Chapter One--Thesis
Now I wish to qualify my initial metaphysical premise with an epistemological presupposition the veracity of which I will leave open to proof. It is enough to proclaim my belief in it--that it is essential to this outline. It has to do with the nature of the human mind, and is an innate universal characteristic. It is the need and capacity of the mind to draw such analytical lines by which to conceive the meaning of reality. This is related to theoretical construct of Claude Levi Strauss--the structural construct of binary opposition--and also to the Hegelian conception of the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. I will define it simply as the tendency of the mind to analyze reality in terms of dualities and the predisposition to dichotomize reality. It is especially apparent in philosophy, but I find it to be nearly universally recurrent throughout our theoretical conceptual systems. To give a few examples of common dichotomies: mind/body, analytic/synthetic, physical/metaphysical, subjective/objective, material/spiritual, rational/empirical, cognitive/behavioral.
Unlike Levi Strauss, I do not believe this to be an "unconscious" deep structure of the mind, but rather think it is quite conscious a process, being primarily an incomplete a-posteriori tendency which is a habitual, acquired and learned predisposition. It is incomplete in the sense that there is a secondary process of integration which complements and completes the total conscious process of the mind. The root of this incomplete process is in the epistemological analytic/synthetic dichotomy which in reality must be reviewed as the analytic/synthetic integrity. One consequence of this tendency towards dichotomization is the fundamental philosophical mind/body dichotomy which prevents the necessary unification of philosophy and other dependent fields of understanding. I believe rather there is really a mind/brain integrity and one plausible "biological" reductionist explanation for the analytic/synthetic process which I will call the structural dialectic is the lateralization of brain function between left and right hemispheres.
The structural dialectic of the mind is the reason for the hierarchical nature of the organization of knowledge from empirically rooted precepts to more abstract and transcendent levels of conceptuality. This is the source of the causal coherence of the mind expressed in alternative direction of simplification and complication--either simplifying fact and complicating theory or complicating fact and simplifying theory. This hierarchical organization of the mind is the resultant structure of the underlying concept of the epistemological self, and is the substructure of reality. It has been more fully elaborated in Ayn Rand's book "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". This hierarchical structure of the mind has important implications for the theoretical unification of psychology.
I believe this rather simple structural dialectic of the conscious mind may adequately supplant some of the innate Kantian antimonies of space and time and cause and effect, as realistic expressions of the a-priori fictions of truth and self respectively, given in the sense as relative absolutes, may be effectively reinterpreted within this structural dialectic as being in reality a dynamic continuum of interrelationship between two ideal fictions delineated and defined by our arbitrary line drawing, expresses more realistically within the framework of a dynamic continuum of contextual relativity or relative contextuality. Synthetic continuity of reality is emphasized rather than analytic differentiation and discontinuity. This may reasonably supplant Freud's essentially scientifically unfalsifiable and untestable notion of the "unconscious" which is directly untenable in any empirical fashion. The key difference is that within the new framework of contextuality many things subsumed under the vague notion of "unconscious"--in lieu of an adequate yet impossible reductionist biological explanation of brain function determining the form of the mind can instead be directly assailable to empirical and rational investigation and redefined rather than remain hidden beneath a shroud of darkness.
This dynamic continuum of contextual relativity is symbolically interpreted in the
Structural-dialectical sense as being the structural continuum of human reality, with the synthetic meaning of reality being realized by symbolic interpretation or interpretative symbolism.
Every initial conscious analytic dichotomization must be followed by a subsequent synthetic integration in order to achieve symbolic realism. While I have necessarily presumed an a-priori dichotomization and integration of reality (metaphysical truth/epistemological self) I have yet to make my initial a-posteriori analytic division (and subsequent synthetic reintegration).
I propose my first analytic division to be the subjective/objective (i.e. inter-subjective) dichotomization of reality. In relation to this division I wish to point up a fallacy in Hume's original empiricism. Hume lead philosophy into a dead end that it has never been able to escape. Hume's philosophy may be loosely described as being absolutely relativistic--so much so as to characterize human experience as being absolutely individually independent and essentially uncommunicable. A tree in the forest falls, but if we have not seen it fall or heard it fall, then we cannot really know it has fallen and therefore it really hasn't fallen. Hume was the ultimate solipsist. Hume is logically impeccable. Indeed his empirical philosophy is the ultimate tautology. It is only that Hume did not carry his argument far enough. Even the relativity of reality cannot be seen in absolute terms, rather it is enough to say that the tree has probably fallen and that the "bundles of perception" be firmly enough rooted in reality, in order to have the experience be objectively communicable. Objective communication depends on probabilistic approximations of empirical reality and not on absolutes. We may not know empirical reality in any absolute sense but we can and must make probabilistic versions of reality, and this relativity has proven practical enough in science.
Subjective reality is the primary "independent" reality. It is the thetical part and is idiothetic. It is a special case reality. It may be further subdivided into empirical and non-empirical realities. Non-empirical reality is phenomenological, consisting of all human experiences which are ultimately empirically unverifiable--including cognitions, conceptions, dreams, intuitions, hallucinations, imaginings, memories, sensual experiences, emotional feelings, past, future belief, willpower, synergy, perfection, ideals. It is the independent and exclusive reality. It is open ended and unlimited. Empirical reality is the second case dependent, inclusive and closed antithetical reality. It is Hume's reality of dystal stimulation which in its essence is a hypothetical construct of the mind and is empirically verifiable. Though dichotomized, empirical and non-empirical subjective realities together forms an integrity if complementarily called subjectivity. It is the private reality of the self as opposed to the public reality of the other. Subjective reality may be defined then as all that is imaginatively possible and all that proves demonstrably probable. This possibility and probability is enough openness and certainty upon which the empirical tradition of science has been founded.
The objective (inter-subjective) reality is the secondary dependent and antithetic reality of the subjective first class. It is more inclusive. It is the reality of symbolism, communication, "realism". It is nomothetic as opposed to idiothetic. Actually the subjective and objective realities are complementary and interdependent, together forming the integrity of universal human reality. Objective reality may also be subdivided into physical and metaphysical realms. The physical realm is that which is" touchable", empirically tenable, intersubjectively quantifiable and measurable. The metaphysical realm is the conceptual, the rationally questionable, and qualitatively describable and communicable. Physical reality includes the empirical basis for the traditional scientific disciplines and related interstitial fields of physics, chemistry, biology (including the biology of man-psychobiology genetics, socio-biology, and physical anthropology). Metaphysical reality includes all formal conceptual-theoretical models and systems of conceptual organization and interpretation, including taxonomies, lexicons terminologies. Precise definition is somewhat sticky business and indefinite in metaphysical reality. The subdivision and delineation of the metaphysical realm is what the remainder of this outline is concerned with.
I wish to interpret the subjective/objective dichotomization of reality in terms of structural dialectics regarding the synthetic integration of reality as a dynamic continuum. The synthetic integrity of the subjective domain is idiothetic in character and it is symbolically interpreted in idiographic fashion--which I prefer to call the verbality of reality, as no other word order in any language better conveys the dynamic character of the continuum than the action expression of the verb--verbality is self expression if the really real. Verbality is the spontaneous language of motility--the language of the self found in purified forms of art and music.
On the other hand, the objective domain of reality achieves synthetic integrity by symbolic interpretation as a nomotheitc construct and its language is essentially nomographic--which I prefer to call the nominality of reality, as no other word order in any language better conveys the contextual relativity of objectivity then the noun or name, which exists as a symbol of a static ideational construct of the present in time and space. Nominality is the responsive language of unity--the language of relationship--of communication with the other.
Together, the synthetic integration of the subjective and objective domains might be interpreted symbolically as being holothetic in structure, and it is expressed essentially in holographic symbolism--which is symbolic realism or realistic symbolism. It is the mentalistic functioning of the mind; intellection, the meaning of reality. What is reality? Reality is holothetic in its human meaning; such that any conceptual subsystem which touts any degree of completeness in truth about reality is "totipotent"--holographic in character--a rough, self contained "complete" picture of the "whole" reality. The integrity of reality is in a sense contained in a grain of sand.
The symbolism of nominality may be subdivided further into the physical language of mathematics and the metaphysical language of description. Mathematics is the language of the number--it is quantitative in character. The other language is descriptive; the language of the adjective and verb--in short the language of the word as metaphor as opposed to the number as metanym. It is more inclusive in that even numbers are words with meanings. It is essentially qualitative in character.
The true language of the physical "sciences" is mathematics in which there is an automatic preclusive criterion to meaning a fundamental and irreducible one-to-one correspondence of terms from the external consistency of actuality to the internal coherence of factuality. It would be nice if the necessity of mathematical correspondence theory of language of the physical sciences existed also in the language of the human sciences, but if and when it does, it does so a-posteriori to the fact of arbitrary human application. Physical language is the language of exclusion; metaphysical language is the language of inclusion. If simple extension of scientific language to essentially nonscientific fields of understanding were a necessity dictated not by contrived human standards but rather by objectively measurable physical reality, then it would be possible, as Descartes hopefully imagined, to turn the precision of the logic of mathematics and geometry upon the nature of human understanding, knowledge, language and ultimately philosophical systems of comprehension and theoretical systems of conceptualization, amenable to innately absolute, intrinsically unquestionable, a-priori laws of rationality.
This is exactly what is attempted in areas of economics, political science, religious science, scientific psychology, social science, social and structural anthropology, the philosophy of logic and logical and empirical positivism, etc. Every field of human understanding tends to be over scientized through exclusive dependence upon the independently exclusive language of mathematics. The inherent weakness of such an effort is the implicit denial of the irreducible relativity of human willpower in the consignment of meaning to words. There is no word uttered that lacks completely even the remotest possibility of subjective connotation, of emotional affect, of intrinsic and inclusive descriptive valuation, no matter how abstract that utterance is from the reality of daily interaction. Just as no word is uttered without some relative degree of value attached to that word, there is no such thing as a "science" of human behavior that is value free. Indeed attempts are systematically and regularly made to formulate just such a value free, mathematically precise understanding of human behavior, but the end result will always be only a very narrow range of understanding founded on only a very limited and overly restrictive and exclusive criterion of validity. The end result is a sterile and inhuman machination, without the beauty and transcendent aesthetic integrity that comes automatically with human emotional attachment and qualitative subjectivity. Qualitative subjectivity, just like quantitative objectivity, is necessarily automatic and preclusive criterion of validity in the human "sciences". If such subjectivity is openly accepted at face value it poses no problem whatsoever, but if it is denied it turns rationality upon itself into a closed system of defensive rationalization and becomes anathema to natural human value orientation. (While in the hard sciences we may look to the absolute ideal of cause and effect as in the Kantian notion of innate causality, in the empiricism of the human sciences the best we can hope for is the correlational approach in determining relative degrees of probability along a continuous dimension of affect rather than the strict experimental approach dominant in the physical sciences. How we divide this dimension and determine causality is wholly an arbitrary function. It is a problem of deciding which came first--the hen or the egg--when in reality we must look at the whole relationship as a dynamic process of continuity through time and space--while our attention to the understanding if the relationship is undivided by the necessity of predetermined causality. This is a recurrent theme throughout the understanding of human behavior.)
