A synthetic theory of the human circumstance

By Rodrigo Cáceres Riquelme

This essay is an attempt to refine Mark Pharoah’s synthetic framework (2018) that provides an objective account of the emergence of subjective experience. My interpretation of his argument is a chronology of emergence of phenomena occurring in the following order: (1) autopoietic units or living organisms in continuous structural change due to interactions with their environment bring forth an emergent interface that unites both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ aspects of the organism-environment couple in a same place or space. We usually denote this interface as ‘mind’, but since theory of mind in western philosophy is plagued by a container-object understanding of mind (as we shall see below), I will refrain from using this concept in order to avoid misunderstanding, and prefer to use the concept of interface.

(2) The first aspect that characterizes the construction of this interface through biosemiotic processes is the bringing forth of qualities or qualia, which are creative and novel interpretations of things like electromagnetic waves that are interpreted as colors or molecules that are interpreted as smells. However, these qualia only make sense or mean something to a first-person perspective. This amounts to note that a first-person perspective is another aspect of the interface brought forth through biochemical processes, an emergent process whose function is to be present at the qualia that are brought forth and respond to them consciously or unconsciously. The sum of qualities that are present to a first-person perspective is denoted as the qualitative matrix or qualitative milieu which consists of qualitative signs.

(3) In the genus homo, we can note the emergence of a new system of signs that allows for stable communication through sounds. We denote this system as language and it adds many new kinds of signs to the interface: words, explanations, questions, theories, orders, narratives, rules, norms and institutions. The sum of the symbols that can be present to a first-person perspective is denoted as the symbolic matrix which consists of symbolic signs.

In the remainder of this essay I will develop an understanding of the first-person human circumstance, considering its form, its motion and its historical process of becoming what it currently is. I intend to move further than the current scientific understanding of first-person human circumstance, which has profoundly limited its scope of understanding due to a series of implicit assumptions that I will discuss. As Evan Thompson has argued, human experience represents a blind spot for science because scientists usually fail to recognize the primacy of lived experience as a prerequisite for all scientific inquiry. As a reader you should not be led to think that I provide a total explanation of first-person human experience, it is only ‘advanced’ in comparison to western science and philosophy, but it is still partial and incomplete.

Before starting, I need to make clear that I will only be referring to the level of existence that I inhabit, which I will refer to as the level of human experience^[1]. This has to be made explicit since Western science has uncovered the existence of simultaneously occurring multiple nested levels of the evolving process that we denote as ‘universe’ (fig. 1). Western science usually fails to distinguish between these different levels and believes that certain levels (the microscopic) are more fundamental or ‘more real’ than the level where we humans inhabit and act from. As the reader might note through this text, a thorough understanding of the level of human experience does not require to make reference to microscopic levels like the neuronal, not because the neuronal level does not teach us anything about the level of experience, but rather because the level of human experience has an organization and dynamic of its own. This organization is made possible due to what occurs at microscopic levels; however, it cannot be reduced to them. 

Figure 1. Simultaneously occurring nested levels of the evolving process or universe.

  

Due to its first-person basis, I need to acknowledge that this theory of human experience must be a theory about me, because I am that which is presencing it from a first-person perspective (from now on, FPP)^[2]. Any attempt to give the impression that I am developing a theory about something else than my own experience would be deceiving and unhelpful, because experience is not something external to me, I am that which is present to what occurs in this moment. In other words, I will put forward a theory about what occurs to me, about what I perceive from a vantage point that is right in the center of what I will refer to as ‘the world’ or ‘the matrices’, which are always around me. In this precise sense, the first part of describing of my own experience in words is to acknowledge my position as a first-person perspective in the center of the things that surround me.

And what are the things that surround me? I will denote the things that surround me as signs, because all of them are signaled to me. This amounts to note a general rule: we are only able to refer to what is presented to us, appears to us or manifests itself in front of us. That is, we can only refer to what is signaled to us in one way or another. This is valid even for what we call fantasy or fiction, since in order to refer to fantasies and fiction they must necessarily manifest to us in the form of signs: images, scenes, sounds, etc.

In this sense, the concept of sign is an inclusive concept, since it is capable of including everything that could manifest in front of a FPP. In a negative way, the concept of sign does not exclude anything that could manifest in front of us, since everything that could manifest itself must be signaled to us. For this reason, the “sign” is a concept that admits the appearance of everything that can possibly appears to us, even what is new or what is currently unknown to us. In short, the concept of signs makes it possible to elaborate a theoretical construct that allows to consider all possible events that may manifest in front of a FPP.

We can establish this through a basic rule: I cannot refer to anything that is not signaled to my FPP. In a positive way, this claim is: all I can refer to is what is signaled to me in some way. That is, everything that manifests itself in front of a FPP is a sign, since it reveals, shows, communicates, presents or indicates something to this FPP, it manifests itself or appears before this FPP.

The second reason why the concept of signs is the most appropriate to refer to human experience is because with it we can unify what we spontaneously tend to separate as “internal” and “external”, what we divide into “me” and “not-me”. For example, when we consider our emotions as "mine" or “part of me" and when we consider the colors of a landscape that we observe as "not-me", the concept of signs allows us to note what is in common between them: both emotions as well as colors are signs that appear before our FPP.

