CHAPTER SEVEN.

LANGUAGE AND THINKING

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THINKING?
THE FIRST THING we must do to approach the problem of language and thinking correctly is to clearly separate what we know about thinking from what we do not know. We know that thinking is a process that takes place in the nerve nets of the brain. Because the tern ''representation" to us means a state of some subsystem of the brain it may be said that thinking is the process of change in the aggregate of self-representations. But at any given moment in time only a certain (obviously small) part of these representations is accessible to, as we say, our consciousness. These representations can be consolidated into one (for several subsystems taken together constitute a new subsystem), which is the state of consciousness at the given moment. We do not know what consciousness is from a cybernetic point of view: we have only fragmentary information (specifically, that consciousness is closely related to the activity of what is called the reticular formation of the brain). Thus, thinking has an external, manifest aspect: a stream of conscious representations. This stream can be fixed and studied, and from it we try to draw conclusions indirectly about those processes in the brain which are illuminated by consciousness. We are fairly sure about some things regarding the stream of consciousness. We know that it is regulated to a significant degree by associations of representations which form under the influence of experience and reflect the characteristics of our environment. Specifically, we receive our ability to foresee future situations to one degree or another thanks to the association of representations. We also know that humans, unlike animals, have the ability to control the process of association; this is manifested as imagination, encoding, and conscious memorization. But we do not know the concrete cybernetic mechanism of this ability or, as a matter of fact, the mechanism of the association of representations. These mechanisms are not given to us subjectively either: in the stream of consciousness we merely observe their appearance, the result of their action. Finally, we are subjectively given a sensation of freedom of choice in our actions: free will. Free will also manifests itself in thinking. We are able to turn our thoughts to any subject we wish. We do not know the cybernetic interpretation of free will either, and this situation is perhaps worst of all.

LINGUISTIC ACTIVITY
REPRESENTATIONS of linguistic objects, words and sentences, occupy a distinct place among all representations in the process of thinking. These representations are (with the exception of deaf mutes, of course) a combination of aural and motor representations and (for people who have dealt with written language from childhood) the visual component may also be joined to them. When we picture a certain word in our mind we mentally pronounce it, listen, and possibly see it written. For brevity we will call these linguistic representations. The stream of linguistic representations is precisely what is ordinarily called thinking. The presence of this stream is a specifically human characteristic; it is not found in animals. Socalled ''abstract'' thinking is actually thinking in words, the stream of linguistic representations. Without such thinking, the achievements of thought in which the human race takes such pride would have been impossible.

The significance of linguistic representations is that they are uniquely related to words and sentences as the material elements of the material system ''language.'' This system is the aggregate of all words and sentences pronounced orally, transmitted by telephone and radio, written on paper, encoded on punched cards for computers, and so on--in short, the aggregate of what we have called the higher nervous system of the material body of culture. Functionally, a stream of linguistic representations in no way differs from a sequence of their material correlatives: words. The external, observed aspect of thinking may be described as activity consisting of the creation of certain material linguistic objects, for example pronouncing sentences out loud (unfortunately these objects are very short-lived) or writing them on paper. We shall call this activity linguistic. There are compelling reasons to consider linguistic activity the basic, primary aspect of thinking and the stream of linguistic representations merely a transitional element--a form of connection between the material linguistic objects and the aggregate of all (not just linguistic) representations. In fact, it is precisely the linguistic objects which store and transmit information and operate as the elements of linguistic models of reality. The child is taught linguistic activity in the same way as it is taught to walk, shoot a bow, or hammer nails. As a result the child becomes, so to speak, plugged into the language: he uses the models already available and enriches it with new ones. Furthermore, he may also use language in a noncommunicative manner (for his own purposes) as did the young man Uu of the Nyam nyam tribe when he counted the enemy with his fingers. During noncommunicative use of language there may be a stream of linguistic representations without apparent linguistic activity (''I think!''); but after all, these representations emerged and acquired their meanings as a result of activity involving substantial, material linguistic objects! And often during the process of reflection we whisper certain words and whole phrases, returning them to their material form. The primacy of substantive linguistic activity is especially clear when we are dealing with scientific models of reality. After long, hard study with real, written symbols a person may be able to multiply a few small numbers or reduce similar elements of an algebraic expression in his head. But give him a problem that is a little harder and he will demand a pencil and paper! Linguistics and logic investigate linguistic activity. Linguistics is interested primarily in the syntax of language (in the broad, semiotic sense) while logic is chiefly interested in semantics. When syntax and semantics are interwoven it is not possible to separate linguistics from logic. It is true that traditional logic declares itself to be the science of the laws of thinking, not the science of language, but this pretentious statement should not be taken too seriously. Of all the fields of knowledge which study thinking, logic has the most external, superficial approach. It does not investigate the real mechanisms of the work of the brain, as neurophysiology does; it does not construct models of mental activity, as cybernetics does; and it does not attempt to record and classify subjectively perceived emotional states, as psychology does. It recognizes only precise, socially significant thoughts (not the ravings of a madman!) as its object of study. But such thoughts are in fact nothing else but linguistic representations with socially significant semantics. Logical (semantic) analysis of language leads to primary, undefinable concepts and stops there; it does not take us beyond language. Logic also contains its theory of proof. If language is used in a form of notation which keeps within the rules of predicate calculus, not in the form of natural language, it is possible to establish the formal characteristics of the correctness of deductions and formal rules which, if used, will always yield correct conclusions from correct premises. These rules (the laws of logic), which are also expressed in the form of a linguistic object, form a metasystem in relation to the statements obtained as a result of application of the rules.

