Sweat drooled down my temples. Sweat gathered on my eyelids and stung my eyes. My arms shone with it and my once clean, sweet-smelling shirt stuck to my body, a somewhat darker color than it had been but two hours ago on its hanger. I smelled like a salt factory. How could I possibly land a job in such condition? It wasn’t that I was the only person so aggrieved; I wasn’t. But I perspire profusely. Around me, along the street, old men and women sat before their houses and stores fanning themselves–or their grandchildren. Slowly, methodically in order not to do it wrong–all the time they talked and laughed.
There was, too, the occasional group of younger men playing cards. Over lunch, I knew from experience, they would add a little drink to the gossipping and gaming. Although it was their wives who were working, these men were traditionalist and would, of course, not be involved in the housework. Homework, some called it. I wondered that they did not become overheated from the intense involvement in their game; though, from the rounded shape of the cards, perhaps only the palms of their hands sweated. Voices grew loud with enthusiasm or frustration. Cards were slapped or flung down on their low table. The occasional strolling grandfather, woven bamboo fan slowly moving the thick air in a kind of thoughtless breeze, would stop and watch the play and then continue ambling down the street.
Indeed, what was the use of doing anything strenuous in such weather? Three yuan for a shower every day mounted up. For a family of three, that would eat up roughly 270 RMB of the household income, perhaps 90% of the wife’s pay. Worst case scenario: showering every day. So, not breaking a sweat was socially necessary.
“So, you’re going?”
“Yes, I’m going.”
“You shouldn’t work so hard in this weather.”
“You’re playing cards.”
“Not so lazy as sitting in your air conditioned house.”
“As if I don’t.”
“We can’t play cards in your house.”
“Fussy old woman, aren’t I?”
A small hand sought mine.
“Where are you going, uncle?”
“What makes you think I’m going somewhere?”
“Where ya goin’?”
“I’m going for a job.”
“Is it a good job?”
“I hope so.”
“Don’t you know?”
“I’ve never worked here before.”
“Do you always do things you haven’t done before, uncle?”
“I’ve done this kind of work before. Just not with these people.”
“What kinda work?”
“Ghost writing.”
“Is that good work?”
“If you can find it.”
“Wow! Hey, grandpa! Uncle’s gonna get a job!”
“That’s great!” shouted his grandfather. “Now, you leave him alone to get on with it.”
“Are you really gonna git a job?”
“Yes. I have a letter here.”
“He’s got a letter, grandpa!”
“Will you leave the man alone? He’s got business to do.”
And so I would become the day’s topic of discussion after I was gone. I smiled ruefully. Amazing how much mileage could be gotten off the most mundane activity when there was nothing else to do.
Though not so well off, I was better off than these people. I lived in this area, still, and knew some of them. I nodded and smiled and voiced the accepted greeting. Smiles and joking. But, after all, I had a little money. More than these my neighbors. So wasn’t I one of the greedy horde going out in search of employment when necessity wouldn’t be demanding as Mother Hubbard’s dog for three or four moths? The truth of the matter was that I wanted a little bit more of a comfort margin. People liked to visit, sitting and talking in comfortable chairs in my cool rooms with their wall of windows (my balcony was enclosed unlike most of theirs) and drinking my tea and water. I did not mind. Loneliness is something I do not handle well. And, of course, why should I be miserly with my comfort? Jealously guarded riches are a source of fear and trembling, as if sharing would somehow contaminate the lucre. Of course, the occasional young thief–usually of frivolities or little luxuries like music or my collectables, an occasional book–these people, discovered more by circumstance than red-handed, found themselves uninvited by my always being busy whenever they called.
Well, I was lucky. True, I had opportunities that these people for the most part did not; but on the whole I struggled. I survived times of only one meal a day provided by friends and houses with no bathrooms–even homelessness–on the way to obtaining the great mythical panacea of an Education. And what did I have? A small nest egg that was fast becoming a hole in the bucket, a few creature comforts and no job. It’s not as if I hadn’t had or didn’t want; it’s more like. . .things happened that conspired–I like to think–to put the kibosh to whatever I was doing. Not a few of my educated friends said I just didn’t know how to play the game. Why would I want to compromise my beliefs in order to get ahead? I knew the rules. I just didn’t want to play by these rules. As I found having a job with a clearly defined objective yet being encouraged to undermine my own dedicated efforts to be hypocritical, I often found myself in contentious situations. You know, I was expected to do my job but not too well. Job security: if you’re too good, too efficient, too successful you’ll find you’ve worked yourself into being dispensable. Unnecessary. I arrogantly considered myself above such behavior. That is, I was a social failure. Pariah, perhaps, is more like it.
Well, not everyone can be a hero, right?
So it was that I found myself walking down the street and out into the mass of human traffic seeking another means of keeping me out of trouble and more assiduously involved in the market economy that kept society going. That is, I would be able to buy more artwork with which to brighten my white walls and more books with which to waste my time. It was not true, however, that I was going about my job-seeking in an arbitrary manner. I had been doing that for months from home, so that now I had an invitation in my pocket, as it were. To truly have had it in my pocket would have meant presenting a soggy piece of paper to the woman at the front desk. A sure means of keeping my unemployed status intact. As this was my entry ticket into a somewhat exclusive world, I had it safely stored in my little bag–a clutch purse we might have called it 50-60 years ago–along with other papers that might serve to keep me inside the door for a time. It was, after all, air conditioned in there.