So, what kinds of signs appear in front of my FPP? On the one hand, there are qualities or qualia, whose appearance in front of me is tangible, concrete as well as limited in time. I usually recognize these because of their distinctive, peculiar qualities that are regular and repetitive: the distinctive qualities and forms of three-dimensional images, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, sensations of my body (e.g. I feel sleepy, hungry, thirsty, I feel my muscles, their tension, temperature, weight, etc.) and emotions (e.g. frustration, anger, dislike, enjoyment, boredom, etc.). Most of these qualities have intensities, and they show different degrees of variation. For example, we refer to the intensity of sounds as volume; in language, we refer to the intensity of emotions and sensations metaphorically in terms of quantity, force, size, weight and depth (e.g. a strong fear, a great frustration, a slight pain, feeling deeply peaceful, a little uncomfortable, etc.).

Qualities like the sensations of our muscles, their tension, shape, size, location, temperature and weight are continually present while we are awake (unless our limbs go numb) so they give us a sense of continuity of our experience. Images, sounds, tastes, smells, textures and emotions may change or fade away, but the sensations of our muscles stay present while we are awake. Moreover, muscular sensations are the basis for movement. We know this, for example, because if we could not feel our legs, we would not be able to walk.

What occurs when all these qualitative signs happen and flow simultaneously in particular ways, I recognize what I denote as things and places (e.g. people, houses, planets, forests, trees, books, etc.) and my posture or stance (e.g. upright, laying down, kneeling, defensive stance, attack stance). I also recognize that globally these qualities and their unfolding through time create what I denote as experiences (e.g. waking, dancing, sleeping, talking, dreaming, eating, waiting, daydreaming, shitting, fighting, playing, reading, traveling, searching, being drunk, resting, running, studying, jumping, having sex, etc.).

On the other hand, human FPPs can interact with symbols and systems of symbols: there are words, concepts, categories, rules, claims, orders, questions, theories, ideologies, conventions, gender archetypes, institutions, languages, etc. Symbols are signs that are shared by multiple first-person perspectives, they are general, they lack intensity and since they are historical systems, they are not bounded by time. As we know, languages can last for millennia, and potentially ad infinitum. Symbols are only bounded by the FPPs that employ them. They are also consensual, in the sense that they are implicitly or explicitly accepted by a group of FPPs as meaningful and capable of producing effects.

It is worth noting that symbols are not ‘purely symbolic’, since my ability to interact with them rests on my capacity to produce and to hear sounds, which are qualitative kinds of signs.

I can note too that signs are signaled to me through multiple planes of perception: the planes of perception of sounds, of tastes, of smells, of images and of bodily sensations. The idea of planes of perception is derived from a general rule: the perception of a sign at one plane of perception does not overlap or interfere with the perception of a sign at another plane of perception. We know this, for example, when we experience that hearing a sound does not interfere with us seeing an image, whereas if we hear many simultaneous sounds, they do overlap with each other and together create things like music, soundscapes or noise. This is actually the formal way of demonstrating the distinction between kinds of qualitative signs (i.e. sounds, smells, images, etc.). They are different kinds of signs because when they appear, they do not interfere with each other, but rather unite to form what we understand as things, places and experiences.

To sum up, my FPP is embedded or in the center of two interlocking and interrelating matrices of signs: the qualitative matrix and the symbolic matrix. The word-symbol ‘matrix’ is useful to evoke the image of being in the center of a spherical place as well as to evoke the idea that the number of signs in each matrix is extremely large (for example, I have been able to count over eighty specific emotions). We are, metaphorically speaking, swimming in the middle of an ocean of signs.

The first thing that I should note is that there are two distinct qualitative sub-matrices within the qualitative matrix: the actual qualitative matrix and the imaginary qualitative matrix. I can distinguish these two from experience because, for example, I can be looking right now at my computer and at the same time imagining being in a park with many trees, feeling a fresh breeze and the feel of the sun in my face. I can distinguish both qualitative matrices because when they manifest to my FPP they do not interfere with each other. My attention might be focused on one of them more intensely than the other, but they are still are in concurrence or co-ocurrence (etymologically, they are running together).

Concerning me (FPP) and my capacities to interact with these matrices of signs, several things have to be noted. First, I have the capacity to attend to what occurs, whether it is signs or my modes of interacting with signs. I note that it is a capacity because I might as well not use it. For example, I may attend to the sensations of my breath or I may not attend to them. This capacity for attention implies that there is a certain distance, an open space for interaction between “me” and signs. I can note too that I have different modes of attention towards the sign matrices. On the one hand, I can have a narrow attention to specific signs, oriented to detail and towards performing tasks. A doctor performing surgery or an adolescent playing a shooter videogame are examples of this narrow mode of attention. I can also have a broad attention to signs, oriented to context and multi-sensory perception. If I am resting in front of a waterfall, for example, my attention may be open to the sounds, the smells, the images and their motion, my bodily feelings of awe and admiration, all in a very broad manner.