Now I wish to elucidate the subdivision of the metaphysical realm of reality. I do not profess scientific truth, I am only speculating an alternative perspectives. Yet it is on the nature of truth criterion which I will base my subsequent analytic subdivision. The subdivisions of the metaphysical realm consists of four paradigms of reality. These paradigms are philosophy, art, science, and humanism. They are presented in respective order for reasons that will be elaborated later. These four paradigms share the same fundamental truth criterion is "The willpower to believe in the relative truth if objective criterion for openness and communication". This criterion provides the philosophical integrity and unity between these four paradigms. In philosophy the objective criterion for openness and communication is the relative certainty of probability and the possibility of speculation. In art the objective criterion for openness and communication is affective self expression and creative conceptual realization. In science the objective criterion for openness and communication is scientific methodology itself--inter-subjective confirmation and falsification of sensual data. In humanism the objective criterion for openness and communication is ideological toleration in the widest context possible and understanding of universal human nature. This fourth paradigm I will discuss as the central thesis of the second part of this paper. Even though each paradigm is self contained in its truth criterion and presents a unified though incomplete version of reality, each in its alternative interpretation being essentially different in form and function from the other, all four are interrelated and interdependent and altogether present a unified comprehension of reality. There is a philosophy of art and science and humanism, there is an art of philosophy, science and humanism, there is a science of philosophy, art and humanism and there is a humanism of philosophy, art and science. This is the holothetic principle of reality. No one paradigm can adequately and completely substitute any of the other paradigms, and only when all are taken together do they form a complete totality of reality.
Where do I begin? Where I decide to start I believe to be irrelevant. It is primarily arbitrary, so long as I end where I want to be. So I will begin with the understanding of "will". No other species on earth can say "I will" like humanity can. Willpower is the starting point for belief in any systems of conceptioning. It is an act of will that decides whether one will choose to believe in the truth of God, of Buddha, of communism, in rationalism, in existentialism, in nihilism, in scientific methodology or in atheism. It is willpower which determines truth and determines that truth will always and forever be relative to the will to believe. If there existed such a thing as absolute truth in reality, then there wouldn't be so many people who believe so many different and often opposing truths. Absolute truth is like God, perfection and paradise--end products of wishful and vicarious imaginations. Even absolute truth is of necessity only relative.
But then how can I account for the synergistic evolution of truth in the scientific system. It is not the discovery or creation of truth that we are witnessing in the advance of science. It is rather increased complication of our reality, increased simplification of our explanation prediction and control, and these increases have been founded upon only one essential element--open communication between people. There is a dynamic interaction between science and reality. It is not that our science has changed, but it is rather that our science has transformed our reality. It is because of the relative criterion of belief in truth in the paradigm of scientific methodology, including every philosophical perspective such a paradigm entails--whether Popper, Putnam, Kuhn. Lakatos, Easley or the logical empiricists--is founded upon inter-subjective or "objective" communication that it has been so successful in transforming and enlarging our relative reality. It is this same criterion of inter-subjective communication which can be applied as the appropriate criterion for relative truth in philosophy, science, art and humanism. It is because of the will to believe in the relative truths encountered within these different systems of conceptioning have not been founded upon open communication that there have been so many different competing philosophies, arts and ideologies. I am not "scientizing" philosophy, art or humanism in the traditional sense of the physical "weltanschauung" paradigm. Rather I have expanded the scientific paradigm to be based solely upon a new criterion for truth--the openness of communication.
What is important is openness and communication and that these provide just as important a truth criterion in philosophy, art, and humanism as they are in science. This criterion operates equally well in all these systems of conceptioning. It is when relative truth is not open and is not communicated that the will to believe transforms truth into untruth and deceit. Once any philosophy, art, science or humanism, as maintained, actualized, manifested, reflected and professed by its individual adherents, sports a will to believe that is no longer open or that cannot be communicated sensibly or logically to any normal person on earth, than it no longer has valid criterion as a "science" in the more general sense of the relative objective truth. I mean by openness first honesty--which is a very difficult thing to define because like truth it is so relative. It connotes to me the will to openness of meaning to others and the will never to believe in truth in the "absolute sense" (i.e. not to be self deceptive). Contrary to opinion, one can be open and utilize a will to believe at the same time. A set of beliefs does not automatically close the individual's mind. I mean by communication the criterion of interrelationship, inter-subjectivity at the conceptual level.
The exact nature of openness and the objectivity of communication varies in each general system if conceptioning. It is apparent that these criteria are as equally valid in each respective and different system of conceptioning and that while the different systems of conceptioning may be interrelated and inter-dynamic in function, no criteria of one system may be adequately substituted for the criterion of any other system. All the criterion system serve the same basic functions in description, explanation, prediction and control on the respective area than another.
It is also apparent that I am not taking an atomistic or reductionist approach and that I am dealing with much more than just the interrelationships between the formal paradigm of natural science and the less formal paradigm of the human sciences. I am attempting to tie together philosophy, art, science and humanism in the hope that I may eventually arrive at the same definitive conclusion about the interrelationship between the natural and human sciences. I feel that these four systems of conceptioning are each a fundamental part of the whole conceptual egg I prefer to call reality or alternatively existence. Each system, though all interacting interdependently, serves a unique and different area and function in the nature of this egg and none can completely replace any other . They are all necessary. The important problem is not just to understand each system of conceptioning, but even more importantly to attempt to understand the interdependent relationships between all four systems. What ties them all together is the will to believe in the relative truth of objective criterion of open communication.
As an artist I believe there is much more truth to life and living than is purported implicitly within the narrow and extremely materialist paradigm of "science". Not all of the fundamental philosophical criterion which strictly applies to the natural sciences--objective methods of observation, controlled experimentation, validation, falsification, explanative theory construction and empirical prediction and control--readily cross over unmodified into the "human" realm of scientific investigation, without conscious alteration to fit altered criterion of understanding and truth. While it is most important to strive for the absolute standard of "scientific objectivity" in the natural sciences, it is not only inappropriate but wrong to deny the importance and value of relative arbitrariness of "human subjectivity" in the human sciences.
The ideal of parsimony which seems so appropriate in the natural sciences, does not automatically preclude understanding within the behavioral sciences. Problems arise, especially academia, when the fundamental philosophical differences in truth criterion between the two paradigms of science and humanism are lost sight of ad the strict positivist paradigm is over extended with only slight alteration in substitution of the somewhat looser criterion of human behavioral truth. Absent is the absolute character of scientific law in the study of human behavior. Abundant is the subjectivity and relativity of arbitrary interpretation and consignment of meaning. As an artist, I believe it is wrong to so strictly model the study of humanity upon the scientific model of understanding physical nature. Perhaps the scientist may one day borrow from the artist the ideal of aesthetic integrity as a substitute for the notion of natural parsimony in the quest for theoretical understanding of humanity.
Even more I must dispute the idea that the ultimate aim of prediction and control so stressed in the physical sciences is so important or primary within the human sciences, rather than simply being content with the quest for knowledge and understanding of human nature for its own intrinsic value. Just like art, such understanding is a human end in itself, a pursuit of pleasure, rather than being propagandized or subjugated as a means to some other motivation--political, economic or religious. While useful and appropriate under limited contexts, prediction and control of behavior must not be allowed to become a part of the same obsessive-compulsive social paranoia which has created and massed produced the multi-megatron MARV'd warheads of the triton class SLBM. The projected image of strict prediction and control by extreme behaviorism is too close to home in space and time to be anything but deadly frightening.
This is not to say that prediction and control have no place whatsoever in the humanistic paradigm, or for that matter all of the scientific methodological criterion can and has been in modified form made to fit well into the expanded human model of science. But we must be made aware of the modification from one fundamental criterion to the other. Nor is it to imply that no human field of study may be easily and arbitrarily systematized into a strict "pure science". Look closely at religious scientology, political science, the sciences of economics, sociology or logical positivism. One must be wary of the pitfalls of any such approach to the understanding of humanity. What is gained in the similitude of simplicity is lost in the import of valuable meaning.
While with the natural sciences the standards of objective criterion are a prime necessity, in the behavioral "sciences" such standards are rather arbitrarily self imposed rather than dictated by any form of natural a-priori determinism. The important word is arbitrary. This is the key concept which distinguishes strict natural sciences from the somewhat looser human sciences. After considering the press of environmental circumstances, the subtle subterfuge and over powering under currents of ulterior motivations, the hapless fate of fortune, the human being remains ultimately, to however diminished a degree, an end product of self made willpower. A human being still has ultimate control over destiny, even only if by suicide, no matter how slighted by other influences. It is this arbitrariness of the human willpower which allows the personality to be so unpredictable and uncontrollable. It is the lack of will which transforms a human being into a machine like automaton, allowing subsequent behavior to become so controllable and predictable.
I choose to concentrate on the humanistic paradigm. I choose to subdivide this into the anthropological (or, preferably, humanological) as a fictional humanistic reality, and into the ideological (or, alternatively, religious) field as a factual humanistic ideality. The transcendent symbolic reality of the humanistic paradigm, based as it is, on the fundamental human truth criterion of universal human nature and ideological toleration in the widest context possible (i.e., the whole of humanity) may be very curtly summed up by the statement, "To know me is to love me". The humanistic integration of anthropology and ideology is an all important crowning injunction on the philosophical definition of human reality. I will attempt to demonstrate what I feel to be the transcendent symbolic reality of both fields of anthropology and ideology by their respective subsequent subdivisions and then I will attempt to interpret how these transcendent symbolic realities of the real as means and the ideal as ends are synthesized together by defining the meaning of humanism.
I prefer to subdivide the field of anthropology into the sub-disciplines of psychology and sociology. After investigating psychology and sociology I personally became disenchanted and disillusioned with their public mystique of power and aura of officious authority over "truth". Both fields are too simply too culture bound and overly wrought with techniques of scientific reductionism for either or both to serve adequately as a broad basis for human understanding of human "nature". In short the philosophical premises on which these fields are founded are too narrow and ill defined to yield a complete understanding of humanity. Perhaps in part because of its marginal structure, the "second class" field of anthropology has transcended to some degree, though not without fault, these limitations. The philosophical premises of anthropology are adequate to serve as the basis for a relative complete understanding of "universal human nature". It is a sorry fate that anthropology must remain a background, peripheral, relatively unpopular and little understood field of inquiry, yet perhaps this humble virtue is in the long run its salvation. Anthropology is adequate and deserving as a field of transcendence over its sub-disciplines of psychology and sociology. The philosophical premises of the field of anthropology are much more general and openly inclusive than the premises of either psychology or sociology, which anthropology seems to adequately incorporate as sub-disciplines.