At the end of the street, sitting on the wall outside her house, sat L–.
“So, you’re going for a job?” she greeted me.
“Yes. I have a letter of invitation here.”
“You are lucky, K–.”
I sat down on the mat next to her. She began fanning me.
“It took me two months to get this.”
“Ah! The postman.” I nodded. “Some of these men should be so diligent.”
“Perhaps they’re not so lazy as–”
“Look at them! Wasting time. They should be out working.”
“You know, jobs are hard to find–”
“K–, wake up to reality. They’re lazy. Look at you–ten years older and you’re out pounding the pavement.”
“Oh. If I pay attention to reality, I complain a lot. How are things with you?”
“I hope you get the job, K—.”
“I have the letter.”
“Well. . .you just be careful they honor it. You know how they can be.”
I waved good-bye and she moved her air conditioning back to herself.
“Ah. Yes. You’re expected, Mr. K–. Through those doors and to your left. The elevator to the thirteenth floor,” was my greeting upon entering the building.
Mister? I had a title. I wanted it used! I had worked hard for the status it carried and I wanted all due respect. A tad elitist, perhaps, and only unwarranted because of my unemployed condition–which she didn’t know about. She did know my title, plainly printed in the salutation of the letter: Dr. K–. She knew my name so she did know how to read. How inattentive of her! No possibility of ever being more than a front desk clerk for her. Odd, isn’t it? How behavior works to limit your future. Keeps you in your place. Like a neurotic rat that keeps running after the goal when the pay-off’s not there any more. So it is that behavior marks the man–or woman. Well, fashions change and no-title referents were the equitable rage. Still, I bristled. . .and did what I was told.
“The thirteenth floor?”
“Yes, sir. We’re not superstitious here,” she replied with offhand snottiness. How outré of me to think otherwise in this modern day and age.
“And that is a very nice ankh you have there. Steel?”
She put her clean, well-manicured fingers over the pendant, rubbing it tenderly. “I’ve had this since I was three. I never take it off.”
“I see. Thirteenth floor?” I confirmed.
“Yes.”
Imagine! A good luck charm and a thirteenth floor.
The elevator doors opened to the Human Resources Department. Mostly, the floor was filled with file cabinets. There were, though, a few people about, including a woman sitting at a desk behind a sign that read “Information.” She was watching me. The only unfamiliar thing in the room. On the floor.
I walked up to her and, greeting her, handed over my letter. She read it. She read it all. Occasionally she looked up at me. I tried to look unconcerned.
When she was through reading every word, she picked up the over-sized telephone and dialed three numbers.
“There’s a Dr. K– here. Supposedly with a letter you sent.” She paused, “Alright.” She hung up the phone. “It’s the big office there, in the corner.” She handed me back my letter and I ceased to exist.
“Thank you.” And then I was on my way.
He was waiting for me at the door to his office, standing in a pool of light from the windows behind him. This glow of lucency was the only way I found his office, glaring as it did off the ceiling and latex-painted file cabinets. Shortly after I’d been cut loose in the maze of files, his door opened, as if to say, “I’m over here!” So it was I found his office, actually tastefully arranged partitions, some with Plexiglas uppers. A desk, two chairs other than his own and two file cabinets were the only furniture. The two framed pictures had most likely been picked up for a song at the local wholesale furniture mart. Anything real would have been too heavy for the walls to hold up.
Ahh! Dr. K–! Dr. K–! You’re here. Hello. How are you? I’m Mr. T–W–.” He stuck out his cool, dry hand. When I put my rather clammy one into his, he covered it with his other pink hand. Although pleasant enough and filled with good intention, I was a captive. He beckoned me into his office, gesticulating for me to sit in the nearest chair. I sat in the other. He shut the door, shaking the walls, and took up his seat behind his desk, spreading his hands on the immaculate desktop.
“You have come. We are so glad.”
“I am pleased as well. It has taken me a long time to get here.”
“Yes. Yes. Now. Let’s see. . .” And Mr. W– opened up a side drawer that, by the sound of it, was empty and took out a folder. When he shut the drawer, with finality, I could tell by its hollowness that it was, indeed, empty. He set the file–my file obviously –on is equally empty desktop and opened it. “You have marvellous credentials, Dr. K–. Very impressive. We are pleased to welcome you to KS Enterprises.”
“Thank you,” I said, wishing to escape praise that was frankly embarrassing. I knew, when compared to others, I had not accomplished much. I published, it was true, but not a plethora of articles. My creative work was considered, by these types of people, inferior. Possibly because they could not do it. I had been to too many places, all for short periods of time. A sure sign that there was something wrong with me, like the people on Internet dating services: if they were so wonderful, why were they there? It is a truism, however quaint and clichéd, that the good ones have already been gotten.
I did, however, suffer from a most grievous malady: I could not tolerate irresponsible behavior or incompetence. These characteristics were so easy to come by (and spot), I tended to be quite vociferous about such people and had, as a consequence, acquired the reputation of complaining. And of being arrogant and demanding. My fault, it was, for I was the only one to complain–only partly true, for others complained amongst themselves and to me but never, never to the people who needed to know.