I can also note that I (FPP) manifest preferences over signs and the forms they put together (e.g. objects, experiences, people). In general, I do not really choose to have preferences; I just find myself exhibiting preferences over different kinds of things.

Third, I can note that I am only able to orient myself thanks to these matrices of signals, and that I act according to these signs that manifest before me. Some examples of qualitative signs are: if I feel hungry, I will go eat; if I feel sleepy, I will go to sleep; if I am thirsty, I will drink; if I feel joy and gratitude, I will act kindly. Some examples of symbolic signs are: if I am told I should brush my teeth, I will go brush my teeth; if I believe in the claim ‘having intercourse before marriage is sin’, I will not have intercourse before marriage; if I am told that I need an education, I will get an education, and so on.

This amounts to another fundamental rule of my orientational dependence on signs: I (FPP) can only orient myself through employing signs as guides to my actions. In metaphorical terms, I am a slave of these matrices of signs because I cannot operate without them. If, for example, hunger or thirst would not be signaled to me, I would die. If 3D images would not be signaled to me, I would have a really hard time orienting myself in the world. I am fully dependent on signs because I act only according to what they show me. I am a function of these matrices of signals.

Another aspect I should note is that I (FPP) generally do not produce the actual qualitative matrix. In other words, I do not give form to the actual images, sensations, smells, textures and sounds that appear before me. They appear to me already formed. For example, I do not choose to feel sleepy, I only become aware that I am becoming sleepy. This amounts to saying that my FPP does not participate in the generation of the actual qualitative matrix.

Second, what can I (FPP) actually do? I can move and coordinate my body, which amounts to my capacity to contract and relax muscles and direct them in different directions and in different patterns. With this capacity I can produce gestures in order to communicate or signal something to another FPP (human or non-human). I can also produce sounds, and amongst the sounds I can produce, I can speak, which amounts to my capacity to produce symbols in order to communicate or signal a certain meaning to an FPP (human or non-human).

It is important to notice that in the phylogenetic history of FPPs, the qualitative matrix comes first than the symbolic matrix. As we know from the evolution of the species, before our species emerged, high-speed speech and fully human language did not exist. The symbols that I personally interact with gradually came to existence in the (phylogenetic) history of my species. Why is this important? Because it means that before language came to existence, experience consisted mainly in first-person perspective of the qualitative matrices and the experiences these qualities put together. This ultimately means -as Maturana (1988) noted- that symbolic things like claims, explanations and theories are essentially superfluous, in the sense that they incorporate into already existing qualitative matrices that unfold before FPPs. Maturana reflects on this by claiming that “any explanation or description of what we do is secondary to our experience of finding ourselves in the doing of what we do” (p.26). This amounts to saying that -in the phylogenetic history of FPPs- qualities come First and symbols come Second.

As we know, words emerge due to a need for communicating with others and coordinating actions (Tomasello, 2018), a need to signal or refer a certain meaning to another FPP. This implies that words and language cannot emerge without the existence of the matrix of qualities that it can to refer to. Put another way, words appear in order to refer to specific aspects of the qualitative matrices. And this means that the presence of qualitative matrices in front of FPPs is a requisite for the emergence of words, simply because if there is nothing to refer to, words cannot come to existence.

In other words, this means that words incorporate into already existing matrices of qualitative signs. This amounts to note that the problem for FPPs as users of language is a problem of distinguishing aspects of qualitative matrixes. This is important because it means that the evolution of human language is constrained by the degree of difficulty in distinguishing aspects. As we know, we have a very precise and highly delineated understanding of 3D images and scenes so vocabulary for images is abundant. Conversely, vocabulary for emotions and sensations is quite poor because since we are mainly audiovisual creatures, sensations and emotions always tend to be backgrounded, they are more difficult to distinguish because they are literally invisible and less delineated in order to make precise distinctions. As we saw, emotions and sensations are usually conceptualized metaphorically in terms of aspects such as size, force, depth, weight or quantity. This happens because these aspects are more readily apparent and distinguishable for us and they are useful and apt in their resemblance to degrees of intensity.

Furthermore, as we know from history, emotional vocabulary is in constant evolution, even the word ‘emotion’ was coined in the early 1800s by Thomas Brown. As Smith (2015) has put it “No one felt emotions before about 1830. Instead they felt other things - "passions", "accidents of the soul", "moral sentiments" - and explained them very differently from how we understand emotions today.”

This amounts to a reasonable hypothesis that, in phylogeny, the process of genesis of words has to start from concrete, easily distinguishable aspects of the qualitative matrix (e.g. hand, fire, rock, sky, day, night) and much further in time to distinguish more abstract and less easily distinguishable aspects of the qualitative matrix (e.g. frustration, speed, weight, process, value). In other words, the history of language starts from the concrete and easily distinguishable aspects of experience and finishes up at the abstract, hardly distinguishable aspects of experience.