As sub-divisions of anthropology, psychology and sociology are philosophically distinct and different yet they are interrelated in meaning within the anthropological field. In the definition and descriptive breakdown of these two subdivisions there are parallel dichotomies between each subdivision and subsequent transcendent integrities by which the symbolic reality of anthropology may be defined. I will break down the following definitions of psychology and sociology into the parallel dichotomic concepts and will elaborate the transcendent synthetic concepts by which the field of anthropology gains humanistic meaning.
Anthropology is a synthesis of independent thetic psychological understanding and independent antithetical sociological understanding.
Psychology is/an anthropological sub-discipline, of the particularistic human understanding, of the self by the idiothetic description of personality in formal stylizations of motivational meanings of functional sources of power, achievement and affiliation and in individualistic directional repertories of intelligence, and psycho-pathology.
Sociology is/an anthropological sub-discipline of the universalistic human understanding of the other by the nomothetic definition of culture in formal configurations of relational significations of functional structures, of politics, economics and society and in collectivistic contextual models of civilization and socio-pathology.
Anthropology is/an the generalistic human understanding of the ego rationality by the holothetic interpretation of normality in formal patterns of behavioral symbolizations of functional systems of status, security and sociability and organismic conditional processes of rational creativity and behavioral irrationality.
Particularistic human understanding. This is the understanding of unique human individuality of how and why all people are different and distinct. The scope is on the total spectrum of possible individual variations, determining so to speak the horizons and boundaries and limitations of possible human variation and differentiation. The emphasis is on the differences. This understanding is characteristically psychological, and in relationship to the humanistic paradigm it is thetical, independent and exclusive. On the other hand, universalistic human understanding is sociological in character an is therefore dependent, anti-thetical and inclusive of particularistic human understanding. In a sense one must understand the differences before one can understand the similarities. Its focus is understanding of the communities of human nature which make all humans similar and related, these human characteristics which are common to all humans and by which all humans achieve a common definition. The particularistic and universalistic ways of understanding are derived from the complication/simplification aspect the concept of epistemological self, and form the basic analytic dichotomy of anthropological understanding--that of universal human nature/unique human individuality. Anthropological understanding is the symbolic synthetic transcendence of this fundamental dichotomy, and in this respect may be said to be generalistic in character. While psychological understanding can elaborate on the empirical individuality of humanity, and sociological understanding, by assigning the individual a number, can derive a tautological and mathematical comprehension of the social nature of man the indifferent insect, the number, the statistic, the social animal, the problem of anthropology as a bridge between these two different analytic understandings is that it has neither the empirical consistency available to psychology nor the tautological coherence available to sociology. To become more empirically realistic, anthropology must sacrifice the predictive the parsimony of tautological rationality. To become more tautological, anthropology must sacrifice the predictive teleological applicability to reality. The only alternative left for anthropology is to what it in fact already is and in essence always has been, and that is the study of generalization about humanity. Though never tautologically perfect nor always empirically applicable, well constructed generalizations, founded not upon prejudice but upon understanding, have nonetheless a utility power and a theoretical unity which effectively and realistically transcends either particularization or universalization. An imperfect generalization is better than none at all when we must have some understanding from which to work, and the more self aware anthropology becomes as a field of generalization, perhaps the more generative it will become of ever better generalization.
Self/other/ego reality. The object of the self is the key symbol of the humanistic interpretation of psychology. It is derived a-posteriori directly from the a-priori concept of the epistemological self. Cogito Ergo Sum. There are two defining qualities if the a-posteriori self, that of identity and of individuality. Identity is derived from awareness if possible alternatives of how one can but isn't and individuality is derived from awareness of the choices one makes in the face of possible alternatives--identity as alternative self and individuality as chosen self. It is the consciousness of individual identity. The self concept is unique, ontological synergistic, organismic. It is also a thetic, exclusive and independent concept.
The concept of the other is antithetical, inclusive and dependent as an extension of the concept of the self. It is the key symbol of sociological understanding. The experience of the group is an indispensable extension of the self. While the self is to be seen as the source of spontaneity, the other may be viewed as reciprocal responsiveness. The human being is of necessity a social animal--it is the group that man gains his social identity. One person alone is a hopeless situation.
Ego reality is the synthetical transcendent symbol of the self/other dichotomy, defining the interrelationship between self and other as the heart of the basic dyad of humanity. In psychological terms it may be stated as the self-ego dyad in which the ego is the self defined in terms of the other. In inclusive sociological terms it may be stated as the ego other dyad, with the ego being the other defined in terms of the self. This concept is derived in part from the psychoanalytic conception of the ego as being the realistic integrator between the id and superego. In a sense ego is reality, while concepts of self are real fictions, to be understood only in terms of the ego reality.
Idiothetic description/nomothetic definition/holothetic interpretation. Idiothetic description represents an alternative methodology and rationale than is usual in the general field of psychology, for understanding personality in idiographic terms of information about what an individual tends to do, not in direct contrast with what others tend to do, as in the case in differential psychology, but in direct contrast to that person's own identity--what that person tends not to do but could do. It is a rationale based squarely on the notion that the kind of person one is determined by the kind of person one is not but could be and is only incidentally and if at all, reflected in the kind of person someone else is. It is concerned exclusively with personality development, change and consistency rather than with comparison of the substance of individual's personalities. Comparison of attributes with the other concept is secondary and is actually a sociological approach, even though it is called differential psychology. Actually much of psychology looks at human behavior exclusively in a nomothetic framework, including behaviorists and scientific psychologists, and these are, at least as far as this philosophical outline is concerned, actually working under a sociological discipline. Again this concept of idiothetic description is thetical, independent and exclusive. It is derived directly from the idiographic concept of the self--the view that behavior is self determined. It is descriptive in as much as personality attributes characterizing the self are only ultimately describable as qualitative tendencies or pre-dispositions, as valuative nonentities rather than as real existents.
On the other hand, nomothetic definition is a sociological, antithetical concept, dependent and inclusive of idiothetic description. It is derived from comparison and differentiation of the other concept between individuals. It is the statistical reification of the other as real fiction, focusing on inter-human interaction, interdependencies, and interrelationships with the aim at discarding differences and discovering similarities of character traits. It is definition of the roles, titles, foundations of the structural interstices which makes society cohesive.
Holothetic interpretation is the synthetical transcendent concept. I have coined this word to fit this purpose of integration of two otherwise complementary yet analytically separate approaches to human understanding. It is my own formulation derived from the concept of holographic representation--four dimensional reproduction of reality in visual and sonal mediums. Peculiar properties of holograms are the interference patterns, the ability for any small portion of the plate to reproduce almost fully, with reduced sharpness and perspective, the whole picture and the potential tremendous storage capacity of information--a one centimeter cube to have superimposed multiple images throughout its thickness and at divergent angles, virtually a whole set of encyclopedias of information. I propose this to be yet another linking concept in the mind/body dichotomy. It is the bio-holographic model of brain function as proffered originally by Paul Greguess. It focuses on neuronal interconnections and chemical structure as replicating the form and function of holography, interference patterns existing throughout portions of the brain, explaining mental consciousness, the ability of such a small mass of brain tissue to reproduce perceptually with such four dimensional realism and integration so much information, and tremendous storage capacity, and also might help to explain the ability of the brain t retain mental integrity and generalize to some extent brain function inspite of brain damage. I propose to over extend this biological analogy one sociobiological step further with the concept of holothetic interpretation of ego reality. In sociobiological terms it might be a link between the unique human individuality/universal human nature dichotomy or alternately may serve as a model for integrating the culture and personality dichotomy between replication of uniformity and organization of diversity.
Vaguely I will describe holothetic interpretations of ego reality as being the ability of the human ego to function sociologically as a fragment of a hologram, to some distinguished degree replicating with some degree of consistency the whole culture, being universally adaptable to any behavioral mode as it is, and with the ability of a person to give an ethnographer a relatively complete or whole rendition of his culture, while at the same time retaining complete individuality in stylization and integrity in cutting up the spectrum of all possible behavior patterns. While each person of a culture is distinct and different, each person retains simultaneously to some extent the gross characteristics peculiar and consistent to that culture.
Personality/culture/normality. The psychological symbol of personality might be described as the real fiction underlying all psychology. For all the lip service paid to personology there is yet to be defined an adequately realistic model of the basic attributes of personality which can be applied to any and every person. Personality is the integrity of self (individuality and identity) on an abstract theoretical idiothetic plane involving definition of personality in terms of attributes, characteristics, and idiosyncratic behavior patterns. Even though it is a thetical, independent and exclusive fiction, it is nonetheless also a reality--the summation of self in pan human terminology. No matter how difficult it proves to get a firm grasp of "personality"--no matter how slippery the concept--it is nonetheless an existent in human reality.
The sociological symbol of culture is similar to personality, being equally difficult if not impossible to adequately define--though it is antithetical, dependent and inclusive of the concept of personality. It is akin to Ruth Benedict's concept of cultural configuration. It is the characteristic contiguity and continuity of the consistency of a culture. It might be characterized as the Modal personality approach or the basic personality structure of a culture.
The synthetical symbol of normality or "normal identity" as defined by the anthropological understanding if the ego reality holothetic interpretation is the real fictionality of integration in relationship between personality and culture. It might be called normal integrity between personality and culture. It is the normative concept of appropriate personal behavior in context to cultural standards, programs, morals or of cultural behavior patterns and organization in personalistic terms of convictions, values, beliefs. It is the personification of culture and the enculturation of personality. It is the reality of integration between culture and personality. I am implying a statistical average--and I mean just that and more than that. By abnormal I mean simply deviation from the "norm" not pathology, but either sub-normality or super normality. I am implying a range of personality co-variation within a continuum of culturally channeled behavior patterns. Normality is the "ordinary". It is a holothetic fictional reality in that there is no real such thing as a really "normal" entity, though some may approximate normality to the nth degree, or situation, and that all things are assessed personally and culturally in terms of normality.
Formal styles/configurations/patterns. Individuals approximate styles, tendencies toward some individual idiosyncratic ideal. Groups of individuals come together to assimilate and approximate cultural configurations. Styles are thetical, exclusive and independent. Configurations are dependent upon styles, inclusive of styles and anti-thetical to styles. Between stylization and configuration holothetic "interference" patterns emerge. Humans in reality approximate and recapitulate patterns, gestalts, which are recognizable. Being recognizable, styles, configurations and patterns are formal abstract ideational entities, which nonetheless predetermine structure and function of personality, culture and normality.
