The Everyday Understanding

Today the word 'representation' enjoys increasing recognition - due, in large measure, to the influence of those working within sociology, media studies, women's studies, and cognitive psychology. Nevertheless, direct reference to, and explicitly writing about, representational goings-on continues for many people to appear strange, perhaps even risible, or just unnecessary in the sense that people of my grandmother's generation would observe that talking about sexual matters was "so unnecessary".

Nevertheless, most people develop a complex understanding for the use of representational things that is commonly shared within a particular collective. That understanding's existence is revealed, moreover, by the way in which, during everyday social encounters, people use terms such as: 'mind', 'mental', 'psychic', 'consciousness', 'will', 'intelligence', 'instinct', and 'intellect'. Examine that usage from a critical standpoint and it is soon clear that it is based upon a complex understanding of representational goings-on. Albeit a mode of examination that has been ignored, so far at least, by most philosophers and psychologists. Instead, such terms are used by, and commented upon, by most philosophers and psychologists as if they form their own technical vocabulary. An example of that restrictive attitude, for the use of the term 'mind' specifically, is provided by the influential philosopher of the forties and fifties: Gilbert Ryle - who, in a radio talk of the late forties, asserted that:

'In ordinary life (save when we want to sound knowing) we seldom use the noun 'Mind' or the adjective 'mental' at all.'

Ryle's assertion here is manifestly so untrue as to merit questioning why he made it at all - particularly when talking to a popular audience. The assertion runs wholly counter to the use of terms such as 'mind' in everyday conversation exchanges. Within such exchanges people make quite frequent use of terms such as 'mind' and 'mental' without feeling that they are getting embroiled in metaphysical uncertainties and without any intention to sound linguistically ostentatious. Instead, people use such terms for perfectly mundane purposes concerning the practical affairs of day to day living. Which is true of young children as well as mature adults. For instance, when, as a primary school child, I certainly was not concerned to sound knowing when I complained that every morning I had to do mental arithmetic.

I conclude, in short, that the complex ways in which people in general, including, of course, the academically educated in particular, talk with terms such as 'mind' is totally ignored by the academically educated when talking and writing about these self same terms. And, perhaps even more surprisingly, when people in general listen to what philosophers and psychologists have to say about 'mind', and other related terms, they forget that they use such terms in their everyday social encounters. A distinction requires, therefore, to be drawn between the intellectual reference to terms such as 'mind' and how those same terms are used idiomatically and vernacularly. Here I draw upon a distinction that, paradoxically, I initially derived from Ryle, namely:

'Many people can talk sense with concepts but cannot talk sense about them; they know by practice how to operate with concepts, anyhow inside familiar fields, but they cannot state the logical regulations governing their use. They are like people who know their way about their own parish, but cannot construct or read a map of it, much less a map of the region or continent in which their parish lies.'

But what Ryle ignores is that people are unable to draw semantic map for terms such as 'mind', 'mental', and so on, because of the intervention, over the centuries, by the academically educated themselves. In short, Ryle is part of the problem that, seemingly, he seeks to solve. [ii]

Today the word 'representation' enjoys increasing recognition, nevertheless, referring directly to, and writing explicitly about, representational goings-on appears to many people strange, and to some exceeding so. Or at least so it seems to me in that for some people to refer directly and explicitly to representational goings-on seems risible if not actually absurd. Nevertheless, as asserted above, for such goings-on most people develop a complex understanding. An assertion supported by the way in which that understanding's existence is revealed by the way in which people, in their everyday social encounters use terms such as: 'mind', 'mental', 'psychic', 'consciousness', 'will', 'intelligence', 'instinct', and 'intellect'. Examine that usage and its clear that it is based upon a complex understanding of representational goings-on. Albeit a mode of examination which, so far, has been ignored by most philosophers and psychologists. Nor is it surprising that academics have given the cold shoulder to the everyday use of such terms in that they are held to belong within their own professional preserve.[i] An example of that restrictive attitude is provided, for the use of the term 'mind' specifically, by the influential philosopher of the forties and fifties: Gilbert Ryle.[ii] In a radio talk of the late forties Ryle asserted that:

'In ordinary life (save when we want to sound knowing) we seldom use the noun 'Mind' or the adjective 'mental' at all.'

Ryle's assertion here is manifestly so untrue as to merit questioning why he made it at all - particularly when talking to a popular audience. For the assertion runs wholly counter to the use of terms such as 'mind' in everyday conversation exchanges. Within such exchanges people make quite frequent use of terms such as 'mind' and 'mental' without feeling that they are getting embroiled in metaphysical uncertainties and without any intention to sound linguistically ostentatious. Instead, people use such terms for perfectly mundane purposes concerning the practical affairs of day to day living.. Which is true of young children as well as mature adults. For instance, when, as a primary school child, I was certainly not concerned to sound knowing when I complained that every morning I had to do mental arithmetic.