As we know, words in general denote specific kinds of things from the qualitative matrix. If I say ‘red’, I refer to a quality present in a 3D image (the redness of a tomato, for example) and at the same time, I know that the word ‘red’ can potentially adapt to infinite other instances where this color appears (e.g. in blood, roses, fire, strawberries, etc.). In this sense, individual words are types, because they cannot be reduced to particular instances, they are instead general signs able to adapt to an infinite number of specific cases.

In this moment I can acknowledge that this essay is situated fully within the symbolic matrix, simply because it is composed purely of words, which are symbolic types of signs. However, since what I identified as the objective of this essay is to refer to my first-person human experience, my attempt with the use of these symbolic words is to go beyond the symbolic matrix, in order to refer to the qualitative matrix (actual and imaginary), to my relationships to these signs and how all these sign matrixes interrelate through the means that links them together, which is me.

I will now turn to discuss some symbolic signs (words, theories and claims) within Western philosophy that have guided the theoretical and practical directions of Western FPPs. I will understand these concepts just as symbolic kinds of signs that FPPs have been confronted to, and my approach will be just to observe what are the relationship that these FPPs have taken concerning these concepts, as well as the consequences of accepting and using them to reflect about experience.

Western FPPs and the concept of truth

In this section I will study I will study the case of the history of western culture. I will do this as a means to show the historical interactions between the interlocking matrices of signs. In rough strokes, I will discuss how Western culture is mainly oriented towards three fairly synonymic words that are part of the symbolic matrix of signs: ‘truth’, ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’. The historical attraction of FPPs towards these symbols seems gigantic. As expressed in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years. Moreover, a huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth, either by relying on theses about truth, or implying theses about truth.

Maturana (1988) also emphasizes the radical importance of elucidating the concept of reality when he affirms:

I claim that the most central question that humanity faces today is the question of reality. And I claim that this is so, regardless of whether we are aware of it or not, because everything that we do as modern human beings, either as individuals, as social entities, or as members of some non-social human community, entails an explicit or implicit answer to this question.

Philosophers’ (as FPPs) central activity is to create theories about abstract concepts. In other words, their main activity is to provide answers to questions like What is truth? What is knowledge? What is freedom? What is morality? What is the mind? What is perception? We can immediately reflect on the status of philosophical questions in terms of signs within the symbolic matrix. A philosophical question is a system of words, which are symbolic signs, that demands for a theory in words (other symbolic signs) that tries to define a specific abstract word (i.e. ‘mind, ‘morality’, ‘self’, etc.).

We can note here that the philosophical question-answer dynamics are organized as reflective self-reference dynamics within the symbolic matrix. In other words, philosophical theories are distinctions of specific symbolic signs through their association to other symbolic signs. That is to say, through our use of questions and answers, symbols have reflective or self-referential capacity: the capability of referring to themselves, of treating themselves as objects with properties that can be described through other symbols. The circularity is evident: the philosophical activity is to provide words as answers to questions made in words about a specific abstract word.

Since ‘truth’ appears to be one of the most important concepts for philosophy, I should now turn to examine what does the canonical philosophical theories of truth looks like. There is, on the one hand, the correspondence theory of truth: this theory claims that I can say that something is true when a description in words matches, corresponds with something real. For example, if I place a real computer on my desk, then the statement ‘a computer is on my desk’ is true.

If we analyze this theory of truth, we can see that there are several assumptions that hold it together. First, we can note that the concept of ‘reality’ is located at the level of the actual qualitative matrix, specifically in the three-dimensional image of the computer on my desk. This assumption is unhelpful because it excludes from the concept of ‘reality’ of the symbolic words that denote the 3D image. Why situate the ‘real’ at the level of the qualitative signs and exclude symbolic signs from the ‘real’? In my experience, words and claims are ‘real’ to me, they exist since I can understand them and interact with them. In this sense, it seems that the implicit assumption that the ‘real’ corresponds to qualitative signs is an arbitrary one, making it just a matter of implicit preference for it.

Second, this theory of truth fails to consider crucial steps of the ‘correspondence’ process. It fails to note that when I (FPP) read the statement ‘a computer is on my desk’ (a 2D image of a sentence in English), an image is spontaneously created in my imaginary qualitative matrix. This spontaneously created image is not specific but general, since it does not specify the form of the computer nor the form of the desk. In other words, this (imaginary) image can fit many particular cases (for example, if many of the readers of this essay are in this moment in front of a specific 3D image of a computer in a desk). Moreover, there is an automatic process of comparison of the general image and the specific image in front of me, where I see that the general image can adapt or adjust to the specific image that I am seeing, which leads me to say that the statement is true. 

In this way, it is not the statement that fits the image, but rather it is the general image evoked by the statement which can adjust to the specific case of the 3D image in front of me. That is to say, the words do not directly fit the 3D image, but rather the words evoke an imaginary general image that can adjust to the actual specific image in front of me.

From this we can infer that the implicit assumption within correspondence theory of truth is that words are a transparent vehicle that directly adapts to whatever it refers to within the qualitative matrix. In other words, this assumption happens when FPPs fail to consider that the correspondence process is mediated by intermediary general images that can adapt to the specific qualitative 3D image that is referring to.