For instance, I was livid at G–S– at my last post. Never had I encountered such mindlessness and inadequacy. He could not address letters, forgetting recipients’ names. On the train, he did not know the way to his own home; that is, he routinely rode by his station, maintaining that he knew by the look of things where he was. But the big man liked G–S–, rewarding him for a job well done by using influence to get him into graduate school at a good university. He was to study English, though he could speak only torturously.
How could you not complain! Though the rationalization that nothing will happen anyway always springs to the coweds’ lips, the logic is, of course, infallible: it proves itself when, having done nothing, nothing improves. As it was with the youth of U– in the middle of the last century who decided not to have children: who wants to bring children into this world?
Alas–I complain and I bring children into this world.
Incompetence comes in many colors.
Certain kinds of people, when given even a modicum of authority, like to wield said perceived power status in most heinous and self-aggrandizing ways. I suppose one cannot blame them, the world to them is such a hopeless, impotent thing; but I do. And I tend, in my conceit, to not accord them the respect they feel comes with their position; that is, you will do as I tell you! Put another way, that might be, don’t defy me! “Can’t” is not a word found in my vocabulary–except perhaps as relates to certain biological limitations.
As I was thus engaged in revisiting my error-driven ways, Mr. W– continued thumbing through my CV, carefully turning each dog-eared corner. Six one-sided pages.
“Yes, yes,” he said, coming to the last page and returning them all to the face up position. “Very impressive. We are happy to offer you a position with us. Very handsome package, if I may say so. Now!” He snapped the file that contained but a brief yet important part of my life shut and looked directly into my calm, pre-occupied face. “There is a matter of formalities to be gotten through. Nothing difficult. Nothing unpleasant.” He opened up the central drawer of his desk and deftly took out one sheet of paper. He set it on his desk and turned it around and pushed it across the policed wood. “Here is a list of our requirements. I’ll go over them with you.” He pointed with a very sharp pencil. “We need a health certificate. We like our employees healthy. Copies of your identification papers and your work permit. And we need a reference from your last employer.”
“That was three years ago.”
“Nevertheless. It is necessary. A necessary formality. I am sure you understand our position, hmm?”
“All but the reference letter are possible. I have them here.” I took out the necessary papers.
He took them and laid them aside. “We must have a complete file, Dr. K–.”
“Let me see if I can make this clear.” Mr. W– continued, leaning across the desk, pointing his sharp, sharp pencil and smiling timidly. “At my last place of employment, I bucked authority and prevailed. This authority figure is the one who would write the referral. A year later, when I revisited the city to see friends, he threatened my friends. He could do this because he employed my friends. To remove the threat to my friends’ livelihoods, I left the city. Now. What kind of referral do you think this man is going to give me–if indeed he even bothers to write one?”
Mr. W– came to life and sat back in his chair. “Referrals are important, Dr. K–. Without them, who knows what type of salacious or downright bad character we might hire?”
“Mr. W–. . .this man will write reprehensible things about me.”
“Are you listening to me, Dr. K–? We must have a letter of referral from your last employer or we cannot finalize your hiring. It is a part of the application approval process. We all have rules we must abide by, else this would be an unruly place. I have my guidelines. They are in the HR procedures manual. These guidelines assure a smooth-running and efficient business. They are in place to assure the continued high quality of the business. Tried and true. If I break them and if everybody breaks the rules–hard and fast rules–there would be chaos. Arbitrarity. Surely, as a man of intelligence, you see that?”
“Did you follow my story, Mr. W–?”
“What were you trying to say, Dr. K–?”
“The man who would write the referral does not like me.”
“Yes?”
“So, he will not write a positive review of my time there.”
“Yes?
“It will be a negative referral.”
“Do you actually believe employers like nothing about their employees? How very petty of them. And how very petty of you to think so, Dr. K–.”
“May I tell you another story?”
“As it turns out, I’m not pressed today.”
“A certain employer, having a dislike of one of his employees, sought out a means of ridding himself of her. It so happened that this employee was going away for three months for further training. While she was gone, this employer concocted a story and bought evidence to prove it, that this employee had cheated the company. She had paid someone to take a proficiency test for her. This employer pressured the Board of Directors and she, the employee, was fired on the spot. When she returned from her training, she had no job.”
“Yes?”
“I know this woman and–”
“Personal bias, Dr. K–. She must have done something wrong. Going to the Board of Directors was just a formality. Like your referral letter.”
“I see.”
“Well, then! There is no problem, is there?”
“There is the problem of personal bias, Mr. W–.”
“Easy to ascertain. As you see I did with your story. Thank goodness it was a story! How incredible it would be if such people truly existed. Wouldn’t you say so?”
“But it is a true story.”
“Well, well. But it doesn’t concern us here, does it, Dr. K–? You’re not that female employee.”
“She never got another job.”
“That is quite understandable.”
“She couldn’t get a positive referral.”
“Of course not.”
“My past employer does not like me. He will write a negative referral.”
“If we get a negative letter of referral, there will be no way for us to hire you. We can’t have disreputable sorts working at KS Enterprises.”
“Well, then,” I stood up and reached for the file on Mr. W–’s desk. “You won’t be needing this.” And I took the file, turned and strode to the door.
“Where are you going with that, Dr. K–?
“Home.”
