2008 EDITION
Source material for Human being
ANIL MITRA, COPYRIGHT © 2008
CONTENTS
Material from Journey in Being-New World-essence.html
Elements of psyche—the dimensions and variables of feeling
Adaptability of integration. Emotion and motivation.
Cognition. Integration with emotion
Emotional responses are not fixed
Incompleteness of integration—its adaptive character
Growth, personality, commitments
The role of method in understanding freedom in the expression of personality
Material from Journey in Being-New World-essence.html
The introduction to the division Human world, discussed its role in the narrative
Human being is the ‘unit’ of the human world. Human being sets up the chapters Social world through Faith
Psyche is the most significant aspect of Human being to ‘Journey’ and so this chapter emphasizes the mental side
Mind is not separate from body and even though there are differences, human being is not distinct from the animal; therefore the chapter begins with organism
When two systems are—exist—in interaction their forms may be mutually influenced. They may co-form and be co-formed or adapted; they may have con-formation—but it is not implied that such conformation is intrinsic or goes to the root of the being of the systems. Common origins and extensive interaction are two sources of adaptation that goes to or approaches that root. The occurrence of adaptation is necessary; that it should be of a particular kind or degree is, in the particular case, a priori contingent. When a kind of degree of adaptation is consistently conceived or observed, that it should occur—and occur with infinite repetition—is necessary. While the occurrence of consistent or observed adaptation is necessary, a mechanism of occurrence such as incremental variation and selection is, in any instance, a priori at most probable. That—consistent—incremental variation and selection should occur in some instance is necessary. That incremental variation and selection should always be a priori probable is impossible even if it is most often so; it is perhaps more accurate to say that there are probabilities only relative to an ‘initial’ state that already has form. There must be cases of deep co-adaptation—including adaptation of organism to environment—whose genesis was not one of incremental variation and selection. It is not necessary that such cases have occurred on this earth
When the process of adaptation becomes ‘coded’ into the organism, ‘evolution’ may be said to be internalized. Examples of internalization are the genetic code and—creative—intelligence. The relation between the size of the code and the size of its elements e.g. the primitive molecules that is required for complexity of even the simplest organisms poses an interesting question. The relation between the size of the simplest organisms and the size required for complexity of form and function—and creative intelligence—also poses an interesting question (note that function is dynamic form)
That psyche is experience—in its forms and varieties—has been shown in Mind. That experience should, in the case of animal being, be coeval with the material root of the organism was also shown and the potential charge that this is an ‘absurd pan-psychism’ was considered and critically rejected
The elementary ‘unit’ of experience or psyche may be labeled feeling. In this use, feeling contains but is not limited to the common use of feeling as emotion or affect
The example of ‘sense’ that includes sensation of environment—sight, hearing and so on, and of body—muscle tension, motion and position sense and so on shows that the dimensions may be or are experienced as both continuous and discrete. Although any listing of the dimensions may be incomplete there is no ineffable sense even though there may be subtle or low intensity sensing. It is not being said that, when matter is defined as in current physical science, all is matter or there is no spiritual element but that any spiritual element is in the universe and sensory knowledge of it does not lie in a different category from the recognized senses. It is certainly possible that, if there is such sensation, some individuals may possess it to a greater degree than others…
Feeling has the following variables or dimensions
Quality refers to sensory mode. Modes defined by environmental variables—sight; hearing; touch which includes pressure, friction, hot and cold; taste and smell. Modes that correspond to body variables. Afferent—sense associated with reception—muscle tension; variables associated with other organs including stress; motion and position sense. Efferent—sense associated with action and production—motion; semi-autonomous variables such as breathing; speech; dramatization
Intensity—which includes the positive-negative dimension e.g. pleasure-pain. Below some threshold, sensory variables may not be associated with the positive-negative dimension which disposes to seeking or avoiding action and, at such levels are primary informational in character