Third, this theory of truth fails to acknowledge that the spontaneous creation of a general image when one reads the statement ‘a computer is on my desk’ was created by some automatic mechanism in which I as an FPP did not participate, I did not create this general image. Whether or not I consider this automatic associative mechanism as ‘part of me’, I need to acknowledge that the ‘truth’ of the correspondence depends upon this automatic associative mechanism as a critical part of that process. If I do assume that this automatic mechanism is part of me or part of ‘my organism’, then I cannot claim that a true statement is independent of me. Most statements that I characterize as ‘true’ have to pass through automatic associative mechanisms of this sort. This ultimately means that a true statement can only be true for a FPP. There is no truth that is independent of my FPP and my automatic associative mechanisms. In this sense, an account of truth necessarily needs to consider the existence of what Lakoff & Johnson (1999) call the ‘cognitive unconscious’ that is responsible for these kinds of automatic processes.

Finally, through this analysis of Western philosophers’ correspondence theory of truth, we could note that the concept of truth ends up referring to something that is more general and encompassing than the concept of truth: the concepts of ‘adjustment’ and ‘adaptation’.

An eco-logical example: we can note for example that the organizational logic of the interrelating matrix of living beings, from which we fulfill our basic needs (water, food, shelter, heat) is an eco-logical organization, which is governed by the logic of cyclicity, regeneration, symbiosis and cooperation. If the actions that we carry out adapt or adjust to this mode of organization, then that environment is maintained, if not, then that environment is destroyed. In this sense, the concept of "adaptation" turns out to be more general than the concept of "truth", since the first one is applicable to a larger number of situations. It is evident that we would not say that actions that adapt to an ecological mode of environmental organization are ‘true’, since this is meaningless. However, we can say that if we act in accordance with the ecological modes of organization of the natural environment, then we generate an environment in which we and the rest of living beings flourish. On the contrary, if we do not act in accordance with this ecological mode of organization, then we create an environment that destroys us as well as the rest of living beings.

The implication is that within philosophical inquiry we should not be looking for ‘truth’ but rather, we should be looking for the more general concepts of adaptation and adjustment.  

Western philosophers’ theory of mind

Another illustrative example of the reflectivity of symbols is western philosophers’ ‘theory of mind’. In this case, we must note that western theory of mind is not a theory of ‘mind itself’ but rather a theory of the concept of mind, and we must distinguish these as different things.

We must first note that the concept of mind is structured in common language by the metaphor THE MIND IS A CONTAINER. We can infer the presence of this metaphor because it is implicit in common language about the mind when we say things like “thoughts came into my mind”, “I can’t get you out of my head”, “it’s all in your mind” “you should bear in mind that…” and so on. The way that the mind is talked about in common language causes the concept of mind to be imagined as a container: a bounded, isolated, independent object with an inside/outside orientation, an internal/external separation and an input/output dynamic.

This container structure happens to be the basis for most of Western philosophy’s theory of mind. In other words, the canonical theory of mind in philosophy is a description that takes literally the metaphorical structure of the mind-concept, which happens to have the shape of a container. In sequential order, philosophers (as language users) implicitly understand the concept of the mind as a container (it is intuitive since it is implicit in common language) and, subsequently, this schema shows up when these philosophers ask questions like What is the mind? and then reply with theories of what the mind-concept is, intuitively using the container schema as a central part of those answers.

Descartes’ dualism is an example of using this container schema when he speaks of the “internal mind” or res cogitans that forms perceptions and ideas from the “external material world” or res extensa. Naturally, this inside/outside separation is also mapped onto the classic dualities of subject/object and subjective/objective, the subject being us, the ones that inhabit the “internal mind” and the object being the “external material reality” that is believed to be independent from us.

Certain epistemological problems arise because of the form of this container schema, and they are fundamentally two: (1) how can we get “outside” our “internal minds” in order to gain “objective” knowledge and (2) how can the mind (a mental substance) incorporate material things, when matter and mind are assumed to be two ontologically distinct substances. Moreover, the concept of representation is also derived from the container schema: with this container-theory of mind, perception is thought to be an “internal or subjective” representation of an “objective and external” reality.

I should emphasize that this container schema, how it leads philosophers to imagine the mind as a container and the epistemological problems that arise from it become organized as a closed self-reflective loop within the symbolic matrix. What I mean by this is that the whole reasoning process about ‘the mind’ revolves within the very symbolic-metaphorical coordinates of the concept of mind. In other words, in the symbolic self-reference of this particular philosophical answer-question process, the philosophical answer ends up referring to the conceptual-container structure of the concept ‘mind’ that is implicit in common knowledge. This amounts to note that this ‘mind’ understanding does not go beyond the symbolic matrix, it only understands the ‘mind’ in the terms of the metaphorical structure of the symbolic concept. It is, again, self-reflective: concepts (i.e. internal/external) referring to the conceptual structure (i.e. container schema) of a concept (i.e. ‘mind’).

