upon the present experiences.

Symbols which seem to occur 'out of place'--a poor man driving a limousine, a rich man dressed in rags, or an adjective poised behind rather than before the English noun it modifies, or a misspelled word--then its experience no longer 'fits' the expected frames of reference/inference. Frames then become disrupted and either the symbols need to be repaired or 'fixed' or else the frames need to be 'reevaluated' and reconstructed.

'Common sense' is largely composed of the expected, unconsciously 'embedded' and ritualized regularities of the culture historical universe of experience. These regularities are frequently left implicit or are taken for granted in the experience of the environment. Common sense interacts with cognition in both conceptual and perceptual ways, in the mediation of symbolic environments which are both ideal and material, cognitive and behavioral.

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Symbolic dependency is a cognitive predisposition to conceive or perceive symbols within expected frames of reference/inference which leads to selective preference for regularly recurring symbolisms and to the inability to 'cope' with symbolisms which occur 'out of frame' and to a cognitive 'dissonance' about the irregularity of such symbolisms. This relates to the capacity to tolerate margins of error and to the inability to manipulate symbolisms independently of their expected, 'common sense' contexts. Highlighting common symbols leads to an 'unconscious' filling of its expected framework--to its common 'configuration' by which it is rendered significant. Psychologically symbols take on a significance of their own, largely independent of the actual experiences in which they occur, but predetermined by the frames of expectation and the contextual configurations in which they 'common sensically' recur.

Symbolic dependency leads to 'fixation' of a symbolic configuration within a given framework or context of understanding--such a fixation becomes invested with an inordinate degree of cognitive, emotional and behavioral significance and importance as a centrally orienting and ordering device of one's experiences. Disruption of such 'significant symbolisms and their fixed frames' results in a great deal of symbolic disorientation and confusion, emotional turmoil and to 'behavioral maladjustment' or failure of 'coping mechanisms' to functionally adapt in appropriate or expected ways. The sense of ego identity undergoes a crises, disintegrating and breaking down. Developmentally, symbolic dependency may be linked to a 'field dependency'. Children should be expected to be relatively more symbolically dependent than adults. As adults mature, they become more symbolically independent, but symbolic dependency in adult life may lead to a failure to fully mature or develop either cognitively, emotionally or behaviorally.

Culture may come to reinforce or encourage or sanction some forms of symbolic dependency, such as those acts or values relating to paternal authority, libidinal ties to the mother, or to acts of violence or sexuality, and thus discourage the development of symbolic independence in these areas. Likewise, it may encourage development of symbolic independence in other ways and therefore discourage symbolic dependency in indirectly related ways. Again, there is a cybernetic interrelationship between the collective symbolisms of culture and cognitive symbolism.

Symbolic dependency leads to the development of elaborated symbolic fantasy life, both culturally and cognitively, in which the relevant symbolisms, divorced from the validation of real experience, become used in the distorted manipulation of frames of reference/inference. There is a general suspension of credibility, even though the symbolisms so divorced may carry heavy loads of cognitive, emotive and behavioral significance. Non-being is the result of such exaggeration of frames and distortion of experience in symbolic dependency.

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Symbolisms become 'fixed' into certain 'categories' of experience. Such symbolic categories take on an independence of relation--a distinctiveness of separate identity among commonly related things--which come to have special significance and come to be seen as pre-existent or previous to experience, as 'coming before experience' and as therefore existing 'beyond or outside of the realm of experience', even though its pre-existence must then be verified by consecutive experience. Such 'categories' come to organize experience in certain expected ways, and serve to simplify the problems of maintaining symbolic symmetry in the experience of the world. Such symbolic 'categories' confer a certain a-priori 'imperativeness' to the generic kinds of experiences which they subsume.

It is in such a way that symbolisms lose their arbitrariness of representation, their original concrete signifiers and their functional independence from the constraints of custom and culture historical context.

Such categorical symbolisms accrete into symbolic 'configurations' which frame experience in certain pre-selective ways. Configurations become 'fixed frames' which are relatively inflexible and unamenable to experience in the environment. They are different from symbolic constellations in that they organize the identity of experience intensively, working ideationally from within, while symbolic constellations are environmentally rooted and functionally derived from an extensive orientation in the world. Symbolic configurations are a special order of symbolic congregation--they carry past experience forward into the present and future. Configurations are composed of symbolisms which are marked with special categorical significance.

Symbolic categories and configurations compose 'world view' as opposed to the 'natural' symbolic conglomeration of 'mind'. They come to have a common senseness and 'givenness' which is frequently absent in the paradoxicalness of mind.

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Power rests in the Center. Movement toward the Center represents symbolic empowerment of non-being--controlling change or the possibility of 'non-being in the world'. Centeredness of world view defines itself in terms of the symbolic empowerment derived from the super imposition of fixed frames, symbolic categories and configurations of experience and expectation upon the world. It is this fixedness of frames, its categorical imperativeness reinforced by common sense configurations of experience and expectation, which creates the grand illusion of the Center.

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Symbolisms provide configurational frames by which to contextualize and make sense of our experience. We share in multiple frames of mind which confer a sense of continuity and order to our world and its experience, orienting us in relation to things in ways which are predictable and stable. We are actively reformulating our frames of mind in order to accommodate the changes we encounter in confrontation with new environments. The dialectics of symbolism are the dialectics of change. We symbolically construct our realities based on symbolisms derived from past experiences--and then we reconstruct them based upon modification to fit or fix our sense of change. Or symbolic realities are constructed, negotiated, interpreted, evaluated and configured in a world of on going change.

Frames are mostly general and generalizing in orientation--they contextually relate particular elements of reality. They are derived from and composed of these elements, but they take on a life of their own--a metaphorical and metalogical level of 'importance' which 'translates' change and difference in our realities.

'Frame disruption' occurs when events in our environments occur which demand our attention but fail to fit our frames of reference/inference or else work at their margins to undermine their relevance and significance.

'Frame elicitation' is the calling forth of frames to met or 'fix' the experience of environmental events or relational situations. Signs in the environment stimulate or trigger the elicitation of frames, often unconsciously.

'Frame fixation' is the relative inflexibility of a frame to be adjusted to fit changes in the experience of environments. Frames are carried forward and made to 'force fit' such changing contexts.

'Frame reinforcement' are conscious, ego coping mechanisms which attempt to 'force fit' frames and environmental changes in ways, cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally, which reestablish the relevance and importance of the original frames.

'Frame reevaluation' is the effort to deconstruct and reconstruct the frames in order to accommodate or assimilate the environmental changes in such a way that restores the frames adaptive significance.

'Frame replacement' or 'revolution' is the complete destruction of a frame, and its substitution by an altogether different frame which may or may not incorporate the elements and relational patternings of the old frame, but always in a new configurational arrangement.

Frames are devices of rationalization and ritualization of human consciousness and behavior. As rationalizing devices, they serve to order the experiences of the environment in a way that is purposive or fitting to the 'design' of the frame. As ritualizing process, they order behavior in prescriptive and predictable ways, controlling reaction and response in ways which behavioral reinforce or ideological legitimate the structure of the frames.

Frames become represented and are reflexive of culture historical process in the patterning of social networks and in the unfolding of social movements.