A bound feeling is one whose intensity and quality are functions of the state of the object of perception (the object is not always identical to the conventional object e.g. when a brick is the conventional object, lighting may be included in ‘the’ object.) A free feeling is one that is at most partially bound. Free feeling and memory are likely interwoven. The free feeling appears to be the source or occasion of novelty or creativity of mental process; higher creativity occurs in the discipline and cultivation of the higher modes in interaction with the basal. The bound quality of mental content appears to be associated with attitude (intentionality) and action
The elementary unit of psyche was labeled feeling. Does this occur at the level of the most elementary of physical particles, at an atomic or molecular level or at the level of cells or some higher level? It was shown in Mind, that the most elementary particles have feeling but it may not be necessary to specify which level is fundamental. For most processes of psyche the relevant elementary level may be cellular but there may be aspects of psyche, e.g. indeterminism, for which it is necessary to refer to sub-cellular even elementary particle levels. When talking of a sensation, integration has already occurred but, for much of the discussion of functions of psyche, this level may be taken as elementary
Integration covers the integration or binding of different sensations—sensory feelings—in the perception of an object. The sense of object constancy under rotation and motion is a form of integration. Integration is not entirely bound—a tree can be seen as a tree or as ‘10,000 leaves…’
Integration is adaptable—cultural objects are especially adapted. The ‘unity of consciousness’ is a form of integration. Complex emotions are integrated. The non-separation and perhaps inseparability of quality and form translates as binding of emotion and perception at primitive levels. Motivation is found in the binding of emotive-feeling and perceptive-feeling; since primitive emotion is sense or perception of body, lower motivation is binding of body to environment (higher motivation is potential binding of psyche to world.) These thoughts concern binding of modes of feeling at primitive levels and show the essential binding of primitive emotion and perception where emotion may be below the threshold of distinctive pleasure-pain but provides perception and thought with a motivational-quality whose lack is pathological. This level of binding of emotive to cognitive ‘feeling’ is primitive in relation to binding of thought and emotion which has necessary degrees of freedom—of integrability and disintegrability. Emotion is—provides—binding to others and to commitments (possible explanation of non-productive lives of antisocial persons)
Perception may be seen as integrated bound external sensation (hallucination is image memory whose intensity matches that of normal perception.) Thought is integrated free sensation. There appear to be thresholds of intensity below which perception and thought lack valence. Higher emotion is (hypothetically) a mutually conditioned mix of elementary emotion and thought. Primitive or elementary emotion is bound, internal, valent sensation
Since binding is a function of memory and since memory associations change, it is not correct to think of emotional responses as fixed even though it is the nature of binding that emotion should have strong binding. This is also observed. Emotion may be cultivated—at least in some measure; although joy is not a matter of will, it may be cultivated; and misery may be cultivated for secondary gain. The categories of intuition below are integral forms
The incompleteness of integration was noted. This incompleteness is essential for it allows integrability and growth, and it allows the presence of multiple channels of mental process and, especially, focus and periphery (background)
Personality is an integral form as is Identity. Personality will not be analyzed further here except to observe that it is a function whose arguments include the integration of the functions of cognition, emotion and perhaps motivation which includes drive or energy and inherited and learnt aspects of these factors. The theory of identity has been considered in Cosmology
The actual integration of objects is clearly a function of ability to integrate—which is a function of kind of organism and exposure (growth.) This would appear to be most efficient; the alternative that integration is entirely built in or innate would place a burden on heredity and would mean that all adaptations would be pre-adaptations. The individual is regarded as having the ability to integrate. The integral forms are laid down in memory (neural) which is modified (grows) in exposure
These terms have a number of meanings and in their most general meanings have significant overlap. In an elementary meaning, perception is bound to the object while conception has a degree of freedom. In another meaning, the concept is any mental content and, in this use, includes perception. Occasionally perception is used to include conception for, even while conception has freedom, it invariably has potential binding
Memory (relative strength of association) and focus-background are implicated in the unconscious. Two types of ‘unconscious’ may be identified. (1) What is present in mind but is peripheral to the focal consciousness. This may come to foreground. In some cases the individual becomes aware of the periphery even without its coming to fore e.g. in becoming aware that there had been an awareness a few seconds ago. (2) What is not present but may come into awareness through association that is focal or otherwise. Additionally, lack of integration or splitting is also implicated (this concern is significant in ‘neuroses’ and disintegration or disorder of personality.) The unconscious enters also as the Form of intuition which conditions perception and conception but is not itself normally seen