Motivational meanings/relational signs/behavioral symbols. Motivational meanings are the psychological conceptions of self determination. It is thetical in the sense of being initiative and spontaneous. It is independent and exclusive to self. Motivational meanings are based on self awareness or self consciousness of individual needs. I propose a need hierarchy similar to Abraham Maslow's need hierarchy, but also instead as a linking concept between the mind/body dichotomy. It is a biological analogy to the epistemological hierarchical organization of knowledge from empirical percepts to abstract generalities, and it is also related to the classic Freudian psycho sexual divisions of human personality development--the oral, anal, phallic, and genital components and phases of human personality. Rather than being determined primarily in early childhood, this need hierarchy is continuously developing and motivationally active throughout the course of life. The oral phase is reinterpreted as stemming from the biological needs of urination and defecation, the phallic needs arise from ever present psycho sexual-psycho social needs of biological procreation. The genital needs are the meta-needs of sensory stimulation, perception, either sensory deprivation or sensory overload, and cognition, including the needs of self expression and self determination-decision making-the normative needs.
Relational signs exist in the social environment as cues and directional modifiers and channelizers of psychological motivations. They are the vehicles of relation, communication and expression by which motivational meanings achieve context and meaning relative to the culture. Motivational meanings become significant only when they can be effectively attached to some relational sign. Relational signs are antithetical to, dependent upon and inclusive of motivational meanings.
Behavioral symbols are the synthetic integrity of motivation, meanings and relational signs. They are the symbolization which not only induces and explains behavior, but they are symbolizing behavior itself. In the act of inter-subjective communication of motivational meanings the human being becomes a symbolizing creature.
Behavioral symbolism is probably the most conspicuous and pervasive aspect of human understanding. It provides a basis to the theoretical unification of the psychological and sociological schemes and the prevalent intra-disciplinary schisms under the appellation of social behaviorism. Behavioral symbolism is typically divided into three mutually inter-functioning and interdependent categories, but in reality these categories are analytical divisions of a multidimensional continuum of behavioral symbolization varying between the extremes of passive "liminality" of the unconscious reality and full blown physical expression in activity. This behavioral continuum is summed up by the words "Vachasa, Manasa, Kayena"--in thought, in speech, in deeds, The three analytical categories if this continuum are the cognitive, the emotive, and the connative. The behavior within each category influences and finds expression in each of the other three categories. All behaviors may be analyzed in terms of any one of these categories. Any one category can be applied to all behaviors. The important point is that in behavioral reality all three categories lie within a single multi-dimensional continuum, and to invoke any single category exclusively in ex-understanding human behavior to the ignorance of any other category is to separate theoretical explanation from the reality that is sought to be explained.
The cognitive behavioral category might be interpreted as lying on the continuum closer to the psychological motivational meaning end, with the tendency for explanation to the psychological in character, this independent, exclusive and iniatively thetical, but it must be remembered that it is in actuality within the anthropological behavioral symbolization mode of interpretation and as such is actually transcendent of the limitations of exclusively psychological explanation. Likewise, on the opposite extreme of the behavioral continuum the connative category can be thought of in context dependent and inclusive sociological terminology, as being antithetical to the cognitive category. Also the emotional category might be viewed as the transcendent synthetical anthropological category, as being in essence the integration between the underlying mind/body dichotomy implied by the two extremes. Behavioral symbolization is in essence the understanding of symbolically invoked emotionality as the basis of human behavioral expression. The behavioral continuum can be seen as a bridge between the self determined independent variable of spontaneity and the other determined dependent variable of responsiveness. The behavioral continuum is multi-dimensional in the sense that it expresses continuing mutual interaction between (a) the three "personality systems" of the psychological category, (b) the three behavioral "effects" of the emotive anthropological category and (c) the three past, present, and future environments of the sociological connative category. This is the dynamic continuum of relative contextuality which is the basis for theoretical unification of the human "sciences".
The cognitive category has been interpreted variously as the ideological super structure of Marxist dialectical dogmatism, or in social behaviorism as the language-cognitive process, and as the problem of antinomality, or as the problem of metaphysical ambivalence. It is also constructed as the supernatural realm.
The emotive category has been described as the sociologic-symbolic structure of human organization in dialectical materialism and in structural anthropology, as the emotional-motivational processes by social behaviorism, and by Geertz as the problem about suffering. It is also the human realm as mediator between the supernatural and natural.
The connative category includes the materialistic base of human social organization in Marxism,, as the sensori-motor processes in social behaviorism, and by Geertz as the ethical problem about evil. It is the natural realm.
It is important to emphasize the importance of the openness and the holistic multi-dimensionality of the behavioral continuum. The hierarchical structure of epistemological knowledge is replicated in each of these dimensional categories. Behavior is one category achieves simultaneous expression in each of the other categories. Perhaps this might serve as the basis to Jung's concept of synchronicity.
Functional sources/structures/systems. Formal stylizations of motivational meanings are causally related to functional sources, likewise formal configurations of relational significations are causally related to functional structures, and finally functional sources and structures are integrated into functional systems of interaction causally related to formal patternings of behavioral symbolization. Sources are psychological, independent, exclusive and thetic. Structures are sociological, dependent, inclusive and antithetical. Systems are synthetic, transcendent and integrative. Just as form seems to determine function, so also does form follow function, in a cyclical interrelationship (the hen and the egg system).
Power/politics/status. On fundamental source is thetic, independent exclusive psychological power motivation, which is defined as the impact and influence of the self upon the other, or in holothetic terms as the self directed ego. The fundamental functional structure of this power motivation is political structure (sociologically antithetical, dependent and inclusive), manifest and expressed in one form or another in all cultures. The principle transactional-exchange medium of power and politics is the energy resource. The functional behavioral system formed by the integration of power sources and political structures is the fundamental status system.
Achievement/economics/security. Another fundamental source is psychological achievement motivation, which is defined as the level of control and manipulation of material resources. The principle transactional-exchange medium is the money resource, into which all the material resources can be translated. The functional structure of achievement motivation is economic which is manifest in all cultures in one form or another. The resultant functional system is the fundamental security system.
Affiliation/society/sociability. Affiliation motivation is the third fundamental functional source. It may be defined as the level of interaction and interrelationship between self and other but with the emphasis on the impact of the other upon self, or as the other directed ego. The fundamental functional structure of this source is the social structure--the characteristic manner a culture divides and forms its social relationship. The principle transactional-exchange medium is the time resource. Can you spare the time? Affiliation motivation and social structure integrate to form the fundamental functional systems of sociability.
I wish to demonstrate at this point the complexity of the philosophical problem of comprehensive definition of human reality, which this outline has attained at this "functional" level, which I will call the holothetic multidimensionality of the functional problem. While power, achievement, and affiliation may be seen as exclusively psychological in understanding, and politics, economics and social structures may be understood as inclusively sociological, while sociability, status and security may be considered anthropological, at the same time all three sources, structures and systems can be seen as interaction and interdependent--affiliation may be described in terms of power and achievement, politics is interdependent with economics and social structure. Status is dependent upon security and sociability. The resources of time, energy and money may be translated into one another. These are analytical classifications, and in reality they are all integrated within a single, whole multidimensional system. At the same time the power/politics/status system may be analyzed as being primarily psychological in character, while achievement/economics/security system might be viewed as antithetically sociological, and the affiliation/society/sociability might be characterized as anthropological understanding, at least from a behavioral perspective. These functional system might be summarized as the universal human quest for "God, Gold and Glory". Francis Hsu has included the concept of the three S's (status, security, and sociability) as the basis for a pan cultural definition of normality).
Individualistic directional repertories/collectivistic contextual models/organismic conditional processes. Functional sources are determined by the repertories available to the individual, his abilities and capacities, and they are directional in the sense of being diachronically ordered and of being either self directed or otherwise. Psychological directionality is thetical, independent and exclusive in understanding. Functional structures are likewise determined by models or conformity which are existent or are possible, understanding defining and being defined by the sociological contextuality, antithetical, dependent and inclusive.
Organismic conditional processes increases the complexity of the philosophical problem of defining human reality by one order of magnitude greater than that level expressed by the holothetic multidimensionality of the dynamic continuum of behavioral symbolism. In defining the functional system, our definition is going to be determined by the anthropological understanding of the conditionality of those behavioral systems by the prevailing organismic processes. These organismic processes can be analytically divided into two conditions, which I will most generally call healthy as a positive organismic process and pathological as negative organismic process. Now health is more than merely an absence of pathology, it entails a qualitatively different process of being, but pathology, in my mind at least, can be viewed in the negative terms of an absence of health. Health and pathology, defined in humanistic terms of psychology, sociology and anthropology, as an alternative organismic processes are to be thought of in terms of the positive conditions of intelligence/civilization/rational creativity and in negative conditions of psycho pathology/socio pathology/general pathology. But more than the negative and positive conditions the conditionality of organismic processes entails the imposition of four prevailing meta types, which might be thought of as the minimum possible requirements for parsimonious construction of theory of human reality. I will call these four meta types oral, anal, phallic and genital, but I wish to avoid the psychoanalytic connotations of these terms. I do not mean to imply the psycho sexual components of personality even though these components may be indirectly related. It is more related to the conception by R. Buckminster Fuller of the tetrahedron as being the minimal-maximal coordinate system employed by nature. In modeling theoretical reality these four meta types serve as the four interrelated vertices of tetrahedron, which are the minimal number of vertices equally interrelatable. I am not claiming any sort of "natural" discovery, I am only asserting the possibility that the conceptual model of the tetrahedron, as the minimal 3-D projection of the equilateral triangle, is the most parsimonious possible in theoretical reconstruction of reality. This model incorporates the triangular interrelationship of the analytic, synthetic and synthesis, which in turn might be used to account for the hierarchical structure of knowledge recurrent throughout this model, extended one dimension more to form an organizational complex of a pyramidal hierarchy as the minimal structure extending in negative and positive directions from a single point of origin, and this pyramidal hierarchy can also be used as the minimal model for describing the cyclical positive and negative spirals in the temporal dimension such as the vicious cycle. Negative-positive feedback loops.
I do not intend to imply that the structure of the tetrahedron is the a-priori necessity dictated by metaphysical truth or epistemological self, that it is the necessary basic structure of either physical or metaphysical reality, but only that I believe that the concept of the tetrahedron is possibly the most useful and parsimonious theoretical model within which the otherwise overwhelming complexity if the philosophical understanding of human reality may be most adequately and optimally represented.
I have found recurrent the utilization of four "meta types" employed for understanding humanity. McClelland used these four types in his description of power motivation, and I believe these four types can be extended to achievement motivation and affiliation motivation as well. These four types are indicative of a more theoretically general meta types that might have been more adequately described by Magorah Maruyama as causal meta types of classificational, random, homeostatic and morphogenetic with corresponding epistemological mindscape types H, I, S, and G. These four types represent theoretically fundamental orientations by which all human personality and culture may be adequately understood. Let me emphasize that these four meta types are in a sense perfect theoretical pre-dispositions--they do not exist in human reality personified by a perfect H, I, S and G. All human share traits of all these meta types, no human is absolutely pure in type. The types are potentially concurrently present in all human beings. I wish to emphasize though that these are arbitrary theoretical classifications, they do not exist in human reality, if they can be found theoretically useful, then that is enough. I am not trying to force their empirical validity, rather I am merely trying to suggest the possibility of their rational utility. They are not even human in the sense of categorizing personality types within them, they are rather categories for the organization of theoretical knowledge which may or may not be applicable to personalities. In a sense they are developmental stages, as each higher stage is theoretically incorporative of the previous stages, and yet they are developmentally diachronic. I wish also to express the holothetic multidimensionality of these four stages, as all are expressible in dimensions of other stages and all are interrelated to form the whole. If these four coordinate system forming a tetrahedron were used as a classificational system of people, then it might be possible to locate the coordinate of a single person's personality anywhere within the space bounded by the tetrahedron and the sum of distances from that point to the surfaces of the tetrahedron would be equal to the height of the tetrahedron.