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Frames are generally derived from 'schemata' that exists within culture historical contexts. Schemata are the 'elements' of culture. They are like 'cliché' of speech--they are either words or several syllable phrases from which larger symbolisms are constructed. Schemata are combined into schemas or 'strips' which are like sentences or paragraphs. Strips normally describe or represent a single 'event' or a single combined instance of experience. Schemata are the elemental atoms of culture history--they might be thought of as the minimal component units of phenomenological experience. Strips become the normally combined units of phenomenological experience. Strips become the normally combined units--they are like 'molecules' which compose the substantial fabric of culture history. They have a normal sense of ordering of its component units which combine together for form the patterning of culture historical process.

It is in terms of such phenomenological atoms and experiential molecules that we construct, deconstruct and reconstruct our symbolic realities in the paradigmatic patternings of culture history. Everyday we are engaged in the manipulation of these minimal units of meaning in the configuring and reconfiguring of our sense of identity in our world. We take these units from the culture historical contexts in which the experience of our world is situated. Our culture historical contexts are internalized in the form of these units as they occur in groups and sets that form regular patternings.

It is in terms of such schemata and strips that we build our frame and deploy them in our confrontations with reality. It has bee estimated that there are natural, normal limits to our innate capacity to process such units, and that these limits of 'long term memory' define the structural sizes of various levels of groupings of such components. It is estimated that the most elements that can be dealt with in the most direct manner is around a hundred or so, and that the minimal units will be grouped in composites of no more than five or ten. These one hundred or so elements are derived indirectly from a larger context composed of no more than five hundred elements. These five hundred elements can be structurally grouped into a single taxon which contains no more than perhaps three thousand such elements. Over time he total long term capacity can be pushed upward fifty or even slightly eight thousand such 'bits and pieces'.

It is possible that these kinds of structural limits in the capacity of symbolic systems superimpose other kinds of constraints and have certain kinds of predetermining consequences in the patterning of culture history. Any given system of symbolism must have a certain optimal carrying capacity for its relative order of functioning. Any inputs overreaching this inherent limit leads to a 'supercritical' state of overload which results in 'events' or damage to the system. Such a system may then 'evolve' into a new systemic arrangement incorporating new elements and throwing off others, or it may structurally lift the whole system to a higher more general order or level of functioning.

It is also likely that the pathway taken by any given scenario would be to some predetermined extent by the larger structural relations of power in the context--such that larger more powerful systems tend to 'swallow' smaller ones, while systems which coexist on a even parity of power perhaps compete with or mutually resist one another or counterbalance each other in directive ways.

Power, in its various forms, structures relationships in definite ways.

Symbol systems and the contexts which frame them, exist in critical and dynamic states--their stability is a function of their flexibility to deal with inevitable changes which alter their composition of elements.

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Symbolisms accrete meaning, grow, mutate by several mechanisms or principles of symbolic change. Metaphorically, symbolisms continuously go through a process of 'extension of meaning' into other contexts incorporating other elements and relations between elements. The looseness and fuzziness of metaphor allows meaning to be extended or to be 'displaced' by other meanings in a gradual but steady manner. Euphemization and Dysphemization of language are examples of such displacement, in which 'bad meaning' tends to drive out good meaning.

Symbolisms sometimes transfer meaning or significance from one symbolic domain to another or from one context to another or from one environment to another. Metaphorical meaning is easily transferred from one symbolism to another, and this can follow a whole indirectly line or chain of such transference such that the original significance may be very remote or directly unrelated to the symbolism to which it becomes contextually related.

Symbolisms can also change from the mechanism of 'stimulus generalization' in that they signifiers of the symbolism become part of another class or group of 'stimuli' to which the symbolism becomes attached.

Symbolisms can also be modified by continuous or proximate analogical association to other symbols, such that the traits of one symbolism become associated with the traits of the other one.

Signs, Symbols and Ideas

Symbols are composed of signs. All symbols are signs, but not all signs are symbols. Signs are the minimal building blocks of symbols--they are characterized by their recursiveness, redundancy, uni-directionality, uni-dimensionality and proximity of meaning. The metanymical function of signs is mechanical and relatively non-arbitrary. Signs are context dependent, occurring in an order which is not as random as with symbols--they are 'harder', more highly constrained by their denotational significance.

Signs may be elevated to the functional level of symbol, than carrying metaphorical 'suggestiveness' of meaning, but in doing so it looses its significant determinacy. Signs carry fixed meanings--significance, which is always metonymical, referring to 'things' at a concrete level. Employed in combinations, signs become symbolic 'markers'--they loose their individual metanymical significance as vehicles for carrying the metaphorically relevant meaning of the symbol they stand for.

Whereas symbols function analogically and metalogically, signs function homologically and relationally by logical principles which disambiguate its significance. Signs have a communicational purpose which requires that they have unambiguous significance--a determinacy of value relatively invariable and inflexible.

Ideas are similar to symbols and signs--all ideas are symbolic and are composed of signs but not all signs or symbols are 'ideational'. Ideas are the basic units of metaphysical importance. Single symbols or even signs may be elevated to the status of an idea--'0' (zero) for instance--but more regularly ideas are composed of sets of symbols in typical arrangements or configurations. Ideas are abstractions--complex thoughts whose only concretized embodiments are the signs employed for their expression. Ideas are not normally constrained by any external reference or bound within a context, but are 'super contextual'. Ideas are metalogical as well as metaphysical in function, serving to 'focus' thought in given directions. Ideas are also normally polythetic and polythematic as nomothetic categories. Ideas are eidetic and 'meta-relational'--they refer to relations between things and relations of such relations, but rarely to 'things' themselves. Ideas are 'constructs'--mental images built up from experience, but indirectly separate from such experience.

A table is an idea of a sign, a symbol and an idea, as is a 'triangle'--the 'idea of table' may be symbolized by the word 'table' and be signified by an actual instance of a typical table, but is still only a mental construct of mind.

Signs and Symbols

It is important to emphasize the critical differences and similarities between signs and symbols, as these differences and similarities underlie the split between the sciences and the humanities---they inform an important epistemological division in our rational knowledge. All science is ultimately a study of signs as systems. The humanities are ultimately a study of symbols as conglomerations.

Signs are 'symbolic markers' which carry specific significance--as markers they function mechanically and automatically to produce a significance which is moderated by proximate or sympathetic connection with other signs. Signs do not 'carry' meaning separately as do symbols--they have separate significance which is non-arbitrary--it cannot yield up or transpose its separate significance. It is only in conjunction with other signs or when signs become promoted to the status of a symbol that they act as vehicles of metaphor. Signs function as 'markers' serving to anchor meaning to concrete, contextually determinate reality. Signs are mnemonic devices--perceptual 'markings' which trigger significance.

In a strict sense, significance is a communicational metaphor for 'information'--it is important for the significant of a sign be clear and unambiguous in order to efficiently communicate information. They tend therefore to be hard and strong. Signs denote some definite and specific--they are therefore concise. Symbols 'connote' or suggest something general and therefore vague. It is important therefore that symbols are indeterminate in order to exploit their inherent ambiguity--their relevance depends upon a 'critical indeterminacy' or 'vagueness' or 'indefiniteness' of meaning.