This is founded on the doctrine of ‘rationalism’, which in different degrees states that we can reach ‘truth’ or ‘knowledge’ only through rational reflection and without consideration from what is referred to as sensory perceptions, appearances or qualities. Simply put, rationalism excludes the qualitative matrix. In the example of the mind, attention is narrowed upon how ‘mind’ can be described or reasoned about in language and excluding what the unfolding of the qualitative matrices can tell us about the concept of ‘mind’.

This is important because we must note that the concept of mind is ‘too abstract’ to be able to note it within the qualitative matrix. By this I mean that within the qualitative matrix that surrounds me I am unable to refer to a ‘mind’: All I can refer to is my FPP, qualities like 3D images, sounds, smells, sensations, etc., the things and experiences they put together and how I relate to these.

I hope it is relatively clear now that the container-mind is a self-referential symbolic understanding of the mind because its meaningfulness as an explanation relies on the explicit or implicit acceptance of the container schema and its entity structure (an isolated, independent object with an inside/outside separation) that are implicit in common language about the mind. However, we can also reflect on what a total understanding of ‘mind’ would be. This amounts to be able to step out of the closed-loop of traditional self-referential symbolic thought about the mind, suspending the traditional western beliefs and assumptions about it -that get their structure from the container schema- and to go beyond this symbolic thought in order to include the qualitative matrices. This amounts to also observe and describe the motion and change of the qualities that unfold before me and consider how do I relate to these qualities.

In this doing, I end up with up with a very different outlook -introduced at the beginning of this essay- observing that I am a first-person perspective situated in the middle of an environment, embedded or submerged right in the center of what I call ‘the world’, that I more formally denote as a double matrix of qualitative signs (actual and imaginary) and a symbolic matrix. With this more general focus I realize that what I am confronted to is my own FPP and the double matrix of qualitative signs that includes images, sounds, sensations, smells and tastes in their specific forms. I am also confronted to a symbolic matrix where I can find the concept ‘mind’, but this is just what it is, another of the countless signs that I am confronted to.

This thorough understanding of ‘what occurs to me’ precludes all sorts of inside/outside or subject/object schematizations of experience, replacing these with the idea of me being existentially connected to the signs that surround me, not separate from them. It must be noted that what were central epistemological problems for the Western tradition disappear in the frame I describe. There are no ‘external objects’ that need to be ‘put inside’ the mind to form perceptions and ideas. For Kant, the all-time scandal was that nobody was able to provide convincing proof of the existence of the ‘external world’. Conversely, in this thorough frame of understanding of experience, the scandal is the very fact that people are trying to prove its existence, as if we were somehow trapped in an ‘internal world’ and were unable to ‘get out’ of it, deluded because people were taking literally the metaphorical structure of a symbolic signs.

‘Essence’, ‘Substance’ and ‘Nature’: the symbolic reinforcement of habits and regularities

I will now turn onto some central concepts that are at the foundation of western philosophy: ‘essence’, ‘substance’ and ‘nature’. Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle assumed that all objects have inherent ‘essences’, referring to a set of core properties that give an object its identity. At the same time, the ‘essence’ of an object was supposed to identify its purpose or function. Without its essence, a kind of object could not be qualified as that kind of object. For example, without its blade, a knife could not be qualified as a knife; without an ability to open doors, a key could not be referred to as a key.

Let me consider an example. For millennia, it has been a common assumption to believe that ‘human essence is rationality’. What we should do in order to analyze this claim is to contrast it to a dynamic or processual understanding of experience. We know that as babies we do not really qualify as ‘rational’ since we are unable to use language. We can at least say that we are able to become rational, but this possibility might not necessarily be actualized. Furthermore, it is very likely that we interpret the claim ‘human nature is rational’ to be a timeless and totalizing description of humans. If someone else claims ‘human nature is emotional’, it seems to be incompatible with the original claim, as if only one of the claims must be ‘true’ and the other one ‘false’. This happens because in the conceptual understanding of ‘essence’, this concept is understood to refer to something unique and not multiple. This is why it does not make sense that I ask ‘What are the human essences? or ‘What are the human natures?’.

This concept of essence and its relationship to a relatively stable and permanent conception of objects is reminiscent of the tension in pre-Socratic philosophy between being and becoming. To be and to become seem to be two fundamental aspects of what occurs, the two sides of a same coin: what is refers to the present state of things, what is the case in this current moment, whereas what becomes acknowledges that the present state of things is really the result of an extremely long process of continuous change and evolution that will, of course, continue from this present moment onto the future.

It is relevant to note that Plato and Aristotle had no notion of ‘evolution’ of living species nor ‘evolution’ of the universe, since they believed that species were fixed by divine design. If one thinks about it, it makes less sense to ask what is the ‘essence’ or ‘nature’ of a living species that is in constant evolution and that in time will metamorphose into another form with other capacities, anatomy, etc.

What is actually done by all treatises of human nature is to observe aspects of what has become regular as a result of a history of transformation and creation (e.g. language, reason, emotion), describe these aspects through language and claim that these aspects are ‘essential’ to our species, and thus, permanent. Concepts like that of ‘human nature’ make us believe that what has been constituted as regular or habitual is the default or permanent condition of human beings, an ‘innate’ or ‘inherent’ trait that all human beings are subject to, without exception. In this sense, symbolic concepts like ‘essence’ or ‘nature’ reinforce what is merely habitual, they naturalize what is merely cultural, they establish as permanent what is merely the product of specific circumstances.