Oral type I-Epistemological mindscape type H, homogenistic, hierarchical, causal meta type classificational, philosophical metaphysical modality, other-source, self-object, power deriving from support.
Anal type II-Epistemological mindscape type I, heterogenistic, individualistic, causal meta type random, artistic metaphysical modality self-source, self-object, autonomy, will, self-control.
Phallic type III-Epistemological mindscape type S, hetereogenistic, interactional, causal meta type homeostatic, scientific metaphysical modality, self-source, other-object, assertive, competitive.
Genital type IV-Epistemological mindscape type G, heterogenistic, interactional, causal meta type morphogenetic, humanistic metaphysical modality, other-source, other-object, genital mutuality, it moves me to serve others.
It may be found that these four types correspond too the need hierarchy I have earlier described, that it is the motivational source of these predispositions, thus giving them some foundation in empirical reality, but it must be emphasized that these types and the corresponding needs are not fixed stages of psycho sexual or psycho social development, but are rather continuous in source and influence and therefore are continuously adaptable and alterable throughout life. These types cut across all personalities, all share attributes of each type, it is just that some typical tendencies are more stressed within the personality matrix than any other typal disposition.
Intelligence/civilization/rational creativity. I have found intelligence defined in many different ways. The ability to solve problems, the ability to learn, to remember, to understand, to form concepts, to think effectively, as academic achievement, as being what intelligence tests measure. The point of the matter is that there really is no physically existing entity that is "intelligence"--it is primarily an arbitrary meaning based upon the definer's point if view. Conventional definitions of intelligence are culture bound. To call a dog more intelligent than a snail, and a chimpanzee more intelligent than a dog, is really to say nothing meaningful at all, but is rather a projection of what some humans believe to be intelligent upon the natural behavior of completely incomparable species, and so also with cultures. Definition of intelligence is in the first place an arbitrary matter, and in the second place it depends entirely upon the cultural prejudices and biases in relation to which it is to be evaluated and interpreted. We live in a time obsessed culture. Amidst so much social complexity and so fast change, time becomes utmost in our valuations of the basic elements in our lives. This is reflected again in our intelligence testing--the rate of learning, the rate of appropriate response--how "fast" or how "slow" a person is. But why must the efficient use of time be construed as a primary indicator of "intelligence"?
In our culture which so reinforces and values so competition, egoism and status seeking, it is no wonder that intelligence has come to be so highly valued as the ultimate "trait" any human being can be endowed with. There is an extremely high correlation between intelligence and verbal competencies. To be shy or to have a speech impediment or to have been raised in a cultural environment of linguistic deprivation is automatically and preclusively to have low "intelligence" as well.
But how are intelligence and language strongly correlated? It is taking the truth criterion of language in pursuit of the ideal of mathematical correspondence in which a purely logical system of rationalization follows from a purely iconographic representational set of names with assigned absolute meanings. It is creating an arbitrarily imposed "value free" language the mastery of which determines not only intelligence, but virtual social classification as well. Ultimately intelligence measurement cannot be completely separated from the interdependent relationship to value measurement--the so called "ethical quotient". The meaning which gives life to the concept of intelligence cannot be absolutely divorced from its primary dependence on arbitrary value orientation and the virtual openness of qualitative frames of reference. Like language intelligence is dependent on open communication and actual performance. Hidden potentiality is virtually unmeasurable. It stresses differential access to conventionalized and standardized forms of meaning to the neglect of imaginative possibilities of individualized interpretations. The quality of the word is relative to the speaker or the listener. It varies infinitely, though not unintelligibly, from individual to individual, from culture to culture, in relative context to interpretation from varied standpoints.
Our intelligence tests are based on the ability to communicate effectively. If there is poor communication, then there is poor intelligence. There is no way to test or to evaluate in context of social interrelationship possible nonverbal forms of communication. Intelligence tests are constructed of words. Schools run on words. Sciences consist of words. In the beginning was the word. In the end will be the word. Words are the fundamental building blocks of our conceptual (metaphysical) reality. The fundamental truth criterion of tests, theories and civilization is communication. It takes at least two people to make an intelligence test, a language, a science, a state or a species. Open communication, unhindered, and encouraged and virtually unlimited access to mutual understanding as well as general knowledge, is the single most important key to paradise in our Brave New World of so many unresolved social problems. Communication is the most essential premise underlying all truth criterion no matter what field or area of conceptualization.
Ultimately intelligence testing can only measure levels of achievement of desirable social competencies to the ignorance of other possible possibilities. In as much as testing is based exclusively upon achievement, in terms of the ability to communicate effectively, intelligence measurement is a valid estimate of environmental factors in development of personality and especially cultural variables. Conventional definitions of intelligence which are basically nomothetical sociological comparisons across groups of different individuals and classifications to assess the individual's potential social "utility" value, are based upon a formal analogy of the computer--the intellectual is supposed to be computer like, with tremendous storage capacity, instantaneous recall, fast and accurate automatic mathematical manipulation of big numbers--or else the "intellectual" amounts to being no more than the complete social animal--with the "gifts" of charisma, "the gift of gab", decisive authority, a neat and beautiful appearance, a dedicated believer--in short the students who are the loudest, who have the most impressive and sophisticated speech patterns, use the biggest words, work the hardest, attract the most attention, know the most trivia, get the most "A's". Ultimately there is no way to measure innate intellectual abilities, as distinguished from acquired competencies.
Definition of intelligence and its measurement of performance of acquired skills is an area that is extremely susceptible to influence by culturally biased valuations and prejudices. Lets take "intelligence" for what it really means. It is a convenient and extremely useful tool for social classification and as such it is one of the most vile manifestations of that internal form of infra-societal racism which separates ethnic groups and lower and upper classes, the "beautiful people" from the "ugly ones". To be given an IQ score on the basis of wholly arbitrarily constructed tests founded upon some other person's valuations amounts to be tattooed with a number upon one's forehead, being irreversibly ranked and classed as to social usefulness--a classification from which it is extremely difficult if not impossible to escape from. It amounts to be classified as to inherent social "superiority" or "inferiority". There is no way to remove from the meaning or intelligence this infrasocial racial connotation of status. Ultimately there is no way of completely separating the meaning of intelligence from social valuation. Intelligence measures become the reality, after the fact of acquisition and demonstration of measurable competencies, only in so much as they are accepted as true and believed in without question.
Intelligence becomes a hindrance or the gateway to achievement only in so much as the individual and his culture allows it to be one. Ultimately intelligence is a function of willpower. Now I am not saying that there is no such thing as "mental retardation" with an organic, physiological, psychological, behavioral or sociological basis in reality, nor that there aren't the occasional child prodigies who are in their own way as abnormal and limited as the retarded. But talents and "gifts" are after the fact of their demonstration, and usually if an individual has not culturally inherited those "gifts" at an early age, then that person is very unlikely to receive such cultural endowment or social investment from anyone else unless he/she willfully and painstakingly gives the gift of intelligence to himself/herself.
For the normal human being there is a broad range of potential human behaviors by which intelligence can be defined. In general the more complex a culture might be said to be, the broader the possible range of selection of behaviors. In so much as intelligence tests bracket only a very narrow range of the individual behavior into arbitrary and culturally prescribed categories in comparison to many others in his culture--intelligence tests fail to adequately evaluate the individual's full range of potential behaviors.
Defining intelligence is as difficult as it is to define personality. To label a personality as being "unintelligent" amounts to the same thing as calling that personality "worthless". Now it depends upon one's philosophical orientation, but to me there is no such thing as a worthless person. Human beings are ends in themselves, not the means to any other end. Intelligence is as uniquely individual and as culturally diverse as are personalities. Intelligence might be thought of as the summarizing valuation of a personality. In as much as there are no two personalities exactly the same, so too there are no two intelligences exactly the same. Intelligence tests can only measure behavioral similarities, it ignores the diversity. In this sense then I consider intelligence as a wholistic, integrative form of function of the individual, and not just as being one narrow aspect of the total inventory of personality traits. Intelligence is wholly idiographic; different and distinctive to each personality. To divorce the definition of intelligence from that individual frame of reference is to lose the real meaning of that term.
Intelligence is a relative thing--to the individual personality and culture--there is no a-priori absolute rational form of "intelligence in nature or manifest in any human behavior--and there is no valid assessment of intelligence without through understanding of the individual personality and the cultural context. It is all right to speak of the intelligence of a bee or snail or dog, or chimpanzee or of cultural intelligence of each of these species, but it is not right to compare the relative intelligence between a bee, a dog, or a chimp, without imposing arbitrarily and artificially contrived human valuations on the meaning of intelligence. Intelligence is species specific (and individually and culturally specific as well). A dog can be said to have dog like intelligence. The intelligence of a human being can likewise be said to be "human like".
I will risk my definition of the meaning of intelligence, one that I don't think can be substantiated by the usual scientific methodology, and if because of this it must be considered worthless from a scientific point of view, it is no less valuable to me in my attempt to understand human behavior. Just like the human psyche, human intelligence has two components, a conscious one and an "unconscious" one, even though standard tests tend to measure only the conscious, communicated, preeminently verbalizable manifestations of intelligence, in fact the "unconscious"--"unverbalizable" portion of intelligence constitutes at least half if not most aspects of what I believe to be individual intelligence. Intelligence can be manifested as much by fantasy and imagination as through general knowledge. In this sense intelligence represents a complete and ultimately unfathomable range of potentiality of possible human development for acquiring and learning mental capacities and skills, including all possible deviations and variations of human behavior that has ever been evinced in the history of humanity.
Manifest, conscious intelligence must have a high correlation with open mindedness. To me it is logically impossible to be considered intelligent and close minded at the same time. Intelligence, understanding and comprehension is a relative function of the relative degree of open mindedness--freedom from prejudices and ignorance. Even more intellectual capacity is a function of the ability for an individual to behave for himself and to make conscious and conscience decisions independent of the will of others. Unconscious intelligence, likewise, must be correlated highly with intuitive capacities, with the state of liminality. It is difficult for me to believe that those "bright" students who are so academically proficient in reading the instructor and in playing with the curriculum can at the same time be considered as more intelligent when they are often more narrow minded in their outlook and lack a mind of their own.