A sign functions--it 'does something', performing an informational, communicational service. A symbol 'means' something, integrating by suggestion. Signs are special purpose devices. Significance is always context dependent. 'General significance' refers to a classificational or taxonomic function of signs--their hierarchical design--they locate and fix a context of significant relations around a 'thing'--thereby situating and orienting a sign within a framework of significations. A symbol may act as a sign, its metaphorical function relegated to a special purpose by becoming context bound--symbols come to have a special significance in a given context. A password is a symbol relegated to the function of a sign. A dictionary is a sigh system of symbols.

Sign systems communicate knowledge, solve puzzles, reduce noise and communicate, describe, explain, predict and control. Symbols systems create understanding, asking why instead of answering how, resolve dilemmas, 'destruct' the given and determinate, and thrive on noise and indeterminacy as the groundless ground of meaning.

Symbolic Cohesion

Symbols readily cohere in to clusters, complexes, constellations and galaxies because they have a characteristic stickiness--an adhesive quality which allows one symbol to be readily lined to others. This is symbolic cohesion.

In order to understand how symbolic cohesion works, it is necessary to examine the structure of the symbol as a 'thing' and as a 'relation' between things. A symbol functions as a 'metaphor'--it is something, 'anything', which stands for something (anything) else. This metaphorical function is polysemic--a thing can stand for many things at once--and 'multi-vocal'--a thing can say many things at once. Symbols have, therefore, a certain metaphorical flexibility which allow them to be adjusted to fit many different kinds of contexts--they are contextually independent and generalizable--they are general purpose metaphors.

Symbols have fussy edges--their definitional boundaries are rarely clear cut but phase into a wider less determinate connotational realm of general metaphorical saliences. These fussy edges give symbols an added malleability that allows them to be fit into varying contextual schemas with relative ease and which allow two or more 'compatible' symbols to be conjoined--to be hooked together by the conflation of their edges. Words as metaphors are the archetypal symbols--compounding or modifying words into phrases is an example of the fussiness and looseness of symbols.

The fussiness of symbols is due in part to the fact that most symbols are composite sets of 'signs' which function as minimal building blocks of symbols--these signs can be added to or modified--conditioned, to alter the form and metaphorical function of a symbol. Morphological conditioning of words are an example of this sign modification of symbols.

The metaphorical 'general purposeness' and the looseness of symbols allows them to be used in several ways--symbols may stand for other symbols, for themselves, for other 'things' of significance, for relations between symbols or things, or for relations of such relations. One symbol may summarize a whole set of symbols, or a set of symbols may elaborate a single symbol. Symbols can be arranged taxonomically into a hierarchical order of determinations or can be used polythetically.

Symbolic cohesion is most often weaker than it is stronger, allowing symbols to be easily conjoined into larger sets and allowing symbols also to be lifted from one context and put into another. Symbolic cohesion accounts for the conglomeration of symbols into patterned sets, but it also accounts for the criticality of the structure of such conglomerations--symbols systems may disintegrate as easily as integrate.

Systems and States of Mind

Signs, symbols and ideas form their own separate kinds of systems which operate at different functional levels of meaning. All idea systems are symbol and sigh systems and all symbol systems are sign systems as well, but sign systems are not symbolic or ideational. These systemic orders inter-function and in most instances co-function and overlap but it is useful to analytically separate them in order to understand their critical differences.

'Symbolic logic' is an example of a sign system, despite its name. Linguistics deals with language at the level of a sign system, but not as a symbolic system. In general, science does not treat symbolic systems except as these systems are also sign systems. Mathematics is an example of a 'pure' sign system. A sign system is necessarily a 'pre-determined relational system'--in this sense it is 'pre-logical'--specified or specifiable 'relational rules' which serve to order and disambiguate its patterns, and render the interconnections between signs decisive and exact or precise. These rules function as direct constraints. Natural information systems, as with chemistry, physics and micro-biology are sign systems predetermined by 'natural laws'--man made sign systems, statistics, mathematics, traffic signs, cook books, telephone books are predetermined by 'conventional rules'. Sign systems tend to be directly and explicitly constrained--its rules are amenable to direct, explicit explanation. Sign systems have a rational and an empirical order--signs cannot occur at random or out of order or sequence.

The difference between a sign system and a symbol system is the difference between a computer and the mind or natural language--a mind may function like a computer if so constrained and a natural language may be prescriptively regulated to fit a computer language, but a computer may never function like the mind or natural language. A symbol system is metaphorical--it tends to be indirectly constrained, context independent and analogical. It functions to mediate multiple levels of meaning and mythologically in the process of identification. Symbol systems are dialectical and 'dialogical'. They are also syncretistic--composing a hodgepodge or a collage of different symbolic conglomerations. Sign systems are denotational, symbol systems are connotational. Sign systems function referentially, symbol systems inferentially.

Ideational systems are metaphysical--ideas refer to other ideas or to relations between ideas. Ideational systems are ideo-logical and metalogical. They are rational systems that are tautological--ideas are justified by other ideas, and are unconstrained themselves, but are themselves constraints--ideas are 'rules' or meta-relational constructs ordering relations.

Frames of Mind

Though Mind exists as a universal, all encompassing possibility, its real manifestations consist of an infinite number of possible Frames of Mind, attitudes of Beingness which inform our existence of meaning and relevance.

Frames of Mind are different points of view, or casts of light, which give to Mind its holothetic multidimensionality. Frames of Mind cohere and link together to provide the on-going articulation of the possibility of Mind.

Frames of Mind do not form a taxonomic structure on the basis of essential differences in meaning of its components--Frames of Mind are but varying combinations of ideas which are configured thematically about some central axis of transformation. Different Frames of Mind may share many similar components. Differences are not structural, but historical and contextual--each Frame of Mind is contextualized within a larger comprehensive framework of the possibilities of Mind.

Frames of Mind do share some common distinguishing features of design and content. Frames of Mind have a particular provenience of period and place which defines their cultural historical context of origination, diffusion, development. Frames of Mind shift provenience as a process of gradual steady transformation, just as language gradually changes and alters in an imperceptible way. This transformation occurs regardless of the ideological attempts to conserve the status quo of world view. Frames of Mind encompass entire contrapuntal dialectics of thesis and antithesis--at any particular point they are represented by the complete range of variation of world view manifest. Frames of Mind are constituted locally by the total relations within the complete text of their articulation. Frames of Mind flow sequentially--they are streams of consciousness which appear to be historically continuous and yet in hindsight can only be studied discontinuously--they are the opposite of the frames of a movie being projected--where as the animation of the movies is only an apparent optical illusion of the running together of a long sequence of many discrete stills, the streams of consciousness of frames of mind are not the derivative effect, but the primary experience of Mind, where as its analysis and study entails 'slowing it down' to appear as if it were a sequential series of skills. The transformational development of Frames of Mind can only be discontinuously apprehended over the long run. Frames of Mind are set of relations between things rather than sets of things--they provide formula for the ordering of relationships between things. Different Frames of Mind can describe the same set of things in essentially different ways. Every world view, every theory, every field of inquiry is made up of multiple, overlapping frames of mind--every Frame of Mind encompasses a plethora of different world views, theories, fields of inquiry. Frames of Mind have thematic unity, and provide thematic unity of understanding to diverse sets of date, things, relations. Frames of Mind are basically 'meta physical' and the relations they are based on are irreducibly 'meta logical'.