“But that’s the property of KS Enterprises.”
“Here, then,” and I returned the manila file. “But I’ll just take what belongs to me. I wrote them. I will take them with me. Thank you. It’s been nice knowing you.”
“But, Dr. K–!” Mr. W– shouted after me. “I can’t hire you without those documents.”
I do not know whether Mr. W– ever filled his vacant position. In general, there was an inexhaustible supply of human resources; in my specialty, perhaps in the neighborhood of one in a million. However, the question is not one of qualifications but one of satisfying formalities.
So it is that between playing cards and visiting friends, I write stories. That is, I tell lies. For what else is fiction?
Steven Pinker’s Linguistic Sounding Brass and Tinkling Cymbal
November 19, 2009 by shikejianJonathan Swift showed just how silly an “enlightened” stance can be in Gulliver’s visit to the land of the Houyhnhnms. The Houyhnhnms, huge horses full of alot of horse sense, spoke beautifully and convincingly of themselves and their brilliance and intellectual superiority; but they, in their reason and rationality, enslaved Yahoos. These superior beings also believed that Gulliver could not have come from some island across the ocean because they believed, rationally and reasonably, that such an island did not exist and, therefore, it did not. Despite having no experience upon which to make such a judgment. Yet, experience is a state of consciousness. Karl Popper maintains, in Unended Quest (p. 218), that “it is silly or at least high-handed to deny the existence of mental experiences or mental states or states of consciousness; or to deny that mental states are as rule closely related to states of the body, especially physiological states.” Which would seem to confirm the Houyhnhnms in their intellectual behavior for, after all, they are basing their judgment on the experience of themselves and their superior knowledge and intellectual ability. They never met any others their superiors.
So, it stands to reason, that they believe as they believe.
So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut writes in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. And other novels of absurdity. Novels of people with individual mental states of consciousness.
On and off throughout history, science has had a bad name because of such thinkers, men (in most cases) who have a particular mental experience. More often than not via the same lingual pyrotechnics as Jonathan Swift used to elucidate such foolishness. With this in mind, it would be good if critical appraisers could be a tad more discriminating in their choice of scientists to congratulate and hold up as shining examples of their art discipline. Steven Pinker is considered to be such an enlightened one by popular publishers and science journalists. Steven Pinker is considered the leading figure in language and linguistics studies in the US, especially via neurological investigations. Dr. Pinker is a psychologist, which of course means he knows better via an understanding of the deeper reaches of motivation to behavior. And Dr. Pinker is a Houyhnhnm thinker, a man who runs in the face of David Hackett Fischer’s Historian’s Fallacies and Stephen Toulmin’s The Uses of Argument and any of Karl Popper’s assumption-questioning writings–even though he cites Popper in The Stuff of Thought–because he hasn’t the experience of them. A few examples will, I think, suffice to elucidate the priceless thinking and intellectual cerebration science writers hail as Dr. Pinker ’s ground-breaking theories.
To begin at the end, as Edgar Alan Poe suggests writers do:
“[N]ear death experiences are not the eyewitness reports of a soul parting company from the body but symptoms of oxygen starvation in the eyes and brain” (The Mystery of Consciousness). This presupposes that there is a separation of the body and the soul. But it is just a tautological dismissal that, in reality, proves nothing because death/near-death is a time of low oxygen in the brain. This happens when people smoke and drink, too, but they report no similar experience. Occasionally, those who ingest LSD or magic mushrooms relate such experiences, without oxygen starvation. Dr. Pinker is saying is that these people did not experience what they experienced. There is no scientific evidence to verify this dismissive judgment, yet it cannot be dismissed as it comes from Dr. Pinker’s Houyhnhnm thinking, as supported by Dr. Popper. It is, then, of no import that such a statement as his is an opinion of science; for, as a Houyhnhnm there is no reason not accept his say so.
Indeed, he’s from Harvard, a university that consistently produces the superiorest of the superior. Dr. Pinker engages in characteristic Houyhnhnm tautological perseveration to prove his point that alternative states of consciousness are not real. He believes they can be explained by some kind of physical state: they are the result of oxygen deprivation to the brain because, well, oxygen deprivation is part of the experience. Like smoking or drinking. This is Houyhnhnm science.
Earlier in the same essay, published in Time (19 Jan. 2007), Dr. Pinker states, “Consciousness surely does not depend on language.” How unfortunate that, in fact, it does depend on language, for without language no one would know of anyone’s consciousness, no one would be able to admit of it, nor would one be able to talk about one’s own consciousness of one’s self, outside of consciousness of the world around one. We are languaging animals: our world is described and built and adapted by our language (Cf. Humberto Maturana generally). Without talking about it (expressing it), how is one to communicate that one is conscious? And, indeed, which state of consciousness one is in, for there is more than one consciousness. Well, perhaps being an experience and experience, as we’ve already noted, is a Houyhnhnm characteristic, it is not out of order that Dr. Pinker, can maintain that it doesn’t exist just because someone says so.