Figure 7.1. Logic as a metasystem.

Sentences are the object and result of work for the theory of proof. Thus, all of logic lies wholly in the sphere of linguistic activity. Its lower stage is semantic analysis and its higher stage is the theory of proof. We will talk about proof theory later; for now we are interested in the lower stage (it may even be called the foundation): the relationship between language and the working of the brain. We shall consider that by logical analysis we can translate any sentence in natural language into the language of logic. Of course, this somewhat exaggerates the advances made to date, but it is fairly clear that in principle there is nothing impossible about it. Logical analysis reveals the internal structure of language, the fundamental nodes of which it consists. Therefore we shall review the basic concepts of the language of logic, clarify exactly why they are as they are, and discover how they are related to brain activity. Whereas in the last chapter we were primarily concerned with the syntax of language, here we shall pose the question of the semantics of language.

THE BRAIN AS A "BLACK BOX"

FIRST LET US try to find direct correlatives of language elements in brain activity. The first concept we introduced in our description of the language of logic was the statement. With what can it be correlated? The answer suggests itself: the association of representations. Indeed, like the brain, language is a system used to create models of reality. In the case of the brain the basic independent unit that can operate as a model is the association of representations, while in the case of language it is the statement. Now there is a temptation to correlate the representation to the object. At first glance this creates a complete and harmonious interpretation: the object corresponds to the representation; the relation among objects, which is the statement, corresponds to the relation among representations, which is the association. We may take the example of the association ''In the forest there are wolves,'' which we gave in chapter 4, and interpret it as follows: "forest'' and "wolves" are objects and, at the same time, representations, while "In the forest there are wolves'' is a statement and, at the same time, an association. But a careful analysis shows that this interpretation involves a serious mistaken assumption; we have artificially transferred linguistic structure to the sphere of representations. In reality

this sphere has no such structure. Begin from the fact that an association of representations is also a representation. A representation may be correlated with the sentence ''In the forest there are wolves'' just as it may be correlated with the nouns ''forest'' and ''wolves.'' We should recall that an association between representations S1 and S2 is a new synthetic representation U (see figure 3.8). It is true that the association of representations is a model of reality, but if we understand the term ''model'' in the broad sense as a certain correlative of reality, any representation is a model. If, however, we understand model in the narrow sense as a correlative of reality which permits us to predict future states, then not any association can be a model, but only one that reflects the temporal aspect of reality. The process of associating is important, because it leads to the creation of a new model where none existed before. This process permits completely strict logical definition and can be revealed by experiment, similar to the way we easily define and uncover the process of the formation of a system from subsystems. But it is impossible to define the difference between an association of representations and a representation just as it is impossible to establish criteria that would distinguish a system from subsystems. So the statement elicits a representation and the object elicits a representation and our harmonious system crumbles. The representation proves too broad and too indefinite a concept to be made the basis of a study of the semantics of language. All we know about the representation is that it is a generalized state of the brain, but we know virtually nothing about the structure of the brain. In chapter 4 we defined language as the aggregate of objects Li each of which is the name of a certain object Ri, which is called its meaning. Concerning objects R we said only that they are some kind of real phenomena. The time has now come to work toward a more precise answer as to what kind of phenomena these are: in other words, the question is ''what are the semantics of natural language?'' In the simplest examples usually given to illustrate the relationship Li-Ri and which we cited above (the word lion--the animal lion, and so on), the object Ri is a representation of a definite object. In general, language emerges as the result of an association between linguistic and other representations, and therefore it is natural to attempt to define the semantics of language by means of those representations which emerge in the process of linguistic activity. It can be said that the meaning of a linguistic object is that representation which it evokes-the change in the state of the brain which occurs when a representation about a linguistic object appears in the consciousness. This definition is entirely correct, but unfortunately it is unproductive because the states of the brain as objective reality are not directly accessible to us, and we make our judgments about them on the basis of their manifestation in human actions only. Therefore let us take another route. We shall view the brain as a black box; we shall investigate the observed manifestations of its activity without any attempt to understand its internal organization. We are interested in the semantics of language, the connection (associations) between linguistic representations and all others.