Frames of Mind are culture historical phenomena--they are like languages and cultures in that they have an historical integrity and a kind of synergism which makes them unique, and yet Mind is like language and culture in the sense that all somehow share a similar set of universal characteristics which define them across time and across the entire range of variation. Frames of Mind are like 'culture areas' or language groups which are defined on the basis of phylogenetic relationship.

Frames of Mind are our way of understanding from a historical perspective in terms of its contextual articulation. They cannot be understood of distinguished outside of the frameworks of understanding which we superimpose upon the relationships which constitute it or the language by which we interpret it--Frames of Mind are subject to the same kinds of biases and problems of interpretation which all historical phenomena are prone to--they can be constrained by the world view which predominates and dictates their reinterpretation.

The understanding of Frames of Mind provide an approach to the resolution of the paradox of history--the dilemma of rewriting the past as a reflection of the present. Relational phenomena of the past were independent of present and yet in some measure events of the present are not independent of relational phenomena of the past--transcribing Frames of Mind is by demonstration of how the present is or is not an indirect representation of the past without the surreptitious projection of ideology. It involves reconstructing the past as an 'independent event' of the present which nevertheless has its own historical sense of precursory relations. Events of a past become written in terms of a previous lost sense of the past which is independent of the sense of the present. Frames of Mind are Frames of Difference, focusing upon the relativizing differences inherent in historical processes of change. Unlike world views they are not collectivizing orientations, but detotalizing and relativizing orientations, serving to historically isolate sets of relational phenomena within their contexts of understanding and articulation. They exist culture historically as the necessary counterpoint to any collectivizing world view, assuming that all world views cannot be total or absolute in a sense of not being subject to processes of historical change. Reconstructing past frame of

Mind is a hermeneutical problem of philology. It is a vital and prerequisite problem if contextualization of the past in terms of the past in a non-ideological manner is desired. At no point is the collectivity of humankind comprehended by a single world view or paradigm--each point of time is characterized by a plurality of perspectives and multiplicity of points of view which provides the chaotic tension of the times--the dramatic sense of culture historical importance. Past Frames of Mind provided the motivations and the rationalizations for historical action which are basically lost to our present world view. We cannot fully reconstruct these past frameworks of mind, but we can come to a sense of their critical differences through the ideological disinvestment of our own Frames of Mind and through seeking the unity of Mind which constitutes the principle identity of humankind. In such a search for lost difference, no stone can be left unturned, no matter how 'irrelevant' or trivial, whether in relation to our own fields of view of to those of other culture historical contexts. We can do no better than the excoriation of identity to get to the problematic core of basic, underived differences.

Frames of Mind are always heterogeneous and complex interactive phenomena encompassing the complete local context and configuring this against a general universal context of possibility. They are continuously dynamic in that they are subject to historical changes and process of transformation. And yet different Frames of Mind share similar sets of things or relations between things, recomposed differentially--the total range of which may actually be finite and limited and the relations between which may be systematically ordered in some complex manner. Different Frames of Mind are united by a common ground in the possibilities of mind--sharing a similar relational context which allow the possibility of intercommunication and mutual recognition and understanding between peoples.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Experience of Stress

Symbolic disequilibrium between experience and environment induces a state of cognitive dissonance--cognitive dissonance leads to a need to assimilate new environment to one's experiential expectations or to accommodate ones expectations to new environmental problems. Cognitive dissonance is the expression of the experience of stress which is created by inexorable change. Stress becomes expressed cognitively, emotionally and motivationally. Stress is a symptom of experiential disease of the self in the environment. Overwhelming stress leads to a breakdown of the mind as an adaptive mechanism for the mediation of change in the environment--trauma may result in a 'conversion experience' which leads to a consequential experiential inflexibility--a fixation upon the stimulus of the traumatic event. Pathology of mind--disintegration of the identity of being--is the long term consequence.

Mind as an Adaptive Mechanism

Natural 'mind' evolved as a super organic adaptive mechanism or managing change in the environment. It evolved at the level of the individual human being, as a dual cybernetic system--an integrated natural sign system and natural symbol system focused exclusively upon perceptual images. The dialectical synthesis of a natural sign and symbol system was a primitive ideational system of mental images derived from experience--perceptual events. This ideational system may have been largely un-self-reflexive. Symbols remained 'sign oriented' and the natural environment was largely a 'sign dominated environment'.

The evolutionary ecology of 'mind' sign systems were 'mechanisms of selective perception' allowing reduction of noise and indeterminacy in complex natural environments--allowing maximization of carrying capacity of environmentally adaptive information for purposes of 'organic communication'--biological transmission.

Symbolization of signs allowed for a greatly increased order of information processing, arising as a 'learning' or 'stimulus generalizing mechanism' which enabled 'adaptive radiation' into a broad range of environments. Symbols were largely perceptual images--concepts remained 'concrete' and 'non-abstract' . symbols become general purpose tools that could be carried into different environments--tools were general purpose symbols which allowed adaptive flexibility in different environments.

The picture which emerges is one of small groups--family sized micro-bands spreading out from clan sized macro-bands. Small group survival depended upon the selective fitness of the individual. Adaptive radiations may have comprised only a small series--a wave of a few hundred or a few thousand individuals in a kind of 'outward movement'. The ability of 'mind' to function as a sign/symbol system in complex environments--not just in hunting but also in gathering adaptations, lead to 'environmental generalizations'.

Two or three such 'adaptive radiations' are apparently recorded in the hominid fossil record--the earliest is the highly successful Homo Erectus. Later the adaptive radiation of Archaic Homo Sapiens. Finally came the radiation of Modern Homo Sapiens in the upper Paleolithic 50-35,000 BP.

It is impossible that these early adaptive radiations were characterized by mechanisms of species wide 'self selection'--preferential mating of 'successful hunters/gatherers' and a gradual loss or culling of less fit members. This early selective mechanism focused upon the mother infant bond which promoted longer post partum infant dependency periods, a reduction in the rate of ontogenic development, selecting for greater cognitive growth and longer periods of 'learning'. Poor mothers would have been unsuccessful in reproduction. Crucial to infant cognitive development would have been peripatetic exploratory behavior, encouraging 'field independence'. Infant orality--putting things into the mouth might have selected for mothers who were able to keep a careful eye upon their infants and who knew the environment and yet who allowed children to explore.

Saltational episodes, early evolutionary events, were probably complex phases of rapid reproduction and population growth, perhaps stimulated by the introduction of new symbols or new 'discoveries' and perhaps preceded by a previous phase of population reduction or adaptive contraction which bottle necked a gene pool. Rapid reproductive increase and selection favored cognitive reorganization of 'mind' promoting symbolization. Successful 'cognitive' adaptation favored selective increase of the population, leading to a gradually slowing adaptive radiation, which gradually modified the 'new traits'. This process did not happen all at once, but took place in a series of 'steps'.

In this view, symbolic culture as an ideational system that is conceptually oriented and highly abstract is largely an 'epi-phenomena' of human evolution--a burgeoning development of human 'cultural evolution' (development) which emerged more recently and slowly but exponentially began to depart from the tract of human biological evolution.

Seen in this light, culture either as process or as material artifact is largely a secondary, derivative phenomena occurring long after the cognitive evolution of human 'mind' as an adaptive mechanism in complex environments.