Yet, in this essay (The Mystery of Consciousness), Dr. Pinker makes the most amazing and contradictory statement: there is a seat of consciousness and it is in the “higher” part of the brain. He supports himself by citing Crick, the other half of the DNA discoverer duo. However, earlier on, he maintains that consciousness consists “of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain.” He even notes that Bernard Baars “likens consciousness to a global blackboard.” Perhaps it is premature and somewhat arrogant to ask: Which is it Dr. Pinker? Is there a seat of consciousness, like the seat of language in Wernicke’s or Broca’s areas? Or is it a brain-wide phenomenon? But let’s not talk about that.
Let’s talk, rather about how consciousness can be only “neural computation” while conveniently excluding soft matter physics. If consciousness is a physical seat in the grey matter of the brain, it stands to reason, I think, that there may be external stressors that affect a cell’s functioning on the cellular level as well as the macroscopic level: swelling in the brain effects behavioral aberrations which, I think, have something to do with “neural computation.” If a change happens on such a large scale, a change must have happened on the cellular level since the cells themselves are not static entities–or perhaps there is some other reason for the brain to pulsate. That is, the environment in which nerve cells operate affects their operation and this tee-tiny alteration creates, in the aggregate as cells do not operate in isolation from other cells, a greatly enhanced alteration in the behavior these cells cause to happen, as an expression of themselves. Even the pulsation affects, macro- and microscopically, of “neural computation” of the cells in the body react to contiguous and non-contiguous cells’ “neural computation.” Dr. Pinker’s thinking seems to be quite linear and rather simplistic and very, very concrete and does. Indeed, his thesis that you cannot talk about consciousness because he can’t talk about it. Dr. Pinker is a genius Houyhnhnm.
His dismissive Houyhnhnm attitude runs throughout his writing, that is, “I don’t believe it, so it’s all pish-posh.” At the same time, Dr. Pinker is attempting, via classical science (physics), to explicate consciousness/perception/emotion when in fact classical science divides the world into two–body and spirit–and cannot explain what happens in the mind via the physical brain because the mind is not a physical reality. (Show me the mind, Dr. Pinker.) Classical science has trouble seeing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; that is, the brain and all that goes to make it up creates something greater than itself. As if to thwart the thinking of the Houyhnhnm, Karl Popper says the mind is the producer of human language, it is “the producer of theories, of critical arguments, and many other things such as mistakes, myths, stories, witticisms, tools, and works of art” (Unended Quest, p. 221). Dr. Pinker could not get his mind around Bertrand Russell’s grandmother’s plague upon him: “What is mind? No matter! What is matter? Never mind!” What Popper seems to be saying is that the mind is what allows Pinker to say and do whatever it is he says and does, albeit this is a decidedly un-Houyhnhnm thing to believe.
Dr. Pinker also says, “everyone agrees that the hard problem (if it is a problem) remains a mystery.”
Who is “everyone”? (Perhaps a rather un-Houyhnhnm-like query because everyone knows who everyone is.)
The hard problem is “explaining how subjective experience arises from neural computation.” That is, consciousness is a mysterious physical anomaly in classical physical bio-chemistry. There is a kind of tyranny of the to biological, to the physical, here in that Dr. Pinker purports to be able to explain the non-physical by the physical, which is, in and of itself, a mystery. Not to mention the apparent opposition to what he’s already said. If consciousness is physical, Dr. Pinker, show me it because I’m only a Yahoo. Simply saying it is so doesn’t make it so, unless one is a Houyhnhnm or a religious leader.
There are some people, notably I.N. Marshal, who do not believe consciousness is a mystery or, rather, that it is a mystery by way of being a problem for which there is an explanation. Marshal, Zohar and others approach consciousness from a quantum mechanical viewpoint. (Dr. Pinker’s flippant speaks to this science later.) Dr. Pinker sees the brain as a computational entity; it doesn’t do anything else but computer neurologically. David Deutsch, on the other hand, believes that to call the brain a computational thing is not only limiting but wrong (Cf. The Fabric of Reality). Truly an anti-Houyhnhnm proposition that seems to point to Dr. Pinker’s confusing brain with mind or, rather, considers there to be no difference: brain is mind and mind is brain (The Stuff of Thought, p. 259). Everything is rational and reasonable and solely to be found in the neural functioning of the physical brain. Everything for Dr. Pinker resides in the physical brain. The brain’s functioning is the answer to everything. The brain rules! The brain also leaves us no choice. We are at its mercy. But it’s a mystery as to how this happens and what this mercy is. Even Pinker admits it’s a mystery when he says we have an innate language instinct. Why? Because instinct is a mystery in and of itself. And so it is that Dr. Pinker is talking in circles. This is Houyhnhnm science.
What happened to environment and heredity in Dr. Pinker’s theories is also a mystery.
Dr. Pinker even talks of language as if it were bits and pieces that are put together according to certain rules–like the brain is bits and pieces put together according to certain rules–implying that to not follow the rules results in non-language and–perhaps I stretch the point here–stupidity. (Where does that leave James Joyce, Antonin Artaud or the Absurdists?) Stupidity is Dr. Pinker’s forte: all his argumentation is reducing ideas he does not agree with, including Lakoff and Johnson’s, to the ridiculous, using bits and pieces of their writings in order to lambaste the entirety of their theories and impart to them ideas or beliefs that are, in reality, his conclusions based on conscious misinterpretation such that the argument to ridicule is itself ridiculous and therefore his ridiculous statements don’t sound so ridiculous, that is, they sound sensible (Cf. The Stuff of Thought in its entirety). Houyhnhnm scientific thinking.