I conclude, in short, that the complex ways in which people in general, including, of course, the academically educated in particular, talk with terms such as 'mind' is totally ignored by the academically educated when talking and writing about these self same terms.[iii] And, perhaps even more surprisingly, when people in general listen to what philosophers and psychologists have to say about 'mind', and other related terms, they forget that they use such terms in their everyday social encounters. A usage which, moreover, runs counter to that within academic discourse.

A distinction requires, therefore, to be drawn between the intellectual reference to terms such as 'mind' and the idiomatic use of those same terms. Here I draw upon a distinction which, paradoxically, I initially derived from Ryle, namely:

But what Ryle ignores is that people are unable to draw semantic map for terms such as 'mind', 'mental', and so on, because of the intervention, over the centuries, by the academically educated themselves. That, in short, Ryle is part of the problem which seemingly he seeks to solve.[v]

By an intellectual use of language I mean language used within academic discourse and which involves terms which are capable of explicit definition. Whereas by an idiomatic use of language I mean language which is used within everyday social exchanges without reference to explicit linguistic definitions.[vi] So, from an ability, idiomatically, to use a word meaningfully within a social context it does not follow that such an ability will extend to defining that word explicitly within an intellectual context. But that lack of a formal definition does not mean that a term is used without meaning or that such meaning is idiosyncratic to a particular person. The term idiomatic I use to refer to a term which carries its meaning implicitly and which is shared within a particular group. Hence, the test I employ to identify the idiomatic use of language is that people are able to use a term within a conversational exchange without that exchange being interrupted by a request for that term's definition or impeded by expressions of puzzlement and doubt about its meaning.[vii] Unless that test was generally satisfied within society then linguistic exchanges would be at best difficult and at worst impossible. That, in other words, linguistic exchanges predominantly rest upon an idiomatic understanding of a language as it is use within a particular linguistic group. Here, I draw a distinction which doubtless I initially derived from Wittgenstein:[viii]

'remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus proceeding according to exact rules.'

That, in other words, the academically educated, in relation to the term 'mind', totally divorce the intellectual from the idiomatic. A divorce which I find surprising in that intellectually the academically educated experience the greatest difficulty in defining what they mean by the term 'mind' yet it is a term which people are able to use idiomatically without, seemingly, any difficulty whatsoever. Moreover, that intellectual difficulty does not stop the academically educated themselves from using the term 'mind' idiomatically. The distinction between the idiomatic and the intellectual I point up in the playlet forming the Prologue for this text. A disparity which is not wholly fictional in that it receives its most ironic illustration in the writings of the American psychologist: John Brodus Watson[ix] - an arch enemy of mental goings-on. Watson, in his first behavioristic broadside, made a forceful attack upon the intellectual use of terms such as 'mind'.[x] Yet in that paper he makes the following idiomatic aside involving the term 'mind':

'I fear that a good many of us are still viewing behavior problems with something like this in mind.'

Accordingly I conclude that whilst people in general, as well as the academically educated in particular, understand well enough how to talk with the term 'mind' concretely nevertheless they seemingly lack the knowledge, in an equally straightforward way, to talk about the term 'mind' in the abstract.[xi] As a consequence the term's meaning in the abstract is typically held by the academically educated to be wholly elusive, obscure, and, perhaps even, incomprehensible - or, in the extreme Watsonian case, that the term itself is unnecessary. Hence, it is generally assumed that words such as 'mind' refer to goings-on which require specialist academic and investigatory skills of philosophers, psychologists, and the like. A view which wholly ignores the possibility that terms such as 'mind' and so on might be initially investigated by transforming the understanding of such terms developed by people in general into a system of knowledge for such terms. A transformation based upon existing knowledge in that the idiomatic use of terms such as 'mind', 'mental' 'psychic', and so on, must be derived from goings-on which exist in the here and now and for which people must have direct experience of a mundane kind. A body of socially established understandings cannot wait upon goings-on which have to be discovered at some time in the future but must be derived from goings-on within which people are collectively involved in their everyday lives in the here and now. And the goings-on to which people have access, and which are of relevance to their understanding of the use of terms such as 'mind', comprise, I assert, those practices involved in making, using, storing, and controlling things representationally - both mentally within the head as well as materially without the body. That, in other words terms such as 'mind', 'mental', and so on give expression to the reflexive understanding developed by people generally over the centuries to make sense of their experience of representational goings-on.