Regulatory mechanism of 'culture' and 'cultural ecology' the bio-psychological functions of culture arose after the evolution of human mind, as secondary development and involved the development of the ideational systems component of 'mind' as a symbolic system--putting to service a symbolic system which had its own reasons in a previous evolutionary epoch.

Pre-cultural symbol systems were 'natural symbol systems'--symbols derived directly from nature. These systems served several interrelated functions--their primary function was to mediate changes in complex environments--by the framing of events by 'cognitive maps' derived from previous experiences. The empowerment offered by 'symbols' is to be found still in their evocative function to elicit modes, moods, memories and physiological and psychological responses which have their origin in 'instinct'--whether it is mass hysteria, stress response, hypnosis, exotic ritual, mass media preoccupied with sex and violence. They create the illusions of fear, of the separation of death and non-beingness, which have their symbolic source in the biological being of the primeval human being. The behavioral and physio-psychological responses symbol systems evoke are discrete and measurable. Natural symbols order an d channel such responses into appropriate patterns. The return to the communitas of 'primitive states' of being is a natural inclination.

Symbols stand intermediately between ideational and sign systems, serving to mediate and integrate these levels into a coherent 'whole'. This relates to the symbolic system function of individual identification in the dialectic between being and non-being. Symbol systems provide a 'cognitive identity of experience' of the individual which allows functional adaptation to strange environments. This begins at the perceptual level--the identity of perceptions--and becomes a cultural ideational identity of conception. With the development of culture, natural mind of the individual becomes displaced by the rational mind of the culture bearer.

With evolutionary development of mind, sign, symbol and ideational functions differentiate and become more systematically distinct.

With the development of culture history, symbol system come to have a higher, separate ideational function which is critically related to the organization structure of the social order. At this cultural order, natural symbol systems come to have a sign system function which becomes contextually bounded and conventionally non-arbitrary, tied by proximity to other symbols and come to have a 'cultural evolutionary and culture ecological' super organic purpose. In their ideological functional, abstract idea symbols cease to be arbitrary in their implicit arbitrariness--having a functional significance of their own, distinguishes from the sign function of natural mind.

World View and Cybernetic Systems

The 'world view' of 'mind/language/culture' defines a centeredness of overlap and integrative congruence between sign systems, symbol systems and idea systems as a single cybernetic system. As sign systems, idea and symbol systems are subject to the same kinds of constraints as all sign systems but as an idea and symbol systems they become used 'both ways'--as sign systems and as symbol systems and as ideational systems--the constraints as if signs are lifted as symbols and ideas.

It is possible to cross reference sign, symbol and idea systems with analytical categories of mind, language and culture, and to investigate the relations between each of the nine combinations of the matrix.

It is also possible to speculate about the evolutionary order of development of 'world view' from signs to symbols to ideas, as a sequential unfolding of increasing sophistication. This sequence is reflected in the development of writing--from idiographic and rhebus and syllabic signs to alphabetic world symbols to modern concepts; but it is more likely that 'primitive' 'signs/symbols/ideas' co-evolved together into more complex 'signs/symbols/ideas'.

There is a sense of systems rooted in percepts--in perception based experience--and of 'primitive systems' adaptive function to process perceptual information. 'Sign systems' remain basically perceptually rooted systems, though the signs may become conceptually abstracted from root percepts. Symbols systems are anchored to sign percepts, concrete or abstracted, but float loosely upon the conceptual, completely abstracted level. Idea systems are no longer so anchored to percept based signs.

An 'etic' view of 'world view' would interpret symbol and idea patterns as 'sign systems' in the way that the natural sciences elicit from patternings of natural events basic ordering rules. An 'etic' view depends upon the 'natural ordering' of human cybernetic systems, of symbols and ideas, as if 'signs' and attempts to elicit what the rules for such a natural arrangement might be. An 'emic' view deals with symbol systems as symbols, idea systems as ideas and symbols, and tends to treat all human sign systems as if symbolic and ideational.

As sign systems the cybernetics of 'world view' has 'nothing but' significance--but as 'symbol systems' they have 'something more' importance.

Symbolic Traits and Metaphorical Functions

The cohesive structure of symbols confers upon them other traits and other functions as metaphors which are ordering principles in the patterning of symbolic conglomerations. Symbols have depth and a multidimensionality which allow them to recur and co-occur upon several metaphorical levels of significance simultaneously. This accounts for their 'duality' of design--they function not only as signs at the level of signification and as multiple metaphors at the level of salience, but they also function metaphysically at a level of general relevance which is primarily abstract. These three levels are designated as 1) metonymical significance, 2) metaphorical relevance, 3) metaphysical importance. Each of these levels is characterized by the degree of contextual dependence/independence of function.

A limited number of symbols can be used in an almost infinite number of possible combinations to create an endless variety of combinations. Nominal symbols refer to 'things' or other symbols--'verbal symbols' refer to relations between things or symbols. Summarizing symbols refer to whole sets of symbols, elaborating symbols elucidate a single symbol. Dominant or master or key symbols are focal symbols which subsume or summarize symbolic conglomerations. Strong symbols have strong cohesive characteristics, weak symbols weak cohesiveness. Hard symbols are less fuzzy and more determinate--soft symbols have greater conglomerations and less determinacy. Peripheral symbols occur upon the margins of conglomerations, core symbols occur near the center. Dependent symbols modify independent or unbound symbols. Abstract symbols are mostly metaphysical--concrete symbols mostly metonymical. Orienting symbols and organizational symbols are used to order symbolic conglomerations--to 'center' them structurally. Independent symbols stand alone--accreting their own significance or meaning free of context, or making their own context.

Besides sharing all their design features of human language, such as semanticity, prevarication, truth value, duality, hierarchy, displacement, etc., symbols also have other characteristic functions. Symbols may be synonymous or antynonymous. Symbols function analogically and carrying meaning which is metalogical. Symbols are both reflexive and referential. They are arbitrary. Symbols must occur in arrangements which are internally non-contradictory and externally consistent with other symbols or experiential reality. Despite their fuzziness and plasticity symbols cannot be erroneous or out of order in arrangement. Despite arbitrariness, symbolic arrangements follow conventions and are constrained in an unrestricted sense.

Symbolic Conglomeration

Symbolic cohesiveness allows symbols to be aggregated into conglomerations or congregations of various sizes. A minimum number of symbols may form 'sets' or clusters--clusters may be congregated into larger sets or 'complexes' of associated clusters which may in turn be further aggregated to form entire 'constellations' which have a centeredness of gravitational attraction. Constellations are grouped to form whole cultural galaxies--what might be referred to as 'civilizations' of symbolic forms. These civilizations occur within a single integrate cultural continuum referred to as the symbolic universe. Symbol 'sets' of various orders have different integrational functions experiences--presenting themselves in a series, ordered one after another. They are read as a cultural narrative of experiences, or 'events' which are sequential in arrangement.

Symbolic complexes organize domains of experience--different categories of complexes produce different categories of experience--they are 'trains of events' or separable, qualitatively distinct, 'episodes' of experience. Symbolic constellations order different symbolic complexes as 'trait complexes' which have a particular spatio-temporal locus.