The intuition is an integral function—or set of integral functions. Its importance is sufficient to place it in a separate section
The ability to perceive the world in terms of objects, space, time, causation and so on must depend on biological structures and so be innate or partially innate. Such abilities examples of what Kant called intuition—the built-in conformation of percept and concept to forms of the world. The following categories deviate from those of Kant and others. Space, time and cause—suggested by Schopenhauer as the forms of intuition—are forms of regularity. It is innate to have adaptation to irregularities and unexpected features of the world. Humor is the category of intuition that adapts to the irregular and the unexpected. In this meaning, humor is related but not identical to its common meaning. Originality and humor overlap. The source of this idea is the pronouncement of a friend ‘Humor is the highest form of wisdom.’ The classes of intuition are the existential, the physical and the biological, and the psychosocial
Being (Becoming, Being-in, …), Experience and Content—precursor to self and concept, Object, Humor (the intuition of indeterminism and chaos)
Space, Time, Physical Object, Causation, Indeterminism
Life Form and Ecosystem, Species, Heredity
Image-Concept, Icon-Symbol (and Artifactuality and Language,) all of which are strongly Cognitive, Emotion, Humor, Value, Identity… Self, Other-as-self e.g. ‘you’ or ‘thou,’ Communication, Other-as-object e.g. ‘they.’ Is such a list necessary or illuminating? It has been presented in such detail because the, for the individual, all the items listed are intuitive—have an intuitive element—which is not to say that they entirely innate / do not have a developmental aspect. And, of course, in allowing symbol, everything would have an innate aspect in some sense but now, in humor, innateness includes the unpredicted and the unpredictable and so allows reaching out into what not at all innate—the world beyond this world—the world of what is unknown, what is not contained in person or society
A reduced system might be Object and Humor—which are the abilities to know and appreciate the known and the unknown
Classic approaches to personality (these perhaps straddle a number of cultures) include factors and dynamics. A preliminary organization of factors is according to freedom and constraint (in which biology is significant.) These include affective-cognitive style. Dynamics pertains to the interactions among these factors and to action and choice. Here, dynamics further pertains to fixity, flexibility of dynamics, recognition of the factors (including the unconscious,) cultivation, and reflexivity applied to change. Dimensions. What factors mark personality and what are its dimensions? Personality is a function of overall integration of psyche (the suggestion a near tautology.) It is also reasonable to think that the overall integration is a result of the interaction of experience and the functional system (including the categories of intuition.) Therefore, an effective approach to classification (to be synthesized with observation and experience) may include consideration of the varieties of integration—the differential development of the various functions and their interactions (e.g. and roughly, prominence of emotion would mark a different kind than would prominence of cognition. The ratios of binding and freedom and their intensities are also significant.) It may be observed that, roughly, growth follows an (overlapping) sequence of development: natural, social, psychological, universal. These issues remain an ongoing concern
The place of a study of personality in the journey is as follows. There are impediments to realization. These include normal impediments e.g. constraints of intelligence, time, affection, resources… There was an initial lack of definition of goals—this, it was recognized, is essential to the endeavor. However, they also recognized characteristic styles of self-perception, relations to life—including others and environment and ambition, how they accommodated criticism and success and failure—how they conceived success and failure… These overlap ‘personality.’ Cultivation of self is important; compensation (in addition to change) but not overcompensation (which requires recognition) is also significant. Charisma may, perhaps, be cultivated