Moreover, the terms 'mind', 'mental', 'consciousness' and so form a corpus of terms which are used not only reflexively but which are also used within a more or less enclosing problematic. The term 'problematic' I use here in its special sense as developed by Althusser[xii], as drawn from Jacques Martin, to refer to an interrelated corpus of terms. [Althusser, 1977 (1965), p. 32.] In that Althusserian sense the terms forming a problematic serve to mark out various distinction in relation to a particular range of representational goings-on. That usage is most readily illustrated by reference to grammatical and critical analysis. So, for instance terms such as 'noun', 'adverb', 'sentence', 'phrase' and 'intransitive' are used reflexively with a grammatical problematic. Thus, grammarians understand that, for instance, the use of the term 'noun' cannot be defined in isolation but only in relation to such other terms such as 'adjective', 'adverb' and so on. So, to take a further example, it is within a critical problematic that terms such as 'sub-text', 'tempo', 'fugue', 'drama', 'act' 'symphony' and 'opera' are used reflexively to refer to representational goings-on within the arts. It is that approach which I adopt to terms such as 'mind', 'mental', 'psychic', 'consciousness' 'will', 'intelligence', and so on. Do so and its clear that such terms form a psychological problematic which refers to representational goings-on of an insubstantial kind within a person's head. It is, therefore, to that problematic's idiomatic use that I turn next: to how people talk and write with the terms such as 'mind', 'mental' and so on. And, of course, the relation between talking and writing in that Cervantes observed that:

I will then consider how these same terms are used intellectually and non-problematically.

The term 'mind', in its idiomatic use, is readily instanced from every day conversational exchanges such as:

'and the mind of Ambrose was satisfied, that his own theological opinions were the standard of truth and orthodoxy.'

'What is dangerous about the tranquillizer is that whatever peace of mind they bring is a packaged peace of mind. Where you buy a pill and buy peace with it, you get conditioned to cheap solutions instead of deep ones.

Max Lerner (1902– ) Russian-born US teacher, editor, and journalist. The Unfinished Country, ‘The Assault on the Mind’

'This thesaurus (Roget's) is often an indispensable companion for writers and speakers, and can help you expand your vocabulary, avoid repetition, or simply recall a word that has slipped your mind.'

'Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitching of our minds by means of language.'

'On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.'

But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.

'Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways; Reclothe us in our rightful mind; In purer lives Thy service find, In deeper reverence, praise.'

'Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.'

'I shall probably have my mind made up for me by something quite accidental and regret it afterwards.'

John Macmurray in a broadcast talk as reproduced in Freedom in the modern World, p. 25.]

'Steven's mind was so tolerant that he could have attended a lynching every day without becoming critical.'

'A businessman without a typewriter is like a policeman without a suspicious mind.'

[Television programme, Heartbeat, December 15, 1996.] Spoken by Claud Greengrass in the

'There is no such danger in the strip pub - a worthy institution where everybody minds their own business and nobody is out to relieve you of more than the price of a pint and a modest contribution for the entertainment.'

'Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.'

'To be, or not to be - that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.'

'The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.'

All the above uses of the term 'mind' are, I suggest, readily interpreted as referring, in one way or another, to internal representational goings-on. So, for instance, Crabb writes of the triad 'idea', 'thought' and 'imagination' that:

'The idea is the simple representation of an object; the thought is the reflection; and the imagination is the combination of ideas: we have ideas of the sun, the moon and all material objects; we have thoughts on moral subjects; we have imaginations drawn from the ideas already existing in the mind.'

I don't suggest, that Crabb's criteria for distinguishing between these three terms are to be uncritically accepted. Nevertheless his approach supports a representational view of the mind's working.

A representational view mind is, moreover, not some newfangled novelty but a view which informs the understanding of mind shared by people in general within a particular speech community. An assertion which is readily supported by the fact that within their conversational exchanges people ask questions, and make statements, about mind without that conversational flow being impeded by requests for clarification of the meaning of the term 'mind'. So it must be that such questions and statement refer to goings-on which, in practice, are readily accessible to, and understood by, people in general.

Take, for instance, the conversational question: "What is on your mind Sally?" To that question Sally, even if she is a behaviorist at the academic podium, is unlikely to reply conversationally: "Don't ask me such a metaphysically meaningless questions." Instead she will reply in terms of some information or intention about which she is worried: about the repayment of her mortgage or her plans for a new garden layout. In short, Sally will interpret the question, and reply to its uncertainty, in relation to representational goings-on concerning perfectly everyday events and concerns. For Sally, like most people, would have developed for the term 'mind an understanding for its idiomatic usage. That idiomatic use, I conclude, is grounded in a general reflexive understanding for the term 'mind' and its meaning - and which is, moreover, generally shared within a particular collective. Accordingly I conclude that the term 'mind', when used idiomatically, does not raise any basic problems or difficulties in its use. Such problems and difficulties only emerge when people start to talk and write about the term abstracted from its everyday use.