Symbolic constellations resemble bounded 'cultures' within a given geographical locale and historical period. They are an arrangement of a series of episodes into a particular cultural historical 'epoch'. This is the level of experience which has received the greatest attention by traditional cultural anthropology. 'Epoch' are ordered or arranged into a culture historical tradition of civilization which frequently has a specifiable boundary or set of long term growth patterns. Frequently this has been called 'culture area' and has become a way of parsing the globe in terms of cultural geography.

Traditional civilizations tend to span several distinctive epochs, and may have a 'civilizing influence' extending well beyond boundaries of political control. What characterizes symbolic constellations and galaxies are not so much defining boundaries so much as 'complex centers' and the distances between such centers. Complexity 'centers' symbolic congregations--such complexity is made up of the local or regional integration of symbolic complexes--several such complexes or sets of complexes overlapping in such a way as to provide a symbolic unity of experience or of different sets of experiences in an orderly and organic manner. Within a tradition such centers go through a developmental cycle which leads to 'cultural evolution'--the branching of traditions into different directions, the coming together of other traditions, their extinction.

Cyrstallytic Structure of Symbolism

Dialectical 'signs/symbols/ideas' cohere into 'symbolisms' of mind--salient focal points upon the culture historical landscape. Symbolisms are the nodal points of the symbolic networks--the points of overlap, conjunction and disjunction along symbolic pathways. They are critical points of transition or transformation of mind, from one state of beingness to another.

Symbolisms have a characteristic 'crystallytic' structure--their reiteration and conglomeration forms recognizable complex patterns which have a sense of symmetry, order and balance but which are infinitely variable in design. Symbolisms are able to refract dialectical mind through many different facets of beingness simultaneously. Similar symbolisms within larger complexes take on characteristic, characterizable forms which serve to distinguish them from other kinds of symbolisms--one symbolism will have a similar structure as a similar symbolism--however separated in space and time and though the actual symbolic markers or components may be heterogeneous and quite different from one another.

It is this crystallytic structure which allows different kinds of symbolism to integrate into organic complexes which then come to have a super organic or synergistic function. Symbolisms have definite compatibilities and complementarities with other kinds of symbolisms which allow them to become functionally integrated and specialized.

Symbolism have their original function in the individual's beingness in the world--and though they may be integrated to form complex organisms, these larger entities come to reflect and take on many of the basic characteristics of these symbolism on an independent, individual level. Complex symbolism thus become organized into patterns which resemble the organic organization of the individual. This allows us to compare levels of symbolic integration in homologous and cybernetically related ways.

The crystallytic structure of symbolism not only determines their patterns of development but sets the critical limits to the growth in complexity of symbolisms, beyond which they are subject to 'random events' which increase the likelihood of their disintegration over time.

The crystallytic structure of symbolisms makes their growth somewhat self organizing and also self limiting. It also creates symbolic 'resonances' or reverberations which tend to become 'self amplifying' and inter-integrative between different kinds of symbolisms--growth and decay in some symbolisms becomes reflected in the facets of other symbolisms.

Basic Simplexity and Derived Complicity

Symbols oriented toward the natural environment have a basic simplicity about their design and function,--they are 'simplex' in the way that they network mind. Symbols which are derived from ideational constructs and which are oriented toward ideas have a fundamental complexity or 'complicity' about their design and function. Simplexity is basic and 'primitive' symbolic structure--complicity is always a 'derived' form. Symbolisms develop from simple forms and functions into complex forms and functions--they go from a general use design to one which is special purpose. Basic symbols and derived symbolisms thus organize mind in fundamentally different ways--the former being 'extensive' in orientation and the latter being 'intensive'. Growth of basic symbol is like an explosion diffusing outward from a center of origin--derived symbols 'implode' in an ever increasing complexity towards a center.

Simplex symbols form different inter-relational patterns than complex symbolisms. Simplex symbolisms interrelate with a limited number of other symbolisms in many different ways--each symbolism comes to take on an independent identity of function which cannot be easily substituted by other symbolisms in the network. Symbolism come to take on a variety of functions which gives them a versatility but which limits its capacity for any single kind of function. Symbolisms come to have an externally undifferentiated design.

Complicit symbolisms take on special purpose functions which come to define their relationship to other symbolisms--many different symbolisms perform many different, distinctive and discrete functions and these functions come to inter-integrate. One symbolism may be easily substituted for another--it is their function which remains indispensable.

With simplex symbolisms discrete functions may be lost without destroying the integrity of the whole symbolism--the symbolism remains symbol oriented in its primary purpose. Complicit symbolisms become function oriented--individual symbolisms may be lost without disturbing the functions in relation to the whole.

Simplex symbols act as symbolic ideas organizing a plethora of environmentally inscribed signs--complicit symbolisms become as symbolic signs organizing a range of ideas. Simplex symbolism tend to be highly internally differentiated but grouped on the basis of external differences and intensive focus. Simplex ideas lack a focus, but have a locus within themselves--complicit ideas have a focus, a center, but lack an internal locus.

Evolution of Symbols

Symbolic conglomeration 'evolved' from simplexity into complexity--individual pathways formed networks of symbolic clusters which eventually coalesced into larger and larger centers. This 'evolution' is actually a matter of fairly continuous development of the culture historical continuum. There was always some minimal symbolic network of humankind--individual pathways were never completely disconnected or non-overlapping. And this minimal network arose out of and is directly rooted in a minimal 'biological network'--the social behavior required for species survival and propagation. And it is at this original 'baseline' that the first symbolic rudiments of human culture history are to be found. The symbolic capacity which later allowed the full scale development of culture history must have evolved at this first stage in terms of the rudimentary network pattern of humankind.

Symbo-Logic

Symbolisms, as systems and mechanism of mind, have a logic of its own which occurs at an unconscious level and which predetermines and preconditions conscious activity.

This unconscious symbolic logic exhibits certain distinguishing characteristics--a recurrence and resonance of motifs, multiple overlapping motifs, a consistent and symmetrical ordering or arrangement of its components. The symbo-logic is largely an aesthetic symbolism and appeals to an individual's aesthetic sensibilities and sense of design.

The unconsciousness of symbo-logic is the symbolic context which is rooted culture historically to larger symbolic context of understanding. It is an embedded and embodied 'mythology' of meaning which reiterates and reinterprets and recreates a larger culture historical context and which speaks unconsciously through the individual 'enactor' who is the vehicle or voice for bringing it to the level of conscious manifestation.

Symbo-logic is characteristically a hyperbolic mode of representation of reality--it involves a slight unconscious distortion to achieve its effect. It is this hyperbola which distinguishes symbo-logic.

The logical aspect of symbolism is its sense of syntactic configuration or arrangement which gives it relational constancy of pattern across different contexts. Symbolic syntax is a kind of complex dialectic involving a multiple number of thematic components contra poised to one another and indirectly related through another mediating component. This syntax is hypertactic, syncretistic and synthetic in that it involves conjoining components by relational linkages. Symbols have a dual function in that they may be either thing or relation or both--symbols relate other symbols. Symbological syntax has a 'shadow' effect, a translative and transformative consequence, and a reflectivity of symbolism such that one symbol is tuned into other symbols which are contextually related.

It is the systematicity of symbo-logic in their articulation and manifestation which allow symbolisms to be configured into complex, sophisticated arrangements of design and to cohere into 'cultural historical' complexes. Symbolism become 'woven' together in the worf and weft of time and space to create a tapestry of meaning which represents and reflects the reality in which it exists.