There then is in my mind no realistic way to divorce from intelligence the value connotations upon which its social meaning is derived. I have proffered an idiographic definition of intelligence from an independent and exclusive psychological viewpoint, now I shall also proffer a cultural definition of the intelligence of humanity--as a single biological and behavioral species--and this definition is to be found strongly related to the concept of "ethical quotient". In a cultural definition of intelligence, whether explicitly recognized as such or only tacitly presumed, there is no way to separate out the influence of subjective valuation. What is to be considered from a sociological or cultural standpoint as intelligent or unintelligent is automatically to be considered good or bad, right or wrong, beneficial or malevolent, healthy or pathological, normal or abnormal, rational or insane. There is no separating the meaning of one set of normative concepts from any of the others in the relational contextuality of nomothetic understanding sociology entails. In this sense intelligence can be said to be a function of authoritarianism and conventionalism.
The cultural form of intelligence I think can be boiled down to the idea of the openness of communication, or the capacity for such openness, implying the ability to express oneself effectively, to be honest and trusting and especially important to be aware of and sensitive to the needs, feelings and valuations of others--as opposed to the ignorance and prideful apathy which underlies prejudice, bigotry,, bias and leads to racism and discrimination and fascism and hate and war and death and destruction. I cannot accept the idea that a person cold and insensitive in communication, relation and interaction with the presence of others, or who are otherwise "out of tune" with their own sensitivities and feelings, or who cannot pet a dog or enjoy a sunrise, can be construed in any way as culturally intelligent. Humanism as an ideology, a belief in fundamental human innocence and virtue, in unalienable human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, in human justice and equality, is the essential basis of the meaning of human intelligence in a pan cultural context. To the extent that an individual incorporates this fundamental humanism in transcendence of specific cultural biases and prejudices is that individual to be considered intelligent from a pan cultural perspective.
Also strongly related to the idea of human cultural intelligence as a single behavioral species is the evolutionary emergence of technological civilization through rational creativity, communication and social integration. It is to do with the discovery of "truth" in the sense that Mahatma Gandhi meant and with the wisdom of Gandhi to see that underlying all cultural intelligence must be a basic trust in life, in the form of love and that ultimately pacifism is the ultimate political expression of this cultural intelligence.
The relativity of intelligence is denied as much as the relativity of language is denied. The beauty of personality is deformed or conformed to fit a standard mold of a highly socialized character stereotype, incorporating only a very narrow range of potential human behavior or personality deviation. As much as the beauty of language becomes lost to dictionary forms, lost in intelligence measurement is the strength of individuality, the subjective and qualitative valuation of personality, the natural inquisitiveness and will to become better and the creativity of Homo Ludens. Even more human cultural intelligence is almost synonymous with creativity. If one is not aware of the crucial role played by creativity in the evolution of human civilization, then there is no use even reading this. Creativity is adapting reality to fit human needs, a measure of human spontaneity and willpower rather than mere responsiveness to environmental or cultural conditions. Creativity is not only one, essentially nonverbal, form of human competence, i.e., innate intelligence, but as an artist I believe it is the highest level of intelligence or genius to which any individual with free will may aspire. It is creativity as much as language which has brought civilization forth from the womb and the cave. Creativity as much as language is what distinguishes "civilized" from "primitive" mentalities of humanity. Creativity is the truth of human genius.
The cultural definition of intelligence is best summarized by the name of civilization. There is the prejudice that civilization is essentially culturally biased, that civilization connotes the western historical tradition of civilization. Civilization is by its very meaning transcultural. The benefits of civilization are readily assimilated into every culture. Televisions, medicine, photographs--these are worldwide phenomenon. Civilization is not a thermo-nuclear warhead or Dachau--these things are anti-civilization. Civilization is much more than just scientific and technological. The symbolic meaning of civilization can best be analyzed in the descriptive terms of the four metaphysical paradigms which I have proffered. These four paradigms, the philosophical, artistic, scientific, and humanistic, are the cornerstones to the metaphysical foundations of civilization--as cultural intelligence. The ordering of these four paradigms is important when we consider the synergistic, synthetic symbolic nature of the meaning of civilization as a developmental continuum of human "culture" in general. All paradigms are interrelated and inter-developmental stages or components of civilization. They are not necessarily sequential from one stage to the next, but they are concurrent, with a shift on emphasis from one stage to the other. The humanistic stage is the culminating maturity level consisting of adequate resolution and harmonization of all stages. All are evidenced in every personality structure--intelligence--and in every cultural configuration-civilization.
Having defined personality intelligence and cultural civilization as meaning the positive individualistic directional repertories and as positive conformist contextual models, that these are in essence the psychological and sociological valuations of health, and having implied that creativity and communication is the ultimate expression of intelligence and civilization, I will next proffer a definition of rational creativity or of as being the synthetic anthropological holothetic definition of positive organismic conditional processes--ultimately the anthropological definition of healthy behavior.
Creative rationality or rational creativity might be misconstrued as an impossible combination of opposites. Where creativity seems to entail a temporary suspension of rational thought, a suspended state of unconscious liminality, on the other hand rationality demands full if not heightened consciousness. The root of rationality is the consciousness of communication. Thought and language, though very much interrelated, and lying upon a single dimension of human behavior, are not exactly synonymous. While language deeply influences and helps to determine the structure and form of expression our thought will take, it can at no time ever take the place of thought without inducing closure of rationality and denying the truth criterion of openness. Take for instance nonverbalized forms of thought and expression and experience, especially in the case of imaginative possibilities. While language determines the probable direction and forms of expression of our thoughts, it is a-posteriori to human arbitrariness, not an a-priori predetermined necessity rooted innately in human nature. Verbalized language does not automatically preclude all possible directions our imagination might take. We can indeed privatize our language to a secret and verboten realm of internal truth, and this happens more often than not, within manmade social boundaries and classification systems, but it does so at the sacrifice of openness of communication.
One problem with a privatized language is that it denies access to those who have not acquired that language competence. Acquisition of that private language is guaranteed access to that closed community and internalized significances of meaning. Privatized language is not founded upon the truth criterion of open communication. Innate human language capacity is rather limited. Social language is a means of transcendence--creating potentially unlimited reservoir of terms and concepts with which to give virtually unlimited expression to our open ended imaginations. Writing as a form of social communication allows transcendence over our own innate limitations, as does our scientifically based understanding and our technological inventions allows us physical mastery over our severe innate physical limitations. Without writing, the evolution of technological civilization would be impossible. Communication of expression creates not only the subjective identity of the person and the external reality outside that person, but ultimately it is the very fabric of that reality. It is the act of relationship between that mind-body dichotomy undermining all philosophy--integrating and synthesizing a unity of identity that is reality.
I propose the "theory of creativity" as being the key to understanding universal human nature, and in a sense this rational creativity is a metaphysical expression of the physical biological creativity which is the key to the survival and evolution of the human species. It implies anthropological, psychological and sociological adaptability to change, which is considered an essential quality of reality. It is rational creativity which separates humanity from all other biological species, which has enabled the singular anti-entropic evolution of human civilization, which is at the heart of personality intelligence. Understanding rational creativity is essential to understanding the health and pathology of humanity--of the personality and the culture. The "theory of creativity" provides the philosophical and theoretical unity for understanding universal human nature, for unifying the fields of human understanding, namely anthropology, psychology and sociology.
Unfortunately what is considered to be culturally "intelligent" human behavior is often times contrary to the meaning I have just given to personality intelligence and civilization, in as much as prejudice and closed mindedness influence such a cultural definition--intelligent behavior is considered to be the epitomization or exemplary reinforcement behavior of the cultural values and pre-established and significant conventions. Now look and see what harm our own "civilized" culture has done to such a meaning. Such a definition would stress the values of human cooperation and individuation, but we find the prevailing values to be primarily competitive. Effective and successful intraspecies competition is erroneously judged on the grounds of social Darwinism--"survival of the fittest"--to be the cultural intelligence of our system. Such competitiveness and need for success and fear of failure, our obsessive-compulsive predilection for competition, precludes and undermines the notions of equality upon which effective cooperative behavior is based. Not one useful or valuable thing has come about through intraspecies competition--only aggression, murder, injustice, inequality. Underlying this obsessive-compulsive social pathology is a Malthusian philosophical orientation based on the idea of limited access to resources and a world view of limited good. The "just world" hypothesis is a conceptual system of rationalization, a cultural ego defense mechanism hiding the reality of the fundamental injustice of this capitalistic system. The cultural behavior misconstrued as intelligent is really very unintelligent.
Civilization is not necessarily determined by the level of complexity a culture has attained, although in a very relative sense these are strongly correlated. Simple "primitive" cultures are to be construed as being more intelligent and civilized than many sophisticated "civilized" societies if they promote peace and equality and a relatively better condition of social welfare than the more complex culture. The Nazi super race might well be construed as one of the most uncivilized and barbarous cultures ever to have existed. Civilization is a metaphysical summation, a symbolic metaphor, not a reality to be measured by any absolute values. Our civilization would be more so and is actually less civilized than we want to believe because we are continuously beset with social afflictions, pollution, poverty, prejudice, ignorance, fanaticism, social pathology, which we have not yet adequately solved. Civilization is a relative thing. It might be generally true that the net world wide summation of civilization has been to increase the level of complexity of our reality quite substantially and possibly quite beyond natural human bounds to cope with such accelerated changes and complexity.
Psychopathology/sociopathology/behavior irrationality. I will in the next part of this work elaborate upon the philosophical problem of pathology. Here I will define it as the negative conditionality of otherwise positive health. I am implying a "rational model of pathology as being essentially "irrational". Rational creativity is healthy, generative, life oriented, growing, integrative, creative. Pathology is irrational, regressive, degenerative, death oriented, fear motivated, maladaptive, perseverative, projective, other dependent, destructive. While health may be looked upon as progressive in the sense that it is continually adaptive to constant and inevitable change, pathology is regressive not in the sense of actual temporal retrogression but rather is only seen as regressive from the healthy standpoint of progression--failure to adaptively change and maladapative perseveration and eventual frustration of obsolete behavior patterns. The basic source of health is willpower--it takes two forms--that of creation, birth, eros, life giving, or the negative of destruction, death, thanatos, life taking. The source of pathology is seen as fundamentally a failure of rational creativity or creative rationality, it has a "rational" pathogenesis. The idiothetic psychological definition of psychopathology, as thetical, independent and exclusive is complemented by the antithetical dependent and inclusive nomothetic sociological definition of sociopathology, which has little addressed and ill defined. Anthropological holothetic definition of synthetic general irrationality is the transcendent symbolic synthesis of psychopathology and sociopathology.