Consequently it is not surprising to find that the anti-mentalistic attack made upon the term 'mind', by psychologists and philosophers such as Watson and Ryle, has had no influence whatsoever on the term's idiomatic usage. An attack which, for instance, has not had any influence upon the term's use within legal discourse. Such discourse is not interrupted by lawyers seeking a definition for its meaning. Nor does the idiomatic use of the term 'mind' cause any difficulties within the theatre. Dramatists and producers are able to take-for-granted that the term is based upon a shared understanding; as instanced by the following Shakespearean lines from Hamlet:

Thus the problems seemingly created by the difficulties raised by endeavours to talk about mind is why these difficulties are raised at all. For they would not be raised at all if, that is, the academically educated chose to based their talking about activities upon the ways in which people in general, as well as academics in particular, talked with the term mind - and related terms.

It is relevant to note that within standard dictionaries the use of the term 'mind' is generally illustrated by examples of its idiomatic use. Although in relation to such examples explicit reference is not made to the representational.

[i]) A passing indication of the way in which the academically educated seek to maintain the term 'mind' as part of its professional preserve ios provided by Arthur Reber:

'This term and what it connotes is the battered offspring of the union of philosophy and psychology.' [Reber, 1995 (1985), p. 460, col. b.]

[ii]) Gilbert Ryle (1900-76), British philosopher, who played a significant role in the development of contemporary analytic and linguistic philosophy.' From Funk and Wagnalls Enc CD ROM version.

[iii]) Underpinning this distinction is a rejection of the traditional view that writing is the instrument of speech. Instead, it is informed by the notion that academic writing has a life of its own.

[iv]) A similar point is made by, for instance, Alan White in his The Philosophy of Mind:

'But expertness in the use of conceptual tools, whether ordinary of technical, is not incompatible with confusion in an exposition of their use.'

[White, 1967, p. 15.]

[v]) Ryle is not unique in failing to take heed of his own preachments - so did Burt. As Stephen Gould notes Burt, on the one hand, 'branded reification of factors as a temptation to be avoided' whilst, on the other hand, indulging that temptation to the full. [Gould, 1984 (1981), p. 288.]

[vi]) I draw here a distinction which is by no means unique but which is drawn by others in different terms. So, for instance, Noam Chomsky (1928-) draws a distinction between 'competence' and 'performance' - a distinction which Cuddon summarised thus:

''Competence' denotes a person's knowledge of his or her language and its rules grammar, syntax, usage, while 'performance' denotes individual and specific utterance: thus, the use of the knowledge.'

[Cuddon, 1992 (1977), p. 176.]

[vii]) The criterion I use here for distinguishing between the idiomatic and the intellectual is today complicated by the publication of dictionaries of idiomatic usage,

[viii]) Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889- 1951), an Austrian-British philosopher, who was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20thC. He was particularly noted for his contribution to the movement known as analytic and linguistic philosophy. [Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia CD ROM version.]

[ix]) John Broadus. Watson (1878-1958) an American psychologist who from 1908 to 1920 he was professor of psychology and director of the psychological laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Watson is noted as the founder and leading exponent of the school of psychology known as behaviorism. Following difficulties at Hopkins he left psychology to work in advertising in Madison Avenue. He continued, nevertheless, to promote behaviourism. Publications include: Animal Education(1903), Behavior (1914), Behaviorism (1925; rev. ed., 1930), and Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928). President for the American Psychological Association for 1916.

[x]) Watson's paper, 'Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It' would be later rated, in 1943, by a group of eminent psychologists as the most important one ever published in the Psychological Review. [Leahey, 1987, p. 301.]

[xi]) Here I draw upon a distinction which initially I derived from Gilbert Ryle, namely: 'knowing how' and 'knowing that'. [Ryle, 1949, pp. 27-32.] But its a distinction which Ryle, ironically, does not seemingly apply to the term 'mind' itself despite his conceptual concern with that term.

[xii]) Althusser, Louis, (1918-1990), French philosopher and Marxist.

[xiii]) In a similar mode Henry Ward Beecher, in his Proverb from Plymouth Pulpit (1887), states that: 'The pen in the tongue of the hand - a silent utterer of words for the eye.'

[xiv]) Jonathon Green, in his The Slang Thesaurus, equates 'mind-blowing' with 'excellent first-rate'. [Green, 1986, p. 8, para. 2.] 'Mind boggling' is, seemingly, not listed.

[xv]) Johnson, Samuel (1709-84), English writer and lexicographer, a major figure in 18th-century literature as an arbiter of taste, renowned for the force and balance of his prose style. From F and Wagnalls In 1728 he entered Oxford's Pembroke College but subsequently left without taking a degree.