Part of the syntax of symbolism are the dialectics or the logic of opposites, of infinite reduction and the multifaceted 'profiles; of composite 'structures'.

Relational Logic

The basis of symbo-logos is relational logic--that set of principles governing relations between things and the contextuality of things. Relational logic transcribes signs into different signs and involves the translation of symbolism from spatial to temporal or temporal to spatial dimensions--relational logic is spatio-temporal. It is hyper physical in that the relations which it governs are beyond the purview of physical principles governing the relations between signs. They are relations of partial identity and relative differences between things based on ascribed values or importance assigned within a culture historical framework or 'hermeneutic circle'.

This relational logic is nevertheless syntactically systematic and forms the basis of the structure of the unconscious as it is embedded and embodied in the relational context. It is based on the hypostatization of the relation between things and the reification of the attribution as if it were a 'thing' which embodies the identity and differences of the things being related. The strength of the attribution is based on the number of aspects of similarity and differences which it encompasses between things. For instance, round balls of different sizes are related on the basis of 'roundness' but distinguished on the basis of girth. If such balls were of a similar color and surface texture then they would held to be more alike even though their sizes were vastly different. Relational logic involves a balancing and a weighing of similarities and differences between things to determine the strength of weakness of the relationship.. it allows different objects to be taxonomically related on the basis of the number of shared affinities or ascribed characteristics and thus forms a taxonomy which is polythetic and non-hierarchical in structure.

These taxons tend to cross cut the physical perceptual ordering of experience even though the two sets overlap and are frequently contiguous. Principles of relational logic include:

1) Things spatio temporally proximate are more alike than things distal.

2) Things of similar shape or form or of similar sequential ordering are more alike than things of different form or sequential ordering.

3) Things which share a number of physical traits are more alike than things which have more differences between physical traits.

4) Things which are symmetrical in design are more alike than things which are asymmetrical.

5) Things which share the same set of contextual relations are more alike than things which have different sets of contexts.

6) Relations are more alike than things which have different sets of contexts.

7) Relations between things tend to be hyperbolic such that similarities or differences tend to be overemphasized or de-emphasized such that emphasis of the former leads to a conflation of identity and emphasis of the latter leads to contra distinction of differences.

8) Similarities tend to be positively values and differences tend to be negatively valued.

9) Things become relatively ranked according to their net positive and negative values.

10) Things of higher positive or negative rank tend to have more salience--the extremes tend to be emphasized and the middle ground excluded.

11) The systematic exclusion of the of the middle range of value leads to the hypostatization of absolute values of identity and difference between relational taxons.

12) These relational values become reified as substitutes for the elements of the taxons.

13) There is a systematic process of substitution, Grisham's Law, such that hyperbolic values and attributes tend to drive out or displace actual relations.

14) Previous values tend to lose their relational salience and become continuously replaced by more salient values, which in turn begin to lose their salience.

15) The greater the valence between things the greater the salience.

16) The greater the salience the faster the rate of substitution.

17) Things of balanced valence tend to have neutral value and are the slowest to substitute--the rate of substitution is more even, gradual, continuous.

18) Neutral things tend to remain in the contextual background.

Symbolic Pathways and Experiential Streams

The function of symbolic congregations is to 'channel experience' along certain spatio temporal pathways--experience becomes channeled into continuous streams of meaning. Consciousness travels along these streams both through time and across space. Symbolic clusters constitute individual experiential pathways, arranging experience into a sequence of events--these pathways for networks at the level of symbolic complexes--symbolic networks situate individual experience into communities of relational, interpersonal experiences. Separate such symbolic networks may converge or overlap into a complex aggregation with develops a 'locative' center orienting different orders of experience in an integrated way. A set of such centers forms a regional or interregional dynamic leading to a complementary functional integration or a widening sphere of influence extending over wide areas of space or continuing through long frames of time.

At symbolic centers, networks converge and overlap and take an essentially different structural character than in simple aggregations. In such a way it can be seen how individual streams of experience become channeled into converging common streams of cultural experience, which flow 'together' in centers which constitute 'pools' or experiential reservoirs. While pathways multiply and criss-cross in ever increasing social entanglements, streams of experience steadily converge into a collective pool. In such pools, 'collective experience' takes on a 'corporate' character, such that the total range of experience extends beyond the single spans of individual experiences.

Symbolic Mazeways and Mental Mapping

Experiential pathways structured symbolically into congregation and networks become a labyrinth of experience--a symbolic mazeway composed of corridors of movement and change, turning points, intersections, doorways and windows, walls and fences and open areas. The mazeway becomes an expression of symbolic unconsciousness, or the unconsciousness is the expression of the symbolic mazeway of mind--as it is composed of the collective 'unknown' pathways which represent possibilities of experience. The existential problematic of the individual is to learn how to negotiate these mazeways in a successful manner, such that movement down a corridor does not lead to a dead end but to gateways through which other openings may be found. We acquire 'cognitive maps' derived from our own or other people's experience--ideational symbolisms which 'map' onto the mazeway and allow us to successfully negotiate it. Mental 'maps' are cognitive constructions of experience of environments.

Centers of Gravity, Centrifugality and Centripedality

Symbolic galaxies and cultural groupings have a centeredness of gravity about which all symbols become oriented. People and things become defined in relation to their centeredness. This field of gravity attracts and pulls everything towards the center--it is a great constraining force preventing movement from the center or crossing over to other cultural centers. The force at the center is much stronger than at the periphery--beingness at the center is much more constrained than beingness at the periphery.

Cultural centers have a centrifugality and a centripedality--things and people are thrown off from the center, diffusing outwardly and other things are pulled into the center through gravitational attraction.

The push and pull of cultural centeredness is the result of symbolic displacement--two ideas of mind that cannot occupy the same point in time and the same place. Symbols have an inertia, mind has a beingness of its ideas. Movement of some ideas toward the center entails displacement of other ideas from the center--movement of ideas from the center creates a vacuum which draws in other ideas away from the center.

The center of gravity of a cultural grouping defines the structural integrity of that symbolic constellation, the web of relations--the culture historical fabric. The sense of integrity is greater at the center--the consistency and coherence. There is less ambiguity or uncertainty at the center. There is greater overlap between culture historical boundaries and spatio temporal boundaries. Reality at the center is much more highly 'structured'. There is greater momentousness of mind and culture historical momentum at the center. There is greater symbolic and relational 'density' at the center, hence greater inertia. The closer to the center something is drawn, the steeper the gradient for such movement, and the more difficult such movement becomes. There is hence greater degrees of displacement towards the center, with a corresponding greater centripedality.

The center of gravity leads to an accretion of symbols toward the center, a gradual aggregation of such symbols until a critical phase line is surpassed, at which point forces of randomization begin to set in leading to the disintegration or disaggregation of the center.