In this regard, philosophies of ‘essence’ and ‘nature’ are static philosophies, because their approach has an explicit or implicit preference for state over change, and in this implicit preference these concepts of ‘essence’ and ‘nature’ portray phenomena that have become habitual or regular as a result of conditions (phylogenetic or cultural) as if they were permanent, the ‘nature’ of reality, and descriptions of the sort. This means that by default closed to the possibility of manifestation of new phenomena, they are unable to account for evolution or to consider possibilities of transformation or metamorphosis. This relationship between being and becoming was embodied in Greek philosophy by the characters of Parmenides and Heraclitus, respectively. Heraclitus believed that nothing in this world was constant, except change and becoming. Conversely, Parmenides thought that the change or "becoming" we perceive with our senses was deceptive, and that there was a pure, permanent, perfect and eternal being behind nature. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy refers to this when describing that:

Substance metaphysics proceeds from the intuition—first formulated by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides—that being should be thought of as simple, hence as internally undifferentiated and unchangeable. Substance metaphysicians recast this intuition as the claim that the primary units of reality (called “substances”) must be static—they must be what they are at any instant in time.

The implication of this is that the verb 'is' tends to take a supposedly static, stable and permanent snapshot of what has come to be the case, overlooking or failing to incorporate the dynamic that gave rise to what is as well as to consider future possible outcomes that might arise. Conversely, the verb 'become' incorporates this dynamic perspective as it acknowledges a process of change and transformation that gave rise to the current conditions and will continue to shape future conditions. 

In this sense, one can do philosophies from the side of what is, from the side of what becomes, or one can try to synthesize both in the same frame of thought. If one takes the side of being or what is in itself, then one will tend to think in terms of objects with essences, which will amount to take a static stance. In other words, one will only consider the snapshot of the current state of affairs and think of it as a permanent state. This mode of reasoning will revolve around central concepts such as ‘essence’, ‘is’, ‘fixed’, ‘solid’, ‘permanent’, ‘foundation’, ‘object’, ‘property’, ‘being’, ‘substance’, ‘nature’, ‘stable’, ‘independent’, ‘state’, ‘law’.

Conversely, if one takes the side of what becomes then one will tend to think in terms of processes with capacities, which will amount to take a processual stance or process philosophy. In other words, one will consider the process that gives rise to the present regularities and think of it as a fluctuating, evolving and transient state. This mode of reasoning will revolve around central concepts such as ‘co-evolving’, ‘fluid’, ‘flux’, ‘impermanent’, ‘process’, ‘become’, ‘unstable’, ‘transient’, ‘co-dependent’, ‘possibility’, ‘relation’, ‘transformation’, ‘phase’, ‘cyclical’, ‘synchrony’.

Let me take a look at some examples of how the static approach in philosophy leads FPPs to act in certain ways. Sahlins (2008) has noted that one of the oldest beliefs instilled at the core of Western culture concerns the belief in a human nature “so avaricious and contentious that, unless it is somehow governed, it will reduce society to anarchy” (p.1), an “innate disposition of competitive self-interest” that manifests as the “lust for power arising from greed and ambition”. As is studied by Stibbe (2015), this belief in a purely selfish individual is also at the core of neoclassical economic theory that is currently taught in universities all over the world.

We shall not make the naïve gesture of evaluating whether this belief is ‘true’ or ‘false’. The important thing to do is to observe what are the effects of believing in these symbolic claims and what do they lead FPPs to do. Sahlins (2008) makes a very strong case that this belief lead FPPs to think that they need a strong government that is able to repress the avaricious and passionate instincts of individual FPPs. This consequent belief has led to the establishment of two modes of strong government: monarchy and republic. However, this is not the only possible inference from the basic belief in a selfish human nature. Adam Smith, for example, turns the logic around to claim that selfishness is moral because when FPPs act in a selfish manner, society and commerce thrives from it (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Stibbe, 2015). This view of moral self-interest is at the core of neoclassical theory which leads people to believe that it is positive to behave in a selfish way.

In short, we can see that static philosophies like this one are very much alive and shaping the world we currently live in. It may seem odd, however, that in this case the belief in an avaricious and contentious human nature has lasted for more than two millennia. How is this possible? We only need to be reminded that symbolic signs like the description ‘self-interested human nature’ are not bounded by time, they can be historically transmitted, recovered or preserved. In this manner, they are capable to become considered as ‘normal’ or as ‘the way things are’. In this sense, beliefs in symbolic claims have a self-fulfilling character, insofar as FPPs act according to what they signal. In this way, they shape the matrix-world at their image, they are able to determine human actions when they are assumed to be ‘real’ and in time they finally seem to be ‘natural’ or ‘the way things are’.