"Vachasa, Manasa, Kayena". This is the rational ordering of self determined human behavior. First they is willpower. Thought precedes expression and expression precedes action. All are related and flow into each other upon a gradually graded continuum of rationality ordered human behavior. This problem with our predominating systems of rationalization is that this rational order is reversed, letting our actions determine our expression which in turn determines our thoughts and finally our wills. This is what happens if we allow ourselves to have no self made willpower, but will ourselves to be willed from without by others. This becomes brainwashing, in which our arguments and thoughts become systems of rationalization for essentially irrational behavior. This is what happens when we deny responsibility for our own thoughts, speech and actions, blaming eternal causes, projecting responsibility upon an unreal (i.e. ideal) social ideology, or attributing causality to a whole plethora of mysterious and virtually unaccessible subconscious motivations. It is like putting the cart in front of the horse.
Why is this unnatural reversal of natural ordering of rational human behavior. They are systems of defense. Psychology has always influenced philosophy as much as psychology remains rooted to philosophical tradition. Closed systems of rationalization in defense of an ideology, in support of unrealistic and primarily arbitrary ideals of absolutism, in covert denial of relativity, designed to perseverate indefinitely into the future human behaviors, especially social and cultural patterns, which over time become maladaptive and counter rational in resistance to the inevitability of universal change. But not for everyone is such perseveration maladaptive or disadvantageous. It becomes a system of defense in support of the decisive effects of profit of a privileged few to the gross neglect of the many and the cumulative effect of protection of the security of all to the unwitting and unwilling neglect of their own potential becoming.
The implication of the preceding paragraph is one of a primarily parasitical interhuman relationship in which a few gain selective and privileged advantage to the disadvantage of the many, and a pathological pattern of regressive social behavior in as much as a culture clings ideologically to the past in denial of the inevitability of current change and future possibilities. Even in our own glorified super post industrial service economy of a rising and stabilizing "middle class", there actually exists a predominating and ruthless class structure, a very fundamental authoritarian division between the upper and the lower class, found in any state, between a few haves and many have nots. The situation is not rectified by the existence of a "middle class", it is only glossed over and moderated. A potential source of social disruption, the capitalists have found it wise to detoxify the boundary line between those in authority and the slave class through commercialism, mass media manipulation, advertising, and the material illusion of health, wealth and happiness. It is fundamentally a political problem. The middle class is a neatly contrived name hiding the reality of fundamental state organization by a middle class division of authority and privilege. People are either upper lower class or lower upper class. Middle class is nothing more than a connotation of an artificially induced ideology of the work ethic, work to make more work, of materialism, of ego gratification, social conformism, cultural conventionalism, prejudice, ignorance, racial and social intolerance, alienation, desperation, artificial transience, loneliness, deindividuation depersonalization, dehumanization, authoritarianism, institutionalism, and virtual spiritual and aesthetic impoverishment--in short psychopathology, sociopathology and general pathology.
The primary mechanism of transcendence of the class structure, of rising from the bottom, is education. Through education people are able to improve their social status--their inherited cultural investment. Here the connection is one of the close relationship of language to intelligence, not as it is intrinsic to the individual human personality, as a potentially rooted as much in imaginative possibility as in conceptual linguistic reality, but rather the intelligence as it is demonstrated in academic performance (based on an atmosphere of competition and contrasted to learning) of previously acquired skills and the acquisition of competencies, and as it is manifested by artificially and arbitrarily contrived intelligence testing. The argument here is one of the intelligence test as being primarily a means of social classification, and it is closely related with the idea of the educational system as being an artificially superimposed social selection system. The two work together, alongside the conservative "middle class" ideology of innateness, inheritance, naturally acquired competencies and capabilities, the work hard ethic, and of a "just world" majority morality, to create a very subtle process of manipulation and control of thought, expression and behavior to conformity to the conventional ideology. Here is the cumulative Pygmalion effect of a long line of venerable authoritarian gatekeepers upholding and reinforcing the values of their "system", the rich get richer and the poor stay poor, in intellectual and spiritual endowment and investment as well as preferential access to differential resources.
Since the writing of "Crito" there has been in the western tradition of civilization a philosophical seed of misunderstanding and general social pathology in regard to the relation between the individual and the state which has had a profound influence upon our historical heritage. So many people's lives have been victimized and sacrificed unnecessarily, uselessly and unjustly. To say that the state rightly predominates the life of the individual is to make that fundamental top dog predominance of the authoritarian side of human personality the prevailing form and function of human behavior and a political reality.
Rooted in the organic physiology of the human brain and with the paradox that all normal humans share a universal similarity and at the same time are unique and infinitely variable--in the neuronal connections and firing patterns, molecular inter-dynamics and bioholographical form and function--are the origins of dreams, fantasies, imagination, comprehension, perceptual sensibilities, of art and science, and the mutual integrated understanding of language; the thought process which spark meanings into empty words. This is the common deep structure of universal human nature which ties together all aspects of human behavior. It is not to say that just because humans don't always communicate intelligibly that they can't. It is to believe all humans can possibly and potentially communicate and understand each other and hopefully some day will. Rooted in the inherent inter-subjective nature of communication--as dependent of human perception--in the arbitrary construction of terminologies--iconographic naming of all things perceived and perceptible--is the word and beginning of language and of all imaginable or possible conceptual systems of symbolic integration.
The human reality of verbality. It is deeply related to the expression and communication of human becoming or realization of potentiality. It implies motion, movement, change--dynamic as opposed to static. It is the dynamic interrelationship and interfunctioning between these two realms of organic materially fundamental deep structure of the incommunicable, hence inherently directly unknowable and imperceptible and indescribable, of the "unconscious" and the "metaphysical" conceptual reality of arbitrary forms and systems of conceptualization and communication--the superficial constructs of human imagination--the touchable, talkable, reality of signs and arbitrary symbols, which is the reality of being human, from which is derived meaning in being human and alive--through which self and other gain identity and relationship, through which culture and personality integrate, springing into existence together and inseparable as a dynamic life process.
It is to be both individually unique and culturally relative as possible as well as to be as timelessly universal as possible. It is the same dilemma as confronted by all humans in their own search of identity--to share relatedness to all other humans--in some deep structural conception of a universal human nature, while at the same time upon the surface to remain distinctly individual, unique, unrepeatable instance of integrity. It is the same dilemma underlying all the human sciences--to find in the deep relational structure of common meaning--the communicated reality of the conceptual identity of human behavior, while at the same time tolerating and understanding the infinite degree of superficial stylistic variation and deviation in thoughts, willpower, words and deeds.
A predisposition to causality is rooted in the very structure language takes--from subject to object. It is the verbalization--the relationship between subject and object, which in language is the verb and which becomes downplayed to the overemphasis on names and meanings. Verbs represent a dynamic temporal process of living and spatial interrelationship. They are what creates understanding, bringing to life language, making relationship from the "unconscious" structural reality to the conscious conceptual reality, from the a-priori to the a-posteriori, integrating the universal absolute indirect deep structure with the relative directly discernible surface structure. Verbs make truth happen in language and understanding. Verbs integrate language and life.
Stress in school is primarily on rote memorization--the ritualization of a meaningful thought patterns and the suspension of meaningful relationships--on learning terminologies and their meanings and is only secondarily laid upon comprehension created by "verbality"--understanding what we learn--integrating it into our human reality of paradox. The state is stressed over the individual not only politically but economically, ideologically and educationally as well. Sciences for dying are stressed over the arts of living. Closure precludes openness. The left hemisphere of the brain is stressed over the right, not only in personality development but in cultural evolution as well. There is crucial and pressing necessity to restore equilibrium, harmony and balance to a generally and primarily arbitrarily imbalanced human reality. We need to resurrect the heart and the soul of the primitive human, of the child, of the psychotic, of the artist m in the minds and bodies of all these civilized scientists.
We need restitution of humanitarianism in our institutions. We need to restore the human value and quality of living to our "systems". We need political entities which help the individual human being as much as the individual serves the bodily politic. The beginning of this general re-humanization is in conscientious recognition of the basic fundamentality of the need for open communication--of the unhindered expression of the reality of "verbality" for all of humanity.
What is to make the humanistic ideology I propose within this philosophical framework any more or less true or certain or believable than any other ideology. I believe the same truth criterion that has applied to all of the metaphysical paradigms, including the scientific paradigm, is applicable to the formulation of a "true" ideology. The truth criterion of ideology is the willpower to believe in the objective truth of openness and communication in the form of ideological toleration and humanism in the widest context possible (i.e., the whole human species).
I will only briefly summarize what I feel to be the important aspects of humanistic ideology. These are the belief in the ideal virtues of rationality, morality and maturity.
Rationality may be summed up as the quest for truth, understanding of self, trust in love and honest belief in life It is to see on a high metaphysical plane of understanding that truth is self is love is life. Before we can know and love others we must know and love ourselves. This knowledge is truth and the ultimate human understanding of this truth is by love, entailing trust which requires honest belief in life. There is a basic affirmation of life in rationality; a fundamental trust in life which entails pacifism (ahimsa) towards all life--violence, hate, prejudice, war, destructiveness and negation undermines this basic trust.
Morality is justice--recognition that all human beings are citizens of the world and the children of the universe before they are obligated to any lesser entity. Justice connotes the morality of equality and the human rights. Death is the greater equalizer. All men die equal. No man is able to take the status, security or sociability he has acquired in his lifetime into death. All humans share and deserve the inalienable human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and these rights must be realized to the fullest extent possible without encroachment or harm to any other person's rights.
Maturity is the attainment of ego balance between independence and responsibility. Independence is relative freedom of the self from the will of the other. Responsibility is reciprocating freedom of the other from the self. Independence and responsibility are balanced to achieve harmonization of human life. Even more maturity is the realization of both self and other in terms of humanistic ideology. In a sense attainment of humanistic ideology is through realization of intelligence and civilization through communicative expression of rational creativity.
Ideology does not exist in a vacuum. Human beings cannot honestly entertain within their lives beliefs and behaviors of too many essentially incompatible and contradictory belief and behavior systems. Just because there are many ideologies, moralities, beliefs and behavior systems which are exclusive and incompatible and even antagonistic to the humanistic ideology, and just because humanistic ideals seem irrelevant, inconsequential and unimportant in the day to day struggle for survival and daily suffering which afflicts the majority of humanity, does not make humanistic ideology any less true in its criterion or any less valuable or applicable to the whole of humanity. Just because humanism has had such a rotten deal throughout the history of humanity, it doesn't making striving for these ideals any less inconsequential. The very basis of humanism is that even if there is only the minority of one against the majority of many others, that the ideals of rationality, morality or maturity are no less important. The very basis of humanism has been the protection of the minority of one (self) from the aversive influence of the majority of many (others). Humanism is the only ideology possible that is based upon the prerequisite truth criterion of openness and communication. It is as open as possible--incorporating all of humanity--not exclusive of a single solitary soul; and it depends on humanistic understanding (anthropology). It is a minimal ideology, entailing no excessive ritual or group mythology. It is not necessarily incompatible with any other ideology, except when these are pathological. The ideology of humanism is the only appropriate transcultural context for understanding rationality/irrationality. No other ideology is an adequate substitute for this understanding.