Dr. Pinker never bothers to prove his opinion; corroboration by his own testing is not scientific proof, according to Popper; it is more in the way of a laboratory simulation. Laboratory simulation always produces what you want to prove so it proves nothing, in fact. Except that it is Houyhnhnm science.
Dr. Pinker, in “Words Don’t Mean What They Mean” (another Time Inc. article, of 6 Sept. 2007, an excerpt from The Stuff of Thought), lays lines on his listeners, role plays, sidesteps, shilly-shallies and engages in “all manner of vagueness and innuendo.” We also do as he tells us we do, without apparent thought: assume “that the speaker is rational.” Dr. Pinker’s rationality is of the Houyhnhnm variety. So Dr. Pinker is seen to be eminently intellectually gifted and full of astounding insight, as gullible Gulliver saw the Houyhnhnms.
The most insidious Houyhnhnm argument Pinker makes results in his debunking quantum mechanics. To wit:- “Some mavericks, like the mathematician Roger Penrose, suggest the answer might someday be found in quantum mechanics. But to my ear, this amounts to the feeling that quantum mechanics sure is weird, and consciousness sure is weird, so maybe quantum mechanics can explain consciousness.” Well, Einstein thought quantum mechanics was weird, too. It’s of no consequence that Einstein’s been proven wrong on this point. Of course, the logic that uses one extremist to debunk the entirety of a science and Richard Feynman is Houyhnhnm logic. Isn’t it? Gulliver was a maverick.
Dr. Pinker wishes to take the mystery out of language via scientific examination and neural explanation and, to do so, he posits that language is an instinct. . .a very mysterious thing indeed is instinct. Instinct is, I think, something that cannot be explained: it just is. And as it is, it is mysterious in its being. In his infinitely regressive method of analysis, Dr. Pinker ever reaches the point where he can explain nothing and it’s at this point that language becomes instinct (Cf. The Stuff of Thought). So, in truth, Dr. Pinker explains nothing and keeps language in the realm of the mysterious. But it sounds good. Wow! Language is built in. We’re different. The Houyhnhnm cerebration is that if I say it is thus, it is thus. And therefore it’s science.
A fool (Yahoo) might ask, “How?” and show his stupidity in thinking that debunking the mysteriousness of language by attributing it to the mysteriousness of instinct is ridiculous. . .if not mysterious. Even so, Dr. Pinker cannot explain the languaging of deaf people or Koko the gorilla–unless his definition of language is in its speaking; that language is not language unless it’s spoken. Which makes writing not language, maybe?
Again in “Can’t find the words? Make ‘em up,” Dr. Pinker resorts to Houyhnhnm-specious thinking in his Chinese example of onomatopoeia and sound symbolism via the Chinese for light in weight (qīng 轻) and heavy (zhòng 重). However, qīng has many meanings in Chinese, such as light green, clear and innocent. So does zhòng; middle, hit, numerous. In Chinese, mostly, the sound of the word is just the sound, but the pitch changes the meaning. For instance, qīng 青 (light green), qǐng 请 (please), qīng 清 (clear, usually referring to river, stream, lake), qíng 情 (passion). All “qing.” All have the sound “qing,” But their meanings have nothing to do with each other. The implication Pinker is making is that there is a parallel between sound and meaning that holds across the language and therefore all languages (even though he debunks this in The Stuff of Thought). It doesn’t. Especially as Chinese is a tonal language. Dr. Pinker is not aware, apparently, that there are at least nine characters in Chinese with the pronunciation of qīng (first tone); some do not have opposites.
If a Yahoo looks at large (dà 大) and small (xiăo 小) he might find that, yes, da is the strong fourth downward tone but xiao is the sing-song third tone. Not only this but da changes its tone with usage, that is, in context. And what are we to make of inside (nèi 内) and outside (wài 外) or up (shàng 上) and down (xià 下)? These opposites are the same tone. Using Pinker’s Houyhnhnm mind, we can easily take gāoxìng (高兴happy) as, at best, so-so and bēishāng (悲伤sad) as good feeling. This is ridiculous. Gāo 高 (high) and dī 低 (low) are both high tones but, according to Dr. Pinker’s Houyhnhnm theorizing, mean differently, that is, dī cannot be low because its tone is high. What is worse, we can take bái 白 (white) as the same as hēi 黑 (black), that is, as white, because black is dark and the tone is not: if we follow Pinker’s statement, then we confound black and white. It’s a terrible Yahoo argument, of course, for how could a top Houyhnhnm psychologist lead his readers to confuse black and white, right and wrong?
There are only four tones in Chinese (five if you count the neutral tone), so onomatopoeia and sound symbolism via tones is extremely limited and apparently has little to do with sound meaning, according to the Yahoo Chinese who developed their language. Further, all these also challenge “families of words share a teeny snatch of sound and a teeny shred of meaning.” In Chinese, word families share a shape, not necessarily a sound or meaning. For instance, the shape family of kŏu口 (mouth) yields gē哥 (song), dīng叮 (mosquito bite), jiā加 (add), nà呐 (no meaning by itself), xuān喧 (noisy), zào噪 (chirp, as with insects or birds)–just a few of the 300+ kŏu口family characters.