For example, I can look now at the current state of the world that surrounds me, claim that ‘this society is competitive’ and think this description fits or adjusts to the current state of things. However, this would fall to the side of what is, and I must note that I can alternatively claim “this society has become competitive”.

This alternative claim gets closer to the circular or cyclical process of interaction between the symbolic matrix and the qualitative matrix (in relation to FPPs) and how they shape the actions of FPPs: symbolic claims like an ‘avaricious and competitive human nature’ lead FPPs to act in a self-interested, competitive way and shape most things they collectively do in these ways: political ‘careers’ and ‘races’, corporations in competitive markets, education, international economics, etc. as well as creating strong authoritative governments that repress the assumed violent and avaricious nature of FPPs and define what they can and cannot do. In sum, symbolic signs shape the world and the kinds of things we do, making it seem as ‘natural’, ‘normal’ or ‘the way things are’.

The issue seems a very simple one, if we do not overcome the current static age of philosophy, we will self-destruct. This is simply the consequence of the realization that the language of static philosophies fails to adapt to the constant metamorphosis of the Earth, of the living species within it and how we participate in this metamorphosis. The main thing to understand here is that our potential adjustment or adaptation to what surrounds us is necessarily a conceptual or symbolic adaptation, because we collectively coordinate and synchronize our actions through words, and we collectively shape the matrices that surround us through the theories, rules, ideologies and institutions we put together with these words. As ethnobotanist Terence Mckenna puts it: “Thought can't go where the roads of language have not been built. You decide where you want to go and you build a linguistic path there […] Our cultural dilemma is a linguistic dilemma. We need to take hold of our language and build it consciously.”

This leads to conclude that a central aspect of solving contemporary human dilemmas (e.g. ecological crises, racism, human exploitation, speciesism, misogyny, homophobia, etc.) amounts to learning how to relate to language. In one way or another this implies deciding not to be determined by what old-age symbolic signs (concepts, theories, ideologies, archetypes, rules, institutions) tell us to do, to think and to believe in. Our languages are full of metaphors that we take literally (as the container-mind) and these metaphors literally structure what we do and think of. We tend to take concepts like ‘essence’ and ‘nature’ literally and act according to them, failing to notice that what we become is not predetermined by symbolic descriptions but is rather completely open to imagination. To become human is a field that is open to design and possibility. Furthermore, due to our dependence on signs, we must recognize that whatever we choose to become we will become by following a subset of signs that we interact with. The human problem is determining which symbolic signs to use and which not to use in order to orient ourselves collectively and adapt to the circumstances at hand.

In more formal terms, what seems to be necessary in order to solve contemporary dilemmas is a transformation of our relationship with symbolic signs. For centuries, concepts were believed to be universal structures that were independent of our bodies and our experiences, and within the frame of this belief is where philosophy has made theories on the ‘universal’ or ‘objective’ structures of concepts like time, morality, the self, etc. (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). This has led FPPs to ignore the ubiquitous presence of metaphors as the main vehicle for theorizing about abstract concepts. Moreover, the canon of western philosophy was founded on the belief in a static world, which has been revolving around static concepts like ‘nature’, ‘essence’, ‘inherent’, that lead FPPs to think that human characteristics are somehow permanent, failing to open possibilities for future evolution concerning a more sane and conscious relationship towards language.

We are, of course, free to stay in the static age of philosophy, free to cling to static concepts and beliefs that have been held for centuries, but this essay was an effort to create awareness that these modes of thinking are leading us to hatred, alienation, conflict, death and ultimately to self-destruction.

References

Glanzberg, Michael, "Truth", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/truth/>.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought (Vol. 28). New York: Basic books.

Maturana, H. R. (1988). Reality: The search for objectivity or the quest for a compelling argument. The Irish journal of psychology, 9(1), 25-82.

Pharoah, M. (2018). Qualitative Attribution, Phenomenal Experience and Being. Biosemiotics, 11(3), 427-446.

Sahlins, M. D. (2008). The Western illusion of human nature: With reflections on the long history of hierarchy, equality and the sublimation of anarchy in the West, and comparative notes on other conceptions of the human condition (Vol. 32). Prickly Paradigm.

Seibt, Johanna, "Process Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/process-philosophy/>.

Smith, T. W. (2015). The book of human emotions: An encyclopedia of feeling from anger to wanderlust. Profile Books.

Stibbe, A. (2015). Ecolinguistics: Language, ecology and the stories we live by. Routledge.

Tomasello, M. (2018). A natural history of human thinking. Harvard University Press.

 

Notes

[1] I shall not use the term ‘consciousness’ since it denotes something secondary to what we call experience. As we know, in many situations we may not be conscious of what is occurring, unaware of what we are experiencing. In this sense, consciousness is secondary to experience since it is a capacity to attend and be conscious of experienced events. Simply put, to speak about ‘consciousness’ tends to overlook the existence of the cognitive unconscious, as understood by Lakoff & Johnson (1999).

[2] From now on, the words ‘FPP’, ‘I’ and ‘me’ will all denote the first-person perspective. The words ‘we’ and ‘us’ will denote the plural form, namely, first-person perspectives or FPPs.