The humanistic paradigm might be summed up then as the realization of humanistic ideological beliefs in the ideal virtues of rationality, morality and maturity by the humanization of humanity by the application of humanistic anthropological understanding of the ego reality by the holothetic interpretation of normality in formal patterns of behavioral symbolizations of functional systems of status, security and sociability and organismic conditional processes of rational creativity and behavioral irrationality. The major obstacle preventing this realization is the closed systems of belief which inhibit full humanistic understanding by reinforcing ignorance, pride and prejudice. In a negative sense anthropology can be said to be the understanding the generalization the belief and behavioral systems of ignorance, pride and prejudice, and the general negative pathological results of these systems. I believe there is a rational model to health and pathology, that these conditions can be explained in terms of this rational model and I believe also that there is an underlying theme of this metaphysical model of rationality, the theme of liminality and antinomality which is the source of willpower to both health and pathology and the source of salvation from general pathology, both psycho pathological and sociopathological. How this universal source is dealt with by both personality and culture determine ultimately the resultant orientation toward pathology and health. To achieve these humanistic ideals, anthropology must work in two general directions (1) the alleviation of suffering by general pathology and (2) the humanistic education of humanity. Essentially these two directions form a single orientation of anthropology--the realization of rational creativity in the forms of humanistic intelligence and humanistic civilization, i.e. the humanization of humanity.
In place of names I have only proffered more names. In criticism of circular and closed reasoning, I have pieced together only my own crude closed tautology with circular argumentation and many leaps of faith. This philosophical outline has plausible heuristic potentialities, especially in the extensibilities of its practical applications and the potential of theoretical philosophical unification. It is common sensical, honest, open, practical, eclectic, critical, syncretic and I believe synergistic. I believe the efficacy of this outline, if there is any, may only be demonstrated, its validity proven, after the fact by its heuristic usefulness in helping the reader integrate his/her own conceptual systems. This outline is intended to be a simple and coarse theoretical map, it is not reality itself. It only suggests one more possible way of looking at the philosophical problem of human reality.
It must be reiterated that this work is essentially a philosophical outline, not anthropological. I have not tried to prevent all possible perspectives, encompassed by this outline, it only hints at the proposed nature of these perspectives. I have concentrated on the anthropological subdivision of the humanistic paradigm of the metaphysical realm of objective reality. My original intention was to build a system in which virtually any and every conceptual system possible can find an appropriate classificatory position and a general contextual explanation. There is a scientific understanding and application of anthropology which fits the scientific paradigm rather than the humanistic one. The biological fields of anthropology, physical anthropology and medical anthropology are "scientific" in the conventional sense. There is an art to anthropological communication and application and a philosophical premises to anthropology. Actually this outline addresses directly this philosophical premises rather than directly the humanistic paradigm of anthropology. There is a practical everyday reality of applied and felt anthropology which is more aptly described within the subjective subdivisions and the physical objective realm, and which is out of context in the metaphysical realm.
It might be said that the four metaphysical paradigms and the underlying causal meta types constitute a whole, an integrated understanding of the cosmic egg of the universal human dilemma, but in a sense it might be said that there is yet a higher, quintessential and all embracing paradigm--and this might be thought of as the whole outline in and of itself. I will call the underlying causal meta type of this fifth quintessential paradigm the holothetic organismic system. It is the harmonization of the four meta types and integration of the four paradigms into a single synergistic system. It is the acknowledgment that there are not final absolute answers in reality, that all meta types and paradigms coexist within the same single network and are equally useful though incomplete in explaining reality.
Furthermore this is an attempt to present a unique insight into the general and many varied specific problems of humanity not as distinct and unrelated but as a potentially whole and single problem, as a philosophical and theoretical unity, a problem with a single whole solution. In order to achieve such unity I must deal necessarily with generalizations that are vague, ambiguous and often inconsistent. Yet it is to start with generalizations as a necessary departure point for it is this most vague generalizations which underlie the prejudices of modern humanity.
While previous philosophies have been founded upon the unjustifiable necessity for certainty and absolute truth, this philosophy is founded upon the inescapable reality of relative uncertainty, on the openendedness of possibility and in the communicative necessity for probability for belief and behavior. Furthermore it is based upon the art of speculative intuition rather than on any science or syllogistic logic. It is based upon the acceptance rather than ignorance of the role belief , faith, psychological motivation, rationalization, willpower, choice, imagination and creativity play in the formulation of any philosophical system. Furthermore, rather than attempt to produce a finite, closed system of conceptioning, its aim is the unending questioning of an infinite, open and unlimited reality.
Is it possible to formulate, organize and create a conceptual system and a system of conceptualization which is completely comprehensive, incorporating in an orderly and systematically understandable fashion all great philosophies, the humanities, the great sciences, the arts, such that there is no rational reason for conflict between, for example cognitive and behavioral psychology, between rationalist and empiricist philosophical doctrines, between capitalism and communism, within which any and every problem afflicting humanity might have a rational basis for mutual understanding and for solution? Is there even a name which exists to describe such a comprehensive system of thought? Would this grand scheme generate a whole new perspective of human reality, generate a whole new operational methodology? Does it not require a whole new outlook, attitude, discipline and reorganization of behavior and being?
My attempt here has been to view the whole. How I cut into my conceptual egg has been wholly arbitrary, yet I have based it upon a specific set of criterion--namely objective criterion of openness and communication --in every area that I have found to be both essentially different and arbitrary.
What's in a name? A rose by any other name still smell as sweet. Nature did not divide reality into different departments--zoology, botany, chemistry, physics--or behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, humanist psychology or third force psychology or Freudian psychoanalysis--or capitalism, communism or socialism--or Buddhism, Catholicism, Puritanism, Hinduism--or geometry, trigonometry, or democracy or totalitarianism--or yet any other theoretical system of conceptioning. These divisions have all been arbitrary--man made and once made has become to reunite them back into a coherent whole. It is the story of Humpty Dumpty.
A name is a conceptual tool of communication--that is all. It is useful only in as much as its objectivity defined in some mutually understood manner--communism does not mean the same thing to everyone. Lets avoid the mistake of trying to turn our conceptual tools into ends in themselves, of trying to make the relative meaning and truth of our words and names into absolute and final truth, substituting metaphysical reality for physical reality. The result of such substitution is only a closed mind, illogical confusion, and counter intuitive logic. But isn't that the problem of our human world. This is what happens when we try to turn words into numbers and transform all of our systems of conceptioning into mathematics. But it also happens when we try and interpret the whole of reality only from one system--as completely and only scientific, trying to make everything, including ideas, reducible to objective little physical, mechanically-causally related, entities. But this happens also with humanism, philosophy and arts.
I said earlier I was not taking a reductionist approach to my reasoning, but I did not say that a reductionist approach is unimportant in understanding. Suffice it to say that such reductionism is inherent in the problem of defining reality itself--to the problems of communication, objectivity and openness. There are many aspects of reductionism. It is primarily an explanatory tool of philosophy. I believe that all philosophical problems, which tend to influence many other problems in life in other systems, can be reduced down to the mind-body problem which ultimately represents an insuperable dilemma in understanding reality. It has gone by many names: real vs. ideal, material vs. spiritual, phenomenal vs. noumenal, physical vs. metaphysical, subjective vs. objective. The important thing is to note that it is not so much the problem itself but the way in which we attempt to deal with this fundamental reductionist problem which is of most importance.
We usually dichotomize the essential problem instead of attempting to integrate the two sides in our judgment. The dichotomization occurs when we desire to substitute the name for meaning and when we try to resolve the dilemma of the intrinsic duality of reality by denying one whole half of it to become committed by an act of will to seeing exclusively only from one side. It is through an act of will that we deny to ourselves that such a dilemma exists and will always exist. But once we accept the inevitability of our essential dilemma then it becomes no longer an insuperable barrier but it becomes rather a means of explaining and understanding reality in the form of a simplifying paradox. Dichotomization is an arbitrary act of becoming committed to one side or the other to the neglect of the other possible perspectives. It means arbitrarily closing your system of conceptioning upon itself and to no longer have valid truth criterion. It is trying to slice the conceptual egg into the big end and the little end with a dull knife rather than trying to dismantle and reconstruct it by its individual component system of conceptioning.
What I do consider to be the essential relationship between the natural sciences and the so called "social sciences"? I will maintain that while they both function on the same essential criterion of relative truth of objective criterion for openness and communication, the intrinsic nature of these two sets of criterion are themselves fundamentally different, and this poses an insuperable barrier between the two systems. The difference is that while science deals with entities existent in the physical universe that are exclusively mechanical and material--that we may observe "objectively" a fly, a rock, or even a neuron--in anthropology the problem is that we must observe ourselves just as objectively as if we were observing a rock. But this is an impossible task. We hold a mirror to our own face and our subjectivity and willpower inevitably get in the way of our interpretation of our own beauty. A social science is good only to the extent that a human may be transformed into a rock or a mechanical machine which may be easily explained, predicted and controlled. The trouble is the explanation, prediction and control of that "I will" power, and to predict and control human nature in light of it. It is the problem of being able to look into ourselves objectively. Indeed a pure social science is possible, for man the ant, but it forms essentially a very limited system of conceptioning with poor explanatory, predictive and controlling capacities. Humans are predictable, explainable, controllable, only to the extent that they allow themselves to be predicted, explained or controlled.
Under the criterion of universal human nature and individuality understanding of anthropology becomes quite a different matter. It is a study of ourselves and others not divorced of our willpower--of our ability to influence and determine our destiny, however diminished.
Our historical heritage, of the universality of humanity, it is the same maturational process as the inherent unfolding of the particularity of the individual. If it can be divided into a sequential process of developmental stages, it is best a dialectical process of emergent symbolism. There is the pre-historical epoch, ethically pre-conventional, the natural, romantic, aesthetic human, the thesis of emergence of expression essence and potentiality. Then there is the historical epoch, the anti-thetical difficulty of communication, the morally conventional, man the adolescent ant, suffering growth pains and severe emotionally traumatic changes from the essential being of man the emergent nascent creature. There is a final post historical stage, reached sooner by some than others, some never completing the pilgrimage, the human being, the religious, sentient philanthropist , without frustration, without hostility. This is the human being, the creator of human civilization. I believe we are historically at the end of the second transitional stage and are on the verge of making the final passage and becoming the final human synthesis--a mature humanity. We are at the climatic end of a long, arduous gradually accelerating period of historical transition,, which was characterized by change, instability, trauma. We are entering a new epoch characterized by timelessness, stability, and fulfillment. We have a choice, to be progressive, and to make the final passage to paradise, or else to be regressive and to suffer inevitable extinction.
Philosophy, Irrationality & Ideology: A Synthesis in the Anthropology of Knowledge
2001
Hugh M. Lewis
Blanket Copyright, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.
Last Updated: 03/17/05