Figure 7.2. The brain as a black box.

Because the representations are inside the "black box," however, we shall rely only on the input data corresponding to them-- which is to say the linguistic objects and all the other activity that, for the sake of brevity, we shall call nonlinguistic. This is the input of the black box. Its output is obviously the person's observed actions Because the system of actions is very complex, we shall not make progress in our attempts to study semantics if we do not choose some simple type of action as a standard. Of course there must be at least two variants of the action so that it will carry some information. Suppose there are exactly two. We shall call them the first and second standard actions. We shall formulate the elementary act in studying semantics as follows. Linguistic objects will be presented to a person who is perceiving a definite nonlinguistic reality and we shall assume that he responds to them by performing one of the two standard actions.

AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION

WE CONCEIVED this scheme in a purely theoretical manner as the simplest method of defining the semantics of language under conditions where the brain is pictured as a black box. It turns out that this scheme actually exists in linguistic activity, emerging spontaneously in the early stages of the development of language! In all known languages we find expressions for two standard actions--affirmation and negation. These actions are of great antiquity, as evidenced by the fact that among a large majority of peoples (possibly all) they are expressed in gestures as well as words. If we open the top of the black box just a crack, to the degree shown in figure 7.2, we can define the affirmation as an action performed when the linguistic object and reality are in the relation name-meaning (that is, the necessary association exists between the linguistic and nonlinguistic representations), and we can define negation as the action performed when there is no such relation. But a person learning to use affirmative and negative words and gestures correctly knows nothing, of course, about representations, associations, and the like. At first he is simply taught to say "cat,'' "dog," and so forth while pointing at the corresponding objects, and then he is taught to perform the affirmative action when someone says ''this is a cat'' while pointing at one and to perform the negative action when someone makes the same statement while pointing at a dog. In both

instances we learn correct linguistic activity while relying on the brain's ability to recognize and associate; but we have no knowledge of the brain s mechanisms; to us it is a black box. The last remark explains why it is hardly surprising that the scheme of standard actions has become an established part of linguistic practice. A person's brain is a black box both for himself and for other members of society. This is the origin of the need for a socially meaningful way of determining more precise semantics; this need appears as soon as language reaches a minimum level of complexity. The standard actions of affirmation and negation are not related to reality itself, as primary linguistic objects are; rather they refer to the relationship between primary linguistic objects and reality. They are elements of a metasystem in relation to the system of primary linguistic objects. The introduction of the actions of affirmation and negation into the practice of society was the beginning of that metasystem transition within linguistic activity whose subsequent stages are the appearance of the language of logic and the theory of deduction. Although affirmation and negation appeared very early in the development of human culture, they did not appear sufficiently early for a prototype of them to be found in animal actions. We know that such prototypes exist for primary linguistic objects in the form of animal signals. Among these signals there are ones which could be described as affirmative and negative, but they have nothing in common with the semantic actions of affirmation and negation which are oriented to the signals themselves and lay the foundations of the metasystem. In this we see one more manifestation of the law of branching (expansion) of the penultimate level. The enormous growth in the number of primary linguistic objects (signals) which is found in human society began simultaneously with the beginning of the metalevel.