This association of sound with meaning is the kind of thing we used to do as children and laugh about. Dr. Pinker, here, is making a Houyhnhnm-specious argument. He also does not speak or read Chinese–nor does his audience, which is why he can get away with such a Houyhnhnm statement. Further, generalizing from one instance to the entire corpus is intellectually indefensible. Factual errors on the part of an academician and scientist are not acceptable. Though, perhaps, the superior mentation of Houyhnhnms can be forgiven.
Except that in the early part of the 20th century, the onomatopoetic theory of language had already been disproven by linguists and philosophers, though, of course, for many modern doctorate holders, that’s ancient history: it is often the case that, in scholarly writing–especially dissertations–references more than 5-10 years old are verboten. Not only history is lost in this way but knowledge. Yet, Dr. Pinker is a follower of X’s universal grammar theory and that was put forth in the early part of the 20th century. A conundrum, to be sure. Indeed, “the names which occur in human speech cannot be interpreted in any such invariable manner. They are not designed to refer to substantial things, independent entities which exist by themselves. They are determined rather by human interests and human purposes. But these interests are ot fixed and invariable. Nor are the classifications to be found in human speech made at random; they are based on certain constant and recurring elements in our sense experience” (Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man, p. 134). It seems, then, that Dr. Pinker is taking words not only out of context but isolating them as individual units and attempting to build a theory of language from these bits and pieces that have no relationship to each other and no relationship to use or culture. There is no juxtaposition. For Dr. Pinker, words are, well, just words. They don’t appear with other words and they don’t change their meaning in association with other words, of course. Writers, those picayune Muse-inspired applied linguists par excellence, who are never taken into account by linguists as knowing anything at all about language (and therefore never consulted or, heaven forbid, studied), know this to be untrue.
Indeed, for Natalie Goldberg, this is a major aspect of writing: words rub up against each other and change their meaning or connotation (Cf. Wild Mind). And Gendlin’s theories are based on contextual usage (Cf. X). Dr. Pinker seems to be measuring language–and he seems to be confounding la langue with la parole–as if it were a scientific thing, a state of being and this is not possible. He is trying to deduce the characteristics of an electron solely by figuring out where it is and how big it is. It and its action, its behavior when moving in context, are different things. But, then, that’s quantum mechanics and that’s already been displaced into File 13 by Dr. Pinker.
Thus, as the name of an object has little to do with the truth of the object but, rather, emphasizes particular aspects of the object, we come across the many words for “snow” in certain Eskimo languages and “hit” in some Amerindian languages and the various counters in Japanese for different entities: long and thin (x), round (x), flat (x), people (x). Or, if we look at the moon, as Washington Irving did in his History of New York, we find that the Greek word mēn emphasizes its measure of time while the Latin word luna, luc-na refers its brightness. How many “heavies” are there in Chinese?
But even more to the point, Chinese words are made of two characters, for the most part. In fact, in Chinese, a single character does not often have meaning. So, what does he make of bō 玻 and lí 璃, which have no meaning when in isolation but when used together, as in bōlí 玻璃, mean “glass.” There are many similar examples, such as pútáo 葡萄 (grape), yīngsù罂桃 (opium), luòtuó 骆驼 (camel), pángxiè 螃蟹 (crab), to name a few words in which the individual characters (the first ones in this instance) are meaningless by themselves.
This fact also challenges Dr. Pinker’s statement that “long words may be used for things that are big or coarse, staccato words for things that are sharp or quick.” “Staccato” and “ratatatat” are long words–and staccato–yet are for sharp or quick sounds. There is nothing short here, which is the implication in Dr. Pinker’s thesis above. The problem is that almost all Chinese words are short, which means, according to Dr. Pinker, that Chinese cannot talk about big and coarse things. Actually, Chinese can: let’s see. . .zhéxué 哲学 (philosophy) and zhū 猪 (pig)–that’s big; xīnguì 新贵 (parvenu) and cūsù 粗俗 (vulgar)–that’s coarse. Taking into account all these factors, we can safely come to the conclusion that Dr. Pinker’s theory is as right as he thinks because it is appropriate Houyhnhnm thinking.
Dr. Pinker’s definition of onomatopoeia is that it is solely sound-based; but in Japanese there are two major types: giseigo and gitaigo, the latter referring to actions. A third group, of which gotcha-gotcha is a good example, refers to states of being (upset stomach or being mixed up). In Chinese, onomatopoeia is used, mainly, for giving strong impressions, expressing things realistically and representing the rhythms of various activities. Dr. Pinker is a follower of Chomsky’s Universal Grammar, yet he cannot uphold this thesis in Chinese or Japanese. But Dr. Pinker is a cutting edge Houyhnhnmist!
Dr. Pinker also notes that most “sn~” words refer to the snout (nose). This kind of assertion plays because: 1) he’s an authority; and 2) no one’s going to actually count all those words. . .except for a second language learner who counted and found 60% of the “sn~” words had nothing to do with the nose. Not a very worthwhile observation, of course, as students are your penultimate Yahoos.
In his Language Acquisition, Dr. Pinker engages in the most egregious Houyhnhnm analysis of how children gain an understanding of how to use language given that they are not open to hearing constant repetitions of patterns: he shows us how they, children, use higher intellectual functioning to come to a conclusion, his conclusion. In truth, children are incapable of even the simplest of arithmetic computations. Not only do children not have this ability to logically analyze backwards from a given until they are much older, Pinker is going about his explanation backwards, as if the end product is the cause when it is more probably the effect of the learning (Cf. Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species, for a different take on this).