Is personality a form of binding to determined patterns of behavior? The repetitive occurrence of characteristic patterns even when not desired suggests that there is a determined component or tendency. However, there is no empirical foundation to complete determinism in personality for a general proposition is not proved by instances and, further, it is perhaps true that most observations of determined behavior come from routine behavior where repetition is desired or neurotic behavior where the mechanism of choice has not developed or has been suppressed due to painful associations. There can be no theoretical foundation for determinism in personality even though thinking in earlier eras of determinism in the fundamental sciences may have so predisposed thought. Freedom has been seen to be logically necessary (on minimalist and realistic conditions.) However, there is no logical proof that the individual has freedom for there could be an invisible agent that guides ‘as if free’ behavior. In development, parents guide the behavior of children. However, to think that all human behavior is so guided is to substitute an extremely improbable explanation for a normal explanation; there is no practical reason to doubt freedom in personality. What is in question is what kinds and extents of freedom there may be. It is suggested that in healthy individual, awareness and expression of choice require time and may develop over time and, when at the boundaries of normal possibility, may require great diligence and focus and may require, for example, an acceptance of anxiety which may be seen as a form of binding
Language has the following typical characteristics. Its syntactical forms correspond to states of affairs and modes of communication regarding such states. The standard form of language that corresponds to a state of affairs is the subject-predicate form. The modes of communication are assertion, direction, commission, expression, declaration (assertion includes the sub-forms of fact, exclamation, and question…) In spoken form there is a vocabulary; the spoken form follows syntax; the spoken form is associated with para-verbal communication. The written form includes letters that are not signs in themselves but from which signs—words—are built; there are punctuation marks and of which some indicate para-verbal communication. However the written form tends to have degrees of dissociation from context that is both strength and weakness. Language is generally a linear form. Language production and comprehension is a form of intuition but this does not mean that it is entirely innate
This picture of language has a number of deficiencies. Is the subject-predicate form the universal mode of expression? Are there not utterances that are not predicative? Is a groan a linguistic form? Are the parts of speech ‘kinds.’ Is the suggestion that syntax and semantics are separate fully valid? As communication and expression, how complete is language—even though there may be special language centers in the brain does this force us to regard language as an entity unto itself—or is it continuous with iconic and dramatic production and recognition? Does not the central place of linear language in culture dispose human beings to see language as larger than it is—especially, perhaps, because language becomes a selective factor for kinds of intelligence and activity
Factors of achievement are of interest in the journey and in the general case. Achievement results from the cultivation of ability as well as from circumstantial factors. The existence of the savant syndrome suggests that exceptional ability is, at least in part, the result of release and this thought has partial confirmation in experiments designed to release ability. Therefore, cultivation of ability is important and in its absence exceptional ability is not at all under individual influence. The dimensions of ability—and of dysfunction—correspond at least approximately to the dimensions of intuition (which include personality.) Binding of cognition and emotion is significant. Achievement is occasionally but not invariably the result of a ‘healthy’ psyche and may be a result of release, compensation or occasion that results from deviation from health and, of course, this calls into question the nature of ‘health’ in relation to psyche and whether health is uniform or multivalent and to what extent health is individual versus cumulative over individuals
In small (hunter-gatherer) societies, ‘shamans’ have been (it is said) the diviners of ‘truth’ and protectors of psychic and social integrity. The (‘true’) shaman appears to be a psychically sensitive and charismatic but perhaps physically robust individual who is initiated e.g. by crisis into and completes a journey of discovery into ‘other’ worlds (which may be interpreted as a journey into the self.) Completion of the shamanic journey is important—cognitively as disintegration as preliminary to integration, breakdown is preliminary to reconstruction in light of the Real; and emotively as confidence that results from living through an experience of complete lack of foundation
It is pertinent to ask whether the future ‘inspiration’ of the modern world lies only in institution, patriarchalism and normalcy or whether it may lie also in charisma (whose roots may lie in sensitivity and ability)
Is there an end of growth? In the normal theories of growth, death is an ultimate limit. The Theory of Being shows that death cannot be such a limit and, in discussing Identity it was shown that Individual Identity merges (must merge) in a higher (more comprehensive) identity
Such issues may be discussed without end. Their meaning (sense and reference) is realized in action rather than discussion alone. The following is an aspect of the experiments to be undertaken
Brahman is the real; Atman is the limit in individual Identity. Then, Atman is the Experience of Brahman in the Individual