Symbolic Universes and the Cultural Continuum

A culture is a limited grouping of particular people in a given time or place--frequently circumscribed by a linguistic or territorial boundary--or it is the distinctive way of life of such a grouping. A culture exists in history. A culture consists of a given 'galaxy' of symbolic constellations which accrete centrifugally about some 'center of gravity'. But culture are rarely if ever completely isolated from other cultures--there is always some degree of interchange across cultural borders. Culture describes the pan cultural characteristics of humankind as it occurs through all time and across all space, and the 'cultural continuum' is complete range of intercultural relations and interchanges serving to situate separate, distinguishable cultural groupings within a larger field of relations. The cultural continuum encompasses all boundaries between cultural groupings, whether of space or time or of kind, as being semi-permeable and non-absolute. The cultural continuum itself has no recognizable boundaries--it encompasses the symbolic universe of humankind as the total, but infinite, range of symbolic variations and combinations available through space and time. The symbolic universe has no edges and no beyond in an extensive sense, except the unknowables of death and non-beingness.

It is moot point to ask whether there are not multiple symbolic universes. There are as many separable symbolic universes as there have been cultural galaxies and symbolic constellation with their own center of gravity. These differences though are intensive and qualitative--there may be infinite variations upon common themes, and no definite historical boundaries but these remain many variations upon a finite number of common themes. Cultural galaxies may be internally and intensively infinite, but they remain always extensively bounded and finite in the fixed range of its variations. Intensively, there are multiple symbolic universes, but extensively there remains only one, and that is the symbolic universe of the cultural continuum--the human universe of 'culture' as a defining characteristic of humankind.

Though there are no extensive boundaries of the cultural continuum, there are definitely recognizable 'horizons' of our understanding of its universe, beyond which our knowledge gives way to the unknown. As we approach our human horizons, knowledge gives way to ignorance, and is replaced by myth and prejudice until we are no longer able to deal in a scientific world of fact but in one of fiction. And this is an approximate matter--approaching an ever receding point of absolute zero--or of absolute nothingness.

Dialectics and Dichotomies

The dialectical tradition reaches back to Plato and Aristotle and took the form of discursive argument between an opponent and a respondent in which the arguments were framed in a syllogistic arrangement. It was not demonstrative in the way that syllogistic logic was held to be, nor was it rhetorical or convincing as 'eristic'--the success of the dialectic was to achieve an effective and relatively objective question and answer dialogue about some central theme of discussion.

This dialectic tradition formed the basis of western scholastic tradition up until the 18^th century--it was the core part of the curriculum of every major European university with but minor variations. Even so, dialectics in the traditional sense has fallen by the wayside as a polemical practice, with few surviving records of its many instances, or else it has come down to us 'Hegelian Dialectics' which involves a transcendent synthesis as an intrinsic part of the counterpoint between thesis and antithesis.

The important point is that our academic tradition remains steeped in an embedded tradition of dialectical practice though it has become largely unaware the extent of its influence in the modern world. Dialectics allows for a thematic dichotomization of reality between a thesis and its opposite antithesis--an affirmation of identity and the negative denial of difference. It is this dichotomization of human reality which provides the consistent and extended tension of reason and relevance for theoretical polemic and discourse--it also opens the way for falsification and prevarication of truth.

The dichotomization of human reality is a consequence of the pervasiveness of the dialectical tradition. Such a tradition has been rooted in the importance of basic oral dialogue as a fundamental part of the socio cultural fabric of language in a public forum. Dialogue and discursive practice is at the heart of dialectics as a tradition of intellectual practice, and dialectics was principally and purposely achieved by means of such dialogical exercise. It also points up in the dichotomization of reality between thesis and antithesis the essential duality of human understanding and meaning systems as these are projected symbolically within cultural contexts. Basic terms such as identity/difference, being and non-being, means/end, rational/relative, mind/body, nature/culture, male/female, becomes the focal center point for such dialectical discourse, pursued formally and informally as an exploratory intellectual exercise in asking and answering questions.

Symbolism of Cyclical Time

All time is cyclical--the circle is the only method of for the measurement of time. The circle and the center of the circle are the symbolic embodiments and spatialized representations of time (the clock).

The exact, ever diminishing perfect center of the circle is the symbol of perfect, eternal time--time which transcends changing and comprehends absolute peace. It is perfectly motionless time. Concentric circles about the center expresses relative time which is also real and incomplete time. It is the time of the cosmic which is in endless movement about the center. The circle represents infinity--as the endless movement of time in space. Distance from the center is the relative degree of change. The further from the center the greater the rate of change, the faster the movement of time. All change emanates from the center and orients itself around the center in cyclical revolutions.

Linear time is the unfolding of cyclical time projected upon a single plane. Linear time becomes spatialized time. The view from the center must see linear time as 'progressive' and purposive--as an evolution of events unfolding in a determined direction of change.

The center constitutes the greatest degree of control over change. It represents absolute control. It is the symbol of the Oculus or the pan optical eye of the cosmos--the omniscient knower or envisor of truth.

The number of revolutions counted from the baseline of time are the indexes of measurement of the degree of change from a point of origin. Time is spiraling out worldly.

Journeying closer to the center is to embody greater timelessness as the center of being. Journeying to the center is a journey to absoluteness--absolute power, truth and time. Standing at the center of the circle is to empower oneself with an omnipotency and omnipresence of spirit. It is a symbolic and ritual act of absolute control.

Spirit always exist at the motionless, changeless center--the exact center of the hub of the spokes of the turning wheel.

Emotionally, the center is the point of origin. It is the womb of the mother. The essence of the female element. Time and change become a male-female dialectic of roundness and straightness, pole and fountain, etiphallic penis and vulva.

Natural time is time ordered periodicities and sequences of events--eclipses, waxing and waning of moons, diurnal/nocturnal rhythms, biological cycles, seasonalities of plants and the growth cycles of animals, living and dying.

Calendrical time is ordered cosmologically by the counting of the cycles of the sun and the moon. There is agricultural time and historical time.

Mechanical time, clock time, machine time and developmental time of the modern era with increasing degrees of the symbolic directions of time. Time is linearized and vectorial in its symbolization of force.

Cybernetic time are the cycling of systems of information--the rate and capacity of the flow of information. Scientific time is symbolic of prediction and control of physical processes.

Symbolic Ecotones

Symbolisms and systems of symbolization evolve boundaries and borders in the regions of mind which define the limits of their adaptiveness and functioning. These boundaries might be described as symbolic ecotones which serve to separate different symbol systems and to control and constrain the interaction between outer and inner regions demarcated by the boundaries.

Different kinds of symbolisms may overlap to some extent, and thus integrate to form a large system, but symbolism of the same order or kind tend to be mutually exclusive of one another which it becomes the function of the ecotone to maintain separation and distance.

Ecotones are the edges of the adaptive radiations of symbolisms in culture history. They are the adaptive boundaries of time and space which determine where and when one style or trait ends and another takes over.

Symbolic Integration

Symbolic Mediation & the Psychological Construction of Reality

The purpose of this chapter is to get at the basic mechanism and sense of organization of the brain that accounts for its evolutionary function in the creation and articulation of human culture. The human brain is held to serve basically and generally as a symbolic pattern recognition devise that leads to characteristic patterns of response at all levels of perception, cognition, language and behavior. Typically, a number of distinctive structures of the brain serve this general function in an integrated way. We can speak of the brain functionally as a symbolic recognition-response apparatus. If we sought to accurately model the human brain as an artificial intelligence machine, then we would want mostly to try to capture and simulate this process of symbolic integration that the brain achieves.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Last Updated: 08/25/09