Dr. Pinker first slides around issues by using ifs, shoulds, coulds–suppositions that assume much but prove nothing. “[C]hildren should start off assuming that their language requires the largest possible governing category, and then to shrink the possibilities inward as they hear the telltale sentences” resulting in “this subtle pattern of predictions.” But they already don’t hear constant repetition. Children are also supposed to “assume, by default, that languages have a fixed constituent order. They would back off from that prediction if and only if they hear alternative word orders, which indicate that the language does permit constituent order freedom. The alternative is that the child could assume that the default case was constituent order freedom.” Eh? “Constituent order freedom”? What kind of children does he know? Children who can classify at age 2 or 3?
Dr. Pinker is thinking, it seems, that children have the same mental agility as he, an adult Houyhnhnm, and can engage in axiom-making and assumption-getting that go with higher inductive and deductive reasoning. He is having children reason as an adult Houyhnhnm might. This is fallacious reasoning. One that, perhaps, Jonathan Swift perhaps might could have used in Gulliver’s Travels or any of his other satires. Children can’t add one and one, Dr. Pinker. Children can’t tell that 10 cc of liquid in a short, round glass is the same as 10 cc of liquid in a tall, thin glass. Unless, perhaps, of course, there were Houyhnhnm children, little people full of horse sense. Again that ancient philosopher of language, Ernst Cassirer: “If a child when learning to talk had simply to learn a certain vocabulary, if he only had to impress on his mind and memory a great mass of artificial and arbitrary sounds, this would be a purely mechanical process.” But, of course, Dr. Pinker does believe that the brain is only involved in mechanical processing. However,
It would be very laborious and tiresome, and would require too great conscious effort for the child to make without a certain reluctance since what he is expected to do would be entirely disconnected from actual biological needs. The ‘hunger for names’. . .reminds us that we are here confronted with a quite different problem. By learning to name things a child does not simply add a list of artificial signs to his previous knowledge of ready-made empirical objects. He learns rather to form the concepts of those objects, to come to terms with the objective world. . . . And language, taken as a whole, becomes the gateway to a new world. All progress here opens a new perspective and widens and enriches our concrete experience (Essay on Man, p. 132).
So it would seem that learning all of these words is learning an objective world. As Suzanne Langer posits in many of her writings, especially Mind, the brain’s job is to find meaning.
The brain we humans have took millions of years to evolve but the language we use evolved (evolves) in hundreds or thousands of years. So, language cannot be an evolution-dependent item, as Dr. Pinker posits. But it could be, as Dr. Deacon notes, a co-evolutionary item, à la Baldwinian evolution/selection (Cf. The Symbolic Species). But Dr. Terrence Deacon is not among the media’s edge-defying Houyhnhnm scientists. Who knows why. Perhaps because he’s not colorful enough. Or maybe he’s too fond of gorillas, especially gorillas that symbolize (Koko). And gorillas are a lower life form. They are not Houyhnhnms. And–horror upon horror!–Dr. Deacon consults with Koko.
Dr. Pinker does not like Dr. Deacon. Actually, Dr. Pinker doesn’t seem to like anyone who doesn’t think as he does. This becomes obvious in The Stuff of Thought, especially as he cites himself 20 times, twice as often as any other writer/theorist–and Terrence Deacon not at all. His weight in the corpus of linguists around the world is evident via their not citing him at all in their work.
But Steven Pinker is colorful and animated and popular and that’s what’s needed in selling a Houyhnhnm science. As long as it sounds great, it’s good. As long as it’s making fame and fortune for a previously unknown psychologist, it’s cutting edge.
It is of no account that the Yahoos in the Old West called these kinds of people con-men or snake oil salesmen and Medievalists charlatans. They are not, of course, Houyhnhnms and, therefore, jealous in their jibes.
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Bibliography
Brockman, John. Edge. http://www.edge.org/
Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944.
Deacon, Terrence W. The Symbolic Species: the co-evolution of language and the brain. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997.
Deutsch, David. The Fabric of Reality. New York; Penguin Brooks, 1997.
Fischer, David Hackett. Historians’ Fallacies. New York: Harper & Row, Pubs., 1970.
Goldberg, Natalie. Wild Mind. New York: xx, 200x.
Langer, Suzanne. Mind. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 19xx.
Pinker, Steven. Can’t find the words? Make ‘em up at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article2474562.ece
__________. The Mystery of Consciousness at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html
__________. The Stuff of Thought. London: Allen Lane, 2007.
__________. Words Don’t Mean What They Mean at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1659772,00.html
Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge Classics, 1969.
__________. Unended Quest. London: Routledge Classics, 1994.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. London: xx, 16xx.
Toulman, Stephen. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964.
Vonnegut, Kurt. God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. New York: xx, 19xx.
*Huang Jia’ning is a tri-lingual interpreter: Chinese-English-Japanese. It is thanks to his input that I was able to discuss the problems with interlanguage onomatopoeia, despite my years in both China and Japan.
Tags: Chinese, Houyhnhnms, language, linguistics, steven pinker
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